Chapter 1: the fool
Chapter Text
McGonagall is at the front of the Great Hall, and she’s definitely saying something, but James’ attention is already split between the back of Lily Evans’ head and Sirius and Peter, who are charming scones to roll under the table and bite at the ankles of first-years.
Suddenly, a rush goes through the crowd. James’ classmates are turning, whispering to each other, excited murmurs flowing through the air. James whips his head around, looking for someone to tell him what he missed. Sirius is a lost cause, scrabbling under the table, one of the scones has gone rogue and turned against him.
“What– oi, Moony, what did she say?” he hisses, but Remus is busy trying to detach a stray scone from his pantleg. He changes tack.
“Psst– Pete, what was that?” James whispers into Peter’s ear. Peter shakes his head, slapping his wand against his palm like it’s faulty. Sparks shoot out of the top, bouncing off of a jug of pumpkin juice.
“Mate, what? I can’t get this bloody spell, how’d he do it on the first go?”
“Will someone please let me know what McGonagall just said?” It comes out much louder than James meant it to, and he winces.
Angelina Beckett shoots him a glare from the Hufflepuff table.
“Bloody hell, Potter, switch your ears on. We’re having a ball.”
Sirius’ head pops up, right next to James’ knee.
“A ball?” His hair is a mess, curls tangled over one another. A scone dangles in his hand, forgotten.
“A ball!” James whispers back, eyes wide. “Oi, Angelina–” he’s calling now, and she heaves a huge, theatrical sigh, but still, she turns. “When did she say it’d be?”
“End of the year, after exams. She said it’s a celebration of the coming Summer– belated Beltane, or something. Fourth year and up,” she looks him up and down. “Better get those dress robes out of storage.”
James thanks her. Peter is tugging on his sleeve, asking about the Charms homework. James doesn’t care. He’s forming a plan.
Of course, Sirius instantly gets a date. As soon as they’ve left the Hall, he goes bounding up to Marlene McKinnon.
“Oh, Leeny, fellow Beater, best friend in the whole world,” he croons, arm around her shoulders, face close to her cheek. James notices Remus, averting his eyes.
“I’ve told you not to call me Leeny,” Marlene gripes, but she’s smiling. “What do you want from me, Black?”
“Will you do me the great honour of coming to the Beltane Ball with me?” He says it theatrically, waving his arm through the air and bowing at the waist.
“Oh, um–” Marlene looks startled, gaze darting sideways to Mary, who’s rolling her eyes. “Sirius, I’m not–”
“As friends!” Sirius says it so fast his teeth clack together. Remus’ shoulders, which had been up around his ears, droop back down, and James sees him shake himself out with something like relief. “Merlin, Leeny, you know I love ya, but not like that.”
“Don’t– just as friends?” Sirius nods, passionately. She laughs. “Alright then. Now get off, you lump. I’ll see you tonight at practice, hey?”
As Marlene peels off from the rest of them, Remus wanders up, taking his place next to Sirius. James watches them walk away towards the Astronomy Tower, before his eye catches on a figure sideling past, trying not to be seen.
Fucking Regulus Black.
Quick as a flash, James whips out his wand, casting a Toenail Growing Jinx, and races up to Peter, grabbing his arm and dragging him down the Charms corridor. He hears swearing, vehement and sudden, somewhere behind them in the distance, and snickers unashamedly.
That’ll teach him.
The thing is, James hates Regulus Black.
He’s never hated anyone before. He isn’t sure what to do with it. The sheer strength of it sometimes scares him, a burning-twisting monster in his chest. Even now, his mother’s voice echoes in his ears– ‘darling, we don’t say hate, and if we absolutely must, we say strongly dislike, alright?’
But this isn't dislike. It isn't even distaste. This is hatred, fiery and acidic and coursing through James’ veins every time his mind veers in Regulus’ general direction.
He hasn't always felt this way about Regulus. Before the summer between Fifth and Sixth year, James had felt nothing but careful neutrality about him. He knew Sirius cared about him, and honestly, he’d seemed like just another Slytherin– not even on James’ radar. James knew it pained Sirius to watch his little brother slipping further and further away, sliding willingly through the very cracks in the Black family facade that Sirius had clawed his way out of, kicking and screaming. That had been about all he knew of the youngest Black.
But that was before. The summer between Fifth and Sixth years was when Sirius had shown up at the Potter residence at daybreak, almost unrecognisable in the pale light, trembling violently. The unspoken had become blood leaking slowly down his face.
“I’m not going back there,” he’d gasped, and he wouldn’t say anything else about it. But James knew. James knew what the Black family had done to his best friend. And no, maybe he couldn’t exact revenge on Sirius’ mother, or scream in the face of Sirius’ father. But he certainly could make Sirius’ smug, remorseless, evil little brother regret the day he was born.
To James’ surprise, Peter is the next one to get a date. It happens in Potions, the week after the announcement. Marina Wattle prances up to Peter and Remus’ desk, ruffles Pete’s hair, and drops a note on his side.
Will you go to the Ball with me?
Tick yes or no.
MW
Peter ticks yes and folds the note into a paper plane, throwing it back in Marina’s direction and blushing so hard he looks purple. Privately, James thinks it’s a rather juvenile way to ask, but it made Pete happy, so he supposes it isn’t worth bringing up. His plan for Lily will be much better than some stupid note.
He turns back to Slughorn– or rather, to the head of red hair at the front of the class. When the class finishes, his parchment is completely empty of notes. No matter– Remus will have them. Or perhaps he could ask Evans, in a casual way. That would be a good lead in for a conversation, and maybe he could drop some hints about the Ball. Much to consider.
It’s lunchtime, classes just let out, when he finds his next opportunity to make the younger Black pay for his crimes. James turns back to the rest of them and grins, winks; Remus groans and pretends to look away.
He narrows his eyes behind his glasses and twitches his wand under his sleeve, muttering the spell under his breath.
They watch as a nasty Stinging Jinx hits Regulus in the back. He flinches, full body, books clattering to the ground. He turns around with a mean look and a counter-curse already gathering on his mouth when Professor McGonagall swoops in.
“Not in front of my classroom,” she snaps, pointing sternly at Regulus, who opens his mouth, presumably to defend himself when she spins around, her finger deftly finding James in the crowd. Peter yelps from beside him. He never really grew out of finding McGonagall slightly terrifying. “And you, Mr. Potter. Ten points from Gryffindor, and I mean it. It’ll be worse the next time I catch you.”
They’re chastened and silent as she walks away, before James turns his gaze to Sirius and they break, cackling, hyenas. Remus swats the back of his head.
“Shut it! She can still hear you!”
“So what?” Sirius shrugs, looks at Remus, back at James. “We’ll get all those points back through Quidditch anyway. There’s no way we aren’t winning the cup this year.”
James laughs, and swings his arm around his shoulder, sticking his tongue out at Remus’ disapproval, the Prefect badge shining on the collar of his robes. As he turns, he catches a last glimpse of Regulus out of the corner of his eye, bent down to pick his books up off of the floor. As if he could somehow feel James’ gaze on him, he looks up. James feels a shiver run down his spine, a spark of lightning from Regulus’ scowl, from their eyes meeting. Sirius tugs at his arm, the crowd dispersing to their next class. He turns away.
James Potter is, unlike most everyone else’s opinion, one of the most irritating, aggravating, unrelenting and downright rude people Regulus has ever had the misfortune of encountering.
It seems like he can hardly go a couple of days before getting jinxed or hexed with something or other. The most bizarre thing of all is the calibre of the hexes– the way that none of them are even remotely harmful, just annoying– at worst, uncomfortable. It's like Potter doesn't know any nasty spells– like he's still ten years old, trying out a curse for the very first time; and Regulus just happens to be the lucky recipient of his experiments. This isn’t to say Regulus doesn't mind the hexing. Potter is like a sandfly, buzzing around his head, nipping aggravatingly at his ears. Even when he does get the chance to defend himself, which wasn’t often, his little gang of friends– the ‘Marauders’, which may be the stupidest name Regulus has ever heard– are right there to back him up. There's the squeaky one with the ratty, pinched face; the Prefect, Lupin– who Regulus has a grudging respect for, truth be told– and- well. Sirius watches the pranks with a practised disinterest– a shadow, in the corner, only coming alive when it's all done and Potter turns to him, face open and ready for his approval. And his brother gives it freely, never minding the effects of the jinx du jour that would sometimes last all day, ruining Regulus’ careful plans of study-eat-sleep, staying completely unnoticed and under the radar. Ruining everything.
He responds in turn, of course; Regulus isn't one to take things lying down. And if his actions are motivated by something a little more than simple retribution– James and Sirius laughing at the Gryffindor table, James and Sirius jostling each other in the corridors, James and Sirius practically brothers– that isn't anyone’s business but his own.
Back in his dorm, Regulus collapses back on his bed, groaning. His feet still ache from that Toenail Hex, and he has sixteen inches due on Prime Numbers for Professor Vector that he hasn't even thought about starting.
“Long day?” Evan Rosier is lounging by the fireplace, practising his Charms work, and he asks the question lazily. Regulus doesn’t bother with an answer; he knows Rosier doesn’t actually care. “You know you could tell another Prefect what’s going on if it really bothers you–”
“Shut up, Rosier,” he says, and draws his curtains shut with a snap of his wand.
When James finally comes up with a plan to ask Lily Evans to the ball, it’s majestic. Nothing can go wrong. He’s planned it to the most minute detail, and he’s so confident, so excited, so ready, that when she says no, he doesn’t hear her. Not the second time, or the third. On the fourth, she whacks him with her Potions textbook, and it begins to sink in.
“But– why?” He asks, and genuinely, he’s baffled, and he’d like to know. He would have thought, if he were a girl, that fireworks and a speech and everything would really get his rocks off, so– what was wrong with it?
“Jesus, Potter, because I’ve told you it isn’t going to happen. Never,” Lily punctuates each pause with another thwack of her Potions book, “ever,” thwack, “ever,” thwack, “ever,” hard thwack, “ever!”
And James just lets it happen. Stands there, surrounded by Third years, in the Charms Courtyard, being beaten up by a Potions book and a furious redhead.
Lily turns to leave, then changes her mind, turns back.
“And besides, I’m going with someone else,” she spits, and it hurts, this rejection, far more than the textbook.
“Lily, I– I thought we were mates!” James cries, because he did, and she’s angry, and he doesn’t know why, he hasn’t even done anything to Snivelley in weeks–
“Friends!” She laughs, mocking. “Friends, James?” James doesn’t know what’s coming, so he nods, slowly. Wrong move. Lily throws her arm back, gestures to the flower petals and the final, still sputtering fireworks listing pathetically through the air.
“Friends,” she spits it like a dirty word. “Friends don’t do this shit, James. I– fuck, I wanted to be your friend! I did! But this– it’s like you don’t even see me as a fucking– as a person! I’m just a person, I’m not a conquest, or a fucking– god, I can’t believe you’re still doing this! You’re still– God, you’re still looking at me like you want to eat me, you absolute bastard!”
She has tears in her eyes, James sees with a start. When did that happen?
“Evans– I–” he begins, but she doesn’t want to hear it. She turns on her heel, robes flying, and right before she walks away, she throws her wand out, and hits him with a hex that he knows from experience will tie his shoelaces together for the rest of the day, no matter how many times he unties them.
Merlin, fuck.
“Oh, get up already, James,” Remus’ voice comes floating through the curtains. “You can’t mope about it all night. Worse things happen at war, you know. We have to go if we want to set up those fireworks in Flitwick’s classroom.”
“I’m not going! I’ve been too humiliated! You can go without me– take the Cloak, I don’t care. I’m not going to Flitwick’s and I’m not going to the Ball!” For all his dramatics, James does feel a pang of longing in his chest. He’d been looking forward to the fireworks.
“Come on, James, it’s no fun if we aren’t all there tonight. As for the rest of it, I’m going to the ball, and I don’t have a date,” Remus persists. A tiny smile creeps into his voice. “And– there’s no shame in going… stag.”
James leaps up and whacks him with a pillow, shouting about misuse of deer-puns, fetching the fireworks and the Cloak from his trunk. Between the prank – a great success! – and Sirius’ whooping laughter, Peter’s shrieking as they run away with Mrs. Norris hot on their trail, his prior heartbreak flees his mind, dew evaporating with the morning sun. Perhaps this was Remus’ plan all along.
As the days pass, exams trickling by, the Ball and the end of term approaching, James begins to notice a nasty little pattern. He’s catching Regulus Black staring– not at him, but at Sirius. It makes the monster in his chest writhe, aching with protectivity towards his best friend. How dare he? As if he has the right– any right at all, to look at Sirius with– there’s no other word for it but envy. Envy! It makes James feel sick. So, of course, he proceeds to double down.
The frequency of his– he hesitates to say pranks. They do feel more malicious but– he also doesn’t– it’s not that he wants Regulus to suffer. He just doesn’t want him to be comfortable. Or to look at Sirius. Or to look at any of them. Or to pass them by in the corridor or–
Well.
It gets to a point, in the middle of exams, when even Remus ends up thinking it’s a bit much. He’d sat James down, a dour look on his face, apprehensive and fidgety.
“Prongs, mate, don’t you think you’re being a bit–”
“What, Moony, a bit harsh?” James’ voice is biting, the monster inside his chest whirling. “You don’t know the half of it. You didn’t see Sirius that day. You didn’t see–” he trails off, lamely. This was Sirius’ secret to tell. Tries again, steadier, pushing his monster down. He pitches his voice low, serious. “You don’t know what it was like. Regulus deserves everything I’m doing. More. That whole family does. I– fuck, Moons, I hate them. For what they did.”
“Yeah, look, Sirius did tell me, but James, I don’t know if he wants you to be doing all this.” Remus looks down, his face all twisted up. He’s so uncomfortable. “He doesn’t even like it when we talk about R– about him.”
“Exactly! I mean Sirius isn’t going to do anything, obviously, but he’s just walking around, like nothing happened, like they didn’t do that– his own brother, he deserves–” James cuts himself off, hearing the words coming out of his mouth. Remus cocks an eyebrow.
“I’m not asking you to stop. I don’t like the guy any more than you do–” James doubts this very much– “but I’m just saying– um.”
James tamps down his grin. It’s clear that Remus had never expected to get this far in the conversation, and isn’t actually clear on what he was asking for.
“Message received, Moons. I’ll tone things down.”
James is laid back against the wide, warm tree branch, chucking the practice Quaffle up into the air, repetitive movements. They’ve just come out of their last exam– Divination, which all of them had flubbed with practised ease. There’s a week left of term, and the weather is finally picking up. James tilts his head up to the sun, feeling it on his face, its rays warming the leather of the Quaffle in his hands, and closes his eyes.
“Oi!” It’s a hissed exclamation from Sirius that gets his attention. He turns his head sideways, feels his glasses slipping across the bridge of his nose.
“What?”
Remus and Peter are talking quietly somewhere on the ground, the awkward snorting of Peter’s laugh, Remus’ low chuckle alongside. They’ve got some kind of Muggle comic-book opened up in front of them. James has never understood the appeal. The pictures don’t even move!
“Look, over there.” Sirius swings his arms over the branch and jerks his head, eyes keen and gleaming.
James turns to see Regulus Black picking his way down the hill. He looks sharply back at Sirius, the spiked ball of annoyance already rattling around his chest, before Sirius snorts, rolling his eyes.
“Not R– not him! Behind him!” This time, he points, and as James follows his finger he sees Evans and two of her friends walking down just behind Regulus. Her hair is tied back and up, a loose ponytail, and she’s laughing at something Mary is saying, mouth hidden behind her freckled hand. She looks up briefly, and with a sixth sense seems to see Sirius pointing, and James staring. Her face goes pinched, rotten milk and sour eggs.
James flushes. Sirius howls with laughter, stumbling away from the tree. Remus and Peter look up, bemused.
“Merlin, she doesn’t like you at all!”
James narrows his eyes. Sirius, still wheezing, carries on saying something about her– her face, oh my days, Remus you should’ve seen her– as James takes aim, sticks out his tongue and–
“Fuck!”
The Quaffle hits Sirius bang on in the middle of his head.
“James!” Remus says, reproaching, as Peter erupts into laughter, jogging to retrieve the Quaffle and intending on tossing it back to him– before he gets distracted by the sight of Marina Wattle, abruptly abandoning his friends– the traitor– to discuss corsages, or robes, or some other nonsense.
Sirius leaps down from his perch in the tree, landing softly on his feet.
“Moons, light of my life, bestest friend–”
“What do you want, Sirius?” Remus is still engrossed in the comic book.
“Will you come with me to the kitchens? It’s ages til dinner, and I’m snacky,” Sirius says, wheedling. He drapes himself over Remus’ back, hand flying to his forehead in mock pain. “Please, oh, King of my Heart– I’m feeling faint, won’t last much longer without–”
“Jesus, Pads, get off and we’ll go!”
James watches them walk away, Remus’ arm slung over Sirius’ shoulders, heads bent together. Sandy blond and inky black. They make a good picture. He hollers after them that they should bring back enough to share, and Remus makes an obscene hand gesture behind his back before disappearing over the hill.
James leans back against the tree trunk, fiddling with the Quaffle before he gets up too. He has a plan, another one, better. This'll get him back in Evans' good books and a date to the Ball, he's positive.
The excitement of the Beltane Ball rushes through students like a burst of new life– sorely needed after the dull plod of end-of-year exams and assignments. Even Regulus himself - very set on not attending - gets affected, caught up in the fevered discussions in the Common Rooms of what-to-wear and who’s-going-with-who. Matilda Withers comes up to him three times to ask if he knew if Sirius knew if Remus was going with anyone to the ball. He wasn’t sure why he would be the expert on Sirius’ friend, as he was barely the expert on Sirius, certainly not these days. But that was neither here nor there.
He's taken to escaping out by the Lake to avoid all the hullabaloo, the one place that was yet undisturbed by elaborate Ball proposals and the chaos of Madam Malkin’s latest catalogues.
Unfortunately enough, the chaos seems to follow him, in the form of one James Potter and Lily Evans.
He's sequestered under one of the many willow trees dotted around the Lake– not the horrifically dangerous one, which he still isn't sure why Dumbledore allows on the school grounds, what was a groundskeeper even for– nose in a book and practising his Transfiguration spells diligently, when he hears a scuffle, hasty footsteps and raised voices.
“Evans! Evans– Lily, come on!”
It's James, pleading, jogging after an increasingly harried Lily Evans. Her hair has come loose around her face, and her books are beginning to slip dangerously from between her arms. Regulus rolls his eyes, and is about to turn the page in his textbook– he can't seem to get a hold of the owl-to-opera-glasses spell, which is developing quickly into a headache somewhere behind his right eye, and Philomena looking up at him very unimpressed– when Lily Evans whirls around, wand coming up and pointing straight at James’ face. He comes to an abrupt halt, and goes a bit cross-eyed trying to keep the wand in his line of sight.
“James Potter!” Regulus thinks she sounds a bit like Professor McGonagall, which is not a flattering description at the best of times. “Leave me alone about this stupid ball, or I will hex you, I don’t even care about losing points!”
“You wouldn’t.” There’s a waver in his voice– he doesn’t completely believe himself. “I– would it be so horrible to go out with me?”
“Yes!” She rolls her eyes, honestly. “Yes, James, it would. You are– first, you won’t leave me alone, second, you can’t get it through your thick head that I might not want to go out with you, and third, you are an absolutely incorrigible bully!” She whacks him on the arm several times on this last one, foregoing her wand entirely. “You don’t even– the only reason you stopped picking on Severus was to ask me out! How do you think that makes me feel?”
James is gaping unattractively. Regulus thinks it might be the first time that anything Evans says has actually punctured through his thick skull. He does– privately– agree with her. The only time James ever seems invested in improving his behaviour is if he has some motivation or punishment through Lily Evans.
“Now stop,” she says, breathing hard and smoothing her hair back from her face, “following me. I mean it. Goodbye.”
She turns on her heel, nose in the air, and stalks off across the grass.
James looks after her, furrowed brow and big eyes, before swearing and kicking at a patch of weed, fisting his hands in his hair. He turns, and Regulus quickly puts his nose back in his book; why oh why hadn’t he walked away while they were shouting! The curse of being nosy!
“Oi!” Regulus pretends, diligently, not to hear him, and lets out a (very small) groan as the voice gets closer, shuffling footsteps. “Hey! You– you didn’t hear all that did you?”
He sighs, looks up, blinking innocently.
“What? Oh. Hullo Potter. Nice day out today isn’t it?”
James frowns down at him, and Regulus squints looking up; James' back is to the sun, and it peeks out to poke directly at Regulus’ eyes.
A pause. Regulus can practically see him thinking, wheels turning squeakily. There’s still an indent in the grass where he and Lily had their little scuffle.
“What’re you reading?” His voice is gruff, barely bordering on interested.
“Transfiguration textbook.” He’s trying for a gullible charm, doesn’t know if it’s quite working. “Trying to get a hang of Strigiforma but it’s–” he rolls his eyes, shrugs. Philomena hoots and ruffles her feathers. “Well. Not my strong suit.”
“Oh!” James perks up, and Regulus can practically see his ears going up, a dog with the scent. “I’m– well I’m pretty aces at Transfiguration. What– do you need help?”
Regulus squints at him, this time not because of the sun.
“Are you seriously offering to help me?” He says dubiously. “Or is this another one of your pranks? Because if it is, I’m not interested.”
“No, no!” James seems to take this as an invitation, and sits down beside him in the grass, setting down his satchel with a huff. “Listen– wait, what’s your owl's name?”
Regulus pauses. He can still hear Sirius’ pealing laughter when he’d first introduced his owl to him.
“Philomena,” he says, delicately.
James blinks. The derision he was expecting doesn’t come.
“Well, hello there Philomena,” he coos, reaching out a hand. She eyes him suspiciously, before turning and running her beak through her feathers. He laughs, softly. “Ha! She’s a bit like Whiskey– that’s our family owl. A lot of attitude, that one.”
Regulus nods. He doesn’t quite trust himself to speak.
“Right, well,” James doesn’t seem to notice, full steam ahead, “you want to make sure that you have your wand tilted a bit to start, like this–” he demonstrates, and Regulus watches him, narrowed eyes, is still sure that he’s doing it correctly, “but then, you want to make sure to do a flick here, before you–” he does it quickly, then slowly, eyes focussed on the tip of his wand. His wrist flexes and bends with the motion, fingers grasping delicately at his wand, loose and fluid. “See? Did you get that?”
Regulus blinks. His mouth is dry.
“Regulus?”
“Yes,” he says, startled. “Yes, I mean. I see. It’s like–” he mimics James, clumsily, then again with more confidence. James nods approvingly.
“Yes! And then you just add the spell– make sure to emphasise the for– and then,” he narrows his eyes, flicks his wand at Philomena, “Strigiforma!”
She neatly folds inwards into a pair of gleaming silver opera glasses. James smiles, a delighted thing that breaks out across his whole face.
“There!” He turns and looks at Regulus. There’s something considering on his face. “Why’re you practising anyway? Exams are over. And I mean–” he sweeps his arm out gesturing to the clear sky, the stretching expanse of blue in the mirrored surface of the lake, the wildflowers bobbing their heads amongst the fields. “Look! And you’re over here studying.” He says it disdainfully, studying, as if it’s the worst activity he could possibly think of.
Regulus shrugs, and tries not to look embarrassed. He doesn’t trust James not to make fun.
“I don’t really have anything better to do,” he says quietly. His shoulders are a taut line, braced for the insults, the mockery, anything.
James catches him by surprise again, just nodding solemnly, before gesturing down to Regulus’ wand.
“Alright. Have a go then.”
Philomena seems distinctly less trusting of Regulus’ wand pointed at her; he’s had to promise her many mouse treats after this.
He breathes in and out sharply, runs through the movement of his wand in his head. James’ gaze fixed on him feels like a prickling at the back of his neck, and he has half a mind to tell him to look away before he attempts the spell.
“Strigiforma!” Tilt, swish, flick and–
Philomena wavers for a second, before with a pop and a sparkling flash, a pair of – this time golden and slightly patterned – opera glasses are sat in front of them.
“Yes!” James pumps his fist in the air. “Exactly! Well done.”
Regulus can’t help but smile, looking down at the result of his successful spell. James goes to pat him on the back before his hand freezes awkwardly in the air, returning to his mouth as he coughs.
“Right– well. I’ll be off then. Well done, Regulus– just a bit more practice and I reckon you’ll be fine.”
Regulus can feel his mouth narrow into a thin lipped smile as he nods, inclining his head gracefully in James’ direction.
“Thanks, Potter. See you.”
As James rises, collecting his things, he turns to leave and pauses. Regulus watches the tense line of his spine, caught in a choice.
“Hey–” he says, turning slightly, the curve of his cheek against the sun. “You won’t– don’t tell anyone, about this.”
Regulus’ mouth sours. He can hear the name they don’t say between his words. Don’t tell Sirius.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he drawls, tries not to feel the bit of hurt somewhere in his chest. “Don’t want your Gryffindor pals to think that you’d ever be cordial with someone like me. That would do such terrible things to your reputation.”
James scoffs, shoulders rounding. “As if I– reputation’s something that you care about. Not– oh, whatever. You wouldn’t be going to Kent this year, would you? For the summer.”
He’s been trying not to think of the summer.
“Yes,” he says, and he doesn’t, does not think about– “we are. Are you?”
He doesn’t know why he asks.
James swears.
“That’s nice,” Regulus says. “Glad to hear you’re so excited.”
“Just–” James pinches the bridge of his nose, pushes his glasses up his face. “Alright. Just stay– whatever. Just stay out of my way.”
“You–!” Regulus says indignantly, to his back, “are the one that came up to me!”
James– ever full of etiquette and charm– flips him off as he makes the slow trek back up to the castle.
Regulus goes up to the astronomy tower, the night of the ball. The common room had become entirely unbearable, with Rosier and Carrow attempting to croon along to an ancient Franklyn Fortescue record, in a very clumsy attempt to charm the– unimpressed- dates that they’d somehow gotten.
He manages to avoid the majority of the students chattering and drinking definitely-not-smuggled-in flasks of Firewhiskey on his way up, slipping between secret corridors and hidden passages.
He ends up sitting in one of the window sconces, the cool night air blowing gently in his face, teasing at his curls. The sky spills out ahead of him, the evening star making her home before the rest of her kin join her in the still orange-and-blue sky.
The Ball itself is outdoors this year, the far wall of the Great Hall opened up in a grand archway overlooking the Lake, bobbing lights suspended over the heads of students and amongst the trees, illuminating the surface of the water like small winking stars. The crowd spills out onto the green, music echoing faintly into the air, and the gentle hum of laughter and conversation intertwining gently on top of it. Long tables of food and glittering towers of glass flutes frame the circle of grass, flowing yards of silk and playful triangles of fabric that switch between the four house sigils, a clever bit of Charmwork.
He leans his head on his hand and feels a not-so-small amount of melancholy, or perhaps envy, watching the students below, flushed cheeks and the awkward readjusting of too-big robes, leaning into each other with glimmering eyes and a chance of maybe– just maybe! – making your crush something more. It isn’t for him.
His gaze catches on a small group just on the edge of the dance floor– two darker heads of hair, two light. One of them breaks off, arm around a girl in a glittering dress, drawing her out on the dance floor. He watches as they twirl and spin across the grass, the picture of grace and society, flawlessly mirroring each other's movements. His brother had always loved their lessons in dance, laughing as he spun Regulus across the squeaking floors at home.
Across the ground from them, a familiar head of red hair– Lily Evans, with her gaggle of friends, notably turned away from his brother and their company. He scoffs, wonders how long that’s going to last. He can already see James casting longing looks across the field at them, Lupin clasping a conciliatory hand on his shoulder.
The night passes him by, temperature dropping and the cool breeze brushing its fingers against his nose, the tips of his ears; the crowd below slowly begins to disperse back inside the castle, tables emptying steadily of food. Eventually, with only stragglers left and the professors mingling by themselves on an empty dance floor, released from their duties of supervision, does Regulus slip off of his seat and walk slowly through the empty corridors, the peaceful high ceilings above, only the sound of his footsteps and the occasional running of students somewhere off in the distance. He slips back into the Common Room, up into his dormitory, and closes his curtains to sleep.
Regulus stands in front of the Fat Lady and tries not to feel like he’s loitering. She’s looking down at him suspiciously as he waits and he looks away, fiddles with a bit of thread in his pocket. Eventually, she swings open and–
“You,” says James, finger pointed and brow furrowed. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Regulus sneers, pulls the disdain taut over his nerves. It’s still hard to get over the childhood awe of his older-brother’s-friends, no matter how unimpressive they might have been right from the start. James is still staring at him; furious, red, righteous James. Sirius is barely a shadow in the door.
“Well I’m not sure if you know this, what with your limited mental capacity– but Sirius, you know, the one standing next to you? He happens to be my brother,” he drawls in lazy tones. His hand is tight around his wand in his pocket.
James scoffs. The shadow is silent. Regulus feels his nails bite into his palm.
A long pause, the three of them in a standstill.
Sirius sighs.
“It’s alright, James. Go back up to the lads, I’ll be there in a minute.”
James hesitates, looking between the two of them. Regulus wants to laugh, and bites at the inside of his cheek. Honestly, as if he could do anything to Sirius. James' protectiveness over his brother makes something sting in his chest, and he prefers to cover it up with finding humour– any humour, in the situation.
“Alright,” he says, finally, a last suspicious glance, “but seriously, if you aren’t up in 10 minutes–”
“You’ll send a search party, I get it, get out of here!”
He huffs his way back inside, and Sirius snorts as the portrait swings gently shut behind him.
The silence becomes strained quickly.
“So?” Sirius isn’t looking at him, eyes fixed to a point somewhere just over his right shoulder. Regulus shifts his weight, back and forth.
“The summer,” he says, quietly. Sirius’ eyes snap to his and away.
“What?”
He heard him, but Regulus repeats himself anyway.
“Will you come back?” He’d practised this in the bathroom back at his dorm, but it’s coming out all wrong now, wheedling and high. “For the summer. We’re–” his voice breaks and he blushes, hot red. “We’re going to Kent. You–” love it there. We love it there. We have so much fun there, I miss– “I thought you’d want to know.”
Sirius sighs. His hand is in his pocket, and Regulus can picture him rolling a cigarette between his fingers, knows he’s going to perch in the window and smoke it out the window after this conversation.
“Reggie,” he says, gentle, and Regulus hates this, hates him. “I’m not coming back. Not for the summer. Not ever.”
“But–” his voice cracks again, pitiful, childish. “I don’t– I–” need you, “why? It wasn’t– they would– Mother and Father, they–”
“They don’t want me to come back either.” He’s distant again, the kindness in his voice washing away as quickly as it came. “I don’t need them to tell me that to my face. Just the once was enough.” He laughs, a short hurt noise, a bird shot down in the bush. “I’m– I’ve already got plans anyway. I’m going with Moony to Wales.”
Regulus hates Lupin in this moment, hates all of them. Hates that Sirius gets to leave, and go gallivanting off with his friends who take him in with open arms and he has to– he has to-
“Fine!” He says, sharp, and he sees the Fat Lady leaning over in real interest now, eyes bulging over Sirius’ head. “I don’t– whatever! I don’t care anyway. It’ll– I don’t care. Have fun in Wales with your friends.” He spits out the last word like it’s something disgusting. His face is twisted up and there’s something hot behind his eyes. Sirius reaches out to him, brow furrowed and something that could be called concern on his face. Regulus takes a step back, another one, before turning on his heel and walking swiftly back to the Slytherin dormitory.
James finds Sirius, round the back of the greenhouses, struggling to light his cigarette against the wind. James ambles up, clicks his fingers, showing off his new wandless trick, and Sirius laughs when a spark comes out, attaching itself to the end of the cigarette.
“Bum one?” James asks, eager.
“Anything for you, Prongs,” and Sirius takes another out of the packet, hands it over.
James lights his own, inhales, letting the smoke swirl around them, buzzing around his blood.
“What did he want?” James asks carefully, after enough time has passed that Sirius has relaxed beside him.
“Nothing much,” Sirius says, placidly. “Just needed me to answer something.”
“And did you?”
“Yeah,” he says, finality colouring his words. He doesn’t want to talk about this any longer.
A beat. James brings his cigarette up to his mouth, lowers it again. Enough faffing around.
“Hey, Pads?”
“Yeah?” And it’s trepidatious, like Sirius already knows where this conversation is going.
“Will you come to Kent this summer?” James tries, he really does, to keep the hopeful note out of his voice. It doesn’t work.
Sirius looks crestfallen.
“James– you know I can’t,” he begins. James feels his ears reddening, his eyes threatening to prickle, even though he knew this would be the answer, and has prepared several rebuttals.
“But why! We’re so far away from them, they won’t even know– we’ll keep you locked up safe, and they’ll never find out– and Pads, you haven’t spent a summer without me since you were eleven– I’ll miss you– and the balls will be so boring without you, and–” he stops short at the look on Sirius’ face. Not begrudging agreement, like it always went in his head, but anger.
“What, and I’ll just be a prisoner in the Summer Cottage? No offence, James, but that does not sound like my idea of an ideal summer,” Sirius bites. “And besides, how do you think the events would go?” He punctuates his tirade with a drag of his cigarette, the smoke seeping out of his nose as he continues, volume climbing. “I mean, really– did you think, at all? About how this would go? What, we’d go to a ball and you’d just keep them out of my way? We’d all have tea together and not discuss it, like polite ladies?” Another drag. The crackle of it is loud in James’ ears. The anger is gone, a weary tone replacing it, and it makes James feel sick, sicker than when Sirius was shouting. “They nearly killed me, Prongs. I meant it, when I said I’m not going back.”
“Where will you go?” James says, very quietly. His cigarette has burnt down to ash in his fingers.
“Moony asked if I want to go to Wales, stay with him and his mum. I said yes.” Sirius is still speaking in that odd, flat voice. The silence between them is a gaping canyon. James doesn’t know what to say– or he knows what to say, what he wants to say but he shouldn’t. His mother’s voice in his ears, the summer-with-Sirius-in-Kent rapidly melting away. Sirius taps his ashes onto the ground, drops the butt of his cigarette and crushes it under his heel. He isn’t looking at James.
“I’ve got to go pack.” James says, in lieu of everything else. “So–”
“Alright,” says Sirius, dispassionate.
A beat. They are both unmoving, twin statues. Then, in a rush:
“Sorry–”
“Promise to write–”
They stop, and it only takes a moment, a shared glance before they both laugh, a relieved, guttural sound.
“Merlin–” says James, bent over. His stomach is beginning to hurt. He looks up, between teary eyes to see Sirius, breathing hard. “I– we’re idiots. We’re being such idiots.”
“S’alright,” gasps out Sirius, between wheezing coughs. “It’s– yes, I’ll write, obviously, Prongs! You’re such an idiot if you think I wouldn’t.”
James leans forwards, claps a hand on his shoulder; he’s still nervous. Sirius pulls him forward, properly, buries his face in James’ neck, arms tight around his shoulders. James breathes in once, twice, feels his heart begin to settle.
“Love you mate.” It’s barely a whisper, a breath past James’ ear. He feels something in his stomach clench, squeezes his arms tighter around Sirius’ middle.
“Yeah,” he says, quiet, in the space just between their bodies. “Yeah– me too. Love you.”
Dear
I hate
Sirius,
I can't convince Mother not to go to Kent this year. I think it’s all the stress of this past two years, remember when we and father certainly isn’t helping.
I’m sorry I’m lonely I can’t believe you’re making me do the summer all alone. If you change your mind and want to come for one of the parties I’m sure no-one would mind.
Cousin Bellatrix has become especially strange. I’m scared Narcissa says not to pay her any mind. Was she always that way? Do you remember her any differently? I remember one year when you both got sent off to France together. You turned up still alive by the end of the summer, so surely it went a little bit well?
Please reply I was talking to Great-Uncle Arcturus (I know you don’t like the portraits but he’s great fun, I swear) and he said that he had a cousin that was struck off too but he was perfectly alright later on, and they were seriously considering reinstating him. He got to come back to family dinners and everything! I miss you I wouldn’t mind having someone else to look at when Great-Aunt Cassiopeia starts going on her divination tangents. Surely no-one believes her prophecies? They hardly ever come true. And don’t talk about the one with the roast pig on the ceiling, that was a fluke and I’m sure you had something to do with it!
Please come back Anyway, this letter is terribly long now. If you really don’t want to come back, I have some books of yours, and those odd Muggle round things, if you’d like me to bring them to Hogwarts.
Yours
R.A.B
It’s the first summer away without Sirius.
Regulus is silent for most of the preparation before – not sullen – letting the low murmur of adult voices wash over his head. Something about the escape to the coast brings an ease to the sharp edges of the Black family. His mother becomes more inclined to smile, his father enjoying a glass of his best vintage in the evenings, as if just the idea of the long summer days and time stretching languidly, emptily in front of them is enough to bring relief.
There is a subtle moving around the idea of– of his now absent brother. His mother, perfected society smile since her youth, glides around the gaping pit at the centre of the family. The holiday is powerful enough to smooth its rough edges, to put up scaffolding and a tasteful illusory charm.
He packs more than he usually would: books mostly; swimming trunks he isn’t sure if he’ll use; some homework his professors have assigned over the break, presumably with the notion that it won’t get done, but Regulus feels like he’ll need a distraction; books again; a pack of cards, all faded and worn at the edges.
The Kent House is glorious when they arrive, full of sun and warmth as if to say welcome in, welcome home, we’ve missed you, yes you! The french doors are thrown open, windows pulling in the lush green air, the hum of new growth and warbling birds. It is almost enough to pull Regulus out of his glum mood, the grey clouds retreating, repelled by the house’s wagging finger. None of that in here, thank you very much!
There’s nothing planned beyond supper, and even that has become graciously informal. His parents have already departed to opposite sides of the house, doing whatever adults do while on holiday.
There’s the quiet popping of house elves in the distance, doing their invisible work. Regulus skates his hand over the sun-soaked walls, fingers catching on the notches of time, nodding to his favourite portraits. Even they look more relaxed here, their wide luxurious frames so different to their cramped homes in Grimmauld Place, great uncle Arcturus lounging on his painted sofa.
“Thank Merlin you lot decided to come to Kent this year,” he sighs, waving a hand in Regulus’ direction. “Couldn’t understand it when your mother decided to go to the French home last summer. France! As if we haven’t lost enough to the Malfoys.”
“They’re hardly French anymore,” Regulus chides. He likes talking to the portraits, and especially Arcturus, although he would never say it to him.
“It’s in their attitude, boy,” he sniffs, imperious, “even if you forget, they remember.”
Regulus shakes his head, laughs, and walks on.
He breathes in, deep, when his feet hit the stone path winding into the garden. The very air seems alive, so different to the cloying business of the city, buildings and people and things pressing inwards until you hardly had room to move. He follows the meandering path into the depths of the greenery, a bubbling creek singing over rounded river-stones, trees with branches weighed down by heavy fruit, bending to brush gentle leaves against the top of his head.
The grass is soft underfoot once he diverges from the well-worn pathway, toeing off his shoes and rolling up his pantlegs in secret rebellion. He stuffs his socks into his pockets, discards his shoes and trusts they’ll turn up sooner or later.
He usually does this with Sirius. He can almost see his brother ahead of him, pale bare feet and prancing through the grass, running and leaping and yelling, hands stretching up to cling onto the low hanging branches, tumbling through the dirt like some wild thing.
He shakes his head, and the melancholy rises off his shoulders like startled white moths. He imagines a voice, his mothers. Nothing to be done about that.
His feet continue to lead him through the grove, dappled sunlight on the ground, settling on the grass in a gentle glow.
He ducks through the last bit of shrubbery to their– his– the secret little clearing. It’s exactly as he remembers it, as they left it. A round of soft earth and the trees rustling overhead, pebbles scattered from childhood games and a long forgotten tie – Sirius’, he’s sure – hanging limply from where it had been tied to one of the branches.
Regulus hadn’t– when they’d first agreed this summer to come to the Kent House, he’d been almost decidedly against coming. He’d wheedled, pleaded, begged as much as he could, enquired after his friends’ holiday plans, extolled on the values of their other homes– if only Sirius could’ve heard the monologue he gave about Cornwall! After dragging his feet as much as he could, which was not a lot to be fair, he’d resigned himself to having a horrible summer ahead of him.
He sits in a slump in the centre of the clearing. He isn’t sure what he’s expecting, looking around with new eyes at memories that he is sure won’t ever be made again.
The sun tracks its way across the sky and he lays on his back, his stomach, picks at the grass and fallen leaves. He wishes he thought to bring the pack of cards. His mind drifts, white bobbing clouds passing overhead, the warm summer air pulling at his thoughts like soft taffy until he stretches languidly, props his head onto his palms.
He’s so relaxed, more than he’s been in months. Finally alone, finally peaceful. Nothing at all to worry about.
That’s why, it’s a bit of a shock when James Potter comes blundering through the grove, straight into the clearing.
Pads–
We just arrived at the Cottage. This’ll probably reach you while you’re still on the train– I hope Whiskey can get in? If not, she’ll enjoy the exercise. Merlin, why’d you have to go all the way to Wales? Although I suppose everyone’s spread out this summer. It feels weird. It feels so wrong coming here without you I think Mum and Dad think I’ll be lonely this summer. They’ve already asked after you twice and you wouldn’t believe the insinuations when I said you were summering with Remus and his mum– I ask you!
I don’t have any news for you, considering I last saw you yesterday. I promise I’ll update you the minute anything worth talking about happens, though. Just dropping a note to say wish you were here that we’ve arrived.
JP
James sighs as he turns onto the little path, the gentle tickle of the grass becoming hard-packed clay under his feet. He knows why Sirius didn’t come, of course he does, and he can’t blame him for it, but nothing in Kent is the same without him. Even the Cottage seems a little forlorn, like it knows someone is being missed. He doesn't know what he was thinking, coming down to the clearing without Sirius. It'll only make him sad, and it won't be any fun to sit there quietly by himself. Still, this is what they always did. Portkey into the front garden, dump bags and shoes in the living room, and run down to their grove.
Today, James is taking the walk at a careful amble. He isn't afraid to see the grove empty. He knows it’ll be the same. The same cool breeze, the same rocks scattered haphazardly around. The same tattered Gryffindor tie that James had tied to a branch the summer between First and Second year. Their first proper holiday together, when Sirius had shown him his secret grove, and they’d camped out there under the stars almost every night. James had wanted to mark it, to leave a reminder of their friendship there, a promise to return. Something aches in his heart. He knows he's being silly, that Sirius hasn't left him forever, but there is some part of him that stays grieving the loss. Five summers since they’d been apart.
The path winds, and James is just in sight of the clearing when he spots it. A head of curly black hair, a flash of pale skin. Just for a moment, he thinks it’s Sirius. He’s returned, he’s waiting for him, he couldn’t stay away after all, and a bubble of hope rises dangerously in his chest.
The figure turns their face. It isn’t Sirius. It’s Regulus. He hasn’t seen James yet, and it’s arresting to see Sirius’ uptight, aristocratic little brother looking so relaxed. Regulus is lying on his stomach in the middle of the clearing, head propped up on his elbows. He is barefoot, his pants rolled to his knees, a curve of soft, blue-white calf just visible above the grass. James doesn’t think he’s ever seen him lying down before. He looks happy. He looks calm.
The bubble of hope recedes, sinking back into the cavity of James’ ribs, deflating, and turning fast into the familiar hot-bright anger, pumping through his veins as he crashes into the clearing. Regulus jolts out of his reverie, staring at him wild eyed, his mouth a small ‘o’ of shock. There’s a piece of grass tucked behind his ear, like a picture in a storybook. He scrambles to his feet, all elbows and knees, and it would be funny if James isn't furious.
“What are you doing here?” He hisses. They don’t shout in the clearing, not in anger, and James is reluctant to break this rule. But he is tempted.
“I could ask you the same thing. This clearing is– well, it’s on Black land.” Regulus’ eyes are flashing, anger and something like pain. He’s whisper-shouting too, nonsensically.
“I know it’s on Black land. We’re the next house over. Sirius showed me when we were eleven.”
“He– he what?” Regulus falters, ever so slightly, the mask of rage slipping down. He suddenly looks very young.
“Are you deaf? He showed me. Merlin, this is our special clearing.” James is barrelling ahead, fuelled by his outrage at the intrusion.
“No it isn’t. It is not.” His tone is petulant, and James sees the moment where Regulus decides to lean into the argument, puffs his chest with self-importance, a little bird fluffing its feathers to make itself look larger. He struggles not to smile at the image.
“Yes it is, and I don’t have to prove it to you, but that’s my tie, so if anybody has any right to be here it’s me.” James can hear the words coming out of his mouth, and they’re so childish, and he doesn’t care at all.
“It’s Black land,” Regulus repeats, his voice rising now, losing the controlled edge that never seemed to leave him at school. “I don’t want you here. This is my clearing, I was here first, and you always do this, and he’s my brother, not yours, and– and– and I hate you, and Sirius showed it to me first, and it’s not fair! It– it isn’t fair.” He’s run out of steam by the end of his tirade, voice trailing off, breathing hard, eyes wet and ears red.
He snaps his mouth shut, and James can hear his teeth clacking from across the grove. He looks more undone than James has ever seen him, his sleeves pushed up and hair askew, the piece of grass behind his ear swinging wildly.
James looks at him, sweeps his eyes up and down. He cocks an eyebrow.
“Are you finished?”
Regulus nods, mutely. His hands flutter at his sides. He looks embarrassed.
“I’m still not leaving.” James says, and his voice is steady.
Regulus nods again. There’s something there, behind his eyes, but as quickly as it appears, it’s gone. He lowers himself back to the ground, folding his legs neatly under himself. His back is ramrod straight, and James thinks back to the brief moment of total relaxation that he saw when he arrived. He isn’t looking at James. That’s fine. Two can play at that game.
James stalks over to the other side of the clearing and flops down onto his back.
The afternoon breathes around them, soft exhalations. James fiddles with the grass, watches the breeze stirring in the trees, looks up at the clouds. He can’t find the peace that usually surrounds him in the clearing, frustrated. Intruder, his mind whispers. He scowls, turning to Regulus, who–
Who is asleep on the grass, head pillowed in his hands, brows drawn together in a tiny frown, lips pouting, full and pressing against a small cluster of moles on his forearm. He’s grumpy even in his sleep, the mean voice in James’ head says. But it’s wrong. He isn’t. He looks sweet like this, unguarded, almost angelic. Something squeezes in James’ chest.
James stands up, quiet feet on the long grass, and leaves the way he came.
Chapter Text
There are enough Pureblood families in the area — and of course, Portkeys and spare rooms — to justify having the Summer Season in Kent. Traditionally, the Blacks go first, throwing their annual Summer Soiree that is really only rivalled in its grandiosity by the Potters, who close out the season.
Practically everyone who was anyone was invited, even with the growing tensions that had adults whispering in secret conversations, heavy doors closed, the storm clouds gathering on the horizon. Still, nobody would turn down the opportunity for a good old fashioned party. The cousins would come, of course, and the Potters, the Malfoys, the Prewetts, the Lestranges, the Rosiers, the Longbottoms and on and on and on. Even the Weasleys, though an invitation didn’t guarantee their attendance.
The household descends into the madness of preparations; a flurry of invitations sent out by owls, Floo. House Elves pattering back and forth, and the smell of the kitchens permeating through the house, fresh bread and roasting herbs. Regulus lolls over the bannister, arms swinging and head leant on the cool wood as he watches his mother in the centre of the foyer, his eyes tracking the smooth magisterial movements of her wand through the air, directing the myriad of decorations, candles floating idly by. Flowing yards of silk meander through the air, hooking themselves up on invisible strings, and he feels a familiar glimmer of awe as she pulls the illusory sky over the high ceiling, a blanket of serene blue and fluffy white clouds that would soon become a array of stars whirling overhead.
The night of, Orion genially allows Regulus a sip of his vintage Firewhiskey, and laughs as he splutters, tears springing to the corners of his eyes. It is his laughter, more than the alcohol itself, that makes Regulus’ stomach warm, tingling down to the tips of his fingers.
With so many families, so much magic gathered in one place, it’s like he can almost taste it, a charge on the back of his tongue. It is intoxicating, making him feel like he could see everyone’s backs straightening, skin clearing, hair gaining a glossy lustre and a glimmer coming to their eyes.
His dress robes have been laid out neatly on his bed by the time he retreats to get changed, pressed black wool and shining leather shoes. He slouches into a chair and stares out the window, at the floating lights and the last few preparations before the guests would begin to arrive. He already feels exhausted.
The evening air is a cool palm pressed to his flushed neck. Regulus wanders through the crowds, a glass of something fizzing in his hand. He inclines his head genially as he passes Narcissa, who seemed to be laying it on rather thick with one Master Lucius Malfoy. He can imagine the scenes of his mother finding out about that, a shrill voice ringing in his ears. There is a sweetness in the air, a buoyancy. Regulus loves parties. The low chattering hum, interrupted by high peals of laughter ringing into the still summer night sky, the clinking of bottles against too-full glasses, extravagant dresses rustling over the grass and the shrieks of children plied with too much sugar. It melts sugar sweet on his tongue.
He wanders for a while longer, gets pulled into a conversation with a distant relative– yes I’m at Hogwarts, no I haven’t really thought about what to do after, yes maybe something in the Ministry– and has just extricated himself when he hears it. A hushed voice, shaping an all too familiar name. A name that Regulus’ ears are perhaps particularly sensitive to; a name, that after the events of last year, was almost never said.
”–Sirius out of the picture, it will have to be the spare.”
It’s Bellatrix, her voice a low hiss. Regulus’ heart stumbles, but he keeps his cool, sliding slightly closer and pretending to watch the dancing.
“Of course it must. The House of Black must join the Dark Lord as soon as it is able, and we shall not let this setback impact our chances. But the boy is not yet of age.”
The fizzy wine in Regulus’ grip sloshes, spilling out of the flute and onto his shoes. It is unmistakably his father’s low voice.
In an instant, it’s like he can see his future locking in around him. His pupils open into twin gaping black holes, straining to see into the murky water ahead of him, the fishing twine curling around his neck, crooning in his ear, not yet pulled taut but soon, soon.
“It must be soon,” Bellatrix croons, her voice lilting and sticky sweet. “Otherwise–”
Regulus doesn’t hear the rest. He stumbles away, accosting a waiter and demanding a ‘bottle of something, anything– no, the good stuff, please.’ He must seem appropriately desperate, as the waiter blinks once and hands him a bottle he’s produced from nowhere, open but full.
He needs air. He needs– he needs– he pushes out of the ballroom, chest heaving. He will not cry.
Regulus makes it all the way to the front steps when his legs give out underneath him. Deciding this is as good a place as any, he leans against a column, and begins to drink.
James’ formal dress robes itch. He pulls at the collar, readjusts the sleeves, but nothing seems to alleviate the tickle of wool against skin. He’s in a foul mood. He wishes Sirius was here– selfish, a voice in his head chides. He wishes Remus or Peter were here. Better .
His parents had arrived ahead of him, punctual to a fault. They’d shown him their outfits before they left, Effy resplendent in deep blue robes that shimmered as they fell to the floor, Monty commanding in a burgundy-red, stiff at the collar and bringing out his laughing brown eyes. It makes sense then, James thinks sourly, for them to put him in purple. The Prince of the House of Potter. His robes, set out by house elves the night before like he was a child again, were a deep, rich plum. Not the most flattering colour, but certainly one that would garner attention. Attention that James didn’t feel up to tonight.
Which is why James is arriving almost an hour late. As he crunches up the gravel of the drive, he feels irritable and too-hot, like the tiniest thing could set him off.
And there it was, right there, the tiny thing that would set him off, and it’s so much worse than a stone stuck in the bottom of his shoe.
Regulus Black, sitting on the steps leading up to the house, looking utterly despondent and drinking straight from the neck of a bottle of champagne.
“Regulus?” James cannot believe his luck. The first person he sees at the Black soiree, the event that he 'must be polite at, darling, or we’ll all be going to hell in a handbasket,’ was the last person he could dredge up even one kind word for. “What are you doing out here?”
“What does it look like?” He’s sullen. James can feel the beginnings of a tingle of curiosity, somewhere in his stomach.
“No need to bite my head off, Merlin, I’m only asking. How is it in there?”
“Look, James, I don’t want to be rude–” a lie, an obvious one– “but I’m not in the mood. Can’t you go and bother someone else?”
“If it’s as bad as that, I’m sure I can.” James starts for the door, and the sounds of the party float out to him, tinkling glasses and tittering laughs, the polite chatter of high society. Usually it would draw him in like a lure, but his robes are scratchy, and his mouth tastes funny, and he has a squirming, nasty feeling in his belly. He’s sure no one will miss him anyway.
Turning on his heel, James goes and sits down next to Regulus, who is looking up at him with glazed, grumpy eyes. His brow is furrowed, confused, and James has the nonsensical urge to smooth over the soft pad of skin that bunches between his eyebrows. He doesn’t.
“You know,” he swipes the bottle out of Regulus’ loose hand, “I’m having a terrible night too.” He takes a swig while he waits for Regulus to answer him. The bubbles dance on his tongue.
“I bet I’d win,” Regulus says, dryly, and then he hiccups, an innocent, polite noise.
“Oh really? Want to compare?”
“No, Potter. I’d win. I never win, but on this–” he hiccups again, “on this one thing, I promise I would.”
James would push him, but he can see the wobble of Regulus’ lips, and realises that if he isn’t careful, he’s going to be bearing witness to a Black Breakdown. Remus and Peter had coined the phrase in third year, after living with a hormone-fuelled Sirius for a month. James hadn’t realised they were hereditary.
“We need more wine, I think.” James clicks his fingers with a sigh, and the Potter house elf pops into existence. “Mopsy, will you please fetch a bottle of Dad’s Chardonnay? The ‘67 vintage, I think. Chill it right down.” Regulus hiccups, a third time, this one accompanied with a dozy frown, as James finishes speaking.
Mopsy pops again, returning with the bottle. She gives James a frown, saying with her eyes that this will get back to his parents, and James gives her back a look that says he doesn’t care, waving his hand to dismiss her.
“You know it’s very rude to call your own house elf on someone else’s property.” Regulus says, but he still takes the bottle out of James’ hands, drinking deeply. “And– hic– and I seem to remember telling you to leave me alone?”
“Yes, my dear Regulus, but if I had left you alone, who would be providing this lovely Chardonnay?” The nasty edge had left James’ tone at some point. He doesn’t know where it went, but Regulus does cut a pathetic figure, and he can’t bring himself to replace it. He drags his eyes over his drinking companion; taking in hunched shoulders, glassy eyes, cheeks flushed with a mixture of alcohol and misery, chest jumping.
The quiet between them stretches long, and James, who doesn’t know the meaning of ‘comfortable silence,’ decides to break it.
“Would you like to play Questions?” As soon as it is out of his mouth, James is kicking himself. Questions? With Sirius’ evil little brother? He’ll never hear the end of it.
“What the bastarding hell is Questions?” Regulus must be very drunk, James thinks, if he is conjugating bastard like this.
“It’s easy. You ask me a question, and I have to tell you the truth. Then we swap: I ask you a question, and you have to tell me the truth. And on it goes.”
Regulus looks incredulous. At least, that is what James thinks he is trying to portray. One of his eyes is drooping shut, and he’s trying to raise his eyebrows, but they don’t seem to be playing ball, and all this results in him giving James a deeply odd, leering, wink.
“No offence, Potter– actually,” he hiccups for the fifth time, and stops talking for a while to hold his breath, bearing down on his diaphragm to stop it from spasming. James neglects to tell him that there’s a spell to stop them.
“Actually, full offence. There isn’t anything I’d like to know about you.”
“I’ll go first then! What’s your favourite colour, Reg?”
Regulus glares at him. His chest jumps. James stares him down.
“Fine! Merlin, you’re persistent. It’s– hic! –purple.”
James raises his eyebrows, looks down at his dress robes.
“Not that kind, you prat. I like– hic! – I like it lighter. Li–hic! Like lilac.”
While Regulus is talking, James twitches his wand at him from beneath his sleeve, muttering the hiccup-cure under his breath. It isn’t to be nice. The hiccups are as annoying to him as they must be to Regulus. James is not being nice.
“Lilac, hey? I’d have you pegged for a green and silver man. Me? Oh, I’m so glad you asked–” Regulus looks astonished, and it’s a sweet expression, childlike. James isn’t sure whether he’s surprised that he’s still speaking, or at the sudden stop of his hiccups, the cool rush of air flowing through him, easy. “I like red.”
“Of course you do. Gryffindors are all the same. No sense of individual identity.”
“Who needs it, when you’re the bravest of them all?” James smirks, rolling up his sleeves. It’s a warm night.
“Okay, my turn, my turn.” Regulus’ voice is bright, unguarded. James finds himself thinking of Sirius in first year, unbuttoning his etiquette for the first time in his life– or to be more accurate, tearing the whole thing off and running .
“I thought you didn’t want to play?” James gets a glare for his trouble, and folds immediately, grinning as he takes a swig of wine. “Alright, go on then.”
Regulus takes a breath to answer, but something in his eyes clouds over. They’re shining oddly, pooling darkness.
“Will you forgive me?” His voice is eerie, clear, and too still for the wavering of his body.
“Um, sorry?” James is unsettled, a prickling edging up the tips of his fingers.
Regulus gets to his feet abruptly, and so James does the natural thing, and follows, keeping Regulus’ weaving figure in sight as they wind through the back passages and service corridors of the Black residence, the sounds of the party– growing raucous now– muffled, cocooning them. The halls are labyrinthine, walls close. it's a wonder they don’t lose more house elves– James imagines coming across the mummified husk of a tiny body, ears twisted back, and shudders. He is so focused on not losing sight of Regulus that he follows him directly into the bathroom.
He’s about to make his apologies and leave when Regulus whips around, grabbing his bare arm. Regulus’ hand is warm, and solid. James doesn’t know why he’s surprised. He had it in his mind that Regulus was freezing under his robes, cold and hard, a little porcelain prince. James can feel his heart beating, in time with Regulus’ pulse fluttering atop his wrist.
“I am furious with you, James Potter.” Regulus’ voice is cold, and it’s lost the bizarre calm from before, his Question.
“What?” James is genuinely befuddled. “ Why? ”
“Oh, you think you’re so bloody cool– stalking up the drive an hour late, with your Chardonnay and your house elf, and–” he burps, puts two delicate fingers to his mouth, and James can see where this is going, but Regulus is off again, hissing words across the still air of the bathroom. “And– and I told you to leave me alone in the clearing yesterday, and you didn’t, and you still won’t– what do I have to do to get you to go away ?”
“Well– and this is just a suggestion, Reg– you could start by letting go of my arm.”
Regulus laughs, a high, mocking sound.
“You think this is all a game, don’t you? It isn’t, James. It’s not a game– not to me, and–”
And he promptly turns, crouches, and vomits neatly into the waiting toilet bowl.
There he goes, James thinks, feeling a little surge of pity as Regulus retches and sobs. He puts a hand on the back of Regulus' neck where it meets his shoulder, rubbing slow circles, – not to be nice, Merlin , just because it’s something he likes when he’s sick. He summons a glass of water, settling in.
Somewhere, in the midst of sicking up everything he’d ever eaten, Regulus collects himself enough to be able to speak. There is something mean coming out of him along with the bile and the un-digested alcohol.
“He’s my brother,” his voice is thin, scraping through the bile stained remains of his throat, “my brother. Mine. No matter how much you want to take him away.”
Regulus feels the sudden lack of James’ hand on the back of his neck like an ache. He imagines that his palm, his calluses, had made indents in his skin like soft mud, and the air slid into them with cold fingers. He bites down on his tongue, hard, iron through his mouth, afraid of what might spill out otherwise. He’s still damp, sweat soaking through his layers of dress robes, drying tackily on his skin. The porcelain bowl of the toilet fills his vision. There is a crack in the ceramic, dark and persistent down the serene white surface.
“Merlin, you’re hard to like.” James sounds disbelieving above him, voice distant. Regulus sways, blinking away the salt-sting in his eyes. His hands skitter away from him on the floor, knees gone numb. James’ hands return, one stroking down the length of his spine and the other placing a glass of water just in front of him.
Later, he’ll wonder whether he heard James properly; a faint, pitying voice amidst his retching and the ringing in his ears.
“I’m not the one he’s running away from.”
Hullo, Pete!
Hope Egypt is going swell!! Do give Whiskey a treat before you send him back– it’s an awful long way from Kent to you, even for an eagle owl.
You must tell me everything – how is the weather? Are you seeing heaps of tombs? Any ghosts worth mentioning??
Nothing is happening here. We had the first event of the season last night– very boring as you well know. I spent most of it wishing you and the others were here, and barely any of it at the actual event. I’ve been There’s something quite lonely about summer this year. Ah, well. Perhaps I’ll make some new friends. There are some familiar faces about in Kent this year, and I’ve been spending time with well, I’m not sure what to think about it yet. Misery makes strange bedfellows for us all!
Have you heard from Moony and Pads yet? They’re terribly quiet up in Wales. I hope they haven’t been eaten by red dragons or sheep. How much mischief can they realistically get up there, without you and me? I doubt very much. Sirius is probably overwhelmed by the Muggle-y bits, and Remus will be running around trying to stop him from elecktricing elticrtryck electronki shocking himself (I did pay attention in third year Muggle Studies, hah!).
That’s all from me. Hope you haven’t perished of heat or been possessed by a malicious deviant spirit of a snake or something. Write soon, or I’ll assume you’ve betrayed us all and are setting up shop permanently in the Near East!
Yours,
Prongs
James is just thinking about what a lovely time he is having, lying in the clearing on his own, watching the clouds drift past, when Regulus stalks out through the trees.
He sits up, lazily.
“Morning, Reg!”
Regulus glares at him, and pointedly says nothing. “I hope that house elf of yours– Bipsy, was it? I hope Bipsy makes a mean hangover potion!” His voice is a little too loud, and it’s on purpose. Never let it be said that James Potter lets an adversary escape with their dignity.
“I’m fine, Potter. No thanks to you.” The flop of him down to the grass, undignified, somewhat undercuts his haughty words.
James is about to lapse back into his reverie when Regulus speaks again.
“Why did you do that?” And his tone isn’t angry, or even accusing. It’s curious.
“Do what?” There are a number of things Regulus could be speaking about here.
“Well–” he hedges. “Well, why did you sit down with me and bring me wine? Why did you stay when I started sicking up? We don’t even like each other.”
James sits up fully, looks at Regulus, who is looking steadily back. They’re at a stalemate, a standstill, and suddenly there’s a duelling mat between them, their hands at their wands, daring the other to draw first. James shakes off the image. The sanctity of the grove forbids duels.
“No, Regulus, we don’t,” and James is hesitating here, because, if he’s honest, he has no idea what possessed him to act the way he did last night. There was something that was just so– so pathetically sad about Regulus, sitting there on the steps, so small, the sad, drunk hunch of his body. It had made James’ chest hurt. “I– I know you’re Sirius’ brother, and you seemed, well– upset–”
Regulus hisses, a sharp, pained noise.
“Don’t. Just– please don’t. Don’t talk about him. I can’t– I don’t– please.”
It’s the way he says it, like it’s painful, words like shards of glass tearing his throat on their way up– and still he says them, and it’s brave , this request– and it makes James take pity on him.
“Consider it unsaid,” he says gravely, and casts around to find a safe topic. There’s nothing in his head, just mothballs and Sirius. Don’t think of a pink elephant.
A beat. A long one.
“We never finished our game of Questions,” Regulus offers, shyly.
“That’s right!” James grasps at the offer like the lifeline it is; he’s always hated silence. “Whose turn was it? Yours? Mine?”
He knows, can still feel the odd shiver down his spine from that last Question of Regulus’. It was a peculiar one- he’s never heard Regulus sound that way before. An echo of Sirius’ voice in his head- sometimes, a hesitation, sometimes he’s a bit strange. I don’t know how– not bad strange! Just– anyway, don’t repeat that. I– shouldn’t have said that. Sirius is famously reticent about his younger brother. James could tell he’d regretted saying anything, that late night conversation under the sheets, the air itself holding its breath and listening.
“Yours, I think.” Regulus’ brow has twisted itself up trying to remember. James is absurdly grateful.
“Well,” he draws out the word, drums his fingers on the ground. “An easy one to start then. Did you have a second round of sicking up this morning?”
Regulus shoots him a mean look. Somehow, in the two days since the beginning of summer and now, James has begun to learn how to distinguish his actual, real mean looks from the ones he just uses as a disguise, like a kitten fluffing itself up to appear intimidating.
“Yes.” He says it begrudgingly, after a long pause. James hadn’t said a word. He wasn’t about to let Regulus off the hook! “I did, and no I still don’t want a hangover potion. I’m fine now.”
From the faint green pallor on his face, presumably just from remembering his morning bent over the toilet, James would say he does need one but he doesn’t push.
“Alright, alright. Hit me.”
“Okay,” Regulus says, humming a little as he thinks. “Anything, and you have to tell the truth?”
James nods, a bundle of nerves curdling in his belly.
“Alright then,” and he takes a deep breath, winding up. The knot in James’ stomach tightens. “Would you like to– oh no, Merlin, nevermind.”
“No, what?” The only thing that James hates more than nerves is curiosity. It’ll burn a hole in him, never knowing what Regulus was going to say. A bolt of inspiration. “Once you start a Question, you can’t stop– no takesy-backsies!” He says it firmly, though this isn’t a rule of Questions at all. But he is dying to know.
“What? You didn’t mention that rule last night!”
“Wasn’t relevant. It is now.” James shrugs, letting a devious smile crack his face. Regulus glares at him, then relents.
“Fine,” another deep breath. “Would you like to keep doing this? In the clearing, I mean? On purpose?”
Whatever James is expecting, it wasn’t this.
“Why?”
“Well–” he draws it out, thinking of what to say. His eyes are determinedly fixed on a small patch of grass and overturned rocks, like they’ll have the answer for him. James wishes he’d look at him instead. “It just seems like– look, I know we hate each other. In school, or whatever. But it’s just us here for the summer– unless you want to start spending time with Emmeline Vance–” they both give a snort of laughter. Emmeline Vance is the most boring girl in their generation of heirs, and has been since birth. “Look, the way I see it is that it’s just you and me, and we may as well be civil. Perhaps we could even be,” he swallows, his throat clicking, “friends. Just for the summer?”
James thinks on this, considers it.
“Okay,” he says at last.
Regulus looks at him, incredulous. There’s something behind his eyes, something strange that James can’t quite place.
“Really?” He asks, and it makes James think. He thinks of Regulus in school, always alone, making himself as small as he can; thinks of him by the Lake after exams– I didn’t have anything better to do ; thinks of him drunk and forlorn, at the front steps of the Black residence the night before. That’s when James places the emotion that Regulus is clearly trying to hide. It’s hope.
James’ chest flutters, a tiny little bit.
“Really, you sook,” he says. “Now, it’s my turn to ask, and I’d like to hear all the gory details about how your OWLs went.”
Prongs, you absolute prat,
Don’t think I haven’t noticed how long it took you to owl me back. I don’t know why, you make Kent sound dull as rocks. I’d have thought you were gagging to hear the Pettigrew’s Grand Adventure – which so far has consisted of a missed portkey and only my baggage getting lost. I haven’t worn underwear in a week. Do you know what that does to a man?
Egypt is very hot, and very loud, and no one seems to notice how hot and loud it all is. I’m sure you could have predicted the sunburn I have. Well whatever you’re thinking, imagine ten times worse. My nose feels like it’s about to fall off. I tried to turn into a rat see Wormy do the thing (you know; but I won’t write it, Mum’s got a bloody bee in her ear about International Owl Postage and I’m half afraid she’ll read this just to check I’m not talking about illegal potions or something – MUM, IF YOU’RE READING THIS THEN YOU’RE GOING DIRECTLY AGAINST THE ADVICE IN ‘THEY GROW UP SO FAST: LEARNING TO PARENT THE WIZARDING TEENAGER’, AND I KNOW THIS BECAUSE I FOUND IT IN YOUR SECRET SPOT, AND I’M NOT TAKING ILLICIT POTIONS) and it itched so badly I thought I was going to die. Could I get fleas when I’m in form like that? Do you get tics? I wish we’d thought this through a little bit more.
I hope something more interesting is happening to you. Your letter was very cryptic. What do you mean familiar faces? Aren’t you still at the Summer Cottage? (I still can’t believe you call it that, fuck’s sake, it’s a mansion), and if you are at the summer cottage, who is with you? I thought you were in a fight with Lily and the girls, and Remus and Sirius said they’d stay in Wales for the duration on account of your evil fucking sociopath Nazis of neighbours (Sirius’ words, not mine). Do you have some other friends that I’m not aware of??? It is not very nice to keep secrets from your oldest and dearest. Incidentally, do you know what Nazis are? I did ask but he just said something vague about Muggle Purebloods, which is surely an anti anten antonim a contradictory statement, and frankly I don’t think he knows either.
Write back soon. I expect all the sordid details and lots of gossip to keep me going while we traipse through identical pyramids. Also, don’t fucking wait a week this time.
Okay, Mum’s breathing down my neck. I’ll see you in August, we’re back on the fourteenth. Hopefully enough time for some Maurauding before summer ends? Really have to go now. Off to see more bones!!!!!!!!!!!
Wormy
As the first week of summer sweeps past, James’ days quickly fall into routine. Instead of the late-starts and sleep-ins of summer previous, he gets up and out of bed with the sun. This surprises his parents, he can tell, who blink owlishly at him over their matching mugs of coffee as he tumbles down the stairs.
“Awfully early start for you, darling, isn’t it?” There’s a hint of question in his mother’s voice that James doesn’t bother – doesn’t want– to answer. “At least have breakfast before you go, you know Mopsy’s made your favourite–”
“Sorry Mum, I’ve got to dash,” he leans over and smacks a kiss on her cheek, the same for his father who’s looking down at the paper. James makes a face, catches the corner of a headline – Unrest and Blood Politics: Muggle Relations in the Modern Era– before Fleamont snaps it closed, looking up with a genial smile.
“He’ll be alright, Effy,” he says, patting her hand. She’s still frowning, saying something about growing boys and their nutrition when James jogs out the door, piece of toast jammed between his teeth. Melting butter runs down his fingers and he licks up the stray droplets, wipes the rest on his pants.
Regulus is there waiting for him, every time, sometimes yawning, sometimes wide awake, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, sometimes (very rarely) not there at all. Those are the days James sits around and whistles and waits, and knows his job; that when Regulus does stumble in with a hints of red stuck to his eyes, the tip of his nose, the telltale sniffle of early morning tears, James jumps up and smiles and cracks a joke and does everything possible for Regulus to smile.
Prongs,
We miss you! It’s ever so dull in Wales. So many sheep. I’ve been restraining myself so far about making jokes about what the farmers get up to with them on cold and lonely nights so far, but I can only do so much. Moony’s mum is very nice. A bit dizzy, but there you go. I’ve been learning ever so much about the Muggle ways of doing things. For instance, did you know that they can harness lightning and turn it into eleck elick elcictryick power currents in their homes???? And things just turn on with the flick of a switch??? I think Moony’s mum thinks I’m thick, but it’s just so much fun to make their lights go on and off. I’m still scared of the toaster though. That’s okay. Plenty of time to get used to it.
How is Kent? Have you seen my Any dashing Southern lasses to take your mind off Lily? I’m sure she’ll be alright once we’re back at school. Has she replied to any of your letters yet?
Moony wants me to ask if you’ve been to the White Cliffs of Dover yet. He’s tucked up in bed now, bless him. The first full moon went okay, but things were a bit odd without you and the rat. Speaking of, did you also get a letter full of complaints from Wormy??? I made the mistake of mentioning those Muggle Pureblood extremists to him before he left and now he seems to think I’m a Muggle history enthusiast. Also, what’s all this about fleas?? I told him I don’t get them– if you tell him about that time you had to get me a treatment from the vet then you’re dead to me, Prongs, don’t think I won’t snap those pretty antlers.
Anyway, I hope alls going well with the Potters. Send your mum and dad my love, yeah? If you see I don’t want Please look out for Try not to get up to too much mischief without me.
Write back soon, or I might be reduced to defiling a sheep in my infinite boredom.
Pads
The summer storm comes upon them suddenly. A deluge of rain and grey skies and rumbling thunder; it is enough to keep even the bravest souls indoors. Regulus rests his head on his knee from where he is sat at a window in the library, one leg dangling off the perch toward the ground. The rain is beating its small fists against the glass, dribbling down sulkily as they fail to make their way inside.
His mother is in a foul mood; she’d planned on having a tea party with her lady friends in the courtyard. She’d been halfway to making Kreacher hold a shield above their heads when his father had intervened, a rare voice of reason. She was now lounging in the sitting room, fanning herself for respite from muggy summer heat.
Regulus himself had on his lightest shirt, a pair of shorts. He was still too-hot, a layer of clammy sweat coating his skin. He’d run a cold bath in the morning to try and escape, but that had only proven to be a brief – wonderful! – interlude.
He had just begun drifting off, in a position that was bound to give him a crick in his neck when– there–!
An owl flies up to the window, bedraggled and wet, and looking altogether very perturbed. Regulus hurries to push up the window, just enough to let it inside. Droplets of rain take their opportunity to enter, making their smug homes in tiny dark splashes against the wood, the elaborate patterned rug.
“Shh, shh,” he soothes, shutting the window and letting the owl hop up and onto his arm. “You’re alright. You're alright, now. Merlin, who’s sending you out in this weather?”
The owl hoots indignantly, as if to say yes, isn’t it just ridiculous!
The letter tied haphazardly to its leg is enough to make Regulus snort, rolling his eyes dramatically up to the ceiling. It is, of course, James.
Reg,
Ever so bored with this storm. Do you think the Lestranges’ event will be cancelled? They usually do a garden party, and I can’t see how that’ll work. Here’s hoping. I cannot be arsed to listen to your loving cousin get sauced and turn on her Celestina impression– or worse, try to talk to me. Merlin, the things I know about that woman’s sex life.
What are you up to? Say you’re not occupied and want me to come for a visit. I’ll Floo in a heartbeat, and we can sit in your nice greenhouse and have Bipsy ply us with cold things. I’ll bring the Gobstones.
Please don’t send Whiskey back in this weather– if you’re keen for me to come, just give me a bell on the Floo. If not, Whiskey is yours forever– my bequest to you as I will be dead from boredom and humidity.
Yours with hope,
JFP
Regulus finds himself biting his lip to keep from smiling as he read the letter, once, then twice.
It isn't a difficult decision to make.
The still-bedraggled owl – Whiskey – flutters onto his shoulder and chirrups in his ear as he slides off the window seat.
“Alright, alright,” he murmurs, scratching at the downy feathers on its chest. “I’ll get you a treat for getting to me in this horrible weather, come on.”
Once Whiskey is nibbling happily on a dried bit of meat, Regulus gives James a ring on the Floo, green flames crackling up in the dark glittering fireplace. It takes a moment– Floo request from, James, it’s me, come on, hurry up– before James is stepping out of the fireplace, grinning like a cat with all the cream.
“Reg! Thank goodness. And Whiskey! Merlin, this weather’s a bit nuts, isn’t it?” As if to agree, the sky outside rumbles and crashes, giant hail like Gobstones hitting the roof. They both flinch, and Whiskey seems to roll her eyes, still chewing on a bit of mouse.
Regulus suddenly feels very awkward, standing in the middle of the library, underdressed - though James is in a similarly practical outfit – and gangly, childish. James looks effortlessly cool, hair tousled and shirt unbuttoned casually. Regulus’ eyes keep darting to and from the bits of exposed skin, and James is looking at him, and there is something crackling between their shared gaze, and he is opening his mouth, eyes dark and–
Another crash-bang, this time with the windows lighting up white. They both turn, twin gasps – Regulus does not shriek, no matter how much James insists – before looking back at each other and bursting into peals of laughter.
Dearest Prongs,
Not much to report from Wales. Again. There never is. It’s nice to get to spend this much time one on one with Sirius. We might be We’ve been going on lots of walks around the farms– he uses this time to get all of his ‘defiling sheep’ jokes out so he doesn’t accidentally slip up in front of Mum.
How are your parents going? How is the season? Sirius has been trying to explain what the Society Season is like to me, but I keep getting stuck on imagining the houses shifting like that. I thought it was only Hogwarts? Does the Cottage (we won’t even talk about that ridiculous name– anything with above seven bedrooms is a Mansion, or a Manor, at the very least) have staircases that move too? What is the point of those anyway? Actually, nevermind. I know you don’t read your textbooks. No reason to start expecting you to just because we’re going into seventh year.
Speaking of reading, have you started the book I gave you yet? I know you think it’s dry but really, once you’re in it you won’t be able to stop. It’s surprisingly racy, for the time period, and I think you’ll really like the ideas in it, the questions it raises– is love at any cost worth it? Or is a safe but dissatisfying marriage the preferable option? Do at least start it. I’m dying to talk to someone about it, and Sirius won’t read anything that isn’t a Quidditch biography.
We had the first moon earlier this week, as I’m sure Pads told you. It went as well as can be expected, I think.
Say, have you been over to the White Cliffs of Dover yet? I asked Sirius to put it in his letter but I can never be sure if he’s listening to me or not. They are very important to a lot of British literature, both Muggle and Wizarding. Not to mention that they’re beautiful, and atmospheric– one could even say Romantic– in the traditional sense, of course! Go on a rainy day, then you can really live out your deep-dark fantasy of being a Byronian hero. No, I shan’t explain what that is. You can look it up.
Jeepers, this got long, fast. I have to go, Sirius is whinging for attention again. He’s like a dog with a bone– hah!
Write soon!
Moony
It is a quiet day in; James has gone to visit a relative with his mother and father.
“So boring,” Regulus remembers him saying, pulling on his socks in the clearing, “I mean, I’m kidding. Aunt Dorea isn’t all bad. She’s just– well. She isn’t all bad.”
“I’d put your worst relative against mine and win any day,” he’d replied, wry.
“Don’t do that!” James had laughed, “we’ll end up finding out exactly how we’re related!”
Regulus is wandering around the house now, rediscovering old nooks and crannies. He’d spent far less time inside this summer than he’d anticipated, and he murmurs out an apology for neglecting the beautiful house. Dust motes float aimlessly through the air, catching on the sunbeams and bobbing their white heads up and down. There is the faint noise of music and chatter from his father's study, somewhere down the corridor. There are guests, and they are not for Regulus to see.
He keeps going, past the booms of adult laughter, past the well lit halls with tall glass windows, into the deeper corners of the house. Here, the shadows are still and peaceful, frames undisturbed, and the dimness is practically baked into the dark oak floors. There is a house elf standing on the runner carpet, arms stretching upwards to direct a feather duster, making its way slowly across the skirting board. She yelps as she sees him, and bobs hastily into a curtsy, before vanishing herself and the duster away.
There was a nursery here once, and playroom, in these long-forgotten corners of the house. The door creaks with disuse as Regulus pushes it open. White, ghostly linens have been placed carefully across each item of furniture, and the sun touches them all with gentle hands, careful not to disturb the memories resting underneath. Through their fingers, the faint outlines of cribs, a dresser, a chest.
There is a mirror on the far wall, and as Regulus caught a glimpse of his own reflection, he frowns. There had been an entirely unfamiliar expression on his face.
The door clicks gently shut behind him as he left.
He ends up spending most of the afternoon in the family study. He’d completed most of his Arithmetic homework, and had given up on Charms before he’d even begun. There is a mug of cooling tea on the ground beside him, and the remaining crumbs from an afternoon sandwich.
He wanders the room, pulling at books with titles that sound interesting, or with spines that shudder to the touch. Anything too dark wasn’t kept here. That was for his father's office.
There is a strange melancholy that has overtaken him for the day, and he wants to get to the source of it, a wriggling tooth, an itch high up on his back. That is when he comes across the photos.
Regulus stares down at the album fallen open on his lap, portraits and pictures gazing up at him and laughing behind thin fingers, footprints on the wet sand and waves crashing endlessly on a summer beach shore. Biting into the vibrancy of his childhood made his back teeth ache. He couldn’t tell what he misses more; the carelessness of his own happiness, or his brother's.
He wonders if Sirius ever thinks as much as he does about their shared youth, or if in his mind there had never been a happy moment, only the interlude between their mothers furrowed brow and fathers silence. Regulus feels as if he’s chosen the wrong thing to preserve, his childish longing for sweets overcoming the necessary bitterness of long forgotten memories. He wonders how much of Sirius’ sweetness has him in it at all. He wonders how much of Sirius’ sweetness depends on James.
It's a thought that makes his mouth pinch, age old selfishness acrid at the back of his throat.
He is worried that there's something wrong with him. Perhaps that Sirius had been able to see it before anyone else, and as soon as he could get away, he had, with his new friends and his new life and his new family. His poisoned little brother and their poisonous family, and there he was, with a clean face and a shining white smile.
There are memories that Regulus held onto– still holds on to, glimmers of light caught in tight, chubby, childish fists, moth wings fluttering and beating at the insides of his palms. Perhaps they would flourish if he let them go, but he was too scared of the possibility of them leaving to find out.
There was one particular summer, where they went to the beach. He remembers his father, a basket in hand and clothed in light linens, a marked departure from his usual austere wardrobe. He’d been smiling, but his expression is hard to actually see, like looking through warped glass in Regulus’ mind's eye. His mother is clearer. She had been holding Sirius’ small hand in her own, as he led her down the beach, chatting away. Their footprints in the sand were messy, Sirius and his mother’s coming together to look like a 3 legged beast had tumbled down the beach. Regulus had tried to fit his feet into each one's deep indent, leaving no trace of himself behind.
His mother, smoothing her pale hands down Sirius’ face, a thick white layer of sun protection potion. Sirius had squirmed around, but had for the most part borne the treatment with grace. Their heads, bent together as Sirius whispered something in her ear, the crinkle of his mothers eyes as she smiled, laughing down delightedly at her oldest, and favourite son. Regulus sat, and watched.
That had been a few years before Sirius had gone to Hogwarts. Years before the dreaded Sorting.
Regulus has always wondered if he could pin it down to a day, a day when his mother stopped smiling so much, and his father stopped playing with them, and his brother stopped being his friend. He wonders why finding this day matters so much to him, if it even exists. After thinking about it so often, he thinks he’s come to the only obvious conclusion. If he can pinpoint the day that everything went wrong, then he can see how much of a part he really had to play, and whether his sin was being too loud, or too needy, too much, or if it was sitting, and watching, and doing nothing at all.
Good gentlemen of Wales,
I’ve decided to owl you as one, mainly because I can’t be arsed writing the same news twice over. Is this okay? If it isn’t, you need only come to Kent and have it out with me– this is not a joke. Society season is well and truly in its swing, and Mum and Dad, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that this summer I will be dressed only in purple. Purple . And not a nice lilac, either, it’s all dark and broody. I look like a bloody blueberry. I am begging you to come here and put me out of my misery. Perhaps you could put some poison on a letter? I’m not picky.
Literally no news from my end. I caught up with Alice and Frank (remember them? Alice was the Beater before you took over, Pads, and Frank, her boyfriend, was always trailing behind her). They’re married now– only two years older than us, and married! I tried not to look too horrified when she flashed her rings at me. Other than that… let’s see. Narcissa Black has been wearing a lot of white, and looking awfully cozy with that Malfoy fellow. Everyone seems to be hearing wedding bells this season. It’s sickening. Evan Rosier is following Emmeline Vance around like a bad smell, but I don’t think she’s actually noticed, dozy girl. The Prewetts show up to every party in matching robes, like actually matching, and they’ve got Molly with them, even though she’s a Weasley now, and hideously pregnant besides. Usually it’s Molly in men’s robes (she must have spelled them to fit over her belly, but I’d never say that, as we’re in polite company here, hey lads?), but the other day Gid and Fab (the twins, Pads, can you describe them to Moony? I won’t do it justice here) were in dresses – it was awesome. All the stuffy old people were scandalised. Walburga Someone smashed a glass. They’re so cool.
No, before you ask, Moony. I haven’t started that ruddy book. It’s been busy, and the writing is a bit dry, no? I know it’s a classic, but come on, it’s summer! I’m meant to be giving these poor eyes a break from reading!
Okay, fine. Merlin, I can feel you glaring at me from across the country. I promise to have read at least enough of it to have a discussion with you upon my return. Happy?
Pads, I want to tell you I haven’t It’s a bit complic I’ve been spending heaps of time in our clearing. It’s just how I remember it (don’t you say that every year?). Any thoughts on how we I can make the next few parties interesting? I didn’t pack my Zonkos box, but I suppose I can owl order something, if you have any bright ideas.
Yes, I have heard from Wormy. He seems to think we’ve abandoned him, and has given himself a psychosomatic case of fleas in our absence. I solemnly swear that I will not tell him about the time I had to pick you up flea potion from the vets, Sirius. Um. I might have just told Moony though.
I’ll leave you to explain that one mate,
All my love and fat wet kisses (and love from Mum and Dad, too!!!!)
Prongs
The first time they get drunk in the clearing began late in the afternoon. James waits in the clearing by himself for a while, but when Regulus still hasn’t shown after two rounds of solo Explosive Snap, he makes his way up to the Black residence. There’s no sign of Regulus in any of his usual places. He grabs the arm of one of the house elves bustling past, asking after him.
“Master Regulus is being in his quiet room,” she whispers, clearly not one of the ones that the Blacks trained to be public-facing, and quite scared to be confronted by a confused teenager.
“Oh. Will you take me to him?”
“Master Regulus is asking not to be disturbed by family.” The elf looks like she is going to burst into tears now. James tries to put on his gentlest voice.
“Well, I’m not family,” speaking slowly and carefully. He is beginning to suspect that this elf was a bit dim. “Do you think he’d mind if I came to see him?”
She shakes her head and takes his hand, apparating them to a door that looks like it comes from the Left Wing. The Residential Wing. James hasn’t been here yet. He shudders, displacing the awful squeezy feeling that came with Side-Alonging with house elves, steels himself, and knocks on the door.
“No.” The voice behind the door sounds wet and small, and James’ heart swoops, just a little.
He knocks again.
“Bipsy, please, it’s too hot for cocoa!”
Knocks once more. In the two weeks that they’ve spent together, James has learned the value of repetition to get Regulus to give in.
There’s a scuffle of movement from the other side, and James smiles. He’s won.
Regulus wrenches open the door, wiping his nose on his sleeve and looking utterly dishevelled. His eyes are red-rimmed and watery, and his cheeks are flushed bright pink. When his gaze meets James’, it’s like he’s been hit with a Stinging Jinx. His back snaps straight, his hands dropping to his sides, face shuttering.
“Oh, absolutely not.”
James catches the door before it can slam in his face.
“Regulus? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Obviously. Please leave.”
It’s going to take a lot more than that to satisfy James’ curiosity about this situation. A week ago, he would have left, and never mentioned it to Regulus or anyone again. But that was a week ago. Nudging his foot into the door, he snakes his arm out, lightning quick, and grabs Regulus’ arm.
“Come on, Reg, I know just the cure.” His hand has landed on the patch of snot, and he tries to use the revulsion to cover the fact that he’s touching Regulus, and his arm is warm , and there , just under the thin cloth of his shirt, and there’s something sparking in James’ chest about it.
Regulus resists for a cursory moment, before mumbling something about stubborn so-and-so’s (where on Earth could he be picking up these turns of phrase, James wonders), and lets himself be dragged out of the bedroom, out of the Black residence, and, after making a quick stop at the Summer Cottage, they’re walking down to the clearing. There is a bag between them, and it’s clinking.
“Right,” James says as they sit down under the oak tree, Regulus still moving carefully, like he’s worried any sudden movements might dislodge the tears again. “Since you’re the misery today– it’s an expression, Regulus, don’t be dramatic– since you have the misery, you get to choose. On the menu tonight, we have–” he roots into the bag and pulls out the three bottles he’d pilfered from the well-stocked Potter liquor cabinet with a flourish. “A mostly full bottle of Firewhiskey; a half full Dwarven Ferment Vodka,” at this one, he pulls a face. He and Sirius had had a disastrous night with the first half of this bottle last summer, if he was remembering correctly. “Or… two thirds of a bottle of… oh, this one’s Muggle, I think, San Jose Tequila!”
Regulus, whose face had gone into a twisty thing that looked almost like a smile, snatches the Dwarven Ferment out of James’ hand. For himself, James decides to be brave and try the Muggle tequila. He reaches into the bag and pulls out a selection of juices and two cups, and when he turns back, Regulus is swigging from the neck of his bottle.
“Regulus! You don't have to- I brought mixers, I’m not a savage!” James makes sure to sound affronted, but he’s laughing, and takes a gulp of his own bottle to keep Regulus company while he makes their drinks.
They talk about nothing for a while, and drink in silence for a while, and around the third drink James feels brave enough to ask.
“So. Would you like to talk about your little tantrum earlier?” It comes out snarkier than he intended. He knows, a little, what the Blacks can be like from Sirius, and he doesn’t want to be mean. Not about this.
Regulus, whose cheeks are pink and eyes a little glassy, has sprawled into the gaps between the roots of their tree. He throws his arm over his eyes, a silly, exaggerated gesture that sends James into fits of giggles.
“It was so stupid. No, James, don’t laugh, I’m very sad. I’m very sad about a very stupid thing.” James lightens. It mustn’t be serious, then.
“Go on, Reg, I’m dying to know. Who had you all teary? Was it a girl? Did your girlfriend return your owl unopened?” James is still laughing.
Regulus has gone very still, his arm still over his face.
“My brother, actually.”
James stops laughing. They’d been dancing around the topic of Sirius. He's like a frayed nerve between them, too raw to touch. The air is soupy.
“Oh, Regulus.” The silence drags. It’s all he can say.
“It’s okay. I wasn’t expecting an answer. I just–” his voice shudders, and James can see his chin dimpling. He’s trying not to cry. “I just. I’d hoped he’d read it, before he sent it back.”
James doesn’t know what to do. His head is swimming. He leans over to Regulus, who is still nestled in the roots of the oak.
“Reg? Can you–” he nudges the arm. “Can you look?”
Regulus moves his arm, and his eyes are glossy, but he isn’t crying. James realises how much he wants to keep it that way. Something in his chest baulks at the idea of making Regulus cry.
“Listen– let’s forget about it. Sirius can be a prick, we both know that. And– and lets– oh, fuck it Reg, lets talk about something else. Anything. Wanna play Questions?” This is playing dirty, and he knows it. Regulus loves Questions.
He gives a tiny nod, and it isn’t wobbly, but it certainly isn’t firm. Still, his chin has stopped trembling, and that’s progress. James pulls him up, and they’re sitting cross-legged, opposite each other, knee to knee, but not quite touching. James can feel the heat in the air, radiating towards him from Regulus’ body, pulling him in. He leans forward and jostles his leg, trying to pull the mood back up.
“You’ve the misery today. You get to start.”
Regulus smirks at this, a little shark smile. This can’t be good.
“Alright. But James, if you forfeit, you drink.”
“Okay then.”
“Okay.” He nods once, sharply, and the smirk spreads into a nasty grin. “Who was your latest wet dream about?”
“Straight into the sex ones?” James splutters, indignant. There’s no fucking way he’s answering this, mostly because it was Peter. He is not into Peter – at all – but he isn’t in control of his dreams, and anyway, he doesn’t want to give Regulus the wrong idea. He shoots Regulus a glare and downs half his drink.
“If you’re going to play that game,” James thinks for a moment, then smiles sweetly. “Alright then. Do you have a crush?”
He doesn’t know why his brain is circling around the topic, needling Regulus about a girlfriend earlier and now this. He doesn’t know what he wants the answer to be. He doesn’t know if he wants an answer at all.
“Yes.” Regulus says, short.
A beat passes. James doesn’t push and gestures his drink in Regulus’ direction. Next question.
“First kiss?”
James grimaces. He can’t forfeit twice in a row, but this–
“First proper kiss, or first ever kiss?”
“Both?” Regulus chuckles, a shy thing.
“First ever– must have been Ethel Poisonwood. We were seven, and she was my neighbour. One day she came up to me and announced she’d like to be my girlfriend, so I kissed her. She told me she loved me afterwards, and I ran away,” he shakes his head, smiling. “She moved away after that, so we never broke up properly. Perhaps she’s still pining after me–”
Regulus kicks him.
“First proper, James, don’t think I’ve forgotten.”
The sanctity of the grove, of Questions, demands it. But–
“Reg– you won’t like this story.”
He sets his chin, stubborn.
“It was Remus Lupin.”
“What?” Regulus’ mouth drops open, the picture of shock. His lips, round and pink, shape a little ‘o’. It looks soft.
“Yes, okay, it was Moony– we were in third year, and we just wanted to see , to try it. And it was–” he laughs, soft. “Reg, it was a great kiss. Definitely eye-opening.”
“Yes, very sweet James– why wouldn’t I like this story?”
“S– your brother wouldn’t speak to me for a week afterwards. I didn’t know why. Peter thought it was because he thought we were bent, but it wasn’t that, it was– well anyway. They sorted it out. I didn’t kiss Moony again.”
Regulus’ mouth has gone rigid, pulling at the edges. The silence draws close, wrapping James up, tight across his chest.
An idea.
“My turn. Do you listen to Muggle music?” James knows his tone sounds too-bright, an edge of desperation in it. It doesn’t matter.
Regulus’ head snaps up. He looks caught. James shouts, pure joy.
“You do ! Oh, Merlin, yes ! The Pureblood Prince– enjoying Muggle music!” The brightness is real now. “Tell me, tell me. Who do you like? How did you get into it?”
The pinched look returns, but Regulus braves it, shakes it off.
“Sirius left some of his records behind. I like the one with the Blue Lady on it, and Simon and Gar– Simon and– Frinkle? I always forget the name. You know,” and he hums– hums! – the tune to Scarborough Fair. His voice is clear, sweet. James feels like he’s going to pass out.
The time passes like water. James’ glasses are askew, and so he takes them off. It’s nice, the blurs of the trees, Regulus’ face in sharp motion as he makes an impassioned argument for the lovemaking abilities of Professor Slughorn. James makes a valiant defence for Professor McGonagall.
Suddenly, it’s quiet, and James is just looking. Looking at Regulus. Looking at his face. It’s a nice face. Angular. The stars are out.
Regulus cocks an eyebrow. The space between them seems to stretch like taffy. James’ head is spinning in slow, lazy circles, and he is not, is not, is not looking at Regulus' lips.
“Something on my face, Potter?”
And before he can stop himself, James is leaning forward, and he brushes their lips together. It’s barely a kiss, just a tiny hopeful thing. He pulls back, looking into Regulus’ eyes. They’re shining, silver pools in the moonlight.
Then he realises what he’s done. He pulls back, sharp and shocked and scared.
“Oh, Merlin, I’m so sorry, Regulus, I think–” and he never does find out what he thinks, because Regulus is surging forward to capture his mouth with his own. It’s nothing like their first kiss. It’s hazy, and messy, and right.
James darts his tongue out to taste Regulus’ bottom lip, and is rewarded with a soft sigh, and Regulus’ mouth opening to let him in. His hands are on Regulus’ waist, and his back, and his chest, and he can feel Regulus’ heart, thrumming hummingbird-quick. His own couldn’t be far behind.
James had kissed girls before, of course, but nothing real, only at parties. Sirius jeering, Remus whooping, Peter teasing, these were the soundtracks of his prior kisses. Now, it was silent, just the crickets and the breeze, and the soft, needy sounds coming out of Regulus’ mouth.
There is something warm unspooling in James’ gut. They kiss longer, deeper, surer. Somehow, James is on his back, with Regulus on top of him. It felt good, the heavy certainty of him. Regulus is here, Regulus is real, Regulus is warm. James felt like he could do this forever.
They break apart after what could have been hours and could have been days. Regulus is breathless, leaning his forehead against James’, nose to nose, his hand curled in James’ hair. James is glad he’d taken off his glasses. He stares up at Regulus, wanting to say something, a sentence on the tip of his tongue– and then Regulus gets quickly to his feet, and wobbles over to the edge of the clearing to be sick.
Notes:
hello! thank you for reading :) if you like it so far leave a comment or a kudos or whatever as they are absolutely the most motivating in the world
you can come find us on tumblr if you want superlateive and hamletkin
also, here is a playlist of regulus' favourite songs from sirius' record collection that he left behind. it's all period accurate, nothing after 1977. because i'm insane. okay bye :)
Chapter Text
Dear
Lil
Okay
Dear Lily,
I’m really sorry about the end of last term. I didn’t mean Things got a little out of hand and Sniv was It wasn’t about and I don’t know why.
Are you okay?
I can’t believe Snivelly Snape said those things to you. I thought he was you were d isn’t he your you two were friends? I guess that’s Slytherins for you. If you want Just say the word, me and the boys will All this blood purity nonsense. It doesn’t make sense Bit too political for my tastes!
I hope you can find it in your heart you to forgive me. It’s our last year this year, and I want to end it friends with a not a virgin on a good note.
Anyway, how are you? I hope things are great in Cokeworth. How’s the weather? How’s that awful Mu sister of yours? Isn’t Sni Snape from there too? Tell me he’s not skulking around, begging for your forgiveness.
Hey, if it gets too dull up there, we’re down in Kent for the season. I’d really like to see y We’re having a bit of a get-together, on the fourth of August. Say you’ll come? I’ll send you the invites, when we get them made. Mum and Dad think I’m lonely say you’d be very welcome, so really, you have no excuse. Girls like to dress up, right It’ll be a laugh!
It’s awful boring, and very hot here, but there’s some nice walks, and Sir and I’ve been keeping some strange company speaking of Slytherins and apparently some cliffs that are quite a big deal.
Write me back, please?
Yours
Eagerly awaiting
James
“Very nice isn’t it,” Effy begins awkwardly, hand retreating from Orion’s, “ to see our boys getting along, I mean?”
“Hmm,” Walburga says, perfectly polite, “it would depend on which boys you mean. Our boy, of course, being Regulus.”
“Well yes,” and her hands are wrapped around each other, shivering harvest mice, “this summer has been so nice for them– you know we were quite concerned James would be lonely. We’re not the most fun, you see.” She laughs, trails off when the only reply is silence.
“An only child, isn’t he?” There’s a careful detachedness to Orion’s voice, “did you not worry?”
James and Regulus’ noses jump back and forth, a snitch flying from end to end of the pitch.
“Worry?” There’s a hint of steel in Effy’s voice, a polite suspicion. “How so?”
“Well with just the one,” Walburga chimes in, her hand tucked into the crevice of Orion’s elbow, their smooth voices swapping in and out like twin snakes, “so much room to go wrong isn’t there? Of course, it seems like you’ve done a good job with James–”
“We’re happy to have James find his own path,” Effy’s voice is firm, and she rests a hand on his shoulder. “He knows that.”
“Hmm.” Orion looks down his nose, inky black pupils. “Well. I would assume we’re having tea out on the veranda?”
“Yes,” Regulus jumps in, over-eager. His mother looks at him, a disparaging tilt to her brow, “I can show the way.”
“Merlin, that was awful!” James groans as he wriggles out of his shirt, discards it somewhere along the poolside. “How you deal with all those Society Events,” his voice warbles upwards, “I will never know! And that was just our own parents!”
He takes a deep breath, fingers pinching his nose shut before taking a running leap into the pool. Regulus shrieks with laughter, and sprints in after him, kicking off his shoes haphazardly and jumping into the foaming bubbles.
James’ hair halos his face under water, eyes screwed shut. Regulus, who has always been able to open his eyes underwater – “I’m surprised you don’t have gills or something!” crows Sirius’ voice in his head – stares at him for a few, peaceful seconds; unwitnessed seconds, where nobody, not even James himself knows how Regulus drinks in every detail of his face like it is water he needs to survive, like it’s the elixir of life itself.
Then they’re both bursting up and out of the water, and James is shaking his hair like a wet dog in Regulus’ face, and he is retaliating by shoving water at him like a mad thing, and they are both laughing, laughing.
The pool is easily one of Regulus’ favourite parts of the Kent House. It’s a glorious strip of blue, a long rectangle stretching across the ground with eclectic Italian tiling, sunbeds for lounging and soaking up the afternoon sun.
James is floating idly, stomach up, arms spread eagled around him.
“Question,” he throws out into the air, “most embarrassing thing you’ve done in a class.”
Regulus snorts from where he’s drying up on the poolside, the ground underneath him damp and cool. He thinks of first year, McGonagall's arched eyebrow twitching as he spluttered excuses for his late homework– ‘I’m so sorry, Mother, it won’t happen again, I swear–’
“Forfeit.”
James kicks up indignantly, and splashes his arms around comically for good measure.
“You can’t say that!”
“Can too!”
They stare at each other, a stalemate.
“If you’re going to play with forfeits,” and James has a wicked glint in his eye, “then I’m getting the gin.”
Regulus knows where this will end, knows by now the routine, the story they tell themselves. He doesn’t fight it.
“Alright,” he says, amiable, amused. “But how did you know that wasn’t my plan all along?”
Regulus is playing a dangerous game, he knows. He and James take turns walking along the knife’s edge, teasing, a pushing-pulling dance. He doesn’t know what will happen when it reaches its conclusion. He is trying, doggedly, not to care.
James nips his fingers out of the water, snapping. Dipsy appears, already wringing his hands. He knows where this is going now, as well as Regulus does. Well. Perhaps not quite as intimately.
“Dipsy, my good man!” James booms. He’s showing off. “Will you please bring us two gin and tonics? I like mine with lemon, Regulus takes his with mint. And keep ‘em coming please– can you make them self-refilling?”
Dipsy looks very put-upon.
“Any day now, old chum.”
“Master James will be having to deal with his own parents this time when they are seeing he has been at the gin!” Dipsy warns, and James gives a hearty chuckle.
“You leave them to me, Dipsy.”
The house elf disappears with a pop, and within a minute, James and Regulus are holding a glass each, ice cubes clinking, glinting and sweating in the sun. Regulus sips his, slowly. He doesn’t want to miss the evening’s entertainment.
“Got any special tricks up your sleeve Reg?” James calls from across the pool. “Remus taught us all how to do an underwater somersault one year– apparently some kind of muggle child safety thing? Of course we just all float so no harm done there but I suppose they don’t have any magic to save themselves!”
Regulus snorts, rolls his eyes. “We can’t float James, honestly! Though my father says he did throw Sirius and I down the stairs as babies and we bounced–” at the horrified look on James’ face, he hurries to finish the story “--but they did that to all of us, Andromeda, Narcissa… She always says that it went a bit wrong with Bellatrix and that’s why she’s, you know.” He makes a face, and thankfully, James laughs.
“What I can do,” Regulus says, remembers a summer of messing about in the pool with Sirius, high pitched giggling and his brother’s arms pushing him under the water, “is hold my breath underwater for five minutes.”
“Five minutes!” It’s an exclamation from James’ mouth, “no way, Reg, you’ve got to be pulling my leg.”
“I mean it,” Regulus laughs, the satisfaction of a cat curling in the sun, “I’ll show you, just watch! Time me.”
A deep breath.
Regulus ducks his head in and under the pool, feels the water rush into his ears and the sound rush out, the peaceful blue, the end of the world. He holds his breath, and blinks slowly, watches as time fades; five seconds, five more. He feels the water begin to press in on his lungs, the burn at the back of his throat. He plants his feet on the smooth floor and pushes upwards, emerging with a gasp. James claps from the other end of the pool. He pushes his wet hair up and out of his face, grins and holds up a hand to squint at James, his face eclipsed by the sun.
“Very impressive,” James calls, kicking his feet and spraying Regulus with cool droplets of water, “although I dunno how useful that is when you could just cast a bubble head charm. Unless that’s too advanced for you, of course.”
Regulus splutters and kicks off towards him.
By the evening, Regulus and James have dipped in and out of the pool more times than Regulus can count. He's pleasantly buzzed, a small smile creeping unbidden around his eyes. He can’t seem to turn it off, but then, he doesn’t really want to.
They’re in the pool-house when it happens. Still in their swimming costumes, towels draped indolently around their waists. Regulus is lying, his feet in the air, on the couch. James, who is lounging on the floor, looks up to Regulus, a question on his lips.
He doesn’t need to ask, not really. He just needs to lie there, looking. Regulus makes his way to the floor, leans down, scrunches his nose. He doesn’t close the gap between them. He never does. That’s James’ job.
James, never one to do things by halves, sits up and leans in, quickly, and puts a little peck on Regulus’ lips. It’s a sweet, chaste thing, and Regulus doesn’t want it.
“Oh, you bastard,” he murmurs, soft against James’ mouth. James pulls back, mock scandalised.
“What, Regulus? How am I a–”
He’s cut off as Regulus grabs the back of his neck, squeezing just a little, just enough to feel the tendons shift as James tilts his head back, and leans in to give him a proper kiss.
Their mouths move together, unhurriedly, long, languishing things that make something tighten in Regulus’ chest. One of James’ hands sits on the side of his waist, the other moving around to cradle the small of his back, and this is so nice that Regulus lets out a soft, small noise. This sparks something in James, and he pulls Regulus in, suddenly, so he is fully sitting on his lap.
The kiss deepens then, becoming desperate, bruising, the two of them racing towards– towards what, Regulus didn’t know. He catches James’ lower lip in his teeth, pulling experimentally, and James gives a shudder, twining his fingers into Regulus’ hair. He tugs, a little, and sharp prickles cascaded down Regulus’ spine, across his back. Regulus is beginning to feel very warm, and he wants— he wants—
James pulls back as the crack of apparition reaches his ears.
“Your parents are home,” he mumbles. “Wow, is that the time? I should probably go back—“ James stands, wobbles theatrically. “Man, Dipsy makes a strong drink.”
Regulus swallows, nods. Dipsy’s gins were half strength at best, and he and James had been going drink for drink, which meant about four each. Not nearly enough to make Regulus drunk, let alone James, who had several inches on him and a significant amount more muscle besides. But this was the charade, the story’s end. It was important not to break it. There was something shivering in Regulus’ chest, and he didn’t want to upset it any further.
He walks James out, wavering a little for the effect.
“Clearing tomorrow?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
James,
Cokeworth is horrible. My sister is horrible. She has a new boyfriend, and he is always at the house, talking to Dad about drills. Do wizards have drills? I would like to see you come down to Kent in August, if you’re sure it wouldn’t be an issue. What kind of get-together is it? Fancy?
Also, for next time you write, I urge you to rewrite a second copy without all the bits crossed off. I felt like I was reading a primary source in History of Magic.
Speaking of, have you done Binns’ essay yet? I’m stuck with the word count– can’t decide whether to prioritise the magic-tax or the galleon crash as the foremost cause of the 17th Goblin War. What did you put?
Don’t take this note as forgiveness, by the way. I’m still angry at you. But Mary and Marlene are in France, and if I have to hear any more about ‘Darling Vernon’ then I’m going to Obliviate myself and spend the rest of my life in St Mungos.
See you soon,
Lily
It is one of those summer days where even thinking of something to do is too much.
Regulus and James are lounging about in the clearing, pants rolled up to their knees and shirts open, fanning themselves as the bees hummed idly through the air, the heat of the sun sagging down onto them, kissing the tops of their heads.
“I’m sick of this!”
Regulus sits up at James’ exclamation, blinking and raising his hand against the smearing sun across his face. James had bolted upright, hair a mess – really, hadn’t he ever used Sleakeezy’s? – with a triumphant red flush on his face.
“Sick of what?” His brain starts spinning slowly back to life, comfortable and slow from hours of lying about, playing cards and sipping lemonade, cool glasses sweating into their palms.
James huffs, pushing himself to his feet. Regulus watches as a bead of sweat trickled down from the curve of his temple, tracing its way across his neck, slipping pleasantly into the divot of his collarbone. He wants to put his mouth on it, and suck. He flushes, and decides to pretend he hadn’t thought that.
“Sick of,” James gestures outwards, a grand sweeping motion, “this! Well, obviously not sick of you Reg, but, one must admit when things have become altogether dull! Too dull to survive!” He intones these last sentences dramatically, one arm swung across his eyes, peeking down at Regulus to make sure he was laughing.
Regulus did laugh, indulgently, and sprawls backwards into the grass. Grasshoppers sprung out from under him, wriggling indignantly and chittering into the distance.
He can practically hear James thinking, his brain whirring and buzzing, like one of the diligent worker bees circling their clearing, golden honey dripping steadily from a hive. A long moment; birds warbling in the trees and the rustle of branches overhead; Regulus closes his eyes and breathes in deep as a cool summer breeze swept through the grove, tickling his nose and slipping its mischievous fingers under his armpits.
James snaps his fingers, breaking him out of his reverie. “I’ve got it. Let’s go to the lake!”
“The lake?” Regulus props himself up onto his elbows. “Where?”
James waves his hand, as if details were beneath him. “We’ve got this lakehouse, a tiny little thing. There’s a boat, we could take a picnic basket from the kitchen, send Dipsy ahead to clean it up a bit. It’s perfect! I’ve got a book that Remus leant me over the summer – potentially dull but, well, you know – and I’m sure you’ve got something you’re working your way through.” This all spills out of him in one long rush, a stream of consciousness straight from his brain to his mouth.
Regulus blinks. Blinks again. “How will we get there?”
James grins, settling his hands on his hips. “Floo, of course!”
Regulus shifts from one foot to the other, suddenly awkward in the Potter House. He’d never been, and tried not to stare too obviously. There's a portrait that's making this particularly difficult, a small man with bushy eyebrows and large glasses that made his eyes look huge and bulbous, who seems to be doing his level best to set Regulus on fire.
“Dipsy,” James calls, one hand cupped around his mouth, “coo-ee! Dipsy–”
A sharp pop as an elf appears in front of him, wringing her small hands. “Master James!” Her eyes widen as she spots Regulus behind him, a silent small shadow, “and– the young Master Black! At your service!”
She bobs in a quick curtsy, and James half turns to Regulus to roll his eyes.
“Yes, yes, young Master Black. This is Regulus. Look, we’re just wanting to take a quick trip to the lake house, so if you could get us a picnic basket and then go on ahead to make sure everything’s clean and whatnot–”
Dipsy blanches, her hands caught in her worn pillowcase. “The lake-house! Oh but Dipsy didn’t know Master James was–”
“--Just an impulse decision,” he cuts over her, impatient, “anyway, we’re happy to wait around here for a bit. Are there provisions in the kitchen?”
“Yes, of course,” she bobs her head, big ears swinging. A lot of bobbing, with this elf. She snaps her spindly fingers, and a basket appears, willow reeds woven together in a complicated pattern, lined with a charming plaid.
“Cheers, Dipsy!” James flips the lid open and begins to rifle through it, making approving noises. “Oh yes, cheese scones! My favourite.”
She glows with his approval, and straightened smartly. “Dipsy will be going to clean now! If the young masters could be waiting–” she looks nervously at the clock, “5 minutes.”
“That’s fine,” Regulus says, tongue finally unsticking from the top of his mouth. He's overwhelmed by the sweetness of the house, the smell of jam and pastries wafting from the kitchen, the sunlight streaming in wide golden stripes over the floor. There were books discarded over every spare surface, mugs of tea abandoned on top of them. It's perfectly homely. Something in his chest aches.
James follows his gaze, winces. “Oh, sorry for the mess. We’re terribly casual around here, probably not anything like your– what do you call it again? The Kent House? Probably much more formal.”
Regulus shrugs. He isn't sure if formal was the word for the difference, the beautiful home that he felt like a perpetual visitor in. He couldn’t think of a better descriptor though, so he supposes that formal would have to do.
“Right then,” James says, already halfway up the stairs. “My father’s in his study I think. Come say hullo!”
Regulus follows him.
Regulus had met James’ father only in passing, a quick chit-chat at various social occasions, never anything proper. He feels strangely nervous as James raps his knuckles against the hardwood entrance. Even the welcoming, open doorway was something new and foreign to him.
“Come in,” says an absent-minded voice, and Regulus can hear the scratching of a quill on parchment, and music playing softly, just loud enough to blend in with the chorus of nature outside.
There are more open and abandoned books in the study, more mugs as well. Regulus wonders how many they had, and if the house elves were popping back and forth to the family home just to keep from running out.
James clears his throat as they walked in, and Fleamont smiles down into his parchment. It seemed a familiar expression to a face like his, skin folding into well-worn creases; a life well lived.
“James,” he says, raising his head and steepling his fingers, before blinking at Regulus, sliding in behind him, “and– Regulus! Well! How are you, my boy? Finally emerged from your fairy grotto, have you?’
“Dad,” James groans, and Fleamont laughs, takes the reading spectacles off his face and folds the thin wiry arms.
“I was beginning to wonder if James really was meeting you there, or if he’d been seduced away by some Elvish Prince with a glamour!” He chuckles, and Regulus laughs, awkward, more at James’ reaction than anything else. “What are you boys up to then? Off on an adventure?”
“We’re going to the lake house,” Regulus says, quietly. There is something soft in Fleamont's eyes as he looks at him, the younger Black brother. He wonders what he sees, if Sirius is as present in his face as he feels like he is, staring in the mirror and loving-hating their same eyes, nose, the twin shades of Black family protegees.
“That sounds like a fantastic idea,” he says, matching Regulus’ tone. His warm palms smooth over the chestnut brown desk, the swirling pattern of the wood-grain.
James shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and Fleamont looks at Regulus knowingly.
“Well boys, I won’t keep you any longer. Tell Regulus what to say, properly, so he doesn’t come shooting out of some poor bugger’s fireplace.”
“Yes Dad,” James draws out the words and rolls his eyes, then grins and skirts round the table to give him a smacking kiss on the cheek. “Love you!” The brazenness of the declaration shocks Regulus, the lack of decorum, of self-consciousness. In front of a guest! The Potters were a strange bunch. “We’ll probably stay the night, so don’t wait around at supper.”
James practically leaps out of the room, clattering down the stairs in a rush. Regulus had just turned to follow him when Fleamont stops him, a soft exclamation of his name.
“There is,” he says, once Regulus has turned to look at him, apprehension thrumming over his shoulders, “a place for you here too, you know. Effy and I– we adore Sirius. I’m sure you do too.”
Regulus’ heart is beating, faster, faster.
From the bottom of the stairs, James calls his name, impatience just barely colouring his voice.
Fleamont sighs. “There’s no pressure for you, dear boy. Just an open door.”
Regulus nods, shortly, and flees.
The house sits at the edge of blue serenity. The sun sparkles across the surface of the lake, winking and beckoning; Regulus stares open mouthed at the sweeping, lush lakefront, heavy blades of grass dipping their faces into the cool water, and duckweed, faces like clovers and floating blithely, like so much confetti.
“Nice, isn’t it?” James says from somewhere behind him. His arms are crossed and he’s surveying the landscape with something like approval on his face, like it’s all his and he’s glad it’s decided to put up such a good show.
“Yes,” Regulus says as he turns around and, for a moment he’s embarrassed about the amount of sincerity in his voice, the awe, but James looks– well he looks like Regulus has just handed him the best birthday present in the all the world, smug and happy and a cat with all the cream.
They spend a moment longer there, Regulus staring out at the landscape, the rolling hills in the distance and the dense grove of trees on the other side of the lakebed, dark heads tilted towards him, curious.
“Come on then,” James says, and his hand is a warm tingling shock on the back of his neck, “let’s get out there.”
Regulus leans over the side of the boat and trails his fingers through the clear, shining water, fingers catching on algae and floating green weeds, reaching themselves desperately up towards the sun, roots caught amidst rock and mud and detritus.
“Don’t lean too far,” James says absentmindedly, eyes fixed on a worn paperback novel, “I won’t jump in if you fall, I mean it.”
“I’m not going to fall,” Regulus says, but he brings his hand back inside the boat to be sure.
The afternoon passes like this, warm amber treacle dripping from the end of a spoon. They pick their way through the remains of the basket, gooey soft cheeses on crusty sourdough bread, various cured meats, the famous Potter Cheese Scones – James says it with that exact inflection, and insists upon Regulus doing the same – quince and honey smeared across seeded crackers until they’re about full to burst, and Regulus reckons if he were to fall out of the boat he would float.
James has a tan developing on his skin, veering quickly into a burn. Regulus is already resigned to his fate, the joys of inbreeding and skin so pale it’s practically blue. Luckily, Kreacher has become a deft hand at salves over the frequent summer burnings. He’s already looking forward to slathering it on in one thick layer once he gets home.
They’d started on opposite sides of the rowboat, legs tangled together, and somehow, like planets in orbit, they’ve ended up with Regulus between James’ legs, his back to James’ chest, his own book propped up on his chest, occasionally looking up to steal a glance at whatever James is reading.
“I’ll have to hand it to Remus,” James says, begrudging, and Regulus shivers at how his voice rumbles through his chest, vibrates against the hairs at his temple. He is so aware of James’ warm skin, his sweat, the smell of him all around in the air, stealing into his brain and bringing a fog down over his eyes. “This is actually getting quite good. But–!” He swings it down, and chucks it haphazardly somewhere on the floor. “Still, I can’t spend this beautiful afternoon just reading .”
Regulus cranes his head back to look at him, and squints, the sun in a halo around James’ head, lighting up his hair in curls of gold and copper red. The rowboat bobs on the gentle swells of the lake, the wind sweeping across them in warm gusts. He leans his chin on James’ chest.
“What shall we do then, oh great Heir Potter?”
“Don’t call me that.” James scowls.
Regulus feels chastened, embarrassment curling into his chest, but then James is smiling down at him, warm, and he forgets any shame he might have felt. Something roguish steals into his face, and Regulus feels suddenly cornered but– not in a bad, or trapped way. A mouse staring up at a benevolent cat, a curious bird perched on the shoulder of a person, the promise of something and a crackling tension in the air.
Then, James in one smooth motion, flips them over, and Regulus is sitting squarely atop his stomach, slightly winded and hands braced against his chest. James – unfairly – still looks very put together.
“This is far more interesting,” he says, and– Regulus doesn’t know what he means, he really doesn’t but there’s something inside of him that might.
Time seems to catch its breath, and Regulus hears the sound of his heart beating, the crash of waves breaking onto a rocky shore.
James’ mouth, glinting wetly in the darkness of his shadow, the hint of his pink tongue, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. Regulus feels heat rush up his spine, a sudden hard clenching in his stomach. It’s like he comes alive all at once, the vibration in his head becoming an all-encompassing roar.
He feels crazed, electric. It’s like the world is holding its breath in the space between their faces, a cord poised to snap.
He isn’t sure who makes the first move, whether it’s James surging upwards or Regulus following the insistent pull down, but then– they’re kissing and— James’ mouth is hot on his and– his hand skirts up the notches of Regulus’ spine and he gasps and– the soft muscle of James’ stomach jerks under his fingers.
He feels ravenous, like a beast, like he wants to take and take and take and never stop, ever.
Finally, they pull back from each other, gasping, panting, hot air circulating between their open mouths. He stares at the muscle of James’ cheek, the way it jumps as he closes, opens his lips.
“Is that–”
“Do you–”
Their words jumble over the top of each other. Regulus stops, embarrassed. There’s a red flush spreading steadily over James’ face.
They’ve never–
Well. He remembers hazy – and then, more clear than he’d like to admit – memories of soft noises and soft mouths, of gasping into the cool summer air, of being pressed into the dew-damp earth.
This feels– there’s something growing inside Regulus’ chest, tender and vulnerable.
James brings his hand up slowly, gently to Regulus’ arm, strokes his fingers down to his wrist and circles it, presses his thumb into the delicate crevice.
“Is this okay?” He says it quietly, as if any louder and this delicate thing, this exposed nerve between them would shatter, break.
Regulus doesn’t know if he can trust himself to speak. He nods, a small jerky movement of his head, holds his breath. James pushes himself up on his elbows, slowly, so slowly. Regulus watches as his face comes closer, keeps his eyes open until it blurs into a mass of shapes and colours, his eyes coalescing. And then he’s there. And Regulus is there too, and it’s like– it’s like a star has come down and made its home in his chest, white hot and burning, growing and shrinking with the beating of his heart.
He wonders, half-hysterical as James moves his mouth against him and he moves back, if anyone has ever felt this feeling before, if this is what – and his mind still shies away from saying the word, kissing, – it feels like he’s having some kind of medical emergency, as if he’s going to have to say actually James, we're going to have to stop and you must take me to St. Mungo's, the quicker the better, if you please. He imagines his mother and fathers faces – and this is a poor thing to imagine when making out with a boy that you like – when James will have to tell them that their son has passed away and yes it was a great tragedy and no, they probably shouldn’t have kissed at all.
“Stop,” James mutters against his mouth, “thinking. I can hear it.”
Regulus moans, a tiny, surprised sound as James’ murmur reaches down into his gut and grasps, pulls a heat up and up. He tries to cover it up by kissing James more insistently, deeper, but it seems he’s unsuccessful, judging by the puff of air against his lips as James laughs.
Time passes simultaneously slowly and too-quickly, grains of sand streaming through Regulus’ clasped fingers. He wants to hold onto them, wants to take his fistful of sand and heat it red-hot, until it’s glass in his palms, crystallised and pure. His lips feel raw and chapped. He could do this for hours. Maybe they have been. The back of his head is hot, and sun-burnt.
He feels like that warm thing that’s been growing slowly in his stomach since that first drunken kiss in the grove has now been unleashed, and is running rampant, growing clinging vines and spreading into the far reaches of his body. He likes it. He wants to feed it, wants it to take over every bit of him, hooking at the dark corners and cobwebbed masses that lurk inside of him and wresting them into the light, where they would look small and pitiful and not scary at all. He noses at the soft skin of James’ cheek, pushes his face into the warm spot between his temple and his ear and feels his hair tickle at his nose, mouths his way down to James’ neck where he presses soft kisses over the jumping muscle he finds there, his fluttering pulse.
“Reg–” it’s the first time James has sounded caught off guard, and Regulus feels a keen stab of pleasure in his stomach, grins in a slide of teeth against James’ skin. A sharp inhale from James’ mouth, tearing paper. Regulus knows, in that moment, he wants to do whatever it takes to get James to make that noise again, different, again .
“Regulus,” James sighs, a breathy soft noise. He hasn’t ever heard his name said like that before, like something worthy of reverence, of worship, a buttery slab of gold on James’ tongue. His hands come to rest on his shoulders, warm palms, the warmth sinking through into Regulus’ bones. He takes a mouthful of skin between his teeth, sucks experimentally, wanting to taste James in his mouth. James makes a raw, wet noise and both of them startle, electric, a static exchange. Regulus lets go with a ‘pop’ and sits back on his heels, stares at James who looks similarly dumb-founded.
They hold eye contact for a moment, incredulous, and that’s when Regulus loses his balance, falling over the side of the boat.
There’s a moment of shock, right before he hits the water, breath-catching and watching James’ face above him, his mouth an ‘o’ of surprise, hands already reaching for him but he’s too late.
Then he’s hitting the water, and it surges up to greet him, reaches its weighty turquoise-blue arms up and over his face and pulls, burbling sweet nothings in his ear, come down to the lake-bed, it’s all made up for you, stay with us Regulus, stay–
He watches his arms move in front of him, pale blurs amidst a flurry of bubbles. He feels as though he’s looking through a portrait, a painting of an underwater scene, that it isn’t him under the serene blue surface and straining for air. He imagines swimming up to the surface and finding a thick sheet of ice, of glass, banging his fist against it and seeing James, helpless on the other side, fingers splayed out and trying, trying to reach him.
He blinks, slowly, slower.
Then, a crash; then, strong arms circling him; then, legs kicking up behind his own lifeless ones, and– he gasps in a breath as a bubble encircles his head and he blinks the water out of his damp eyelashes to see James, face screwed up in determination swimming up and up and up to the surface, and not leaving him behind.
Finally they reach the surface, and it feels like an age has passed in the span of minutes. James pulls him, gasping, onto the grass and Regulus buries his face in it, sends his apologies for never appreciating the beautiful solidity of the earth under his feet.
“Never,” James says, looking up at the sky and attempting to catch his breath, “ever do that again. Fucks sake–” the tingle of an illicit, Muggle swear. “Don’t think I’ll do that the next time. Work on that bloody charm.”
And through his ranting, and the anger, something warms in Regulus’ stomach, something that reaches around and up the clammy pink shell of his ear and says, listen! He cares!
Regulus has only a moment to regret the circumstances of his fall – hot panting mouth, the salt of James’ skin, the creeping heat spreading all throughout his belly – when James turns and soundly smacks a kiss – very wet! – against his open mouth.
“And that–” he says smugly, “is for that bloody hickey.”
Regulus ends up bundled up in a fluffy white towel on the bed, with James casting a warming charm on him every thirty seconds.
“Stop,” he finally says, holding up a hand and laughing, “stop, stop! I’m not going to die of hypothermia, it’s the middle of summer!”
James looks determined, tongue sticking out the side of his mouth. “You never know! You – the Blacks I mean – and your fragile constitutions. Imagine if I had to go to your parents and say, oh gosh so sorry, your son, he’s died of a cold from nearly drowning in the lake! Yes, we are two wizards, yes we had our wands. What was that? You’re going to stuff and mount my head on the wall? Well, seems reasonable enough, I’ll just have to go and let my parents know. Cheers!”
“They would never do that,” Regulus sniffs, “that’s for the house elves. You would just get thrown in a deep dark vault somewhere, never to be seen again.”
“Wow,” James rocks back on his heels, “thanks for that Regulus. So glad you’re looking out for my well-being here,” and he laughs, his face a picture. “ Really glad you hold my life in such high regard–”
“Shut up,” Regulus says, and he discards the towel, punching at James between gasping laughs. James mock-screamed, shielding his face and curling up into a ball, “you’re such a wanker.”
James let it go on until they fell off the bed, before rearing up and over to push Regulus onto the ground, making faux-punching noises. The rug scratches at the underside of his arms as they roll around, warm patches where the sun had settled.
“Mercy, mercy,” Regulus finally chokes out, raising his arms in surrender. His stomach hurts from laughing. “I give up! White flag!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” James says, grinning from above him. They’re both still breathing heavily, faces flushed. Regulus blinks, and it’s like he could only see in sharp details; the way James’ hair has fallen out of place, messy across his forehead; the pink and red mottling across his cheeks and down his neck; his shirt pulled at the collar where they’d been roughhousing.
Regulus’ stomach feels tight, and hot.
He swallows, mouth suddenly sticky and coughs awkwardly as he starts to disentangle himself, voice overlapping with James’.
“Well I mean I should—“
“Yeah sorry I’ll just—“
They sit awkwardly facing each other. Regulus can feel the distance between them like heat on his skin.
James’ throat clicks audibly in the silence, and something about it makes Regulus’ heart flutter. He’s nervous, and he doesn’t know what for. James is staring.
“Regulus,” his voice is suddenly quiet, a marked departure from how they’d just been yelling and shrieking, “Regulus I–”
There is something hesitant about him, a deer stepping out of the safety of the trees. Regulus can almost see it, the rise of its graceful head, the indents of cloven hooves on the grass.
“Can I kiss you?” James says quietly, and– they had just been kissing, and they had done so many times before but, this feels different. The air is pressing down on them and each second is passing through honey. Regulus swallows, tongue sticking to the top of his mouth.
“Yes,” he croaks, and he hardly has the time to feel embarrassed before James is on him.
There’s a new intensity to him, and Regulus feels infected with it, want rushing up his spine and over his head. His hands are fisted in James’ hair, his shirt, palming over warm skin, catching in the curves and divots of his body.
He is making soft, warm noises, or maybe James is, or maybe they both are.
The late afternoon sun is streaming in through the window and over them, settling on James in warm golden sheets. Regulus watches between long, slow blinks as it moves across the bed, the floor, readying itself to be replaced by cool silvery moonlight.
He gasps as James palms at him, a clumsy movement but he doesn’t mind, even the small amount of friction is enough to have him arch off the bed, pressing his face into the tender curve of his elbow.
“Is this okay?” James’ voice is low, intimate. The smell of the loamy earth, of lake water, of nature permeates the air. The chirruping crickets outside are an accompaniment to the chorus inside Regulus’ head.
He nods, doesn’t trust his voice.
Regulus has touched himself before – he is a teenage boy – but, he’s never felt anything like this before. He stares at James’ face above him, brow furrowed in concentration, eyes fixed on where his hand is working its way up and down his cock. It makes him feel exposed, a raw nerve, each slow flick of his wrist producing a muffled yelp, teeth biting into his palm.
James’ hand on his wrist, pressing him down into the plush mattress.
“I want to hear you,” and it’s barely a murmur but James’ voice, the confession, sends a shockwave of desire down Regulus’ spine. His skin is sweat-slick and clammy, and each exhalation tears out of him like something new, a rebirth.
Regulus’ hands, scrabbling down the planes of James’ chest; their fingers entwined; his palm on the heavy weight of him; a gasp as they slide together, James’ cock landing in the divot of his hip. Regulus feels as though he has lost all of his vocabulary, returning to pre-verbal state, his brain overloaded with pure sensation.
Their shared climax comes in waves. James first, a hoarse, raw gasp, lungs punching inwards as he buckles forward, pressing his forehead into Regulus’ neck, mouthing sweet kisses at the base of his shoulder. His hand stutters before regaining speed, determined, and it’s just enough to have Regulus breathe out sharply, the final droplet of water to have a glass overflow, popping a trembling membrane.
James collapses on top of him, a wet heap, and Regulus breathes in the smell of him, warm, sweaty musk, James, James, James.
He tolerates this for around a minute before wriggling out from beneath him, rooting around for that towel to wipe the sticky mess from his stomach.
James lights a cigarette. The smoke curls up between them, slow dizzying eddies, disappearing into the hangings of the bed. Regulus thinks there might be something sacred between them, a divine essence just visible through the blue-grey haze. He thinks of incense, of temples. Of Oracles.
“Can I have one?” The request surprises him, his voice coming out childish, wheedling. James huffs a laugh, flicks the packet to him. Regulus extracts one, crinkling foil, and James leans over, clicks his fingers– a spark.
“Put it in your mouth, Reg, and suck.”
Regulus raises an eyebrow.
“And get your mind out of the gutter!” James laughs, snaps his fingers again, and this time Regulus is ready, bending down, pulling air through the gaps in the thin tube of tobacco. It catches.
Smoke fills his mouth, singeing his lungs. It tastes fucking awful. He coughs, splutters.
“Oh, Regulus, I’m sorry, I should have told you– you shouldn’t inhale for your first one,” James is smirking, sly, and completely unrepentant. Regulus takes another drag, just to spite him. This one goes down easier, as he gets the hang of holding the smoke in his mouth, letting it trickle down his windpipe.
A comfortable buzzing fills his veins. It’s like being drunk, but his head is sharp. Regulus could get used to this.
James shifts on the bed, stretching out to ash his cigarette onto the floor, bare torso still gleaming with sweat. Regulus could get used to this, too.
“Questions?” he says, hopeful.
“Hit me.” James’ voice is serene, husky. Despite the very adult act they’ve just been engaged in, Regulus suddenly feels unfathomably young, naive, inexperienced and virginal.
“No, never mind.”
“Suit yourself.”
A beat.
Regulus stretches out onto his stomach, cigarette dangling from his fingers, dispelling the insecurity. It is very warm in the bedroom, and smells comfortable, of smoke and vetiver and sex. The sun is streaming in through the windows, golden, illuminating the dancing dust motes and lighting up the wispy smoke like honey.
James inhales, sharply.
Regulus twists around, eyes still half-lidded, contentment oozing through his bones.
“What?”
“Regulus–” and his voice is horrified, almost betrayed. “What–” he gestures to Regulus’ back, and like a shot, Regulus’ hackles are up. He feels caught.
“What do you mean, what?”
“That,” James gestures broadly, whole body. There is something cold trickling into Regulus’ stomach and it is sucking up all the warmth from inside of him. He twists, just enough to look at himself, a curdling dread. He imagines himself through new eyes, feels sick. He doesn’t speak.
“I don’t understand,” James’ voice ticks up, aghast, horror in every element of his expression. Regulus’ mouth is dry and he wills himself into being still, the texture of the sheets twisting between his fingers, the same twisting in his belly, deep in his intestines. He rolls over, slow, tries not to feel flayed open as he settles back on the mattress, tries not to feel like he’s being backed into a corner.
“What do you mean?” He hears himself as if his voice is coming from the other room, distant and removed.
James blinks, his eyebrows still crept halfway up his forehead. Regulus looks up at him, mouth flat, a practised blasé.
“I mean,” he gestures wordlessly, up and down the expanse of Regulus’ body, “this. I don’t understand this. Why are there–” his voice gives out, as if his lungs don’t know how to continue, “what is this?”
Regulus shrugs, the pull of skin over muscle over bone in his shoulders. He looks down at the cigarette, still cradled between his fingers, the acrid stink of it– two minutes ago, you were laughing, it says, mocking. He crushes the tiny flame between his fingers, relishing a little in the burn, in the way it makes him real. His eyes fix on a spot just behind James’ face, the worn-smooth wood of the bedposts. He can feel James’ stare on him like a hot brand, the presence of insistent questions caught just behind the flat of his tongue.
“I’ve seen Sirius, in the dorms.”
There he goes, Regulus thinks, putting his foot in his mouth.
“He doesn’t look like that,” James continues doggedly, “his back isn’t– he isn’t so–”
Regulus finally takes pity and decides to put him out of his misery.
“Scarred?” His voice is flat, blunted, “ marked ? What James, tell me more about what my brother– ” and he is so focussed on keeping his voice from cracking on those two words that he overplays his hand, emphasises them, “--isn’t”
James opens and shuts his mouth, a fish gasping outside of the pond. The beginnings of a frown is gathering on his brow. Regulus can almost taste the anger, the smell of ozone, hairs standing up on the back of his neck. Both of them are poised for a fight.
James Potter has an unlikely, and unintentional skill for cruelty. Part of it, is that he doesn’t see it as being cruel at all.
“Your parents like you more than Sirius,” he sounds almost accusing, as if now that he can’t pity Regulus for his scars they’ve become ammunition, “he always said so.”
Regulus scoffs, rolling his eyes over the hurt that pinches deep in his stomach. He’s never talked to anyone else about this, certainly not about Sirius. He wonders what else has been said in the late night whispers in the Gryffindor dorm rooms, Sirius and his perfect friends all talking about his snobbish, prissy, soft little brother.
He gathers himself slowly, shards of glass placed carefully back into his palms. Venom is gathering in the base of his throat, a bitter taste on the back of his tongue.
“Well,” and it comes out more wavering than aloof. “Haven’t you ever heard of an heir and a spare.”
James barks out a laugh, a harsh short noise. “Your parents never treated Sirius like a fucking heir.”
He says it like a dirty word. Regulus finds an irony in it, James being one himself. He has to bite his tongue. For the longest time, being the heir was all he ever wanted. Regulus could still remember holding Sirius’ hands, small and childishly soft, in bed and under the sheets.
“We could swap,” he remembers Sirius whispering, a secret blasphemous idea, “then you would be the heir and I could just do whatever I want. It’s what you would want too,” he adds hastily, and Regulus nods, eyes wide.
Now, he can look back and laugh at the ridiculousness of the idea. Now he can look back and thank whatever divine intervention kept them from bringing it to their mother.
Regulus has been silent for too long.
“He would’ve told me if this was happening,” James’ tone has switched, now breathy and uncertain, “I don’t– and you– why didn’t you ever say?”
Regulus can feel the exhaustion pulling at his limbs, hands leaden with new weight.
“An important lesson in a family like ours,” he says, and he doesn’t have enough energy to not sound tired anymore, long-practised words dragging out of him, a fraying rope drawing a tattered bucket up from the depths of a well, “is to not let anyone see how badly it hurts.”
The seconds tick by. James is a silent, brooding presence beside him.
Regulus slides out of the bed with as much dignity as he can muster. James’ head snaps up, eyes rounded.
“Where are you going?”
Regulus picks up his discarded clothes, tries not to feel as if he’s running away, tail between his legs, raises his chin up and looks at James with a disdainful stare he’d practised off of Narcissa.
“If you would excuse me,” he sneers, gathering his contempt like a cloak around himself, “I’ll be down by the lake. Goodnight.”
James watches Regulus leave, stiff shouldered, his nose in the air. He feels a rush of anger, of frustration. He stubs his abandoned cigarette, now just a column of fragile ash, out, mashing it into the messy grain of the bedside table. How was he meant to know all of that? Regulus had said it like it was obvious, like he was stupid for not seeing it, and–
And James thinks a little harder, for once in his life.
He thinks about Sirius, flinching away when a voice is raised in anger. Thinks of his careful movements after Christmas and Easter breaks, his bizarre talent for healing charms. James thinks especially hard about that summer morning, grey dawn light lending an eerie glow to Sirius’ skin, the blood dripping down his best friend’s aristocratic face like war paint.
He thinks about Regulus, who flinches in much the same way when his mother’s tone turns sharp. The way he flutters around his father, an insignificant bird, begging for crumbs. He thinks of hushed tones at the balls, murmurs of obligation, of the new heir to the House of Black. He thinks, really thinks, of Regulus meeting James’ father, his eyes wide, Monty’s kindness striking at him truer than any blade.
Fuck, James thinks, and he scrambles out of bed. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He’s almost at the door, still starkers, when he remembers how Monty treats Effy after they fight. Kid-gloves, grand gestures, and plenty of time to stew after the fact. Is this right? He makes a decision in a moment, snapping his fingers.
“Mopsy! Mopsy, I need–”
Mopsy appears with a pop that grates James’ ears. She takes one look at him, sweeping those bulging eyes up and down. This elf changed James’ nappies, but he’s aghast. She clicks her fingers, and he is dressed– in those bloody purple dress robes.
“Oh, Mopsy, can’t it have been anything else?”
“Master James,” she says, and he thinks there might be a smile in her tone. “Beggars must not be being choosers.”
“Right, okay, it doesn’t actually matter, Mopsy, I need a favour.”
She looks at him. Waits.
“Um…” James is struck by the realisation that he has no idea what to do. His mind– traitorous thing– is coming up completely blank on ‘grand romantic gestures’.
He thinks of his parents, his father working late, coming in with tired eyes and a warm smile, kissing his mother on the forehead, bringing her a bunch of flowers.
He thinks of Peter, meticulously setting up picnics in the Astronomy Tower, for his girlfriend back in fourth year.
Right. Okay. He can do this.
“Mopsy, I need you to set up a romantic dinner for two. I want candles, and–” there’s a Muggle movie, a famous one, something about spaghetti. “And we’ll be eating spaghetti this evening.” His voice is steady, firm. “While you do that, I’m going to pick some flowers.”
Regulus has his head on his knee as he stares out across the lake, his back a sorrowful arch. He wonders how it is possible to go from feeling so– so good to so horrible and awful and small in the span of minutes.
The lake winks sadly at him, as if it is listening, blows a sympathetic gust of wind up towards him, ruffling his hair and cooling the tears drying tackily on his face.
There’s a rustle in the reeds, and Regulus looks up to see James wading towards him, absolutely bedraggled, wearing purple dress robes, and holding the saddest bunch of flowers that he has ever seen.
He blinks. Blinks again. This has to be some kind of hallucination– a weird mirage. Too much time with the Potters.
“Regulus!” The mirage calls. Again. “Regulus!”
He doesn’t know if he wants to see him yet. There’s still a messy-ugly-confusing tangle of emotions in his stomach, but here James is, approaching; and here James is, standing in front of him; and here James is, offering him flowers.
“Regulus,” he says for the final time, and his brow is creased and apologetic, and there’s a sad tilt to his mouth that Regulus instinctively wants to sit up and push away, with his fingers, with his own mouth.
“What,” he says, and it isn’t a question. He is still sullen, and resentful, and the hurt in his stomach is no small thing.
“Listen,” James takes a deep breath. This is a big effort for him. “Back there. I was being an idiot, alright? I wasn’t thinking and– and I didn’t mean it and– listen. I can just be an idiot, right, you know that. I’m sorry, I really am. And we don’t ever have to talk about it again if you don’t want to, but I just want you to know that– I’m sorry. And I didn’t have any right to talk about it how I did.”
It didn’t sound rehearsed at all, and from the way James was panting, he’d probably said it all completely spur of the moment.
There’s a part of Regulus that is still angry, and hurt, and upset. He doesn’t think it’ll go away, not any time soon. But there is another part, small and growing, that is sweetly grateful for, well, James’ distress; the clearly haphazardly picked flowers; the nervous flush on his cheeks; the dark pink spot of a developing mark on his neck. The apology, clumsy and sincere.
He takes a moment – watches James squirm – before pushing himself up to stand, brushing off the grass stains from his legs.
“Alright,” he says, gamely, “I accept your apology, if you swear to never talk about my scars to me again.”
“Never?” James’ face is comically serious, “want to swear an Unbreakable about it?”
Regulus laughs. Even in the most dire moments, James Potter has never passed up the opportunity to flex his charm.
“No, you tosser. Just shake on it.” His hand, outstretched. No tricks, open palm. James takes it almost instantly, shakes hard. He smiles up at Regulus, tentative. Regulus smiles back.
After they shake, James pushes his handful of foliage towards Regulus. He recoils.
“What– James, what are those?”
“Flowers, you twit! I picked them–” his voice is suddenly sheepish, uncertain. Regulus’ chest gives a little quaver. “I picked them for you. To say sorry.”
“Oh–!”
They make quite the picture, blinking at each other like two lost lambs, James still holding out the drooping bouquet.
“If you don’t want them–” He starts, once the silence has stretched for too long and the uncertainty on his face has become belligerent discomfort.
“I do!” Regulus interrupts, and hastily steps forward to take them. “I do want them. I was just–”
“Disgusted?” James’ voice is knowing, and Regulus reflects on how poorly it looks on him; self-deprecation.
“Surprised.” Regulus says, stern. “Not disgusted.”
A conversation, around the lake:
“James– where did you get these flowers?”
“Oh all over! The field, down by the river bed. Just stopped by everything that looked nice.”
“Right, right… Listen, in Herbology, you wouldn’t have happened to look at poison ivy very much, would you?”
“I’m helpless at Herbology, Reg, you know that.”
“Right. Well I’m just going to put the bouquet down now, and I still like it very much, I just do think I’m developing a rash on my palms–”
When they finally traipse back up to the house together, after a series of events: involving a bouquet of potentially poisonous weeds, a rash, some very gentleman-ly screaming and a bunch of– to call them this is charitable, but Regulus is feeling a little sentimental– flowers, discarded by the lakeside, it’s to find the fire roaring and a candle-lit dinner waiting, warm and steaming on the table.
“Welcome,” James says with a flourish, opening his arms wide and bowing, “to Casa di Potter, for a beautiful dinner prepared by yours truly.”
There’s pasta, and fresh crusty bread. A shallow dish with a dark oblong of balsamic vinegar, a thick layer of olive oil on top. The sauce has been ladled generously over top, pooling gently between the ribbons of pasta, red and rich.
It is unbearably sweet. The fluttering thing in the hidden crevices of Regulus’ chest is beginning to take root, wings beating slowly, slower, settling into its new home.
James is looking at him, and he’s smiling but there is a too-bright glint to his eyes; nerves. He’s nervous. He wants everything to go well. He wants everything to go well for Regulus .
It is a heady realisation, that James Potter might– well. He may not move mountains for Regulus but perhaps, someday, he might want to.
Regulus smiles, and he pulls out his chair, and he sits.
They eat, and laugh, and try the red wine that Dipsy brings them– it isn’t good, so they don’t drink it. Regulus is learning that when James doesn’t like something, he doesn’t suffer it. It is an utterly foreign way of life– so bizarrely different to the obligation and duty of being a Black– and he is utterly seduced by it. There is also, of course, the matter of the little voice in Regulus’ head, the sweet one, sounding a little like Narcissa, when she was a child, whispering softly into the delicate parts of his mind; he doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to, Regulus– so what does that make this? What does it make you?
James spreads a healing potion onto Regulus’ hands after dinner. He’s gentle with it, so careful. The rash, which had already been fading, disappears immediately, but James’ hand doesn’t move. He keeps rubbing Regulus’ palm, up and down his fingers, deep, kneading strokes. It is ridiculous, to get turned on by a hand massage– but this whole evening, the dinner and the apology and the flowers and that sweet voice asking questions that Regulus thinks he might know the answer to– well. James is moving his hands now, spreading the strokes up to Regulus’ forearm, sweeping up, down, the smooth expanse of skin interrupted only by a few moles, the blue of veins. Regulus can feel the blood, beating through those veins, see the tendons in his wrist, flex, relax, and still, James moves his hands, up, down, caressing. He knows what he’s doing, the bastard. Regulus is a piece of putty under his hands. James could do anything to him now, if he wanted. He is unmoulded, untouched, a piece of clay plucked out of the river. He wants James’ hands to sink deeper, to leave a permanent indentation.
James’ eyes are dark when he looks back up at him, and desire has gathered in the corner of his mouth.
Their words tumble out at the same time, intermingling in the air.
“Do you want to—“
“Can we—“
Regulus stops, flushed. His arm is still caught in James’ grasp; caught, but not caged. James’ hands are still kneading, thumb pushing into the tender spot between his muscles. He imagines his bones shifting and moving under his skin, smooth and curved under James’ fingers.
James chuffs out a laugh, reaches up with his spare hand and touches his temple with the tips of his fingers, a butterfly kiss, skates down to tuck a loose curl behind his ear. His fingertips rest there, against the shell of his ear, soft skin, heat.
Regulus can hear every breath echoing in his ears, muscles tingling like he’s about to run a marathon.
“Do you want to-” a breath. Regulus follows the path of it, the gulp of James’ throat, the slow movement of his chest under his clothes, “-go upstairs?”
There’s something fluttering in his stomach, the furious beating of sparrows wings. His heart squeezes, hard, in his chest. James looking up at him from between his legs, his wide, beseeching eyes, pink tongue flicking out over his lips, red flush down his neck and disappearing captivatingly down his shirt.
James quirks an eyebrow at him, and he realises he’s waited too long, mouth dry and sticky.
“Yes—!” He flushes, the high, needy pitch of his voice, coughs, “yes. Yes. Let’s do that.”
Regulus is on top of him, lips bitten and red. James puts his hands on his face, in the curve of his neck, his shoulder, the warm softness of his chest. He can’t stop touching him, doesn’t want to stop.
“James,” Regulus laughs, and he can feel the way the laughter moves through his body, the hitching breaths in his lungs, the muscles jumping under his hand. “Stop! You’re distracting me.”
He hums, turns his head sideways into Regulus’ hand at his cheek, presses a hot kiss to the inside of his palm, opens his mouth and licks the flat of his tongue against the whorls of his thumb, presses it against the inside of his cheek. He opens his eyes, thin slits. Regulus is staring down at him, captivated, mouth open.
James sucks, experimentally, and Regulus gasps, a punched out, hoarse noise. A hot spark of satisfaction is taking light in his stomach. He likes seeing Regulus like this, split open, all his feelings flying across his face without any semblance of control, his desire written in inky letters.
The next few moments pass in a blur of hands and mouths and laughter and Regulus, Regulus, Regulus.
James ends up on his stomach, biting into his forearm, the sharp sting of pain mixing with the pleasure rushing down his spine. He can feel Regulus’ thighs bracketing him, the magnetic pulse of his body curved over his spine, the heat of his hand around—
He breathes out, hard.
“Is this alright?” Regulus’ voice, quiet, muted in the darkness of the room. The hush of the summer night air presses down on them, a blanket of stars and quiet. His fingers skirt up the curve of his thigh, over his hole and— he’s breathing hotly into the sensitive skin just behind James’ ear and—
He gasps, and shudders forward, the hot line of his cock pushing against the sheets.
“That—“ he says, croaks it out “That. Again. Please.”
He hears Regulus’ smile in his voice, is too busy pressing his face into the curve of his elbow to look up, sparks flying in the darkness behind his eyes. A quick mutter of a charm and his fingers are back, cold dripping liquid. He flinches, and Regulus murmurs an apology, one hand sliding down his back, soothing a spooked animal.
Then he’s— and James is flying apart under him, skin over-sensitive and jittery, every touch sending him scrabbling at the sheets. Regulus’ fingers were a hard contour of pressure inside of him, every minute movement leaving him breathless and moaning.
It’s almost easy, after this; a golden snitch in front of him glimmering in the darkness that he’s chasing, chasing, his fingers outstretched; Regulus’ mouth on his ear, his soft, damp noises driving James wild, on his neck, the scrape of teeth; his fingers inside of him, crooking and pressing a spot that makes the room sing, reaching, reaching—
He comes harder than he ever has before, spine curving forward and in on himself, eyes squeezing shut and tears gathering at the corners. Regulus pushes him through it, then he has to squirm away, the aftershock coming to him in a wave of breathless giggles and too much, too much, wait—!
When he finally comes back to himself, arms thrown over his face and breathing hard, he looks down at Regulus; he looks utterly pleased with himself, a cat with all the cream.
“Oh sod off,” he says, but it comes out overly fond, his body still warm and liquid. “Do you need—?” He gestures broadly at Regulus’ crotch. He doesn’t know if he’ll be much good except to swing his hand around but it seems polite to offer after the experience Regulus had just given him.
“No.” Regulus says, too quickly, a hot red blush overtaking his face.
James sits up, almost frowning and worry beginning to gather in his stomach when he sees the way Regulus is sat, awkwardly, the wet spot at his groin.
“Oh,” he says, pleased, can’t help the smile that spreads over his face. Regulus scowls— but that’s too-fond as well. “Oh, I see.”
“You sod off,” he says, lunging forward to hit him with a pillow. “Don't— stop looking at me like that—!”
James laughs, and they tumble backwards, a mess of pillows and blankets and sheets coming up to gather them in a warm, cheerful embrace.
Notes:
thanks for reading!!! hope you're liking it so far, please leave a kudos and comment if you've enjoyed it (we are very chatty)
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by the way, the book james is reading from remus is anna karenina - this won't come back thematically! ;)
<3 <3 anyway thanks byeee
Chapter Text
Regulus has always woken early. It’s a fact of life for him, that he gets up with the sun. And once he is awake, well. There’s no putting the doxies back in the curtains.
James is dead to the world, snoring softly. His face is more relaxed than Regulus has ever seen it. He looks so young like this, pliant and sweet. Regulus disentangles their limbs, and James stirs, a small groan escaping his lips. Thinking quickly, Regulus slips his pillow into the empty arms he’s leaving. James snuffles, clutches the pillow tight, doesn’t wake.
Padding downstairs, Regulus flicks a silencing spell at the kettle before turning it on. It’s a beautiful morning, the sun just peering over the horizon’s edge, sending mist whirling upwards, the dew that had gathered on the grass overnight evaporating back into the atmosphere.
A jumper has been flung over the side of the couch, discarded by James in his excitement to get into the lake yesterday. Regulus puts it on, enjoying at the brightness of it, the way it still holds the ghost of James’ body. Nonsensically, he feels a kinship to the flashy red Quidditch jersey. He feels bright. He’s holding the ghost of James’ body, now.
Regulus shakes off the thought– you absolute sap – and pours his coffee. He hesitates, wanting something. Narcissa’s voice in his ear, ‘indelicate, darling, to sweeten and dilute your beverages. A show of weakness.’ Regulus smiles, a lopsided, easy thing, adds cream and sugar to his cup, two heaping spoonfuls, generous. Still smiling, he wanders outside, seeking a spot to sit and watch the sun as it begins its steady climb over the water.
There’s a bench, right at the lakefront, amongst the reeds. That will do nicely.
Bare feet on grass, the chill of the morning nips playfully at Regulus’ nose, reddening the tips of his ears, but he has James’ jersey, and his hands are filled with the heat of his coffee, and he is cradled in warmth. Safe. Sitting down, he watches as the steam curls off the lake, mixing and melding with the steam swirling out of his own mug. It’s going to be a scorcher.
A rustle, to his right.
He turns, but nothing emerges.
There, again, and he can’t be imagining things.
He thinks he can hear seagulls, squalling overhead, but that can’t be; the Lake is miles away from the seaside. Somewhere low, low in his gut, a voice. It sounds like the reeds.
The youngest Noble, the first to fall.
He’s frozen, still, a prey animal caught at the end of a long chase. His heart thuds in his chest, blood like water rushing through his ears.
Again, and again, that fall, wings burning in the sun, feathers melting away to ash, to dust.
The voice is merciless, its rustling-creaking tones soft and grating on Regulus’ ears. The coffee in his grip is suddenly ice-cold, a chill stealing over its surface, quick as lightning.
Die to live, and live to die. A million members of the House, coalesced into one. Buried in water, shallow graves, mausoleums.
He can’t move, can’t breathe. He feels as though he is nothing at all– like he was never really a person, just a concept, and the words spilling into him are taking even that shred of selfhood. His stomach twists.
The first to die will be the one to outlive them all. The youngest Noble, the first to fall.
As suddenly as it began, it’s over. Regulus can move again, chest heaving, eyes darting. The chase is done but he still feels hunted. He puts his coffee down, watching it spill into the grass. His hands are trembling violently– he wonders if he’s going to be sick.
The lake, which just before had seemed idyllic, peaceful, feels sinister, eerie. The swirls of mist have gained a malicious edge, continuing to spin invitingly. Step inside, they say, the water’s fine. There is a chill, a freezing trickle, slinking its way down Regulus’ spine, cold, dead hands scrabbling at him, breaking skin. He tastes vomit in his mouth, a cold-fire liquid, slippery-smooth on his tongue. Dirt under his nails, the tickle of lavender in his nose.
Regulus wrenches himself up, swaying, drifting dangerously closer to the siren-call of the water. It takes all the self-control he has– a considerable amount, the son of the Noble House of Black– for him to turn on his heel and run.
James is in the same place as when he left, nose buried in the pillow. Regulus snatches it out of his hands, and still, James does not wake. He climbs straight into the bed, mud and grass and pond-scum smearing from his feet onto the sheets, tucks himself under the outstretched arm, nosing up close to James’ chest. Two hot tears snake out of his eyes, dripping onto the pillow.
Dearest Pads,
I don’t know how to start this How are you? How are things with Moony? I hope that Wales has gotten more interesting. And NO sheep have been accosted. Merlin. Can’t you two find a pair of nice girls to warm your beds? I’m sure Wales has some non-hideous milkmaids, or something.
Still nothing to report from me. There is something You know I’ve always You’re my best friend and I don’t want to lie to y Parentals are very busy, all the time out of the house. We’ve been spending a lot of time at the Lake House. I invited Lily to come down for the Potter Ball. If you wanted to I’d like if you Why won’t you We’ll miss you.
Write back soon and save me from this!!
Yours
Prongsy
Their second morning in the Lakehouse, and James can’t stop looking at Regulus.
It had begun– like most things– in the clearing, long before the first sparks of desire had begun to catch in his chest. He felt, in these early moments, as though if he could only catch Regulus out– interrupt him in a moment of weakness, see him as he was, no pretence, guard fully down– then perhaps he could understand him, begin to untangle the messy knot of Regulus that had made its home in James’ chest sometime in sixth year.
Somewhere along the way– James doesn’t know when it started, and frankly, doesn’t care to examine it– this ceaseless watching had turned from curiosity to desire. It had grown, and grown, until he was drunk and sticky with it, and that night, the stars shining a blessing down onto them, they’d kissed, and the knot in James’ chest became a growth, and it had sprouted wings, soared.
And then– nothing. Not a peep, not even a single word about what they’d shared. James hurt, but figured if Regulus was chalking it up to a drunken mistake, he could too. And he did. At least– until the next time they’d raided the Summer Cottage’s liquor cabinet. And so began a pattern. The society events created structure to an otherwise endless haze of their summer, of pool-clearing-wine-sun, days and days passing for James in a blur of want, of need. James couldn’t help himself. Time went on, and the winged thing in James’ chest bubbled, rumbled, craved. The drinking, the touching, the pretence of drunkenness – to give Regulus an out, an escape, James’ stomach tightened at the thought, – none of it satisfied him. When he was alone, his mind echoed, the soft noises Regulus made every time they kissed bouncing around in his skull. James wanked a lot, at night. It was like fourth year, all over again. Frustrated and unsatisfied by his own hand. James was insatiable.
But then they had gone to the Lake House. James hadn’t known what he had expected, when he’d invited Regulus. He’d suggested it almost as a dare, a push aimed at Regulus as they danced together on the knife’s edge of propriety, expecting a little wobble, a jolt, before being corrected, balance restored. Instead, Regulus had taken his hand, and jumped.
James wonders, very distantly, as Regulus mouths at the soft skin of his neck, whether anyone had ever felt like this before– or if he is the first, if this is completely uncharted territory. Regulus takes off his glasses, sets them aside, a dear motion that sends a pang up through James’ chest. James wonders if any of his ancestors– the Potters Past– still held the record for most sex in the Lake House. Smugly, he doubts it.
Regulus bears down on his crotch, his hands scrabbling at the hem of James’ shirt, and James’ musings are gone, washed away in a rush of heat, of want-need-closer-now.
James falls back onto the mattress, shucking his shirt off as he goes. He grabs the back of Regulus’ neck, pulls him in for a bruising kiss, their tongues jockeying for dominance. The tendons beneath James’ palm twist, leap.
Regulus’ hands are all over James, sliding, grasping, clinging, leaving hot trails of desire across his chest, his back. James pulls him closer, closer, the feeling of skin on skin driving him. Regulus’ mouth tastes of cigarettes and sweets, and all he wants is more– more of this, more taste, more touch, more Regulus .
James twists them around, pinning Regulus back on the bed, and begins to kiss his neck in earnest. He sucks a path down, hesitating at the hollow of his throat, the curve of his ribs, down, and down, and Regulus’ breath is coming in short puffs. When he reaches Regulus’ crotch, he looks up, eyebrow cocked, a silent ‘this okay?’
Regulus nods, eyes dark with want, and then he fists his hand in James’ hair, and tugs . The sharpness of the motion sends sparks up and down James’ spine, making his cock ache. He begins to kiss around Regulus’ thighs, gentle pecks, almost sweet, until the fist in his hair tightens again, Regulus’ broken voice coming in a whine.
“James, please .”
And James complies, taking Regulus into the wet heat of his mouth.
He’d never done this before, so at first it’s fumbling, messy, his teeth getting in the way, tongue unsure what to do with itself. But James finds a rhythm, licking and stroking, guided by the soft sounds escaping Regulus’ lips. He reaches down with his free hand, palms himself, and the friction is so good, so right, that he lets out a groan, from deep in his chest. It vibrates around Regulus’ cock, and Regulus makes an absolutely filthy noise–
“James– I need– please –” the hand is tugging on his hair again, bringing him up, and they’re kissing, wet and messy, hips grinding against each other, relishing in the heat, the feeling . Regulus looks absolutely undone, his eyes glazed, a blotchy blush spreading down his neck, his chest heaving.
“Regulus,” James whispers, and the name feels perfect in his mouth, slotting among the grooves like it was always meant to be there, a prayer sent up to a benevolent god. Mine-mine-mine, goes his heart.
Regulus comes with a start, a widening of his grey eyes, and a thin moan slipping out of his mouth, and James’ world goes sideways– seeing Regulus like this, unabashed, unguarded, flushed and free and beautiful, is enough to send him over the edge as well.
They lie together, panting, gentle giggles escaping them as they take in the tangled sheets, the still-warm coffees that Regulus had brought in for them, the congealing scrambled eggs on the bedside table.
“Breakfast in bed, huh?” Regulus snorts, a breathy thing, and James’ heart swoops, soars, up and then down again.
James squeezes his eyes shut tight, nudges his head into the crook of Regulus’ shoulder. He’s bottling this moment, preserving it for later, taking in all the feelings– the sun, streaming through the windows and the white sheets, crumpled, tossed carelessly at the bottom of the bed; the smell, of sweat and sex and Regulus’ own spiced-musk; and the feeling, the warm heat of body, of Regulus, Regulus, Regulus– he needs to remember perfectly, keep it all still, careful in his mind, so he can have it for later, take it out on rainy days.
Mary & Marlene!
I do wish you’d write me more than once a fortnight. It seems so unfair that you’re living the life in some mansion in Marseilles and I’m stuck in ruddy Cokeworth. Send me news– or more photos, if you can!! That one of you two with the portrait of William of Orange nearly made me wet myself. How did you get it to move so easily?? I thought Muggle paintings couldn’t be brought to life– isn’t it something in the pigments themselves while they’re being painted? I bet Sybill would know.
Sev sent me another owl. I don’t really know what to do about it, because ignoring it seems to be just encouraging him, and I’m seriously worried he’ll come by the house and cause a scene. Which, as you’ll know, is the absolute last thing I need.
Tuney’s always in a tizzy about something or other, and this week is no exception. She’s got it into her head that Vernon (he of very little brain and very piggish face; they started seeing each other over Christmas break, I think? I did tell you about them but they’re so forgettable that I wouldn’t blame you if you’d forgotten) will be proposing to her before summer’s end, because he made a really big deal about going down the pub with Dave– “just us gentlemen”. So now my darling sister is swanning round the house wearing only white. It’s embarrassing, really, the hints she’s dropping, especially if they turn out to be unsubstantiated. I’ll never be like that, honest. If I start dropping hints about a big, white, wedding, I want you to check me very carefully for hexes, jinxes, and Polyjuice. I mean it!!!
Alright, I’ll let you get back to your wineries and museums. Spare a thought for the rest of us stuck in the Midlands, no?
All my love,
Lil xxxx
Regulus felt like that first night with James had opened something up in him, a frenzy, a ravenous, covetous pining. They’re spending more and more time at the Lakehouse, stealing away almost every night they didn’t have an engagement. James had infected him with desire. It was every second, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Pressed up against the kitchen counter, mouthing blindly at the skin on his neck; face down and panting against the desk as James’ hands scrabbled desperately at his belt; dropping to his knees with a jolt and pushing James’ underwear out of the way. Every new action triggers a craving for more, more, more.
His hair is in a constant state of disarray. There is a mark on his collarbone that hadn’t been allowed to fade.
“I can’t go home like this,” he says, staring at himself in the mirror with dismay. He’d pulled his collar to the side to see them, the string of bite-marks leading in an ants-trail down his neck. James’ face is buried in his shoulder on the other side, arms looped around his waist. He is breathing Regulus in, softly, slowly.
“Then don’t.” He’s smiling, Regulus can hear it.
“Stop it,” he says, shoving him off. It’s hard not to smile too. “You know I have to– Mother will want me home for supper– and especially before the Malfoy soiree. You have to get ready for that too.”
James groans, throwing his head back dramatically and pulling Regulus back, until they are both sprawled on the bed.
“The Malfoys are such a bore . And we’ll have to go all the way to Wiltshire. Wiltshire!”
“It’s just a portkey,” Regulus rolls his eyes. He’d always rather liked the manor. “And–” here he turns, swinging his leg up and over James’ hips and watching his eyes darken, tongue darting out to lick his lips. “If you get really bored,” he leans down, nipping at his ear and feeling James shudder, all the way down to his toes. “I’m sure we can come up with some way of entertaining ourselves.” He could feel James hardening beneath him.
Regulus didn’t manage to get home until late in the afternoon.
Lily,
Please, please, please– I’m so sorry, you know I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I can do to make it up to you.
Is this the end of our friendship? Don’t you think that eleven years You owe me I don’t understand why you I love
Please write me back. I don’t care if you just send me a Howler, or scream at me. I don’t want this to be the end.
Yours, always,
Severus
James gets back to the Summer Cottage as the sun tips, warm and golden, into the afternoon. Just in the nick of time, if his mothers nervous laughter is anything to go by— his father makes a half-serious joke about having to send out a search party.
“There you are, sweetheart,” Effy sighs, pulls him into a quick hug and a kiss at his temple, like he’s all of five years old again. “Up to your room and dressed, quickly now! Your robes are set out and ready for you.”
Fleamont smiles at his wife, a warm, indulgent thing.
“You’ve twenty minutes before we’re going to the Portkey,” he says, not really paying attention to James at all. “Will you be ready in time?”
James nods, already halfway up the stairs to his bedroom. It’s odd, being back. They’d only been away for a few nights, and already it felt like that time had run through his fingers like water, like grains of sand, memories wavering in iridescent bubbles. It’s as if he’s returned to the world out of a long and beautiful dream, like he’s lived lifetimes before returning, new eyes. Everything in his room feels a bit foreign, or strange, as if an intruder has come into their home and replaced everything with an exact replica. It’s all exactly as he left it: mugs left half-drunk on the bedside table; clothes strewn around all around like a storm’s ripped through the room; a poster curling over itself where it’s come unstuck from the wall. It’s like a snapshot, a historical bedroom preserved in a museum. He’s surprised at how different he feels, after just a few nights away. It’s almost– he doesn’t know how to put it into words, this strange out-of-time feeling rising in him, stepping backwards into skin he has long since shed and pulling it tight over his chest. It’s almost like his room should be covered in dust, or shining and pristine, or everything moved ever so slightly to the right. Something in his room should have changed, as much he feels he has changed; monumentally and not a bit, not at all. He thinks on this as he pulls on his dress robes– that awful royal purple, still. Nothing has changed, not materially, nothing he can track and compare– and yet there’s been a shift in James, in the air, in time itself that feels so profound–
An irritated hoot startles him from his musings.
There’s an owl waiting for him. It shakes its feathers, gives him a glare– well you took your bloody time . It’s Sirius’, of course. James smiles as he reaches up for the owl, scratching its head as he unties the letter from its leg. A stink bomb explodes everywhere as soon as he opens the roll of parchment, and he jumps back, swearing.
PRONGS.
“WE” HAVE BEEN SPENDING TIME AT THE LAKE HOUSE?
YOU ARE KEEPING A SECRET FROM ME. I WILL NOT HAVE IT. THINK OF THIS AS YOUR RETRIBUTION. AND TELL ME THIS INSTANT.
WALES IS STILL BORING. NO MILKMAIDS. I HATE YOU.
SOB
“Mopsy!” James screeches. “Mopsy, I need new robes, or I shan’t be– oh, there you are.”
Mopsy takes one look at him, her bulging eyes pointed. She twists one of her ears back in an exasperated gesture, clicks her fingers.
James is dressed in new, un-Stink-Bombed robes. They’re a pale lilac. He smiles.
Sev,
Thank you for your note. I understand you didn’t mean it, but that doesn’t make it okay.
I’m really worried about you. You say that your friends aren’t like that, not really, but I heard that Carrow got Marked over Christmas – please tell me this is a rumour. I couldn’t bear it if
I want you to know that your friendship has been a very dear part of my life, and I don’t want to give this up– but Sev, please try to see it from my perspective, these people want me and my family dead. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill your mum if they knew where she was and you’re being naive if you think . Things are getting scarier. I keep seeing the Muggle news– mass killings, explosions, whole families going missing. And that’s just the stuff that the Ministry can’t hide.
If you need a place to go If you decide I dont want you to
Please don’t write me again unless
Lily
The Malfoys – and Regulus could already see Great Uncle Arcturus rolling his eyes here, dramatic and disappointed – was one of his favourite parties of the season. Not for fondness of their House itself – Lucius had a penchant for becoming very annoying after a few drinks – but for fondness of, well, the house; the manor itself.
Regulus had many a fond memory of running through its corridors, giggling hand in hand with Narcissa, Andromeda ahead of them and Sirius and Bellatrix bickering somewhere behind. The Manor was frightfully modern of course, in comparison to their own Great and Noble House; the castle in Scotland really put the Malfoy House in Wiltshire to shame. Of course, the Black’s Ancestral Home had largely fallen out of use except for on holidays; there were far too many dark things lurking in the hidden depths, and their ancestors had become really quite lax about noting down where they’d put their most Dark and Dangerous objects. It wasn’t the safest space to have children, or adults, or really most people inside. You never knew if you were picking up a normal book or something that would just about curse your whole arm clean off.
The Malfoy’s afternoon soiree was more of the standard fare. When Regulus walks in, he takes a moment to look at the towers of golden champagne, flowing endlessly down crystal glasses; a string quartet stroking their bows gently across their strings, a particularly beautiful enchantment having the music flow in iridescent colours through the air above them; and absurdly, peacocks, dragging their white feathers through the grass. When his gaze had landed on the birds, Regulus had caught James’ eye and then they both had to promptly look away to keep from laughing.
It was perhaps a smaller affair than usual. Regulus had heard that Lucius’ mother, Lady Seraphina Malfoy, was unwell, some manner of illness capturing her spirit, and had been this way for quite some time. Lord Abraxas was famously tight lipped around any family matters, and it wasn’t any different for the matter of his wife’s health. It wasn’t hard to see her absence however, a conspicuous gap between the Lord and his Heir, the minute details of the event that weren’t quite right, threads hanging loose in a tapestry. It wasn’t a source of gossip though, of course not; that would be terribly discourteous. Even his mother didn’t pass comment on the floral arrangements, a noticeable repeat from the year previous.
Regulus and James had fallen into a routine at these events: they didn’t speak for the majority of it, making the rounds politely, filling their dance cards with appropriate partners, mingling; doing their duties as respective representatives of their Houses. Regulus was far more popular this year than years past. He didn’t take it as any kind of personal compliment; it was clearly the unavailability of Sirius – the true heir – that had bolstered his social standing.
Somewhere near the end, when the event was petering out, ties discarded on the grass, waistcoats unbuttoned, and a general air of breathing out, they would find each other. Regulus usually positioned himself just behind a tree on the outskirts, or in some sort of secluded area, cigarette smoke drifting from his mouth up into the chilled air of the night sky. Other times, he’d be the one to go searching for James– who liked making it a bit of a game, leaving small hints to his location like some sort of scavenger hunt.
The prize was always the same.
Regulus moans, soft breathy noises escaping him as James pins him against the base of a sculpture in the maze. He is occupied with mouthing down Regulus’ neck, seeming determined to explore every inch of it with just his lips. His thigh is pressed between Regulus’ legs, and Regulus is squirming, small needy jerks of his hips.
“James,” he says, hand scrabbling at the back of his head and pulling, fruitlessly at his hair. It only serves to motivate his actions, hands pulling at Regulus’ shirt and pushing the fabric up to spread his palms against his hot stomach. “James– James!”
“What?” James’ voice vibrates across the damp skin of Regulus’ shoulder and he makes a frustrated noise, thumps his head back against the marble and sliding himself along James’ leg, friction not-quite-there. The smell of crushed grasses and clover fills his nose, a hint of bergamot from James’ cologne.
“Stop it, my parents– we’re leaving soon–!”
“But not yet.” James kisses at the soft spot behind his ear, tugs at his lobe between his teeth, licks a hot wet stripe across his skin. Regulus bites at his knuckles and looks despairingly at the sky. He doesn’t want him to stop, not really.
Then– voices somewhere behind them in the maze. The cool air becomes sharp on Regulus’ exposed stomach and James jerks his head back– finally!– staring at him with wide eyes. They’re frozen, and then in a flurry of movement, Regulus tugs his shirt back down, tucking it haphazardly into his pants. He takes James’ hand and runs through the maze; left here, left again, now right. It’s a path he’s known since he was six years old.
They end up, panting, in the middle of the maze, a centaur caught in a marble sheen rearing his proud head above them.
“Merlin,” James says, between heavy breaths and his hands on his knees. “That was a close one! We’re bloody lucky you knew the way through that maze.”
They’d gotten almost-caught a few times now. Regulus’ heart is still beating rabbit-fast in his chest. He scrubs his hands over his face and laughs, shaking his head.
“Can you imagine if we did get caught like that?” James looks at him, and there’s something fond and then– something almost approaching a question in his face. Regulus looks away. The humour of champagne is a golden fizz that’s beginning to bubble away, flat liquid settling in his stomach.
“Imagine,” he says. He knows that he isn’t saying it with quite enough– well. Quite enough anything. James frowns. He coughs, pastes on a smile and reaches out to tug at his hand. “Anyway. My parents will be waiting for me. Should we–” the rope is fraying and he doesn’t know what to say, is thinking and– “the clearing? Later? Will you be there?”
James’ forehead eases, smoothing away. There’s still a pinch just above his right eyebrow but that doesn’t– Regulus doesn’t see it.
“Yeah,” he says, and Regulus darts in for a kiss before pulling away. “Yeah, I’ll see you in the clearing.”
Merlin, Sirius, MUST you send me a fucking stink bomb?
Fine, I’ll tell you. I’ve been spending time with Emmeline Vance. We got talking at the Black Soiree and she is a nice girl. I like her a little bit. Nothing has happened and I’m still a virgin. You haven’t missed that much.
I’m still cross with you.
Prongs.
The hazy lazy summer days dripped into each other like caramel, slipping past in waves of golden champagne and the cool blue rush of the pool and laughing into the sweet curve of James’ neck. His skin was warming under the sun in patches of honey brown and red on the bridge of his nose. Regulus had become obsessed with tracking the number of new freckles he was developing day by day, clusters of them gathering on his shoulders and across the wide, warm span of his back. They traded kisses like it was a competition, rough and hungry, sweet and smiling. Regulus felt the happiness in his chest like a wavering frightened thing, like some wet creature crawling out from the ocean having just grown legs, stumbling then sprinting with the rabbit-fast beating of his heart. He pressed his mouth to James’ to soothe its fears, rested his head on the soft planes of his chest to catch the thumping rhythm of his heart, stared at him in the night to commit his face to memory, as if all these things were ingredients for some unknown potion.
They weren’t without issues. It was easy to slip into the grooves of petty hatred, the shouting and sniping and cold silences. James’ eyes would flash behind his glasses, shoulders rounding as he gathered his anger into his chest. Regulus could feel his mouth twist and the disdainful tilt to his brow, familiar muscles jumping into place. Both of their bodies were betraying them in these moments, their secret desire come up to the surface to rip and tear and bite at the soft underbelly of their trust.
She was there in those moments, a ghost between them. He didn’t like to say her name. He was frightened of what he might say, and what he might see in the shadows of James’ face.
It wasn’t her fault, that she was bright and fierce and unafraid. It wasn’t her fault, that she made his lack into a hole punched straight through his stomach, that he was afraid he would look down and see that he wasn’t there at all.
James loved her effortlessly. It was hard not to see it, heads bent together like bobbing wildflowers and secret smiles, his laughter twining into hers. Regulus felt something hook behind his spine and pull, tearing through him with thin barbs. His want, his hunger was a rail thin dog in his chest, white teeth flashing in the dark, drooling and starved and mean. He couldn’t laugh in the sun without baring his neck, lying on his back to feel the press of James’ hand on the empty nothing of his body where his organs should be.
“Where have you gone now?” James’ voice is soft, light fingers smoothing across the unconscious furrow of Regulus’ brow, following an invisible path down to the curve of his cheek, skirting across the chapped skin of his lips. Regulus stares up at him as far as he dared, at the mole on his chin, and feels unravelled, skin peeling away to leave him pink and defenceless under a searching gaze.
All his secrets were futile, he’s sure. He would send them all spilling into James’ cupped hand, if he’d only ask. James would know them if he just lifted his gaze, would see all the secret, wicked thoughts crowding up to press themselves against the backs of his eyes, shrieking and squawking to be known.
“Nowhere.” Regulus trails his fingers through the pond, watching as glassy eyed fish bumped into them, mouths opening mindlessly. He watches, head canted onto his other hand at the sunlight filtering weakly through into the still, deep, green.
“I wish we could stay here forever.” The thought slips out of his mouth, a fish ducking into cool water. He snaps it closed, teeth clicking against each other, head ringing with the force of it. He hadn’t meant to say that. He feels silly, childish, whining for ‘just one more sweet, please, please, and then I won’t ask any more,’ and he imagines James’ disdain above him, how selfish Regulus has already been and how dare he ask for more.
“Me too,” James says quietly. And they sit, the two of them, side by side, staring as fish bob up and down, tadpoles with fat legs swimming through the water and dragonflies skating across the surface of the water. They sit, and the summer passes them by.
Miss Lily Jade Potter
The Pleasure of your Company is Requested by James Fleamont Potter
For the Annual Summer’s End Ball;
Hosted by the Noble House of Potter
Tuesday 2nd August, 1977
The Summer Cottage, Kent
Floo Channels will be open from 6pm
The evening’s events will begin promptly at 7pm
Summer Semi-Formal Dress
On the back of the note, in James’ handwriting, is scrawled–
Lil, say you’ll come! Sorry about the fanfare. If you use a scourgify it’ll get rid of most of the glitter. JP
Regulus’ days fall into a rhythm somewhat like this. Wake up, frightfully early as usual– with the sun creeping in through minute cracks in his curtains; have his morning breakfast with his father reading the paper, and his mother on the other side going through her appointments for the day (tea, tea again, some lounging, and an engagement for supper); rush through breakfast as quickly as possible whilst still being polite and avoiding pointed comments; dash through the garden path and through the trees to get to the clearing; get there before James (always) and mill about feeling a bit foolish for hurrying; hear James before he sees him, crashing through the undergrowth– a newborn deer, skittering on its feet; kiss; kiss again; roll around on the grass; play Exploding Snap; kiss some more, and on and on.
It’s surprising how repetitive, and yet new and exhilarating this routine is each day. Regulus thinks it has something to do with the kissing. He’s been trying this new thing with his tongue, and it has James gasping, pupils blowing wide until they’re dark pools in his face, Regulus palming victoriously at the shape of him half-hard in his pants.
He’s decided he likes playing Exploding Snap the most when freshly ravished, as James loses all sense of winning or strategy, when Regulus employs a well-timed usage of his neck and a suggestive gasp. He wonders when James will discover this tactic, and launch a suitable defence. For today, however, it’s chess.
“You know Peter is awfully good at this,” James says, fingers drifting over his bishop and knight. The clearing is warm and he’s discarded his shirt somewhere beside him. The blades of grass are caressing his chest. Regulus wonders if the touch tickles him.
“You can’t distract me,” says Regulus flatly. “Not even with the weirdest of your friends.”
“Peter is not weird!” James defends him, valiantly, and at the same time deftly moves his bishop three spots to the left. “He is a great old mate of mine!”
“Yes,” Regulus says, and promptly orders his rook to smash into the poor bishop, a triumphant swing. “And yet. If he were a better one, maybe he could’ve taught you some actual strategy.”
James frowns, a crease appearing above his eyebrow. There’s a small scar there, a little crescent moon, silver and papery against the warm brown of his forehead.
“Question,” Regulus says, and the frown disappears, replaced by an eager lift of his eyes. It’s so easy to smooth over James’ worries– they’re hardly worries at all. Just concerns, and barely those. “How’d you get that scar?”
“I thought–” James huffs a laugh to himself. “Nevermind. Er– a Care of Magical Creatures accident.” As he finishes the sentence, his eyes flit, ever so slightly, across Regulus’ face.
Regulus lets out a little gasp. He’s lying!
“James! You– the sanctity–! You just told a lie!” He’s sputtering his words out, the chess game entirely forgotten now– not that it matters. He was a move away from checkmate, and James always gets sulky when a loss takes him by surprise.
James grins, and the scar jumps.
“I’m not– not in so many words, Reg. It was an accident with a Magical Creature, but it– well. Not my secret, unfortunately.”
“Fine,” Regulus pouts. “You go, then.”
James pushes the board between them aside, crawling over to Regulus. The long grass parts for him, clovers crushed under his weight, a sea allowing him access. He crowds Regulus in between his arms, his mouth a moment away. Regulus swallows.
“What do you dream about?” James murmurs, hot breath ghosting over Regulus’ lips. Regulus blinks once, slowly. He thinks of the shoreline, of the smell of lavender, of a kiss on the beach that he’s never visited. Of a bed, of a cave, of three drops of blood in the snow and a ring, a locket, black hair and brown eyes–
“You,” he gasps, and James’ lips are on him.
Prongs,
What have you done to Sirius? He’s in an awful sook– only three sheep jokes made on this morning’s walk, and none were even original. If you two are in an argument again, please count me out. It’s always about silly things, and I want no part in them.
Say, have you heard from Lily yet? Or is she still cross with you? You’re making enemies left right and centre, my friend. How’s the season coming? I think Sirius misses Listen, do write us back, even if it’s just some silly gossipy thing. SPEAKING OF: what’s all this about Emmeline Vance???? Isn’t she the dull one??? What could you possibly be seeing in her? Or is it simply a case of summer boredom? Please report with all gory details.
Any progress on our mutual acquaintance Anna (the book, in case you were feeling extra sun-stroked)? You’ll be pleased to note I have Sirius reading Oliver Twist– another achievement for your good friend Remus! It did take a lot of convincing, but I managed it. [Ink blot, large.]
How are the parents? How are you? Radio silence isn’t really a good look for you, mate.
See you soon,
Moony
Lily sticks her head into the fireplace, trying not to feel self-conscious. It was the first time she’d used a public Floo– although, it wasn’t public, not really. She’d found a dingy little Floo-cafe in the back streets of Diagon Alley, filled with little cubicles with curtains across them. When she walked in, she had very pointedly ignored the multitudes of fliers for HOT WITCHES IN YOUR AREA and SEXY JESSY WANTS YOUR CALL– it was 1977, for goodness sake, and she didn’t like to think about any of the stains inside the booth for even a moment besides.
“Marlene– oi, Marlene!” She yells. This is a last resort. Marlene had been distressingly vague, and increasingly unreachable, in response to Lily’s increasing amounts of panicked owls after the invitations– first James’ letter, then the bloody Potter Ball invite, and she was still picking glitter out of her bedroom carpet– had arrived.
Marlene steps into the fireplace’s frame. She looks like she’s just rolled out of bed, her hair all skew-whiff and tousled, wrapped in a thin, silky dressing gown.
“Marlene, it’s 3pm! Have you just got up?” Lily asks, incredulous. She remembers fourth year, when Marlene had had a nasty case of Dragon Fever, and been laid up in bed for weeks, all glazed eyes and sweaty skin– quite similar to how she looks now, actually. “Are you sick?”
“Nope, not sick, just lazy.” Marlene smiles, a slow, stretching thing.
“Well, okay, first of all I would like to say a very polite fuck you very much for ignoring my owls, McKinnon, you absolute–”
“Alright, Lil, I’ve been busy, and I’m here now, aren’t I? This international Floo must be costing you a fortune, so do get on with it, or I’ll walk, and you’ll never know what summer semi-formal is,” Marlene is laughing, actually laughing at her, and it’s so unfair , Lily wants to scream.
“Leeny, please. Please, put me out of my misery, and tell me what to wear!” She’s desperate, now– she must be, to use Marlene’s childhood nickname like this. Emergencies only, and this is an emergency, alright.
Suddenly, another voice comes through the staticky connection.
“Marlene,” it’s a woman with a thick French accent. “Come back to bed this instant– what are you doing, crouching there–”
“Marlene, who’s in there with you?” Lily pouts, just a little bit. She didn’t like to be second choice. “Didn’t we agree to call at three?”
“Sorry, Lil, I’ve been a little busy,” Marlene gives Lily a smirk, a big, suggestive one.
“Oh– oh!” Lily flushes bright red. “Sorry!” she calls to the voice in the flames.
“Don’t worry about it! Send her back to us when you’re ready, will you babe?” A different voice this time, a sweet Irish lilt. A fucking familiar voice.
“Mary?” Lily hisses. “Marlene– Mary?”
It’s Marlene’s turn to blush, her face turning a strange purply colour in the green-hued flames.
“Lily, I should really go– I really am busy–”
“Yeah, busy shagging some Frog and Mary Macdonald , Marlene, you slag–!”
“Look, just, wear– fuck, I don’t know– that mint green tulle thing you got in fifth year. Yeah, that’ll do nicely for summer semi-formal.” Marlene is stumbling over her words now, a mad dash to the end of the conversation. “Okay, well, nice seeing you Lil– must run–”
“Do your hair up though darling, or it’ll clash dreadfully,” calls Mary. “See you in September!”
“Mary Macdonald, don’t think I’m letting–”
The Floo cuts off, abruptly. Lily sits there a moment more, her knees sore from the hardwood floor, taking a moment. Honestly , Marlene never tells her anything .
Still. Green dress, hair up. She can work with that.
The morning of August 1st dawns bright and hot, James and Regulus having once again absconded to the lake house. They wake in a messy tangle, naked limbs sticking to each other, exchanging soft, meaningless, morning-breath kisses. James has a mad thought that if this was the rest of his life, he wouldn’t mind it. The signet ring on his pinky aches.
Regulus has appointed himself in sole charge of coffee, as James ‘simply cannot make it correctly, honestly , it’s like you hate me,’ and so he gets out of bed first. James watches as he pulls on underpants, the smooth curves of his muscles, soft spread of skin. The freckles on his shoulders wink. James is about to roll over into the warmth on the other side of the bed, the sweet smell left behind, closing his eyes and waiting to see if sleep has completely abandoned him yet, when Regulus calls his name.
“James? Can you come down, please?” Regulus’ voice, and it’s loud, but there’s a giggle in it, a little hitch. James stays very still. Perhaps Regulus will bring him coffee and just tell him about whatever laughing matter is in the kitchen.
“James!” It comes again, sharper. “There’s a– fucking bird, stop – there’s a situation down here!”
James lets out a wordless groan, communicating, very effectively, he thinks, that he is too comfortable to be dealing with any kind of situation this early in the morning. Regulus is standing at the bottom of the stairs now.
“James Potter!” He thunders. “There is a Howler in here, and it is smoking, and I haven’t even gotten into the four– four!– owls that are in the kitchen right now. I am not dealing with this! I didn’t sign up for–”
He’s cut off as Lily Evans’ voice screeches through the air, a wordless, joyful scream.
James leaps out of bed, wide awake in an instant. August 1st– of course! He flies down the stairs, past Regulus, who has an unfamiliar owl flapping at his hair.
“I am furious about this, you know!”
“Regulus!” James halts, turns on his heel, catches Regulus in his arms. He sweeps them down the corridor towards the kitchen in some kind of foxtrot-cross-waltz, laughing. “Reg, it’s the first of August!”
“Yes, I know,” and Regulus is trying, so hard, to look cross, but he’s laughing, laughing, as James spins him “What do the Muggles say? Black Rabbits?” James dips him, plants a wet kiss on his mouth. “James–!”
“No, sweet Merlin– the appointments come out today!”
They tumble into the kitchen, red-faced and laughing, and James blasts the Howler, before he begins to tear open the letters attached to each of the owls. The first is from Lily, written in a frantic hand.
James,
I know I’m meant to still be mad at you, and I’m seeing you tomorrow anyway, but I have to ask now– did you get it????
The letter from McGonagall said it’d be a boy in my house, and I thought at first Remus, but then she said something about Quidditch, and I couldn’t think of any other seventh years– aside from Sirius– in the team. Is it you????
Write back as soon as you can please,
Lily
James laughs, tosses the letter aside, opens the next one. It’s also from Lily, and this one is in a barely legible scrawl.
James,
What was McGonagall thinking? You boys set the record for the most detentions in the whole school. She must be having a laugh! I need to know– did you get it???? Because if you didn’t then I’ll have to owl Sirius and ask if he’s heard anything. But surely it isn’t him. He’s a bloody thorn in McGonagall’s side and I know this because I heard her talking in the teacher’s lounge when you guys did that end of year thing with the fire-works in the Great Hall.
Jesus, I can’t believe this is happening. Owl me the FUCK back.
Lil
A small frown crosses James’ face, a hint of cloud in a summer sky. Regulus is standing, nervously watching him, next to the kettle. Lily’s third letter is much clearer, as though she’d taken several deep breaths before writing it.
James,
DISREGARD that last owl– I’m sure we’ll be amazing together. As partners, I mean. Working partners. Bollocks. Also please don’t tell Sirius I said that.
Do you have a telephone where you are? I can’t use the Floo at mine, my parents still haven’t hooked the fireplace up– Tuney’s been making an awful fuss about my weird homework and I think they don’t want to upset her any further.
I think that – a large ink blot, obscuring the rest of the sentence. James’ frown deepens.
Anyway, please write me back the instant you get this.
L
And at last– at last! The embossed cream envelope, Mcgonagall’s chicken scratch hand, bright green ink. It announces itself:
Mr J F Potter
The Only Bedroom
Lake House, Summer Cottage
Kent.
James smiles. Rips it open. Faces his future.
Dear Mr Potter,
I am pleased to inform you of your appointment to Head Boy of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. After careful consideration, you were chosen due to your academic prowess and leadership qualities, noticed particularly your work last year as Quidditch Captain. Please note that you will not be required to step down as Quidditch Captain, however in the event of overwhelm, it will not be held against you.
You will be pleased to know that your fellow new appointee to Head Girl is also in Gryffindor, although she is not involved in Quidditch.
On a personal note, Mr Potter, I am proud of the growth that you have displayed since I first met you. I believe that you are an asset to Gryffindor House, and I look forward to seeing what you will do in the future.
Sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress
A shiny badge falls out of the letter. James and Regulus whoop at the same time, caught up in the moment. The kitchen is filled with their joyous sounds, the coffee half-made and forgotten. James looks away for a moment, down at the gleam of the badge in his hand. When he looks back up, Regulus is very close to him, winding his arms around James’ waist. His look of delight is swept away, something else glinting in his eye. He catches James’ mouth with his own, a sweet kiss that turns searing almost immediately, their tongues wrapping around each other. Regulus’ hands are wandering around James’ back, higher, then lower, and then lower still.
“We should celebrate your success, Mr Potter,” Regulus murmurs against his lips.
James makes a humming noise in answer. He’s aiming for seductive, but unfortunately lands between nervous and questioning. No matter. Regulus breaks the kiss, grabs his hands, steering them back up the stairs to the bedroom.
It’s a rush, like it always is, a frenzy to discard articles of clothing; socks flung across the room and James’ shirt ending up somewhere on the desk. He’s breathing hotly into Regulus’ neck, face damp from the heat of their two bodies coming together when it happens.
“James,” Regulus says quietly, and James stops where he was mouthing at the salty-sweet skin of his shoulder, bringing his head up to blink. Regulus’ face is a blur; they’d learnt their lesson and James has put his glasses carefully on the bedside table before anything too heated had begun.
“James can we–” he’s biting his lip, maybe, but James is still squinting. “Do you– I want– do you want to–” he trails off, gesturing, and seems too embarrassed to say much more. It takes James a second, a clock hand ticking twice before–
“Oh!” He says it too loudly for the intimacy that has gathered around them in a shroud, and Regulus flushes bright red, all the way up his face. James winces and runs a hand down his side, the flank of a startled horse. He pulls his voice back down, a whisper, much more appropriate for the air of reverence descending upon them. “Sorry– sorry. I– yes. If you want to?” His voice pitches up at the end; he is as inexperienced (and anticipatory) as Regulus.
He’s nervous, but it’s coloured by a low hum of excitement; he won’t pretend that he hasn’t been thinking about this since the– his brain stutters – that first night, face pushed into the cool skin of his forearm, mouth open against the sheets, sparks behind his eyes. His face heats even just from remembering. He can tell Regulus is doing the same, tongue darting out to lick over his lips, eyes dark and glinting. He’s looking at James like– he’s hungry. It sends a fissure of something bordering on pleasure down his spine.
What James wants to say is that after the first – second, third – time, it becomes less overwhelming for him, less full body, less– well. Just less. It doesn’t. He feels halfway to falling apart from just having Regulus’ fingers in him, the slow curving pull of them, Regulus’ voice murmuring sweet words somewhere behind him, Regulus’ voice right by his ear, his lips ready for capture when James turns his head, mouthing blindly at the air, needing something, anything to ground him and pull him back to here, on this bed, in the house. He’s trembling all over by the time Regulus pulls his fingers out and he gasps, a wet, needy sound at the sudden absence.
“Sorry– sorry!” The noise of Regulus fiddling behind him but James is barely there, floating somewhere between his body and the ceiling, the sky above. Each breath is an effort to hold himself together. His cock is an aching, weeping line along his stomach, the slightest brush of friction sending static rushing over his skin. It feels like a second and forever between Regulus pulling away and coming back, his hands – wet and a bit cold – on his sides, kissing up the heaving muscles of his back, over his shoulders, softly in the warm tenderness right behind his ear. James moans and shifts; he’s lost his capacity for words. Regulus’ hand smooths down his arm and traces over his knuckles, before linking their fingers together.
“Alright?” He says, a murmur over the shell of James’ ear. He garbles out an affirmative sound.
There’s a pressure at his entrance and he breathes out hard, relaxes his shoulders, his back, all the way down, feels his mind clear. Pressure, building and building– Regulus is breathing hard into his hair– their hands are clenched together, white knuckles– he’s stretching and he can’t do this and it’s so much and– and surely not and–
Regulus slides forward and they both gasp, punched out air, hollow lungs. James shudders all the way down his spine, tingling shooting down his legs all the way down to his toes. It takes him a moment to get used to it, where aching-too-much meets good-yes-more. Regulus is patient behind him, almost silent except for the quick heavy breaths, the trembling of his arm in James’ periphery. Once James has regathered himself, once he feels he is settled into his own skull, he moves, experimentally, a rolling of his hips.
Regulus whimpers, a short cut off sound. That , he likes.
“James–” he says, strained. “James– I–”
“You–?” He’s veering towards smug now, and Regulus can hear it, bites gently at his ear in retaliation, except that makes James– well– and he’s shifting and Regulus is moving with him and– and then they’re in a clumsy rhythm, one-two, push-pull, and Regulus keeps making those soft noises into his ear and James is moaning, really truly, bites his knuckles but then Regulus’ hand is there guiding his arm away and he’s murmuring something about wanting to hear him and that sets him off and–
It’s almost competitive the way they’re trying to one up each other, to find out what makes the other tick, as if pleasure was a goal and they both had their own tally charts, bonus points of yes, there, oh please, Reg–!
It’s hard to say who comes first, James’ hips chasing Regulus’ hand, the firm pressure of it over his cock, wet and spit slick sliding in an unsteady rhythm; Regulus’ own hips stuttering forward, fingers wrapped tight around James’ hand, knuckles grinding, until he’s pressing his forehead hard between James’ shoulder blades, until James is spilling over with a cry into his hand, until Regulus collapses on top of him, front against James’ sweaty back.
They can only breathe for a few seconds, or perhaps minutes or perhaps– well James isn’t in a place to be able to tell the time as accurately as he might hope. At some point Regulus rolls off, and staggers to the bathroom, comes back with a damp and warm washcloth. James can’t feel anything but a deep true fondness, amber light in his chest, as Regulus wipes carefully between his thighs, rolls him over and mops up his front. He smiles up at him, can’t stop smiling, the all encompassing pleasure washing away to leave giddy happiness in its place.
“C’mere,” he says, tugs at Regulus’ hand, his arm, pulls until he’s falling forward into James’ chest, nose pressing uncomfortably into his collarbone but neither of them care. “C’mon. Leave it, just–” a kiss, clumsily pressed to his temple, “come on. Sleep.”
Darling,
Will you be back for tea before the Ball tonight? And would you prefer the light robes, or the dark ones? I know you don’t like the purple for this season, but it does suit you so. I’ll get the house elves to put both out, in case. Feel free to bring that nice Black boy over for dinner beforehand, if you’d like to.
See you soon– five at the latest, please!
Mum xx
Regulus ends up running horrendously (around half-an-hour) late to the Potter Party.
His parents had already departed, sweeping off in a glorious duo of glittering blue-black fabrics, the night sky suspended onto the train of his mothers dress, an array of stars trailing down the twin-tails of his fathers jacket. He’d watched the seamstress enchant it herself, needles pinched in her mouth and eyes magnified and huge behind bulky glasses, wand held precisely between two fingers. His mother had stood perfectly still, a doll suspended mid-motion. It was– and there was no other word here– magic , to see it all come together, from plain fabric folded together to something breathing and alive, the shimmer of something ethereal, the shift of his mothers skin from alabaster to other-worldly. The portraits had sighed to watch it, and Walburga preened, turning from side to side to admire herself in the mirror.
His own robes were very plain. The seamstress herself had clucked to look at him, bustling over to give him a quick pinch, a tuck here and there.
“He’s growing awfully quickly,” she’d said, and he had the distinct image of a chicken ruffling her feathers all around him, “you’ll need a whole new set for this one, unless of course you have the brother’s–”
“A new set,” his mother had cut in, smooth. “Would be perfectly suitable. We shall pay you a visit in Diagon Alley before his school year begins.”
“And any modifications for you dear?” She looked up at him, eyes twinkling, “your parents have gotten done up very nicely, if you’d like to match. Or– Regulus, isn’t it? Constellation Leo, I’m sure we could do something with that if you’d like.”
“No,” he’d managed to splutter out, terribly embarrassed. “I’m alright with how they are. Thank you.”
“Alright dear,” she said, patted him on the shoulder as she finished the last few alterations. “I won’t push. There you go! Nice and fresh for this evening's engagement.”
Regulus hurries down the drive of the Potter house, the sound of the festivities already leaking out into the summer evening air. He’s excited, almost childishly, to see James, talk to James, sneak off with him, and maybe, just maybe, a kiss–
He shakes that last thought out of his head. First, seeing James. That is the priority.
He runs into Effy first, a glowing flush already on her cheeks.
“Oh– Regulus!” She exclaims. “There you are! So good to see you, darling, and don’t you look very dashing in these robes!” All of Regulus’ dress-robes are practically identical.
“Thank you,” he says, smiling, and takes her hand for a perfunctory kiss. “You’re looking very lovely yourself.”
“Stop it, you,” she says, waving her hand. There’s a pleased smile on her lips. “Anyhow. You’ll be looking for Jim, won’t you? He’s just–” she turns her head, squints, then huffs. “Hm. He’ll be somewhere over in that direction, I’m sure you’ll find him.”
“Thank you,” he repeats, and after a few more seconds of small talk, extricates himself to go searching for James amidst the crowd.
He’s just spotted the back of his head– after a few too many painful conversations with estranged relatives– and is pushing through a particularly ill-mannered crowd to get to him when he turns, and he realises that James isn’t alone at all.
All at once his excitement at seeing James, the glee and nervous energy is thrown back in his face, cold wet slime down his back, slopping over his head, humiliation and embarrassment curdling in his stomach.
James has an easy arm hooked around Lily Evans’ hip. His shining face is turned up to his father, then swivels down to her, two beatific smiles bouncing back and forth until it's almost painful to look at.
But then, James' eyes alight on his, and his grin is so large, so genuine and sparkling, that Regulus is dazzled for a moment, and when he gets his vision back, he sees that– he rubs his eyes, unable to believe what he's seeing– that James has abandoned his post beside Lily, leaping over to where Regulus is standing and throwing an arm around his shoulders. Together, they make their way to the drinks table. Lily has been left looking confused, alone in the crowd, her body still curved into the warm air where James just was, and is no longer. Regulus feels a nasty little shiver of satisfaction. See how she likes it.
“Reg! You’re here!” James is grinning and then he’s leaning in, and the sickly sweet smell of the punch is already wafting off of his breath. Regulus flinches, turns his head to the side at the last minute and feels James’ mouth press against the curve of his cheek. “Thank Merlin, it was getting dull around here!” It’s half yelled into Regulus’ ear, and he suppresses a smug smile.
Regulus laughs, pulls at the cuffs of his sleeves and rubs over the silver ravens perched there, a pinch as one of them nips playfully at his wandering fingers.
“Sorry I’m late,” he smiles, tilts his head and feels his curls fall sweetly over his face, rounding his eyes.
James’ breath catches in his throat, and Regulus watches triumphant at the red flush that creeps up his neck, hooks its fingers over the curve of his ear. His mouth has fallen open.
A beat.
Regulus clears his throat.
“Oh!” James says, blinks, turns to grab Regulus a drink off of the table as if that’s what he meant to do all along. “Right. No problem at all. Not like your lot is swanning about right next door or anything.”
“And if I recall,” Regulus says drily, taking a sip from his glass. “You weren’t exactly on time to our event, either.”
James puts a hand to his chest, gasps in mock-offence.
“So this is just to get back at me then! Very vindictive of you, Master Regulus. Well I will have you know, the Potter family is and has always been, extremely punctual, and in fact to suggest otherwise could be considered–” he stumbles here, searching for a word, “–treasonous! An action entirely deserving of a duel.”
“Alright then.” Regulus takes another long sip, tilts his head up and watches through slitted eyes as James’ gaze trickles down the pale line of his throat, catching on the bob of his Adam’s apple. He sets his glass down on the table and crosses his arms, smiles. “A duel. That sounds perfectly fair to me.”
“What’s all this about a duel?”
Regulus tamps down a flare of annoyance as they turn, Lily Evans staring between the two of them with a smile edging on the wrong side of nervous and a too-tight grip on her glass.
Regulus smiles back, a tight, thin lipped movement. He can see Lily change, rocking her weight back onto her heels, a new sharpness coming into her eyes; she’s on the defence.
James laughs into the silence, eyes darting between them.
“Oh nothing– say, Lily, Regulus, have you ever met each other? Properly I mean, obviously we all go to school together but–”
“We have, actually,” Regulus cuts smoothly into James’ nervous prattle, holding his hand out with a practised smile. “Evans, isn’t it? We’re one of the lucky few Slug Club attendees.”
They hadn’t actually spoken to each other at Professor Slughorn’s late-night events. Regulus usually spent them clammed up, on his own defensive front around his prying, gossipy housemates, and Lily smiling with gritted teeth at increasingly backhanded compliments.
“Yes,” Lily says slowly, and she takes his hand. A strong grip. A short breath in. She dives. “Not a lot of fun, are they?”
An olive branch, extended true. Regulus blinks. Lily stares at him, gaze hard and sincere.
“Absolute rubbish,” he agrees, grasps it, takes it. “That last one–”
“–and Lucius!” Lily finishes. She’s beginning to smile, creeping tentatively across her face. It agrees with her. “He was so embarrassed. I thought that his whole face would–”
“Turn red,” Regulus nods, rolls his eyes. “Honestly. And with all that hair–”
“Terrible!” Lily crows. “Like a peppermint lolly!”
James’ face swings back and forth between them. There’s a crease developing on his forehead. Regulus glances at him, back at Lily, takes pity.
“We’re being rude,” he shoots a jovial, chastising look at Lily, stepping slightly to the side, opening the circle. “Sincere apologies for my manners, James. Quite unforgivable to talk about events you haven’t been invited to.”
James gapes, blinks rapidly behind his glasses. He shakes his head, and a disbelieving smile settles on his face. “Don’t mind me. Bit too dull to have caught old Sluggy’s attention.”
“Oh yes, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that you can’t go a single potions lesson without making something explode in his classroom,” Lily says, all sarcasm and crossed arms.
“Hey! It’s all Sirius’ doing I swear, it’s not my fault he’s the worst partner–”
They both stop, and Regulus decidedly doesn’t flinch, schooling his face into careful curiosity. James looks caught, his expression veering on hunted, and– Regulus doesn’t look at Lily, though he can feel her eyes steady on his face.
The moment stretches, long and tense, a wobbling reverberation. Regulus hates when this happens, the tip-toeing. After a whole summer, he still isn’t used to it, the hole in the air where his brother should be.
“The worst partner to have in class.” James continues slowly, tries to cover himself with a deep gulp of his drink.
Regulus is gracious, well-mannered and civilised.
“Can’t be any worse than he is as a brother!” He means it to be funny, but it comes out too sharp, tearing at the tender new bubble of friendship that had been growing between the three of them.
Lily breathes in, a small shocked noise.
“Reg…” James trails off, looks similarly dumb-founded. The mean thing inside Regulus crows, throwing up its hands finally, finally this is when the other shoe drops, when James Potter proves once and for all which of the Black brothers he really prefers!
And then, just as quickly as it came, the balloon pops and Regulus sighs, shoulders dropping. “Just a joke,” he says, trying to conjure up a smile, a sarcastic roll of his eyes. “I’m sure he’s said worse about me.”
Lily’s mouth is pinched and small when he glances at her, and he’s expecting her to be glaring but instead she’s looking at James, staring so intensely he wonders if she’s trying to practise Legilimency.
James laughs, a short sharp noise into the silence.
“Right! Well. I’m in dire need of a bathroom so– Reg?”
“I’ll stay here, thanks.” He ignores the very obvious signals from James to come join him in the toilet. “I want to get to know Lily a bit more.”
That makes her smile, small and surprised.
James hesitates for a moment, shifting his weight between his two feet.
“Go on, James,” Lily finally sighs. “You’re absolutely dying to piss, and we can all see it. Get out of here, we’re not going to kill each other.”
“Alright! Alright. I’m going.”
They watched as he slid his way through the crowd, looking back at them once – suspiciously – before jogging into the house.
“So!” And for all her talk, Regulus could see that Lily is still nervous, the line of her shoulders tense under her dress. “What should we talk about, what’s cool? How much you love skipping and hate homework?”
“I–” Regulus hesitates. “I don’t hate homework. To be honest it’s just Charms that I’m having trouble with at the moment.”
In an instant, Lily’s eyes light up, and she’s clasping his hands in between her own. Her palms are a little sweaty– Regulus doesn’t mind. It makes her more human, in his mind. Less of a siren, waiting in the wings to steal his– to steal James away.
“Oh thank god, someone else who is actually aware we’re attending a school! What is it, that essay on mending charms?”
Regulus feels a bit shell-shocked by the full impact of her attention. He nods, once.
“I hated that one too,” Lily confides, conspiratorial. “But it turns out, there’s a fantastic section on it further on in the textbook, Flitwick just never bothers to tell you! It’s– oh bugger, I usually have a quill on me– but it’s page 385.”
By the time James returns– drinks in hand– Regulus and Lily were in fits of laughter, and she’s still holding his hand.
“And then–!” She chokes out, wiping a tear from her eye. “And then Marlene says, oh no you don’t, that’s my dead mouse!”
“She does not!”
“She does! She does! Oh god– and his face –” they erupt again, peals of laughter.
James looks between them with a hesitant smile, eyes wide behind his glasses.
“So I take it bonding time went well?”
“Oh extremely. Cheers for the introduction, by the way,” Lily says, smiling. “Regulus and I are going to be great friends. I can feel it.”
Somewhere between the chatting and the dancing and the turns about the room, James sweeps Lily off her feet, then Lily and Regulus take their turn on the dance floor. She steps on his feet twice and apologises profusely and he laughs it off, leans in conspiratorially to tell her about every time Sirius – and he almost says it without a hitch in his voice – stepped all over his feet when they practised together.
“ Really ,” she says, very interested now. “He– well he was so good at the end of year ball! I guess everyone has to start somewhere.”
“Exactly,” says Regulus, as he spins her under his arm; they’re around a similar height so he has to lean up a bit to do it comfortably. “Everyone starts somewhere, so don’t feel like you’re playing catch up. You’ll be better than the rest of those drunk idiots–” he rolls his eyes, waves his hand somewhere to his left where he’d definitely seen Goyle falling over his own feet, a glass of gillywater sloshing over onto his shoes. “In no time. Trust me. You’re doing perfectly well!”
Lily smiles up at him. Her cheeks are flushed now from her two rounds of dancing. Regulus feels his face warm; he isn’t immune to her effortless charm, so much like James’. Looking down at her– there are whispers, he can hear. Whispers of things he himself had thought, when he’d first seen her here. This wasn’t a place one often saw Muggleborns. It wasn’t a place where one saw Half-Bloods, even, if he was going to be completely honest. There are little things that make Lily stand out, as obviously, horrendously out of place.
Regulus isn’t an idiot. He knows the murmurs in political spheres, in social settings like this, the things people say behind closed doors when they think they’re in polite company– when they are in polite company. Lily Evans won’t escape tonight without a touch of unsavoury gossip, not with the way magic settles like a freshly bought coat around her, tag still hanging from the neck.
He swallows, and smiles, keeps smiling. She’s trying, something inside him whispers, and he doesn’t know if he likes it, they can’t say she isn’t trying. That makes it better, doesn’t it? Even if she doesn’t ever fit but– she wants to?
When he turns, he sees James, looking oddly sullen and lifting his glass to pour the last few dregs into his mouth. Regulus frowns, slightly. Lily looks up at him as he slows, shuffling absentmindedly to the music and pulling them out of the dance floor proper.
“Regulus?” She says, a question in her voice.
“Oh–” he startles, breaks his gaze away from trying to catch James’ eye– he’s still not looking – and blinks down at her. “Sorry, Evans. I just–”
Effy bustles over in that moment, sliding between them gracefully to take Lily’s hands in hers.
“Lily! Oh I’ve been trying to catch you, but you and Regulus over here, well you just looked beautiful dancing together–” she’s chattering away, red cheeks and Regulus catches Lily’s eye over her shoulder, mouths Firewhiskey! just to see her laugh.
“Regulus dear, you wouldn’t mind, would you?”
He blinks as Effy turns to him, pats a gloved hand on his cheek.
“Oh no, of course,” he says smoothly, tilts his head and smiles.
“Right, then come with me Lily darling, I have some friends that I would love for you to meet–”
Regulus blinks after them as Lily is pulled away, her arm tucked securely into the crook of Effy’s arm. She looks back at him, mouths what do I do? and he shrugs, gives her a thumbs up. She rolls her eyes and then Effy is turning to her and she’s plastering on a smile, laughing at whatever joke has just been said.
Regulus turns, and blinks at the blank spot where James had just been standing. He narrows his eyes. He has a Potter to find.
James is swaying, and Regulus looks doubtfully at the glass in his hand, liquid sloshing from side to side. They’ve reached the Celestina Warbeck portion of the night, which consists of Regulus seeing his Aunts entirely too drunk, and Cousin Bellatrix herself attempting to warble along. Lily is stood at the edge of the crowd in rapt conversation with Effy, and another unknown witch. He takes a drag of his cigarette, feels the acrid tang of it at the back of his throat, exhales in a puff of cloud against the dark night sky. James does the same beside him, and coughs, flapping a hand in front of his face as he squints down and away. Regulus snorts, and James looks sideways at him, betrayed, a kicked puppy.
A minute passes like this, both of them watching the idle crowd on the dance floor, Frank and Alice Longbottom laughing into each other’s shoulders, heads bent together.
“You know,” James starts, brings his hand up to his mouth, belches, continues. “It’s a bit weird isn’t it?”
“What’s weird?” Regulus can hear the warm amusement colouring his voice. He takes another long drag of his cigarette. James tilts backwards to lean against the tree and he follows, the scratch of bark against his shirt.
“You and Lily,” James says it as if it’s something obvious, like he’s surprised he’s having to explain it, “you know, Mu– Muggleborn, Pureblood.” He shifts his hands, up and down, as though weighing something invisible. It isn’t clear which side comes out wanting. “I never thought you would– I dunno, want to talk to her.”
Regulus blinks. He can’t tell whether to smile or frown and his face gets stuck somewhere in between, a strange grimace. “I’m not sure if I’m following.”
“Well she’s not,” James gestures outwardly with his glass, a broad gesture to the party itself, the shine of lights spilling out onto the lawn. “She’s not really one of your lot, is she?”
“Our lot,” Regulus says slowly. He spots Fleamont in the crowd, looking up from his conversation with Rudolphus Lestrange, a grin on his face as he waves in their direction. Regulus smiles, raises his hand. “And what you mean by our lot is–?”
“Come on Reg,” James sighs, looks at him, “have you listened to what’s been going on lately? The awful fuss that– that your lot has been kicking up.”
The comfortable warmth that has floated in Regulus’ stomach all evening begins to fade rapidly.
“I’m not sure if you’ve been listening. You think we’d all be here if we were on opposite sides?” He says, and his voice is deadly cold, a sardonic drawl. “And if I recall correctly, you are the one that invited her, knowing the people that were going to be here. ‘Your lot’–” and he laughs here, scornful, “look around, James. We’re all fucking linked. And if I have just done my part in treating your guest with dignity then–”
“Well,” James says, and there’s a sudden belligerence in his voice, as if he’s sobering up and not enjoying the turn of the conversation, “if you didn’t want to be nice to her–”
“It’s not–” Regulus stands up from the tree properly, too exasperated to be slouching. “James, I wanted to be–!”
“Because she’s my guest, or my friend, I get it,” James’ words barrel over his, and he’s standing too.
“Because she’s Lily Evans ,” Regulus corrects. He’s veered all the way into frowning now. “Because she’s a Prefect? Because she’s making conversation with me? Because she's tops at Charms–? Why is it so hard for you to–”
“I just–” James’ tone is rising rapidly and Regulus spares a resigned thought for the eavesdroppers that have surely caught on to their conversation. “What are you being so friendly with her for?”
Regulus laughs, a short bark of a noise, harsh on his ears. He sounds like Sirius, and feels very far away. “Are you joking?”
James puffs his chest, pushes his glasses up his nose, doubles down. Regulus wishes– wishes hard – that James would back down, just once. “No. What are you being so friendly with her for?”
Regulus sneers, steps closer so he can do it right in his face. “If it bothers you so much that I’m giving your Mudblood friend the time of day–”
“ Don’t call her that! ” James roars, and Regulus’ eyes go wide, back flinching straight, a long line of tension all the way down his body. His cigarette has burnt down to his fingertips.
James works his jaw. Regulus puts his hands into his pockets – trembling – clenches them to get the feeling back.
“Were you flirting with her?” He sounds exhausted, drained. Regulus barely has the energy left to scoff.
“Listen to yourself.” He shakes his head, exasperation giving way to a stunned daze. He turns and leaves James, still swaying, by the tree.
A sharp grip on Regulus’ arm, nails digging through his robes. He jumps and half turns, doesn’t know who he’s expecting to see but it certainly isn’t Lily Evans, staring at him with a crazed grin and wild eyes.
“I have been–” she says, whisper-shouting as one does in polite company. “–Looking for you, or James, or anyone normal at this party, for ages –” this is special to Regulus, that Lily Evans considers him among the quote unquote, normal. “And I don’t know what the two of you are fighting about now, but let me tell you it doesn’t hold a candle to the number of people that have started a conversation asking about my Muggleborn status tonight.”
He blinks, and guilt washes up and over him. He can now see the tremor at the corner of Lily’s mouth, holding back exhaustion, or tears, or both; the unsteady movement of her ankles, red marks along the straps of her heels; the twin high red spots on her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and means it. “That wasn’t– I’m sorry.” He swallows, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Nobody’s been too horrid, have they?” His voice pitches up at the end, hopeful, naive; childish.
Lily laughs, a humourless sound.
“Honestly? It’s just about what I expected when I got James’ invitation to come. You know he called it a ‘bit of a get-together.’” She gestures, hands waving in the air sarcastically. Regulus snorts, and she points at him, vindicated. “Yes! Exactly! As if he didn’t know that this is some sort of– you know. I had to get the real story on it from Marlene, as if she doesn’t have enough to deal with this summer.”
She looks down at herself and picks at her outfit, a sudden self-consciousness, “I had to ask her about this, as well. As if I know what your bloody dress code is going to be– and then when I got the invitation, it said Summer Semi-Formal– Regulus, don’t laugh, but I have no idea what that means– none! And I knew if I asked James he wasn’t going to be any help at all. Such a boy. ”
She loops her arm through Regulus’, casual. He laughs, more than once – more than a couple times – at her snide comments as they make a turn about the room. He isn’t sure where James is and miraculously, despite all his efforts to sulk, he ends up at the end of the night having hardly thought about him at all.
Evans,
It was really nice to see you at the Potter’s soiree. I’m writing to ask if you meant it, about sending me the Binns notes? It would be really great to get a head-start on the readings for this year. Everyone says sixth year is just as intense as OWLs, even if there aren’t any life-ruiningly consequential exams at the end. I can’t wait! (That was sarcasm. James is always saying I am often told that I do it wrong, and it comes out too sincere.)
By the way, how did you do in your OWLs? And do you know how James did? He won’t tell me how many he got, and I want to know if I beat him.
Thank you in advance for the notes,
R.A.B
Notes:
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Chapter Text
The morning after the Potter Ball, James is waiting for him in the clearing. Regulus stops and waits a moment before he enters, watching the stiff tension of James’ back, the fists clenched at his sides. He sighs. It’s early– too early. He wonders if James slept much, if he’s slept at all. His shoes leave soft indentations in the grass.
“Hullo,” he says, and it’s so cautious. It’s unnatural– feeling this way around James. He feels flighty, like one sharp movement would be enough to send him far away. One of those little birds, approaching a crocodile– is this the day you’ll eat me, or can I pick the scraps out of your teeth again? He hates it. James turns around, slowly. His eyes land on a fixed spot somewhere behind Regulus’ right shoulder.
“Hi,” James replies, his voice cold and harsh, and– wobbly. Oh– Regulus thinks. He’s scared.
They stand for a few moments, the silence stretching long and tense between them. Regulus won’t speak first. He didn’t do anything wrong. Well– he might’ve, but James was the one who started it. Oh shut it, says Sirius, fond inside his head, we both know you don’t start things but you sure do give them a strong finish, don’t you Reggie?
“Sleep well?” James asks at last. It’s painfully neutral; obvious he doesn’t care what the answer is. Regulus fights the urge to roll his eyes, swallowing down his annoyance and attempting, for once, to take the high road.
“It was alright,” he shrugs. “Yourself?”
James’ mouth is tight and pinched. He still isn’t looking at him, eyes fixed on the rustling leaves, a bird above, darting everywhere but Regulus himself. Don’t get annoyed, Regulus thinks, and maybe if he says it enough he’ll believe it, please don’t get annoyed!
“Fine.” A pause. The silence moves restlessly; James has more to say. His mouth moves slightly as if he’s trying to physically hold the words in. Finally, he breaks. “Well– fine as it could be, I suppose, what with your parents being absolute cunts.”
Regulus blinks, pulling his chin back in shock. A strong start from James.
“What?” For once, he isn’t feigning ignorance. His surprise is real.
“You heard me.” James’ cheek jumps as he clenches his teeth together. There’s a bit of sleep still caught in the corner of his eye, yellow and crusted over. “Your parents were being cunts, to our guests.”
That word, again, coming out of James’ mouth– it strikes into the soft part of Regulus’ stomach. Their parents are something they always disagree on, a discussion that usually leaves James bright red and furious, and Regulus white with anger. Its surprising that it’s taken this long for them to break their fragile truce.
“I–” Regulus works his jaw, breathing in sharply. “We– James, for goodness sake. That has nothing to do with me and you know it.”
“Oh,” James scoffs, rolls his eyes skyward and crosses his arms. “Sure. Nothing to do with you . Is it convenient for you, picking and choosing when you side with them and when you don’t?”
“What are you talking about?” Regulus frowns and steps closer. James takes a half step back, a sharp stab of pain in his chest.
“ You said that we were all linked up, that there wasn’t a ‘your lot’ or ‘my lot’. Well look at how that turned out.” James’ eyes are cold and pinched. Regulus realises with a start that they’re a bit pink and puffy at the edges; has he been crying?
“I–” He stops and starts again, gentling his voice and spreading out his hands, palms up, soothing. “James. I’m– sorry if I offended you but– I still don’t think I was wrong for saying that. We– don’t you see it? There’s no– you have as much Dark in you as we do.”
He means it to be comforting; he means it to be reassuring; he means it to say if we’re only as entrenched in the Darkness as each other then we’re together and there’s hope–! He means it like we’re from the same stock, you and I. We’re the same Dark, the same Light. The same–!
This isn’t how James takes it.
He steps back, properly, and sneers, and now Regulus the one penitent and cracked open, vulnerable insides spilling out onto the grass and James is armoured, stern and self righteous.
“My parents would never ,” he says, so unshakeable in his own certainty. “Never– treat anyone the way that your parents, and your lot , treated Lily last night.”
Here we are , Regulus thinks, resigned, here is what this is all about .
“Listen, I’m–” he swallows his pride, hard, and it settles in his throat, a hard mass. He has to try to get the words to squeeze out around it. “I’m sorry, for whatever they did, or whatever they said, alright? That’s– you can be angry about that, that’s fine. I just– did you even talk to her? Last night?”
“Of course I talked to her!” James’ cheeks are steadily turning red; he’s a bull in the arena, pawing at the ground, and Regulus is dressed all in red. “You think I didn’t– she’s my friend!”
“I know, I know,” Regulus persists, and his voice is wheedling, conciliatory, he is a dog laying belly up. “I just– I was wondering if she– I mean— when did this happen? I didn’t see you, after– well. I was with her towards the end, and– James, what did she say?”
“She didn’t have to say anything.” James says, rolls his eyes again. Regulus’ annoyance is a fly buzzing round and round his head; it’s getting more and more difficult to ignore. “I have eyes, you know. One moment I see her talking to your parents, the next she looks upset! I can put two and two together.”
“So you don’t know what they actually said to her,” says Regulus, doggedly. He’s following something, a scent, where to he doesn’t yet know.
“I don’t have to!” James says, and his voice is jumping up, louder and louder. Regulus is not, is not, going to flinch. “What, do you want me to make an educated guess? It was probably something about–!”
“I’m just trying–” Regulus raises his voice, cuts through James’ frankly incoherent shouting, “I’m trying to say that it probably wasn’t just my parents that upset her yesterday, and I’m sorry if they said anything I really am but if you’re seriously going to pretend it was just them–!”
“Who else!” James roars, throws his arms out. “I know what your parents think about Muggles and Muggleborns, the horrible things they say, the horrid politics –” he says this like a dirty word, like politics itself is something disgusting– “that you all discuss. Merlin , it makes me sick.”
“You think–” Regulus tries not to, really he does, but he laughs. It bubbles up inside him, something mean and poisonous, drowning any hope for reconciliation. “You think my parents are the only ones that talk about blood politics? Are you listening to yourself James? Sure– I’m not a fool, I know the kinds of opinions they have, the people they are, the–” his father and his friends in a sun-warmed study, the smell of old cigars and whiskey, lowered voices, the Dark Lord approaches. “The company they keep. But at least we’re honest about it. At least we don’t pretend . You think your parents don’t have opinions on Muggleborns? Really, James? Do you think it’s a coincidence that you’re as Pure as they come? Just a little bit less inbred than me, really, and you think that’s just by chance? You think people don’t work to have that kind of bloodline, that kind of legacy?”
His questions are unrelenting, and the conclusion they are all pointing towards is clear as day, the sun rising white-hot on the horizon. James’ face has gone red, then white, mouth a thin tight line drawn across his face.
“The only difference between you and me,” Regulus says, and his voice is barely above a whisper now, and he’s taken enough steps forward that he and James are face to face, chest to chest, breathing hard. “The only difference, is how much we lie to ourselves. And I don’t know about you, James, but at least I don’t make a habit of pretending to be something I’m not.”
James’ face is stricken, white and bloodless. The frames of his glasses catch the sun, flashing.
Regulus turns on his heel, and walks out of the clearing, and it is only when he is halfway home, certain that there is no chance of James hearing him, that he begins to cry.
Dear Regulus,
How good to hear from you! I’ve sent you all my notes from Binns last year, but I had to use a post office owl, and I’m a bit worried as to whether she’s up for the challenge. I hope they’re legible for you– let me know if you want any help with deciphering them.
I got eight O’s and two E’s in my OWLs, but I took the Muggle Studies one without going to the classes for an easy O, so. How did you go? With regards to James’ results, I don’t know the specifics, but if he isn’t telling you, that means you beat him. I hope you rub it in his face.
How are you going with the Charms homework? Or Potions? Are you going to James’ birthday party? It’s a surprise, I hear, so best not to show him this. Maybe we can chat then, and compare how we’re going? That would be nice.
See you soon, if not this summer then maybe I can catch you on the train.
Lily x
Regulus sits on the stairwell by his father’s study, head rolled sideways on his knees. The light crawls, amber glow, across the red patterned rug stretched out along the hallway, embroidered lions chasing each other up and down the sides. It’s the late afternoon, the kind of in-between time where there just aren’t enough ways to fill the seconds that stretch like minutes that stretch like hours. The grandfather clock’s hands haven’t moved every time he looks over to check, and he’s half convinced that it’s infested by some kind of pixie.
The voices from inside the study rise and fall as the door creaks open and shut, heavy footsteps walking back and forth, low rumbling laughter; these are the voices and humours of men. Regulus can just peer inside, if he leans back, cranes his neck. The air inside is a haze of smoke, a cracked open window letting in a light breeze that flutters its hands around the papers on the table. Dark figures pass back and forth obscuring Regulus’ vision, fingers loose around heavy-weighted glasses of amber liquid, sweating cubes of ice.
He doesn’t mind not being involved; in fact, he expects it. What could he have to offer the adults’ leisurely conversations? How could he hope to draw out the murmurs of laughter, muffled around mouthfuls of cigar smoke? He’s just a boy. He catches a snatch of a word– something about a thief, and honour; and unbidden, Lily’s letter floats to the top of his mind.
There’s something like guilt stabbing in his gut, when he thinks about it. The hefty parcel of notes, Lily’s careful handwriting straight across, tails of letters looping around each other, reams and reams of parchment. That she’d put it all together, writing labels for each subject, wrap it up tight and write him a little note besides– and send it. All the while, he sits in his house, moping the days away and listening to his father’s friends get tipsier and angrier as the evening wears into night, polite murmurs devolving into shouting laughter. She tries– she tries so hard. And she’ll never be a part of this.
He leans his head back, lets it thunk against the wall.
Darling Prongs,
I STILL can’t believe you left that ruddy mirror at home. So inconvenient. How dare you do this to me? Don’t you know I need you accessible to me always– in my pocket ready and waiting??
Anyway, I’m actually writing to ask if I can talk to you about something happened with Remus something weird whether its weird to something that happened last night.
Do you have spare time for us to Floo?
Please don’t mention this to Moony
Missing you (don’t make it weird. Sap.)
Pads
As soon as James lights the fire, it flares green. He grins. Sirius must have been waiting at the other side; he can picture him so clearly, impatient pout and tapping his fingers against his legs. Sirius has always struggled with self-restraint.
“Floo request from–” the warm tones of the Floo Lady intone, before Sirius’ frantic– oddly stilted– voice cuts in. “Hello Potters, it’s Sirius, can I please speak to James?” Floo Lady again– “would you like to accept–”
“Yes! Yes,” James says, interrupting her. The Potter’s private Floo is a hassle at the best of times, but today– all he wants is to see Sirius, hear his strange barking laughter; he wants to take his mind off of everything in Kent.
Sirius’ head appears in the flames. He's grinning widely and his teeth are sharp and glinting.
“Merlin, we are eager,” he drawls. “Was hoping to get a few moments alone with Effy–”
“Sirius,” James plays up the affront, clasping his hand to the base of his neck. Imaginary pearls, clutched. “You must be bored in Wales. Starting in on my mum already, are we?” He smirks. “Had enough of Remus and the sheep?”
Sirius’ face falls.
James shifts, casts a cushioning charm on the stone flagons in front of the drawing room fireplace, settles in for the long haul.
“What’s this something weird, Pads?” He says it as gently as he can. Coaxing. “Let’s get it out of the way, come on.”
“I don’t–” Sirius groans, long and drawn out. What tips James off though is the glint in his eyes, that fleeting, flighty stare– darting around and looking for an escape route. He’s scared, really scared. It’s big then, James thinks. “Prongs, promise you won’t be mad. Please”
“Sirius, as long as it’s not–” they don’t like to talk about fifth year, not really. It’s all smoothed over now, but with Sirius as edgy as he is now, it seems unwise to bring it up. “Look, whatever’s happened, I promise, it’ll be fine.” He teeters forwards on his sitz bones, his curiosity– a prim little voice in his ear, don’t you mean nosiness, Potter?– gathering steam.
Sirius puts his face in his hands, peeking out of the gaps in his fingers. The fire makes his grey eyes green, bright like poison. He mumbles something, muffled by a popping log in the grate behind him.
“Say again?” James has half a mind to just drag him through the flames– though, from Wales to Kent, is hardly a pleasant Floo– and while it’s never been fatal, he likes Sirius with all his fluids inside , thanks very much.
“Moony and I–” his voice is still barely audible, a murmur, as if he fears his words being earth-shattering, world-rending. “We kissed.”
A pause. The fire cracks and spits.
James laughs, a shock of relief coursing through him. Sirius lifts his face out of his hands, his eyebrows twisting up. A tentative smile begins to dance around the corner of his mouth. He isn’t quite in on the joke, but he’d like to be. It’s a face that James has become intimately familiar with, this summer.
“Sirius, is that really all?” James says, between hoots of laughter. “Merlin, I thought something bad had happened!”
Sirius’ smile cracks, his eyebrows still wavering in the mid-zone, not quite fear, not-yet believing in his reprieve.
“What is it now?” For some reason, Sirius’ insecurity is nettling at him. It’s that expression, unsure and fretful, catching something along his skin and squeezing at it; pinches along his arms. “You can’t really think this is a problem, Pads. Me and Moony kissed in third year, it wasn’t weird then, so it won’t be weird with you guys!”
“Yeah, but– no. Yeah. You’re right.”
A beat. Something flashes across Sirius’ face, something like grief, but James can’t parse it, and as quickly as it appeared, it vanishes. Sirius inhales, and as he breathes out, he falls back into his role as good-humoured best-friend; something intangible leaves him, as his shoulders drop from hovering around his ears. James is reminded briefly of a court jester.
“How was the Ball, then? I hear some people didn’t behave themselves.”
“Wh– who’d you hear–” James is flustered, more than he should be, probably. He’s scared, of Sirius finding out about– well. Not much to find out there. Not anymore.
“Lily told us. You know how Remus’ mum has a phone?” James didn’t, actually, but he’s not about to push the issue. “Most people don’t, and she’s been lonely up in Cokeworth, so we’ve been doing weekly calls. I mean- she and Remus call and chat. I sit by them and crack witty jokes.” James bets Lily and Remus would defer on the level of wittiness of Sirius’ jokes, but he stays quiet. “Well, she said this morning that the Carrow twins were cornering her, trying to work out whose magic she’d stolen. She was laughing, but it wasn’t so– I just wonder- she’s never been a convincing liar, has she, and–”
“The twins?” James’ face starts twisting, his eyebrows climbing up his forehead and knitting together in something that looks like confusion but feels like guilt. “I didn’t even see them at the party.”
“Yeah, she said they came late and left early. Your dad wasn’t too keen on them, spouting shit about blood traitors and whatever else. And she said you disappeared on her out of the blue, and she had to spend the rest of the night with–” he swallows, like it’s an effort to get the name out. And it is, James can see, “with Reggie. So. It's cool to hear that he’s doing okay.”
Now’s the time, James thinks. Now’s the perfect time. Just say it, you can– he won’t even be angry– just a piece of the truth, not the whole one, just–
“Are you going to snog Moony again, d’you reckon?”
Sirius looks at once aghast and bashful, his eyes swivelling around James’ face. He feels a cloying, sticky shame at the relief that sinks through him as Sirius' attention is successfully diverted.
“I don’t know. It was probably just a one off thing, don’t you think? And– I mean, I’m not–”
“Well, Pads, you can just do it as mates. I mean, it’s all good practice, isn’t it?” James laughs, and it comes out forced. “For when something real comes along.”
Sirius laughs too, relieved and easy and with a rather obvious line of tension through him that James won’t acknowledge, because to see it means he’ll have to say something, and he can’t– he can’t. So he doesn’t. And they say their goodbyes, and promise to write more.
As the Floo ends, the green embers vanishing into the summer air, James feels that familiar guilt, a dreadful pooling at the base of his stomach. He’s always been a man of action, and he won’t let this be the thing to stop him.
Regulus,
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to
Please can we go back It’s been four days and it’s so utterly weird without you not having you around. I miss you. Can we forget about it?
I’m going to go to the Lake tonight. If you want to come the Floo will be open.
Please come,
James.
Regulus tumbles out of the fireplace, all elbows and knees, a newborn foal. James– who has the worst timing in the entire world, probably– was just crouching down into the fireplace, having spied a loose piece of ash missed by Mopsy. In the subsequent mess, they end up in a tangle on the floor, Regulus’ knee pressed against James’ stomach, arms catching and grasping and scrambling to get free of one another.
Or–
That isn’t quite right. Regulus, certainly, is scrambling to get free, his elbows hitting on some soft part of James’ torso, muttered swearing and frantic pushing. James, though, feels his arms - almost of their own volition - reaching up, encircling Regulus’ squirming body, holding him tight and flush against him. The rug scratches at his back, fibres digging in through the thin fabric of his shirt.
Regulus hits him on the chest, once, weakly. His elbow is caught in the crease of James’ arm, so it’s more of a flutter of movement, a bird in the hand. They’re very close together. Pinned, even. Grey eyes meet brown. Regulus has a face like thunder, coloured in with worry across the edges. His mouth is open, ever so slightly, breath gathering to speak. James beats him to the punch.
“I missed you,” he says, and it comes out like a gasp, like a confession. “I’m sorry.”
“I–” Regulus begins, confusion beginning to cloud into his face, but James isn’t finished.
“No, what I did, Reg, that was shit. I’m sorry. Let’s–” and he allows, finally, his gaze to drop down to Regulus’ lips, pink and glistening in the firelight; he notes distantly that they're chapped and peeling. He must've been biting them- a nervous habit that his mother has been trying to break him out of. “Can we forget about it? I’m sorry, I–” and he can’t talk anymore, because Regulus is kissing him.
It’s frightening, the desperation of it, all teeth, all tongue. Regulus makes a frantic, needy sound, pulling his arms free of James’ and tangling his fingers into his shirt, his hair, grasping and pulling.
He tastes like apples, sweet and crisp, and below that, something of earth and iron and salt– something all Regulus.
“We should–” James grounds out around Regulus’ lips, and Regulus looks up with a frown.
“James,” he says, punctuating his words with kisses, fast and harsh. “If the next few words out of your mouth are anything other than ‘move to the bedroom,’ I’ll- I'll hex you.”
“Okay,” James gasps, and there’s a beat, and a blur, and they’re in the bedroom. Regulus looks around, eyes wide, crinkling at the edges.
“Sixteen years old and you’re using accidental magic to get me into bed?” He crows. James growls, flips them around, shoves him into the pillows. Regulus’ stomach muscles jump under his fingers.
Regulus’ hands are on his sides, nails clawing sharp lines into the soft skin of his waist. He’s lifting James’ shirt over his head, then sitting up to remove his own. Somewhere, in the back of James’ head, is a voice, exclaiming talk! You have to talk about these things! But Regulus is at his neck, short-sharp bites, a flicking tongue, teeth sinking into the soft flesh above James’ collarbone, and the voice is very far away now.
Regulus wakes up, and it’s the middle of the night. The moon streams in through the gaps in the curtains, silver light painting stripes across the bed. James is asleep next to him, mouth slightly open, breath whistling through his teeth. He reaches a hand out, smoothing the hair across James’ forehead. A grown-up motion, a soothing one. James sighs into the touch, doesn’t stir.
He swings his legs over the bed, fumbling on the bedside table for his wand, the carton of cigarettes. He pads over to the window, already open, the sticky summer air doing little to alleviate the blanket of warmth in the bedroom. The stars are out. Regulus lights a cigarette, leans out the window into the night. The blue smoke curls up, through his lungs, coating his throat.
It’s automatic, really, the way his eyes scan the sky. First, to his anchor. The Dog Star, the brightest in the sky. The brightest of them all, really. The first star Regulus ever learned to spot himself. Here, in the darkness of the bedroom, the cocoon of James’ smell around him, it almost doesn’t hurt to remember. Sirius’ tiny hands, knuckles still dimpling with baby fat– he couldn’t have been more than five, which would put Regulus at a soft four– pointing up at the night sky. See Reggie, the brightest, that’s me– and you’re on the left, after the little Dog. I’m the brightest, he’d say, a little smirk in his voice, but you, you’re the bravest. The heart of the Lion! And his little fingers would scrabble at Regulus’ sides, drawing muffled shrieks of laughter. My little brother, the Lion-Heart, and Regulus’ chest would swell with pride.
He takes another drag, and as he does so, warm arms circle around his waist. James’ chin hooks into his shoulder. Regulus lifts up the cigarette to James lips, and he takes a hit, humming contentedly.
“Come back to bed, Reg,” he murmurs against Regulus’ ear, smoke tickling around his words. “I missed you.”
The world is so quiet, just the soft warmth of James and the twinkling stars, the true family tapestry. Regulus stubs the cigarette out, letting his head loll back onto James’ shoulders. For just tonight, he’ll allow himself a spark of hope.
Lord Abraxas Malfoy and Lord Orion Black are Pleased to Invite
Lord Fleamont and Lady Euphemia Potter, and Heir James Potter
To the Union of
Lucius Abraxas Malfoy, Heir to the House of Malfoy
and
Narcissa Regina Black, Niece of Lord Orion Black
On Friday, 5th August 1977 at 11am
Ceremony will be held at Malfoy Manor, with Reception Graciously Hosted by Lord Malfoy
White Tie, Official Formal Robes, or Morning Dress
The day of the wedding dawns, bright and beautiful.
Nobody is prepared, and yet, nothing goes terribly wrong; Narcissa and Lucius with eyes only for each other, graceful hands and graceful faces, her bone-white gown dragging across the new growths of summer.
And there really, really is nothing that goes wrong, no wrong word, no red-wine-on-a-white-dress incidents, and yet. The hair of the back of Regulus’ neck shivers; the sun overhead seems fragile almost, as if its light is waning into the moon; the clouds trembling, white smears fleeing the incoming darkness of the night; the joviality of the celebrations are a thin membrane stretched across a bulging tumour waiting to be excised.
It is a beautiful night. It feels like the last beautiful night that some of them will ever know.
James is lounging on his seat by the time Regulus picks his way over to him, after he’s managed to slither past and grasp at Narcissa’s warm trembling hand, her silent grateful gaze as he squeezed it once, twice.
“Marriage,” is how James begins, a dry, sarcastic twist in his voice.
He takes a long sip from his glass and Regulus wonders how many he’s already had. He hums, and reaches in his pocket for a cigarette, casting a furtive glance around the crowd and spotting his parents across the way. He turns inward, against the wind and snaps his fingers once, twice, a spark flying up and catching; it shrinks into a winking white star before sputtering and growing into a flame, the crackling paper taking light. Regulus has seen him do this a few times, and always admires it. A clever little wandless spell, good in an emergency.
Regulus inhales and looks askance at James, the melancholy tilt of his shoulders.
“Marriage?” He prompts. He wants to hear where this is going.
“Marriage,” James repeats, glumly, and he stares at the walkway, crushed petals, as if it’s leading to a gravesite instead of the altar. “The great trap, isn’t it? Gets all of us, one by one, and if it doesn’t that just– it means there’s something wrong with you.”
“My great-uncle Arcturus never married,” Regulus says mildly, taps the ash onto the ground. “Perpetual bachelor. There was nothing wrong with him.”
“ You wouldn’t’ve thought there was something wrong with him. Other people probably did. And besides, he wasn’t the heir, was he?”
“No,” Regulus agrees. He still doesn’t know what James wants out of this. “That was his brother.”
A pause. They watch as the crowd mills around the clearing, a listless organism circling the happy couple. In the centre of it all, Lucius watches Narcissa with– hunger isn’t the right word. An awe, a wonder, as if to say, I get her? She’s mine? They are already each others’ half of a pair, picturesque, dark hair twining together with light.
“I know I’ll have to get married.” James sounds like he’s seeing into some unknown future, dragging footsteps on a path he doesn’t want to walk, “find a nice young woman–” this is particularly sarcastic, “--to have children with. Teach them about what it is to be a Potter. Represent our family. Tell them how they can do whatever they want in the world and there’s just this one tiny little thing. And so on and so on, until I die.”
And— for the first time, it’s like Regulus can see him in a new light. James Potter, the heir to his house, the Potter Family, a long chain stretching back into the Sacred Twenty-Eight, the proud line of his nose, well-formed features. There’s a gold signet ring, suddenly a heavy weighted presence on his pinky finger, proud twin antlers.
“I know what it all means,” he says, and the exhaustion in his voice is old, is something that has been passed from heir-to-heir in a never-ending daisy chain of hopes and possibilities cut at the head, the bulbs of tulips dying on the ground. “I’m the only direct descendant. I have a duty. My parents would never say anything but— I know it would disappoint them, if I didn’t. I’d disappoint myself, not giving them a little grandkid to fawn over! But—“ a sigh, a smile twisting at his mouth, humour trying and failing to break its way in, “I don’t have to like it, I suppose, to do it. I just don’t want it to be anytime soon.”
Regulus searches, scrambles for something to say– the right thing to say.
“You have time,” is what he settles on, weakly. A voice in his head whispers, cold fingers on his spine. Does he?
Moony,
How are things with you? I’m getting through your Anna book. I like it, quite a lot. Goodness, but that Count isn’t half dashing. I’m finding myself getting hot under the collar while I’m reading it! It’s tricky getting all the Russian nicknames under my belt– it took me an embarrassing amount of chapters to realise that Vronsky and Aloysha were the same person. I’ve taken to having a sheet of parchment next to my book, writing down new characters or new nicknames and how they relate to the plot. Please don’t tell Sirius this. He’ll never let me live it down. I can’t believe how much of a swot I’m being. Regulus must be rubbing off
We just had the Malfoy wedding, I think I told you boys about Cissy’s engagement. It was as to be expected. She looked ravishing, all white silk and tiny waist. Malfoy looked happy. It was nice, seeing them so– I suppose human, is the word I’m looking for? Unbuttoned? I don’t know. Sometimes when I’m reading that Tolstoy fellow I can’t help but wonder if he’d been to a few Society balls in Kent.
How is Sirius? I had rather a strange call with him letter from him, and so I thought I’d check in with you. Not long now til I’ll get to see you, anyway. And Pete’s back on the fourteenth! Save any gossip up for us all to be together, why don’t you?
Love to your mum, and good luck with the moon on Friday.
JFP
P.S: Headed out to the Cliffs you keep nagging me about this week. I’ll tell you how they are, tho’ I’d rather you lot just came next summer and saw for yourselves.
It is another terribly dull, drizzling day when they decide to take a day trip out to the cliffs.
“Remus really won’t leave me alone if I don’t go,” says James, shrugging on his mackintosh and determinedly spelling his glasses to deflect the rain. Regulus is already dressed and waiting patiently, leaning against his broom. “He’s been writing about it in his letters, saying it’s just beautiful and–” here he looks sideways at Regulus and winks saucily, “-that it’s very romantic .”
“Right.” Regulus says, dry and trying very hard to sound unamused. “This is very romantic weather, and of course I tend to feel very romanced after engaging in some cross country flying.”
“Hey!” James points an indignant finger at him; he’s finally managed to fix his glasses. “I’ll have you know that flying is a tried and true romantic pastime– take it from the Gryffindor keeper himself!”
This sort of discussion continues until they leave; Regulus doesn’t contribute much but really he doesn’t have to. James is quite capable of entertaining himself in circles like this.
It ends up being a trip of just over half an hour; they probably could’ve been faster except James had to stop part of the way because his Impervius charm had worn off and he had to stand under a tree to refresh it. He made quite a picture, under the dripping branches, furiously pointing his wand at his face again and again, going slightly cross eyed from the effort, ears reddening. Regulus had sat in a branch above him and laughed.
The sky is still overcast by the time they land. They look out over the expanse, the rolling field dropping off sharply to the ocean, a grey foaming mass crashing up against the rocks. There is a strange serenity through the rain, pattering gently against the green and mud, blades of grass hanging their heavy heads with fat droplets of water, crying gentle tears into the earth. There was the smell of petrichor, damp earth and worms come wriggling to the surface.
James, effortlessly casual, links his cold fingers between Regulus’. He makes a noise– he thinks, but he isn’t sure– and then they’re running and whooping across the field, brooms discarded somewhere behind them. The white cliffs spread their gentle arms around the coast, an albatross in flight, coasting above the sea of gnashing teeth and rolling waves. Even the dullness of the weather compliments the scenery, the mist and fog rising to pool at their feet with gentle curls of white smoke, lending a distinctly mystical energy.
They do this for a while; running and jumping and laughing and chasing. James brought a quaffle with them, an inspired choice, and they throw it around for a bit, the leather of the ball slipping between their fingers more often than not and James bemoaning the loss of his gloves, Regulus ruthlessly accusing him that he must not be so good if he needs his gloves to play– this leads to a tussle in the grass, muddy knees and James above him, leaning down with a grin and kissing, kissing, kissing. The cool rain is a balm against Regulus’ flushed skin. He’s been smiling for so long his cheeks are beginning to hurt, disused muscles woken up with a start.
Finally, a quiet moment. Regulus’ hair is damp and plastered to his forehead; James is much the same except that he’s been running his fingers through it so it stands up in spikes. He keeps saying something about Muggle bands and their fashion. Regulus thinks he might be making it all up.
There’s something in his stomach that has been twisting and twisting ever since the lake house, or ever since the party, or ever since the beginning of the summer. He is a wind up doll, and he has just been let go.
“James,” he starts slowly. He’s picking at the grass, one, two, three blades pinched between his fingers, a plait beginning.
“Yeah?” James is sprawled on his back, eyes closed and head pillowed on his arms.
“Do you–” he stops, starts, stops again. “I was just thinking– well–”
Somewhere in this mess, James has sat up to look at him. His attention makes it worse. Regulus’ stomach is twisting, twisting, curling, knotting.
“When we go back to Hogwarts,” his voice is very quiet, barely a murmur over the patter of rain all around them. “I– when we go back to Hogwarts will we–”
He stops, and this time not from his own volition. James’s mouth is a warm pressure on top of his. His lips are still parted from speaking, and his tongue is a soft questioning press into his mouth. Regulus breathes out through his nose, tilts his head and seals them together, properly, warmth blossoming outwards, cold noses, cold cheeks.
They part.
“James–” he says, and he feels– a little happy, a little angry, a little confused.
James shakes his head. He’s smiling but–
“Let’s not,” he says, kindly, and it’s like a knife slotted gently between Regulus’ ribs. “Let’s just– We’re having so much fun, aren’t we? Let’s not. Just–”
He reaches out a hand and cups his palm around Regulus’ jaw, his neck, pulls him back in for a kiss. Regulus goes to him. He closes his eyes, and closes the lid on his twisting, curling feelings.
Dear Evans Lily,
Thank you ever so much for your notes. They’re already proving very helpful with my History of Magic essay, and I’m definitely planning on bringing them with me to school when we go back. Let’s hope Binns hasn’t changed his curriculum over summer (ha ha!!)
Regarding your question about my OWLs, you’ve beaten me! I got eight O’s, one E. I’ll forever be cursing the Arithmancy examiner– she was extra tough on Slytherins this year, I’m sure she was.
Listen, I wanted to say sorry, again, for how everyone behaved at the Potter Ball. I hope you don’t hold it against J We aren’t all like that. And I really enjoyed spending time with you.
I’ll see you at James’ birthday party, I’m sure.
Do you know if my broth
Cheers again for the notes.
RAB
On the morning of his birthday, James runs down the stairs in the rush. He’s already late– the sun having risen a fair distance over the horizon, its yellow face beaming down at the lush expanse of green and winding rivers. It was a beautiful day, a glorious day, a perfect day. He’d already planned the whole thing out in his mind: meeting Regulus in the clearing and hopefully fooling around a bit; going to the lake house, more fooling around; taking a boat out, and swimming followed by– predictably, even more fooling around, before coming back to his (surprise) birthday party and acting appropriately startled.
This all gets derailed as soon as he makes it downstairs. His parents had been acting suspiciously the last week, hushed conversations that stopped as soon as he got in earshot, owls flying in and his father moving quickly to intercept their messages before he could even get a glimpse at the address. James had chalked it all up to birthday party preparations but now he was getting confirmation that that wasn’t the case.
The confirmation being his friends – the Marauders! All of them! – leaping out at him from behind the couch, swarming him with chatter and laughter and great thumps on the back.
He laughs delightedly, and catches sight of his parents leant up against the doorway, twin smiles on their faces looking at their reunion, his fathers hand clasped firmly in his mother’s; a shared fondness.
Peter is jumping up and down and yelling something about the cost of international Floo and a time limit and gosh it took so long to convince Mum, I think she’s really convinced you’re kidnapping me to London to traffic me , before Sirius is interrupting him to sweep James up into a proper bear hug, arms tight around his middle.
“Came all the way to Kent for you, Prongsy,” he says, right into his ear, private and warm. “So you’d better appreciate it! Happy birthday, old chap.”
James can do nothing but laugh and smile and hug all of his dearest friends tightly, so tightly. He hadn’t been admitting to himself how much he’d missed them this summer, the ease of reaching for Remus, Peter, finding a gap where he’d want to ruffle their hair, grab onto a shoulder. The ache of missing Sirius was too new and tender of a wound for him to think about at all.
Then it’s a rush of getting swept up in the mess of getting ready, a pouch of galleons pressed into his hands – get yourself something nice and not a broom again this year, I really do mean it, James – Remus and Sirius and Peter chattering away to him, his parents, each other, and he’d really forgotten how loud they could all be together. Amongst the chaos, he finds a few quiet seconds to grab an elf.
“Mopsy– Mopsy–!” He says, a hushed whisper. He doesn’t want anyone – Sirius– to hear. “Can you– please can you go to the clearing and find Regulus and tell him I’ll see him later at the party?” A shout from behind him and he turns, sees Wormy-the-rat running up Remus’ leg, Sirius waving at him to come over here, come on James!
A pop, and Mopsy’s disappeared. Between that breath and the next James runs to his friends, and only really spares a passing, regretful thought for Regulus.
Regulus hardly gets to see James at all on his actual birthday. The perks, he supposes, of being the Heir to a Great House. Not as Great as the Blacks, of course, but that couldn’t be helped. The Potters had a decent standing themselves.
Sirius would’ve gotten something like this, had he not— well. His sixteenth birthday was certainly as celebratory and magnificent as this, right before things really went wrong. Their parents had still been trying, you see, their wayward son who had stepped off the straight and narrow path– but the path was still there, and really all he needed was a firm hand, and—
They’d had their most terrible row then, after all the guests had left. Sirius’ sweet sixteenth, bitter in Regulus’ memories. It was the one that had begun everything, the great tapestry unravelling. Regulus couldn’t remember much about that night, or the ones after, but he could remember Sirius’ face, disappointed and angry, and later, Sirius’ back, disappearing into the darkness of London.
Anyway. He floats at the edge of the party and watches over his glass as James entertains, shining and golden in the midst of a crowd. He takes to it naturally, and not for the last time, Regulus’ eyes are drawn to the ring, heavy and golden on his finger. His closest friends are markedly absent, having to return home after the day trip. Sirius’ absence in particular, he registers with the ache of an old, misshapen wound. It was usually impossible to see James without Sirius on his birthday, arms swung around each other's shoulders and their distinct well-formed charms mixing together, melding into one another and producing a truly remarkable combined effect.
They’d gone on a London-bound adventure, or so he’d heard from Mopsy, wringing her ears as she told him apologetically that Master James wouldn’t be making it to see Young Master Black but he sends many many apologies. He’d half expected it, waiting in their clearing with a cake and present in hand. Some part of him knew that James would probably rather spend this day with all his friends, sunshine and fun, and not his best friend’s strange, reclusive little brother.
A shout of laughter, from the middle of the room.
He’s trying not to think bitterly about Lily. He knows it isn’t her fault, and that he’s doing a disservice to her, the way she captivates James while not ever intending to. It’s a hard pill to swallow. Regulus has never been known for his ability to be forgiving.
She’s there, in the crowd, wearing a pretty patterned dress– white flowers, Queen of the Meadow climbing up the curves of her body. It suits her much better than whatever she wore to the Potter Ball. She’s standing next to James with her friends, Marlene and Mary, who still look a bit cross with him – James had filled him in on their Great Falling Out that’d happened before the summer began – but seem to gradually be warming as the evening progresses. Regulus can sympathise; James had a remarkably effective way of getting under your skin and making it seem endearing all the while. Several times, Lily floats over and tries to chat with him– about his marks, about the coming year. She cracks a few jokes about James’ appointment to Head Boy, and Regulus feels a stab of heat at the bottom of his belly at the memory of that morning, crushed immediately by the scent of Lily’s perfume, gardenias and sea-salt.
“Are you alright, Regulus?” She finally asks, after he leaves another of her questions unanswered, hanging in the air for several beats too long. He looks at her, green eyes a little glassy with three glasses of champagne, brow knit together with concern. She’s just a girl– a silly girl, a fox sniffing about the forest, deaf to the blaring horns heralding the beginning of a hunt. She doesn’t know, something cruel whispers into the creases of Regulus’ brain, she can’t see it. How sharp your teeth have become. How you’ve been trained for this moment. Will you bite? Now, or later? He shakes it off.
“Yeah,” he says, trying desperately to inject something bright into his voice. Society-speak. “Of course I am. Just don’t want summer to end.”
She smiles, and pats his arm, and floats away, a cloud of florals and Light and choking goodness. Regulus can taste blood in his mouth, releases his tongue from its place between his teeth.
There are somehow fewer and more people than at the Society events just passed; Regulus counts the exclusion of certain Pureblood families – intentional or not, he couldn’t say. He’d need more than his two hands to count the number of Blood Traitors, Muggleborns and Half-Bloods attending this evening. His parents had declined to attend, citing a previously arranged event, a small soiree at the Parkinson’s.
He manages to catch, or rather, James manages to catch him, at the end of the night. Regulus is standing half behind a tree, smoking, the gentle warmth of it filling his lungs and diffusing outwards through his body. He tilts his head back to look at the stars through the gentle pattern of the leaves, winking and cold in the distance. It’s a familiar stance, though this time he hadn’t been sure if James would care to seek him out. But then, behind him, footsteps.
“Regulus!” James is flushed and swaying, and the smell of warm amber and clove clings to his skin, a hint of tobacco on his breath. “I’ve been looking for you!”
“Happy birthday,” replies Regulus, letting a smile into his voice and taking another drag from his cigarette. “Have a good day?”
“The best,” James says, breathing out. His shoulders are loose and there’s a cheery red flush on his cheeks. “Went to London, just ran around really, got to see Sirius and Remus and Peter– honestly, I had no idea how much I’d been missing them! My dad bought me a new broom which explains why he was so hard on me not getting myself one in London, and–”
He rattles on like this for a while, and Regulus interjects with hums and nods and oh really? ’s when needed. James seems to notice somewhere near the end and peters off, looking a bit embarrassed.
“Are you alright?” It’s a genuine question, and asked with care. Regulus considers.
After he’d gone home from the clearing, cake vanished away somewhere and beribboned present dropped off at the Potters, he’d stumbled upon his father in the study. He’d been getting ready for the Parkinson’s evening, and seemed in a better mood than Regulus would have expected.
“You know, boy,” he’d said, and Regulus’ eyes were drawn to the signet ring on his finger. He’d wanted to give it to Sirius, that birthday now passed. Even after everything, he’d wanted to give him the ring, the House, the– Regulus paused. Little good came from remembering. “If Sirius continues with this– silliness, it’ll all be falling on your shoulders.”
“Yes, sir,” Regulus said, quietly. He handed him his cufflinks from the table and his father nodded approvingly.
“You’ve always been a good lad,” he said, casually, adjusting his sleeves in the mirror. Regulus looked at himself behind his father, cast in shadow, seeking the features they share, dark hair, grey eyes. It had always been easy to see Father’s looks in Sirius, the dramatic features, aristocratic bones, well-formed. Regulus was– less. In so many ways. “Good at doing what you’re told. That’s needed, sometimes. You could do with some initiative but– well. You are the second, aren’t you? Can’t be helped, really.”
The way he says it, as if Regulus is an intriguing object at an auction, that he can’t decide whether to bid on or not. It’s a hurt that Regulus pricks himself with at night.
“You’re going to do something, for the family.” Father says, after a long silence. “It’ll– well. It’ll certainly build character. Might be good for you. You won’t let me down, will you?”
Regulus shakes his head. His tongue is a slab of lead in his mouth.
“No, of course not.” His father says, casual, and smiles. He’s handsome when he smiles, and he looks most similar to Sirius then. “Well. Have fun at your– what is it, the Potter boy’s seventeenth birthday? What an occasion. I do wonder how he’ll turn out.”
He claps a heavy hand on Regulus’ shoulder as he leaves. His shoes are fixed to the rug.
“Don’t tell your mother about this,” he says, still casual. It’s a command, and not a question. Regulus nods. “Good.”
His shoes click smartly down the corridor, and the door swings shut, a dusty sigh.
Regulus shakes himself, back in the present moment with James’ hand warm on his upper arm.
“–Regulus?” He’s been saying his name for a while from the look of it, expression veering from pleased all the way into concern. “Regulus? There you are. What’s wrong?”
“I–” he knows, instantly, intimately, that he can’t tell James about this. James, who is still Sirius’ friend first, and James who would tell Sirius– he doesn’t know what, and Sirius who– Sirius who clearly doesn’t want anything at all to do with Regulus anymore and Regulus who– is happy to clean up the mess, quietly and out of the way. “I– it’s nothing. I think I’m a bit tired.”
James is chewing at the inside of his cheek; Regulus can tell he doesn’t quite believe him, but he shuts his mouth and refuses to say any more. In this game of stubbornness, James loses. He’s too drunk to have much strength of will.
“Well–” he says, and now there’s something cajoling in his voice. “I want to get out of here anyway. Come with me?”
It’s easy to say yes.
They end up in the clearing, as always, as they were always going to. The summer night air is warm and still over them, and the humming buzz of insects wafts through the leaves, the smell of lush and green in their senses; summer is on the edge of leaving them, and every last night she gives them is perfectly formed in her gentle hands.
They talk, and drink, and play cards, and between it all the night blurs into warmth and laughter. The ache in Regulus’ heart begins to subside, washing away with every persistent wave, the pull of the tide, until the beach is calm and still and undisturbed, tranquil ocean stretching out its blue arms in front of him. James is smiling at him, and they are in the clearing, and for as long as they are here, he can pretend that nothing else, nothing else, is happening. That time will freeze here, for them, in this bubble of life and cheer and tranquillity, that time will stop in its silvery smooth tracks and apologise for intruding and leave them be. He can pretend, and as he kisses James, as James kisses him, he closes his eyes, and casts it all away.
James,
It happened again. After we got back from London. I don’t want to Floo about it.
I think something weird is going on– do the Blacks have congenital heart defects??? Can you please look it up in that ruddy great library of yours at the Cottage? My chest keeps thudding weirdly. We were both really drunk. I don’t know what to do. We didn’t talk afterwards. Well we did. I made a weird joke. And he didn’t laugh. Fuck.
When are you back, did you say? Let’s do something, just me and you. Please. Wales is wonderful but I fear the Black madness is beginning to creep in.
Pads.
PS: What’s this I hear about my brother being at your birthday party?
His mother catches him just as he’s leaving to go to the clearing. She calls his name from down the hall and Regulus pauses, blinking wide. Even when she sounds calm it’s difficult to stop the fissure of nerves that gathers in his chest.
“Regulus,” she says again, and her pale hand comes up, smooths fondly over his cheek, tucks a stray curl behind his ear. She’s smiling. “Before you run off– have a cup of tea with me, won’t you?”
James will be waiting for him, he knows. He’s already late as it is.
“Of course, Mother,” he says, smiling and reaching forward to take her other hand in his, losing a decade and feeling all of six years old.
The sun falls into gentle shadows on the floor, weakened by the gauzy linen pulled over the windows. The effect comes together as a slight haze in the air, a white pearlescent sheen over the room.
A set of tea and biscuits sits on a silver platter on the table, neat cubes of sugar piled high. The only sound is his mothers spoon, clinking on the sides of the teacup as she stirs.
“You’ve been spending an awful lot of time with the Potter boy,” is how she begins. There isn’t any judgement yet, just the beginning of a question.
Regulus sips at his tea; it’s black, and too hot, and he can already feel that he’s burnt his mouth.
“Yes,” he says, polite and smooth, a blank slate of a word.
“I hope you haven’t picked up any–” a pause here, as she gathers her thoughts. “Any unsavoury ideas from that family. The Potters are perfectly respectable but– rather Muggle-loving, these days.”
She says ‘Muggle-loving’ with almost laughter in her voice, as if it’s something ridiculous, akin to saying that Father was going to have sweets for breakfast. Regulus smiles.
“Well– I wouldn’t say that they’re– I think that James’ father is just a bit–” it’s a weak defence, and with each stuttering word his mother’s gaze becomes more and more incredulous. “A bit more liberal, I suppose.”
Mother just hums, doesn’t deign to reply.
It’s almost nice, having tea with her. Like a normal morning shared between mother and son, catching up on the petty things of life, making sweet conversation. Of course that’s what it looks like, from the outside.
The crux of their conversation, this morning, their strange rendezvous, arrives quickly. His mother has never enjoyed beating about the bush.
“You may have heard,” she says, setting down her cup. “From others in our circle of– well. We’ve felt, recently, that there’s a need for the rejuvenation of ideas; getting Society whipped back into shape, one might say.”
Regulus feigns casual interest even as his heart rate begins to pick up, the sound of rushing water beginning to ring in his ears.
“Oh? You mean like, Fathers meetings in his study?”
“Yes,” she says, and doesn’t even tell him off for being nosy. She’s honed in on the scent. “Your father and I have been working very hard to make sure that we–” the family “are on the… right side of things.”
The Blacks didn’t get their station in life by being wallflowers and doormats. They are action-driven, political powerhouses, kingmakers . Other Houses have risen and fallen, their riches laid to waste, while their Great and Noble House has become stronger and stronger, each pass of the loom drawing the threads tighter and tighter into the tapestry of their legacy. Regulus can feel them closing in around him, recalls the party at the beginning of his season, the fishing twine. It has come, round and round his neck, and there is no escaping; there never has been. Perhaps he was born like this, a sea-bird tangled in a net.
“The right side,” he says, very slowly. “I assume– I’ll have a part to play in this?”
“Clever boy.” It isn’t a compliment, it’s barely an opinion. “Yes. Your father– well. He seems against telling you. He thinks you can’t handle it.” She laughs here, short and cold. “As if you’ve ever benefited from coddling. Your brother– he’s clearly lost himself.” A sigh. Her form is wavering in front of Regulus. He feels barely there. “A shame. So much lost potential– so much life .” She sounds almost– sad. Almost. “You’ll have to do, in the end.”
She collects herself. Regulus’ back is beginning to ache, a rod puncturing all the way down his spine.
“Our House must align itself with the Dark Lord.”
It’s almost obscene, this conversation against the sunny, beautiful, wondrous backdrop of the Kent House. The Kent House where nothing bad has ever happened; The Kent House where so many a wonderful summer has been spent; The Kent House where he has always been safe. The sunlight is still frozen on the floor, the warm light still caressing his cheek. His face feels flushed where his mother had touched him just moments before. His chest is aching.
“You know what to do, don’t you Regulus?”
He nods, maybe, says something, maybe. There is a corpse standing, rotted and decaying in the corner and he thinks if he were to look into its darkened face he would find his own eyes staring back.
His mother rises in a rustle of skirts and fabric. She leaves and he is hopelessly, grotesquely grateful that she doesn’t touch him as she leaves, feels like his chest is caving in in a mass of writhing maggots and murky water and dirt, dirt, dirt. He’s breathing, shallow, darkness creeping into the corners of his vision. There’s something inside of him, a roaring, wounded, crying thing; it is wanting and it has been waiting, and it is tearing him up and maybe in this moment, rather than any other, he can admit it to himself, can uncover the shame that sits at the bottom of his heart.
It’s a voice, crying out. He wants his brother .
Boys!!!!!
Did you feel a shift in the air? A tremor? A siseminc change?????? If you did, CONGRATULATIONS! Your Pettigrew Perception is perfectly attuned. That’s right, Old Wormy’s back in town.
No need to tell me how much you missed me, I know, I know. Merlin, England’s bloody wet! Has it been like this all summer?? I wouldn’t know, as none of you have been OWLING ME.
See you on the 30th at Diagon, as discussed???
Big kisses, and lots of ‘em
Petey
As the summer begins to come to a close, Regulus feels the long shadow creeping closer and closer, a large door swinging shut somewhere in the distance. He tries to outrun it, to ignore it, pressing kisses into the seam of James’ mouth, running away with him to the lakeside, spending longer and longer in the grove, until the stars are winking overhead and James is yawning, rubbing at tired eyes. He’s full of a manic kind of energy, a second wind, and– it’s as if he knows there’s no running now.
His fathers guests have become more and more private, with lingering glances at him in the foyer if ever they cross paths. Sizing him up, like a calf for slaughter, a piece of livestock with every part of him marked off for value. He feels severed, inhuman, under their unfeeling gazes.
Bellatrix’s voice echoes in his head. The House of Black must join the Dark Lord. And it must be soon .
He knows what that means. He’s known it ever since that party, ever since that overheard, hushed conversation. He wonders if it’s better, or worse, to be caged and rage against it, or to be docile, patient, a pet awaiting its fate with guileless eyes and a dutiful song.
He knows what Sirius would do.
He knows what James would do.
He closes his eyes, and imagines, just for a second, running away. Running and running, the wide open world, no creeping hand at his back, no jaws clamping down on his neck. A great, solitary bird overhead, gentle wings, gliding on the wind. He imagines James, a happy life; a flat together, somewhere nice, somewhere full of light, and love; a life of mundanity, of petty fighting and making-up kisses; a family, built without cracks; a home.
He feels a sharp stabbing somewhere in his chest.
He opens his eyes. He lets it go.
Notes:
hi! thank you so much for reading!!! sorry this chapter is a bit late out, real life is creeping in around the edges. never bother!! summer's over for our boys! i hope you're enjoying the happiness in this one because it's the last you'll see for quite some time HAHAH
i jest! there are some modicums of happiness post hogwarts. maybe. you'll see.
come visit us on tumblr if you want superlateive and hamletkin
we thrive on comments. just saying!!!! okay BYE ! <3
Chapter 6: the hermit
Notes:
heyyyy..... how y'all doin.......
so. it has been nine months! this chapter took the same amount of time as a baby to gestate. THANK YOU for sticking with us. here is 18k words as your reward.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Regulus bounds down the stairs, practically buoyant, his head filled with plans. The last day – their last day! – of the summer together. After the disaster that was yesterday, he’s eager to waste no time in beginning it. It’s early. The sun is just beginning to shine, golden rays filtering through the creamy net of the Kent House’s curtains. He’s stopped short– of course– by his mother, already sitting at the breakfast table. She isn’t usually up for hours. Her cup of tea is steaming, wisps of smoke curling around her face. Regulus is reminded disconcertingly of old, fanciful paintings of dragons.
“Good morning, darling boy.” The sweetness in her tone grates against Regulus’ nerves. She inclines her head– sit down. Regulus suppresses a sigh, and does not allow the chair to scuff the floor as he sits. He grabs a slice of toast, and wastes no time in buttering it, a one-two scrape of his knife. The sooner this is over, the better.
“Mother,” he acknowledges, after a long moment. Their talk yesterday sits between them, heavy and stinking.
“The Potters have already left,” she says, shortly, all sweetness abandoned. Regulus’ stomach drops. “I thought you’d like to know. I’ve moved our Portkey up to tonight, so be sure to pack your things away by the afternoon, or Bipsy will have far too much to do.”
Stupidly, the backs of Regulus’ eyes start to prickle. He blinks, hard. He hadn’t been ready, they were supposed to have one more day, just one more moment in the beaming sun before his shadow grew to engulf him once more-
He swallows around the knives in his throat, and nods, abandoning his toast and his mother without another word.
It’s only halfway up the stairs that he realises.
James hadn’t said goodbye. Or perhaps he had, and Regulus had been too distracted to notice. Yesterday, their last day in the clearing –not that Regulus had known it at the time– had been tense, forlorn. A drizzle had started up as soon as Regulus left his mother at tea, and had seeped persistently through their various drying and impervious charms as the afternoon wore on. James kept trying to get him to talk, to kiss, to say what was wrong, and Regulus had rebuffed it all, sniffing a little and waving his hands about. It wasn’t something he could talk about. That one-winged Snitch of hope in his chest was dormant. He’d been flat, and empty, and so cold, as if the drizzling rain had trickled its chill into his very being.
When they parted ways, James was sneezing, and Regulus had said bless you, and James had said thanks, and– and he had looked at him so strangely. That night, Regulus had spent hours in the bath, trying to get the cold seep of dread out of his bones. He’d sunk down and down, until his back was flat against the warm ceramic, until his ears were full of nothing but the sound of still water, until his fingertips were soft and pruning. It hadn’t worked, and by the morning, he was shivering under his blankets. Now, that cold sinks back in, as if it hadn’t left at all, as if all the reprieve of summer had left with the Potters, swift and fleeting as a dream.
Storm clouds roll in, a cold wind blowing harshly at the flowerbeds outside the dining room window. The warmth of the morning is gone, as if it was never here. He walks around the house for a half hour, rubbing his arms uselessly, before he remembers he can simply go back to bed.
Regulus’ bedroom in the Kent House is clean, but not bare. The house elves haven’t been yet, the detritus of the summer still dotting the shelves. A small, white shell; a bottle-cap; a corkscrew. They loom over him, mocking. His bed is as he left it, the quilt fluffed and waiting. He falls into it, not bothering to take off his clothes. It takes barely a second for sleep to take him back into her soft arms.
He drifts.
It’s a familiar dream, one that’s been nipping at his heels since he was very small. The chill of the Kent House seeps through his sleep, making the cavern he stands in seem realer, grittier, and so very cold. Regulus balls up his fists, refusing to shake. He walks up to the plinth, knowing that the dream won’t let him go until it’s over. Kreacher is there, tugging at his coat, but he’ll vanish soon enough. The rocks are sharp under his feet. The potion looks so innocuous, translucent with the slightest sheen, silver in the light of his Lumos. He drinks.
His mother is there, his father, Sirius. They’re each talking to him, horrible things, useless things. It hurts, but it’s a pain he’s used to. Regulus grits his teeth, takes another mouthful, but then the dream changes, and this– this is new. This has never happened before. James is there, sitting before him, in a kitchen with yellow cabinets. The image wavers. The cavern, again. Sirius spits on him. Another gulp. James gets up from his chair, his lips moving. A scream. Lily’s in the cavern now, hands resting on her protruding belly. James stands behind her, love in his eyes. They don’t look at Regulus. He scrabbles, stones slicing at his hands. A blink. The kitchen. Sirius stands at the sink, a cigarette in his hand, the other outstretched to Regulus. A glass of water. He snatches it, gulps it down, but it’s the potion, and another stab of pain wrenches at his gut.
Regulus awakes to find his eyes are crusted over with salt and sand; he’d been visited by the fairies, as his grandmother might’ve once said, stroking over his face with a dry and weathered palm. His knees ache, as if he’s run a long distance in his dreams. He can still taste the remnants at the edges of his mouth, that ozone crackle, the ground before lightning strikes. It lingers like the last dregs of a dark bitter tea.
The floor is cold underfoot. This he attributes to the curtains, drawn shut by silent attentive hands. It would soon warm under the sun, waiting patiently outside. It presses its face against the window and casts a soft amber glow through the thick fabric, a gentle reminder of the existence of the day.
His belongings lie scattered and still across the floor, and in the middle, the gaping wound of his open suitcase. He turns his head to see Bipsy. She’s standing at his elbow, twisting her ears back.
There’s a thin film of sweat over his skin, cooling into a sticky sheen.
“Master Regulus must be getting up now, must be leaving soon,” she says, her voice nearly a whisper.
“Thank you, Bipsy,” Regulus croaks. His mouth is terribly dry, his lips sticking together as he speaks.
“Is–” Bipsy pauses, giving her ears a sharp tug. “Is Master Regulus being okay? Only–” and her voice goes even softer here.Regulus has to strain to hear her over the creaking of the house. “Only, he was crying out, and Bipsy wanted–”
Regulus clears his throat, wanting– needing– to stop her in her tracks. The tips of his ears prickle with embarrassment– his house elf feeling the need to comfort him! He could practically see his mother’s lip curl. “I’m perfectly well, thank you.”
She looks relieved, and heaves a sigh as her twiggy hands leave her ears to drop by her sides. From the hallway, the toll of a grandfather clock; Regulus startles at the stark reminder of the hours passing by.
“And Bispy– what time is it, please?”
“Eight o’clock, Master Regulus. Just enough time for you to be getting ready before the travelling.” Regulus gives her a grimace. He’s slept the day away. With a neat bobbing curtsy, Bipsy pops out of the room.
Regulus swings his legs over the side of the bed. He’s shaking, stomach heaving with inexplicable nausea. He manages to make his way to the shower, and as the spray of water hits his face; as the steam curls and gathers around him; as he breathes in the smell of warm citrus, the dream washes away. It leaves nothing behind but a shiver, and that, too, slips away with the soap suds, swirling around his toes and down the drain.
The Portkey back to London drops them unceremoniously in the back garden of the Potter townhouse. It’s an overcast day, the sky bright-white and glaring into James eyes.
They make their way inside.
Effy and Monty are chattering aimlessly away at him, but James is staring at his feet; he is quite the picture of misery. He’d muddled the dates, and thought the Potters would be returning the same day as the Blacks– not the day before. He hadn’t had a chance to speak to Regulus one last time, to tell him— and here his thoughts interrupt themselves, voices chiming in argumentative and sharp. To tell him what? That it had been a fun summer and now it was time for them to go back to hating each other? That they should hang their duties and hang what their families think and run away together to the continent? That he’d miss him? What a joke. He could imagine Regulus’ reaction even now, the arched brow at James’ sentimentality. He might’ve even asked if James was feeling well, pressing the back of his hand coolly against his forehead.
And then— through the French doors, a flash of inky curls, a haughty profile, blue-white skin even after a whole summer, and he’s here, and James can feel his face breaking into a smile and he’s running through the doors and—
Sirius turns around, grinning, crooked incisor catching on the edge of his lip – this is one of the only things that could be found and called a flaw in Sirius’ face, and has the effect of making his already rakish smiles carry a constant air of mischief, even when he hasn’t done anything wrong. Yet. James’ stomach drops, flip-flopping into something almost resembling disappointment. He shakes his head, relifts the corners of his mouth, and sweeps Sirius into his arms.
“You aren’t due back for another three days!” James manages to spit out around a mouthful of hair. Sirius draws back and looks at him, face still stretched into a smile.
“Moony and his mum were getting tired of me, I reckon,” he says. “And your mum wanted to know if I’d like to come back a bit earlier and surprise you–?” The end of his sentence lifts into a question, the wheedle in his voice that always hints towards insecurity. James’ face falls, just a little. He hadn’t hidden his disappointment as well as he’d thought. He could still feel it, hovering like a shroud at the corners of his eyes
“No, of course!” He’s saving it, he will save it, “I missed you, Pads!” James’ hands are still at Sirius’ elbows, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to bring them back together, a back-slapper of a hug, pulling apart after just the right amount of time and slotting in next to his best friend, drawing him further into the house. His hands are warm and Sirius is warmer still underneath them.
“How was Kent?” Sirius says, a little breathless, his eyes skittering over James’ face, then back around the Potter’s house. He looks like a child set loose in Honeydukes, a first year sat at their first Hogwarts feast, a– and you’ll pardon the pun– dog with a bone. He looks like he’s been starved of it. “You didn’t answer my last letter, you bar–” the idle chatter of Effy and Monty, levitating the summer’s luggage behind them, stops the curse short on his tongue– “er– bad friend!”
James sighs, small and quiet. The sound is nothing in comparison to the welling– grief, or regret, or, something, in his chest. Kent was too complicated to bring home– especially to Sirius. He rearranges his face. Right now, he wants light things, simple things. The other stuff, the big stuff, has to be reserved for the night. Sirius has been sneaking into his bed since first year, and their friendship is as much whispered confessions, nose-to-nose amongst starlight and rustling sheets, as it is brash pranks and boyish laughter.
“So boring, exactly the same as every other year. You’re the one with news! You must tell me everything about Wales– how about those milkmaids?” His tone is bouncing, teasing. Sirius grins, launching into a well practiced anecdote about sheep. James smiles right back.
“Your father wants to see you in the study.” His mother doesn’t look at him as she says it. He stops where he was walking past her door, caught. She holds another earring up to her ear, twisting her head this way and that in the mirror. It catches the light, shimmering a rainbow across the room. Then the brief glitter of its life fades, dull as she drops it back into her jewellery box. She sighs as she shakes her head. Her pale fingers drum against the smooth polished surface of her vanity. Regulus shivers. Grimmauld Place is damp today, and the smell of it is thick in his nose.
He hovers for a moment, unsure of his dismissal. His mother’s eyes flicker towards him for just a moment. They are razor sharp, cutting, even through the reflection of her mirror. He hurries down the corridor.
The door to the study creaks open under his hand, almost seeming to taunt his caution. The house appears to move soundlessly for his father, his mother, even Sirius. There is something about him that finds every squeaking stair, every rusted hinge. His presence is announced through the groaning complaints of the house.
Regulus’ father is sitting at his desk, his glasses– wire-rimmed pince-nez– perched at the end of his nose. His dark hair is swept back from his face, and it is almost a replica of Sirius’ own thick head of hair, if not for the grey sprouting at the corners of his brow. He’s writing something. The only sound is his quill scratching neatly across the parchment and the periodical tinkling of it being dipped into the inkwell. He holds up an elegant finger to Regulus, who halts as instructed, hands clasped firmly behind his back.
As he waits, his eyes fall on his father’s desk. It is almost aggressively neat, parchment in neat piles spiralling out away from him, like planets orbiting their sun; letters stacked according to importance; to the side, a quill moving through repetitive looping signatures. And there, placed on the corner, a glimmering object– the ring.
There it is, just sitting there, quiet and unobtrusive as if it isn’t a black hole to Regulus’ attention, as if it isn’t unequivocal proof that he isn’t coming back. That he isn’t welcome back. That every day, he is erased, until it’s as if he had never existed at all. Regulus’ stomach rolls. He feels like he’s about to be sick.
“You know why you’re here?” His father asks, still looking down at the parchment. His voice is idle, but not light. Regulus is quiet, swallowing and swallowing the bile. His mouth is full of saliva. His father’s face pinches with annoyance, then smooths over. Blacks are in control of their emotions, always. “Well?”
“Yes, sir.” He has to force the words out and is pleasantly surprised that they aren’t accompanied by bloody spittle.
The ring is a vacuum on any question, on any hope of conversation.
“Take it, then, and go. I’ve enough to do without the pomp and ceremony of it all.” He waves his hand vaguely in the direction of the ring and Regulus. The dismissal is clear.
Regulus takes the ring, slipping it onto his pinky as he stumbles out of the room. He hears a scoff from behind him, almost indistinguishable from the scratching of the quills. It adjusts itself automatically, but after an age, the charms must be wonky, because it’s too tight. Standing in the hallway, he watches his finger go white, then red, then purple. The silver band is starkly cold against his skin. In the center are two ravens, their backs to one another, sharp beaks tucked towards their chests. The etchings on the ring aren’t enchanted to move, but Regulus swears he can see a malicious glint in their eyes. His finger begins to throb, and somewhere in his mind he knows it must hurt– but a strange numbness has begun to overtake him, and all he can seem to do is look, and look, and look.
Kreacher appears with a crack. He doesn’t say a word, just takes Regulus’ hand and guides him away from the study door. Under his spindly fingers, the ring appears to– begrudgingly– loosen its icy grip. Regulus keeps looking at it, following wordlessly as Kreacher leads him all the way up to his bedroom.
James is thinking; never a good sign.
It’s sometime in the afternoon, just when the house goes from the flurry of morning activity to everyone retiring to their favourite spots— his father to his study to stick his nose into an old and dusty book, his mother with her knitting and a cup of tea, Sirius back under the covers for a “siesta, Jimmy– they’re all the rage on the continent–” and uncharacteristically, James lying in the garden to think. He always does his best musing in the open air. Something about the sky above him, blue and endless.
The topic of his thoughts that day is, of course, a certain brother Black.
It all just seems so unfair to James. That their– whatever it was– should be so alive, so endless, infinite within the property bounds of Magical Kent, and yet as soon as they leave, stutter to a mere ember of what it was before. James turns their situation over, again and again in his mind, watching the sunlight glint bright-green through the wide leaves of the Potter’s orchard. A youthful indiscretion is one thing– most of the Society families even have an uncle or two that takes it further, into perpetual bachelorhood– but for an Heir? For the Potter Heir? That isn’t an option– can’t be an option. He can’t live in a fantasy forever. He has to find a way forward.
He’s trying to get to it, that elusive path through the maze, to the beating center; one that leads to happiness; to paradise; to James getting what he wants. His mind starts up in abortive sentences:
If we just–
Who needs heirs, anyway–
Perhaps Sirius won’t–
Two Heirs of two great Houses, the papers won’t even–
We could–
If he would just–
But I want–
James sighs, and watches the branches above his head, sweeping gentle across the pallid openness. He drifts for a while. There’s a branch sticking into his back, which is putting a damper on his efforts to not to think of anything at all. He feels spoiled, like a child throwing a tantrum. Like a piece of fruit left too long on the counter.
An upstairs window opens, and he hears Sirius’ voice shouting down to him. The bubble bursts. A cloud passes over the sun. James stands, and heads inside.
Nothing of note happens to James during the two weeks before school. Regulus doesn’t owl him– a fact that is both terrible and wonderful, given Sirius’ near constant presence over his shoulder. He shouldn’t have lied about Emmeline Vance– it’s spinning out of control. What was an easy excuse over letters has become a veritable dance of give-and-take information, of half-truths and outright fibs. When they’re all together, Sirius and Peter are enthralled, but Remus, he thinks, is beginning to catch on.
“Emmeline really said all that to you?” he says under his breath, suspicious, as he pulls James aside after a particularly embellished tale has Peter howling.
James looks at him through his lashes.
“Moony, my darling, my absolute beloved. Would I lie to you– oof!” Remus’ elbow catches him in the delicate space between his ribs. “That hurt!”
Remus’ mouth twitches, the scar biting through his upper lip trembling.
“Only I seem to recall that exact exchange in May’s edition of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle. So funny, how life imitates art, isn’t it, James?”
If James has learned one thing from all his years of practical jokes, it’s when to give it up when he’s been caught.
“Shit, Moons, please don’t–” his words are tripping out over themselves, and he’s– oh, Merlin, he’s really scared. This has the potential to be dire. Imagining Sirius’ reaction– imagining Regulus’– “Please,” he tries again, “don’t tell. You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
Remus sighs, and nods. “I”m no stone,” he murmurs, half to himself.
James has no idea what this means, but before he can ask, Sirius and Peter have shifted into Padfoot and Wormy, and are attempting to reenact the heinously dramatic, utterly fictional break-up of James and Emmeline. Peter has taken on the role of James, squeaking up a storm and gesturing violently with his little paws.
James and Remus dissolve into peals of laughter, and it’s all forgotten.
The Hogwarts Express somehow surprises Lily every year. The flashing brightness of it, the steaming roar of its engine, the sheer size of the thing. It’s enough to astonish anyone, even if they’ve had seven years to get used to the utterly in-your-face grandeur. Looking at it coming into the platform, watching her final year of high school, of childhood, of safety, barrel down the tracks, she’s thrown back into the moment that she first saw it.
She can almost feel the ghost of her tiny hand clutched tightly in her mother’s, both of their hearts still racing from the run into the wall between platforms nine and ten. It had taken fifteen minutes for them to work up the courage to go through, standing on the side and taking deep breaths together. Petunia had declined to come with them, and being thirteen, was allowed to be at home by herself. Her mum hadn’t met Steve yet, and was between boyfriends. Still, as Tuney argued, if Lily was eleven and could go to boarding school for a whole year , she could stay at home for a day by herself. Still, a pang runs through Lily’s heart as she remembers Petunia hugging her goodbye, the cursory tight squeeze of her arms, how the door had slammed behind her blonde ponytail, the curtains twitching as they backed the car out of the driveway.Then, as now, the bullet of red-black-fire-steam had rendered her speechless. Then, as now, the thought, unprompted, came into her head. This mechanical monster is going to spirit me away, and everything is going to be different from how it was.
A squeal jolts her out of her reverie– just as well, too, as a moment later Marlene’s pointy fingers are jabbing into her sides, right in the kidneys. Lily howls, slapping wildly behind her.
“Fucking–! It wasn’t funny when we were thirteen– oh, sorry Mary, wasn’t aiming for you– and it’s not funny now! Grow up, Leeny!”
“Sor-ry!” Marlene drags out the word, giving it several more syllables than it was ever meant to have. “Excuse me for trying to have fun! I missed you, stupid!” As she talks, Mary’s arm wraps around Lily’s shoulder, fingering at the badge on her chest.
“Are we going to get detention, then?” She asks it softly, poking at the badge. Lily wrinkles her nose, trying not to smile.
“Maybe! Maybe I will, since neither of you even bothered to write!” They bundle themselves onto the train, laughing and bickering and catching up. They find a carriage– well. Marlene kicks four squealing third-years out of the best carriage, the one with the plush, greenish seats and the stain on the ceiling– their carriage, the one that’s been theirs since they’d made pinky-promises to stay friends on the way home for the holidays at the end of first year.
Mary is scrabbling in her bag for her tarot cards– they’re really pulling out all the traditions this year, and Lily feels stupidly sentimental. Her throat feels hot, and tight, a tension rising up and out and she’s taking a breath to speak, to say something sweet and sappy about their last year, when there’s a banging on the window. She scowls.
“Evans! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten, not when you sent me a bloody Howler!”
It’s James Potter. Of course it is. The King of Bad Timing.
“You’d better go, Lil,” Marlene says, with a well-practised roll of her eyes. “Merlin knows he won’t let up.” Lily nods, stuffing the well of emotion down.
“The ruddy Prefects meeting– I can’t believe it slipped my mind,” she punctuates her words with kisses dropped onto her friends’ heads, Mary leaning up to it sweetly, Marlene scrabbling away. She’s never been one for affection.
James pokes her in the side when she finally extricates herself and slips out the door. She jabs him right back then gives him a squeeze on his arm; she did miss him in the end.
“Took your time,” he chirps. He’s in an oddly skittish mood, peering into every carriage they pass. She frowns at him– he’s not usually the type to be nosy.
“The end carriage, right?” Lily asks, looking straight ahead. It’s not that things are awkward between them, of course not, but– James seems different, after the summer.
Part of it is the way he’s treating her. Something shifted, while he was in Kent, between them.
The prefects are waiting for them in the back carriage. fifth years at the front, all shiny badges and scrubbed clean faces— Lily thinks she never looked that young, and they’re only two years younger than she is. The sixth years slump around the edges, leaning on the walls and chatting quietly amongst themselves. They’re all a little wan, still reeling from the stress of OWLs, the excitement of responsibility weighed down by the realities of patrol rosters and homework help and endless homesick firsties. Regulus is there, of course, sitting by himself in a booth, his forehead to the window. Lily wants to catch his eye, but his whole head is turned away.
James jumps to the front, clapping his hands eagerly. A little manically, actually, but Lily won’t say anything. Regulus gives a little start, his gaze sliding over to them. She gives him a little wink, and his eyebrows raise in response, a startled little jump that she finds stupidly sweet.
“Welcome, welcome,” James begins, and Lily has to put her hand on his arm, telling him without words that he needn’t shout. He brings down the volume, as Regulus turns his head back to the window. “Welcome to the upper echelons of responsibility!” Lily rolls her eyes.
“We’ll be giving you a proper training soon, at our first meeting this week,” she steps in. “For now, we’ll be pairing up and patrolling the train corridors. Pop into the carriages, check on the first years, especially if you see they’re obviously Muggle-raised—“ she frowns as Mulciber lets out a derisive snort— “or look particularly lost. Sixth years, if you could pair up with a fifth and show them the ropes? It won’t matter too much if we’re uneven. Just make sure all the fifths get an upper level student to pair with. If there’s nothing else, we’ll leave you to sort your pairs and start.” James claps his hands again, punctuating her final sentence. She resists the urge to roll her eyes.
The prefects start mingling then, soft chatter breaking out as they split into pairs and divide the train cars between them. There’s a lot of shuffling– fifth years trying to get paired with sixth years they find good-looking, painfully obvious about it; sixths rolling their eyes about getting stuck with a kid. James himself, still weird and fidgety, is edging away from Lily. She grabs his arm– fuck, his biceps, he must have been training over summer– and he starts, guiltily. Lily snatches her hand back like she’s been burned. Since when did she have thoughts like that about him? And further, since when was James Potter not jumping at the chance to spend time riling her up?
“We’re a pair, dummy,” she says, trying to make a joke of it.
“But– I thought–” he begins, and she lifts her eyebrows, waiting for him to continue. “I wanted–” he tries again, and her eyebrows raise higher. “Nothing.”
“That’s what I thought,” she elbows him in the side and they go on their way, together, pairing up the stragglers. Lily spots James looking behind him, just once, at Regulus, who’s being chattered at by a sixth year Ravenclaw with spiky black hair.
Finally, finally, the train pulls into the Hogsmeade station. It’s fully dark outside, and James’ voice aches from the number of times he’s had to remind the lower years to change into their robes. Now it’s just getting the first years up into the boats, and he’s home safe to enjoy the feast. He’s ushering the last one out of the carriage door when he hears a polite, muttered ‘excuse me’ in a cut-glass accent from behind him. As James turns, a figure in green-trimmed robes is sweeping down the train corridor, doing last-checks. He runs after, determined.
James grabs a hold of Regulus’ elbow, swinging him round. He regrets it a half-second later– it’s closer in the train corridor than he anticipated and the move leaves the two of them practically nose to nose. Regulus feels strange and floppy in his grasp, like a paper doll. He swallows – a picture: Regulus’ mouth, lips kiss-swollen and flushed – before pushing on.
“You didn’t write,” James says. He’s trying to keep the sheen of hurt out of his voice– he doesn’t want to play his hand so early. Regulus stares at him, completely blank, like he’s never seen him before; like Kent is a distant memory.
“You were in my dream,” he whispers. It’s odd, almost like his lips move slower than the words coming out.
James frowns, feels the scar by his eyebrow tighten.
“Um, alright— listen Reg, can we please talk?”
Regulus shakes his head, the sharp flick of a ratter. The odd trance leaves him at once. “Not here!”
“Where, then? When? I don’t like the way we left things, and—“
“James!” He swears, and bites frustratedly on his knuckles, “What are you up to back there?” Lily’s voice floats out from the platform, sweet but coloured with thinly covered irritation. “Hagrid’s late, and these firsties won’t herd themselves!”
“I have to go,” James says with a sigh. Regulus keeps looking at him, the skin between his brows bunching together. James’ hand twitches at his side. “Can we–”
“Fine,” Regulus relents, and it’s like a breath of sweet air to James’ lungs; finally, a concession. “But not tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow morning by the Lake. Early— before breakfast.”
”Do you—“ James cuts himself off, breathes, “you swear you’ll be there?”
Regulus’ mouth is flat. James is possessed by an urge to kiss him— punch him— do something, anything, to have him stop looking at him like that. His heart squeezes with feeling. Regulus in the summer, Regulus at Kent, feels like a lifetime ago. He seemed to smile so easily, to frown, to cry . James doesn’t know what he’s done, to have that Regulus locked away from him, in front of him but so fucking distant .
“Yes,” He replies quietly. He reaches out and touches James’ hand, a fluttering, cold, brush, there and gone again. James wants to snatch his hand and keep it there. “I swear.”
“ Thank you.” He hears Lily call his name again – really annoyed this time – and shuffles sideways. “I’ll– alright by the Lake then, tomorrow, and– alright. Bye.”
Regulus just stares at him, eyes huge, as he stumbles down and out from the train.
After spending hours learning his Head Boy duties on the job, hugging weepy first years and giving another stern talking to to the cohort of nervous fifth year prefects, James is exhausted. He is nursing a secret hope that perhaps the boys in his dorm have decided to turn in early for the night.
No such luck.
As he swings open the door to their room, Remus is laughing, being bounced around as Sirius jumps on the mattress, shouting about something. Peter is— Peter is apparently in rat form, and making short work of a pile of sweets heaped high in the middle of the table. A rock song is playing from Sirius’ record player, a top volume. James has a headache.
“Sirius! Pads! Turn that Muggle racket off, will you?”
Two faces and an entire rat turn towards him. Sirius waves his wand, and the music shuts off.
James knows he’s being a dick, but for some reason he can’t stop. There’s a thrumming buzz somewhere behind his eyes and spreading all throughout his body, skin tightening and red hot. Everything seems tailor made to annoy him, to needle at him and grate like sand caught between his molars.
There are three wide, hurt pairs of eyes staring at him– and even that isn’t enough to staunch this horrible, burning nastiness in his stomach. He clenches his fist, and the bite of his nails in his palm is the briefest balm. He turns sharply, and heads toward his bed, opening his suitcase to toss around his belongings until he finds his pyjamas. He feels childish as he pulls his tie roughly from around his neck but– he can’t seem to manage to stop. Once he’s finished, he throws himself back onto his bed with a huff and closes his eyes, twitching his wand stroppily to throw the curtains shut around him.
He can tell the three of them are having a silent conversation over his head, can imagine the rhythms of it– having been an active participant himself in the past. Exchanging worried glances with the others when it was Peter, sulking in the corner, or Sirius with the curtains of his bed drawn, a tight-laced Silencing charm packing him in. Most uncommon was Moony, tucked in a lump under his sheets. Remus usually wouldn’t budge for anyone except for Sirius, but they usually took it in turns to comfort the others.
Finally, it seems that Remus draws the short straw. On some unseen signal, he broaches the silence, poking his fingers through the drawn curtains but not opening them any.
“Prongs? James? Are you– what’s going on, mate?”
James keeps his eyes stubbornly closed, and chews at the inside of his cheek. He can feel the muscles popping between his teeth. Even if he tried, he doesn’t know what he’d say. The frustration inside of him is a wordless roar.
After a few more cajoling attempts at drawing him out, Remus gives up. The fingers leave, with a sigh, and a quiet ‘just– you can talk to me if you need. Night, James.’
And for a moment, for a long night-stretched hour, James dozes, and the ember fire in him slowly begins to cool. Then, his curtain is being drawn and a shadowy figure slips under his covers. There are cold toes poking at his shins.
“James,” Sirius– because of course , it’s Sirius– hisses. “Oi, James. I know you’re awake, you’re not even snoring.”
A pause. James debates whether he really wants to start this, if Sirius would leave him alone if he just kept pretending to be asleep. Sirius prods at him again, wriggling closer underneath the covers.
“I don’t snore,” James grunts. He keeps his eyes pointedly closed. “And I’m sleeping, so bugger off.”
“So you’ve taken up sleep-talking since you’ve been away?” Sirius persists, and now he’s poking his fingers into James’ side, into the fleshy parts of his arms. Sirius’ fingers are cold too– inbred circulation, Regulus used to say. His mouth tightens, drawing the edges down. James loves Sirius very much, like his own flesh-and-blood brother. He thinks this deliberately, because he is finding that very hard to remember in this particular moment.
“I mean it, Sirius,” he says, and his voice is getting sharper now, discarding the soft layers of almost-sleep. “Go back to your own bed. I’m not in the mood.”
Sirius shifts, but makes no move to leave. Instead, he turns away, shoulders hunching over in a pantomime of sulkiness.
James has almost drifted away again when he speaks, and now it’s Sirius’ voice that is petulant and mean.
“You know you’ve been a right prick since we’ve gotten back to Hogwarts. Even summer. The least you can do is tell me what’s wrong instead of– of having stupid private chats.”
This makes James open his eyes, if only from the sheer indignation. To say that James has been a prick when– when all of his energy has been going into smiling and laughing and being his usual self because, mind you, he knew as soon as Sirius got even a whiff of his melancholy he would nag and nag at him and not let it go and do exactly what he was doing now.
“You know what, Sirius,” he hisses, and the fire is behind his teeth again, prickling behind his eyes. “If I were you, I would take a long hard look in the mirror before I called anyone else a prick. Now just– go back to your bed!”
He accompanies this last part, perhaps unadvisedly, with a shove. Sirius wastes no time in scrambling up to return the blow and then before they know it, they’re on the floor tussling.
“You–!” Sirius bizarrely whisper-shouts, as if they’re not thumping each other against the ground, “are hiding something! Just tell me! Instead of creeping around–”
“I’m not hiding–!” James grunts with the effort of dodging Sirius’ hands– he’s always been a dirty fighter. “I’m not hiding anything, but you–!”
“You and Moony,” and Sirius sounds hurt now, something sharp and tender at the back of his throat making its way through. “He won’t tell me what’s going on and neither will you and–”
“Oh for–” James goes limp and Sirius – still suspicious – stops trying to grab at his hair. “Is that what you’re sulking about? Moony doesn’t know anything. Swear.”
He can tell Sirius doesn’t believe him from the way he squints, as if the force of his glare would be enough to suddenly develop Legilimency.
“He’s telling the truth, Sirius.” They both turn at Remus’ voice, coming reedy and faint from his bed. “Now will you please both go to sleep so we can talk about this in the morning?”
“Please,” chimes in Peter, plaintive and somewhat muffled, as if he has his pillow stuffed over his face. “I think Professor Grubby-Plank is seriously going to hex me if I’m late again.”
A sudden burst of embarrassment crawls over James’ neck, and as he looks sideways through the dark towards Sirius, he can see a mirrored sheepishness in his gaze. He shrugs, a sloping motion of his shoulders and as he gets up he pulls James to his feet.
“Right,” Sirius says gruffly, and then softer, “sorry– about that. I–”
“S’alright,” James says awkwardly, grasping at his hand and pulling him into a half hug and patting him on the back. “I– we’ll talk about it properly. I promise. Now– seriously, goodnight.”
As Sirius slinks out and back to his own bed, he seems to hesitate; his very outline seems to waver, caught in some no-mans-land– a battle waging between his urge to gnaw at the problem until he sees the glimmer of white bone, and his need to go sleep and let this all be forgotten with the morning mist.
James pointedly lays down, and turns his shoulder the other way. He waits, bated breath, listening to the shuffle of Sirius’ feet and the soft rustling sounds of his sheets. He feels— perhaps guilty isn’t the right word, but there’s a stab of feeling in his chest. Regret, maybe, or something deeper than that. A moment lost, and a moth released from between his palms. He shuts his eyes, and falls into a restless sleep.
The only thing Regulus misses about Hogwarts during the summer away, is the Astronomy Tower. Ever since first year, during sleepless nights, Regulus would venture out of the dungeons, out of the cool green lake-light of the Slytherin quarters, and up all those flights of stairs. The quiet, solemn stones were a comfort to him– familiar, yet different all the time. Mysterious and changeable, like the sky itself.
In those darkened, silenced moments, in the dead of night, the Witching Hours, Regulus would grant himself a wish. Just one. As he treads through the darkness, his feet marking the well-worn path, he allows himself to remember honey-sweet memories, and this time he doesn’t taint them. As he puts his blanket down onto the cold stone floor, he thinks of small hands and whispered words, and he doesn’t feel guilt. As his gift to himself, he doesn’t think about the talk that’s coming in the morning. Doesn’t think about the decisions he’ll have to make this year. He doesn’t let himself feel the subtle tug of the fishing line around his neck; the ever-present march towards his fate.
And as he looks up to the heavens, he searches. The stars twinkle back at him, so cold and far away, yet their gaze is made tender through the gold curtain of memory around him. Once he’s found the Dog Star, the brightest of them all, he doesn’t think at all. Just looks.
Regulus wakes, early. The first fingers of dawn are rising above the Lake’s mist, and his tailbone is awfully sore from the hard-stone floor of the Astronomy Tower. He draws his thin blanket around his shoulders, blinking sleep from his eyes, before he pads back down to get dressed and face– well. Whatever’s coming.
It’s a particularly cold autumn morning. Regulus shivers in his cloak by the shoreline; the sun is hiding between cool grey clouds, barely risen, and the frosty dew remains triumphantly on the long grass, each minute a victory in its short life. He rubs at his nose, letting out a sharp, frustrated breath in a puff of fog. He can’t remember if he’d said before or after breakfast and— well. He isn’t feeling all that hungry anyway.
His convictions of the last two weeks seem so fragile now, now that he’s at Hogwarts and away from home, now that he’s seen James face-to-face once more. He turns the signet ring round and round on his finger. The silver is cold as ice, and no amount of rubbing seemed to change that. It seems to run hot and cold with a mind of its own. He had been so sure that they should break it— whatever it was— off. It had seemed like the right, the only, thing to do, when he was locked up in the mouldering damp of Grimmauld Place. The ring on his finger was just another feather in the cap of ending things, and his mother’s sneering remark as he got on the train about seeking only suitable company was certainly not subtle.
He knows what the ring meant. He knows where he is being led, like a lamb to slaughter, the twine around his neck like some mocking noose.
It would be better for all of them, James included, if he— if they stop. This is the right thing to do– maybe the last right thing that Regulus will ever do. He presses his cold fingers to his mouth. There is a small and traitorous voice inside of him protesting, would it be so bad if we kissed again, just once, or twice, or again and again and—
“Regulus!”
His head snaps up to see James making his way towards him, down the hill and through the brush. He swears as twigs grasp at the bottom of his cloak and Regulus smiles reflexively; James had had almost the same reaction running through the bushes in Kent, swearing like a sailor and getting leaves stuck all through his hair.
“Merlin, Reg— how long have you been waiting? You look so cold— here.” James shoves his scarf off over his head and loops it around Regulus’ neck. It’s still warm from where it had been touching his skin. “You’ll have to give it back but— well. It’s alright for now, right?”
Regulus feels totally caught off guard, mouth slightly open. The whirlwind of James Potter has descended upon him. He looks down and blinks. The red and gold Gryffindor scarf clashes horribly with the green of his robes. He swallows. The scarf is so warm.
”Yes it’s fine. Thank you.”
A pause. The air feels thick, full of things that Regulus wants to say but— can’t. He stares at the ground by James’ feet, at the crushed and crumpled leaves under his shoes. The Lake ripples gently at the shoreline. He looks up, to find James staring intently at his face. His glasses are fogging slightly at the edges of the lens.
“Well?” Finally Regulus breaks the silence. He shifts his weight, and small pebbles scatter down into the water. “Why— what did you want to talk about?”
James blinks, pulling his head back into himself like a bird. Regulus has startled him, and already he misses James’ hot gaze around his face. He isn’t often so direct, but he is just so sick of it all, of all the sideways conversations and hushing whispers.
“Alright, straight into it,” James looks trepidatious, and Regulus knows– not in the way that he sometimes knows, but he knows all the same. “I—“ James works his jaw, “I don’t— I don’t think we should— see each other anymore.”
He says it all in one great rush, as if the words have to come out altogether, or he would snap his teeth closed in the middle and they’d never leave his throat. It’s strange. Regulus has never heard him speak that way before, so brisk and— almost desperate.
Strangest of all was the way Regulus feels. He— well. By all accounts he should be relieved. This is what he wants. He wants to call things off— for the betterment of everyone, his one right thing. But instead his stomach twists and drops, a snake biting down on its own tail, fangs full of acidic venom. His eyes prickle, and it’s so embarrassing that Regulus has to move his gaze to somewhere above James’ shoulder.
“I agree,” he says stiffly. It’s hard to speak around the clenching muscles of his throat, but he thinks he sounds at least halfway normal. It’s the same kind of aloofness he’d perfected at family soirées. ”It— I agree. It wouldn't work out anyway.”
“Right.” James seems to jump on this with a bit of a crazed respite, a drowning man grasping at a log. “It was just a bit of fun in the summer.” A bit of fun hits Regulus right in the softest part of his belly. It’s an effort not to double over, but he’s a Black. He manages. James continues, valiantly. “No need to— bog it down with any of this boring–” he coughs, once. “Any of this relationship stuff right? It’s not like we even need that.”
”No,” Regulus says, slowly, picking his way around the lump in his throat. It’s hard not to feel hurt, and he blinks twice, slowly, breathes even slower. “It would make no sense at all to do that.” James nods sharply.
They’re now at an impasse. Regulus watches as James’ hand fists at his side, red skin and white knuckles. He suppresses the urge to take it, uncurl his fingers, smooth his lips over James’ palms.
Instead, Regulus watches and watches, willing James’ hands to unclench, to lighten. James does that best, after all. He waits for the relief of levity, some little joke, the mole at the side of James’ nose to disappear into his smile lines.
It doesn’t come.
“Is that all?” Regulus finally says, after an age. James starts, blinking quickly, like he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t allowed to be doing anymore. Sneaking sweets out of a jar, though he’s long past the age of needing to ask permission.
“I ‘spose so,” James admits, his voice hoarse. Regulus’ stomach twists, again, knot after knot. He wants to be anywhere but here.
“Right.” It’s short, and sharp, society-speak when an uncle’s imbibed too much, or a small cousin’s broken an heirloom. They both recognise it for what it is. A wall, going up. Regulus unhooks the scarf from his neck, the warmth suddenly smothering. He presses it into James’ open hands, does not notice that their fingers brush, momentarily, and starts off, at pace, back up the hill.
He doesn’t look back, and the day moves on.
Regulus heaves a sigh as he settles into his favourite spot in the library — a table kitty-corner between the big stained glass window depicting Rowena Ravenclaw and the Advanced Arithmancy section. No one ever comes down this far, and it’s so quiet, just the hush of Rowena’s stained robes drifting across the lead panes, the whisper of pages turning from afar. It always feels different, returning to Hogwarts after the long summer break; head full of cobwebs and magic finally stretching itself beyond the odd lumos or accio. This time feels particularly strange, like the summer away has poked and prodded at Regulus until he’s been remolded, reformed, a slab of clay on a potter's wheel. Their conversation by the Lake this morning tickles at the back of his mind, and he shakes his head to dislodge it. No good will come from dwelling.
He almost hadn’t gone to dinner, still mostly full from last night’s Feast and the leftovers they’d gotten for lunch. Not wanting to disrupt his routine, he’d gone anyway, sitting alone on the edge of the Slytherin table and picking at a plate of bitter greens. When his gaze strayed across to the Gryffindors— of course it had, of course , he’d seen the three of them, Lily and Sirius and James squashed in-between, laughing and shovelling food into their mouths. It turned his stomach, the way the three of them— even now, even after summer— leaned into one another, three wildflowers curving together in the wind, watched from afar by a thorny weed. James had seemed fine, at dinner. Good. Regulus is fine too.
He sighs again, a little puff of air this time, blowing out his lips, and pulls out his Herbology homework. Lets himself be consumed by the ten inches on counteracting poisons and accessing the healing properties of Mandrake and Venomous Tentacula. It’s interesting work, and before long he’s completely engrossed. So engrossed, in fact, that he doesn’t notice someone creeping towards him, gingerly sitting down on the other side of his table, and pulling out her own notes.
“Hi,” Lily says shyly. Regulus starts, the sudden noise and presence at his table— his table— completely unprecedented.
“Oh—“ he stutters, a little. “Well. Hello, Ev-“ he catches himself just in time, “Lily.”
“Do you mind if I—“ she gestures, once, at the empty space, the yawning expanse of the otherwise unoccupied table.
“You want to— with me?”
She nods, huffs a little laugh.
“Mary and Marlene are always doing their couple things now, and I hate studying with the boys.” Regulus raises his eyebrows, and she barrels on, hurrying to explain. “It comes so easily to James and Sirius, they don’t even have to try, and they end up distracting the rest of us.” Regulus tries not to flinch at James-and-Sirius, the fraternal comradery of it threatening the carefully built walls he’d built around this particular hurt. Lily doesn’t notice, her words tumbling out, almost tripping over themselves. “And–” she says this part with a look of utter disgust, “Peter hums under his breath when he’s reading.” Regulus realises, slowly, then all at once, that she’s serious. And nervous. She wants him to say yes.
And he can’t think of a reason to deny her.
“Okay,” he says, tentatively. “I don’t hum, and I do work. Please don’t talk.”
At this, Lily grins, a sweet, shining thing that warms Regulus from the inside. Suddenly, he gets what James must have seen in her for all these years.
They settle into a companionable silence, the whisper-rustle of the library melding with the scratching of their respective quills. Once, Regulus asks Lily if she knows the best pH for the soil of teenaged Mandrake plants. Once, Lily asks Regulus to check her Arithmancy equations.
It’s nice.
Lily isn’t anywhere, and so for the second night in a row, James is on firstie duty. He’s sprawled by the fire in the Common Room, sulkily coaching a Muggleborn through her first owl to her parents, when Sirius comes striding over to him, back straight but shoulders loose. He holds out a bar of chocolate, and when James reaches for it, snatches it back.
“You owe me a chat,” Sirius says, his teeth glinting in the low light. James sighs, ruffles the hair of the first year as he stands, and they head upstairs together.
From their first argument at the beginning of second year, whenever James and Sirius were at odds, this has been how they go about fixing it. An offer of chocolate, then a conversation behind spelled-shut bed-curtains, then usually, a back-slapping hug and a promise to never let anything come between them ever again. It’s worked alright so far. James has the utmost faith in the method to fix this, too. He just needs to be very careful about where the conversation goes. He doesn’t want to talk about Regulus, but that’s fine, because he’s ended things this morning, and he’s fine about it. He’ll have to come clean about the Emmeline lie, but Sirius won’t be too upset, and once that’s out of the way they’ll be fine again.
Once they’ve cast the spells, cocooned within themselves, the light of a lumos floating around them, Sirius takes a huge bite of chocolate and starts, his mouth full.
“I wanted to tell you about Remus, but you didn’t want to hear it,” he says, and James is so astonished that he just topples backwards off the mattress. All his thoughts and guilt about Regulus go out the window. “I’m sorry I got cross with you! But you– and him– you were always together, and I couldn’t tell you and you kicked me out of bed, James!”
James does not laugh. It isn’t even a near thing. It isn’t– right up until Sirius does, a snort leaving his pursed lips, chocolatey spit spraying all over James’ face.
“Ew, you git!” James splutters, and lunges at him.
After a few minutes of tussling, James wiping his face all over Sirius’ pyjama top, Sirius pulling his hair very hard, they fall down onto the pillows.
“Are you– were you angry? With me?” Sirius asks. James shakes his head, fervently.
“Of course not, Pads. Why would I be?” The contrition in his voice rings false, to James’ ears, but Sirius either doesn’t notice or skates right by it, propelled by their mutual urge to be okay again.
“I just. Well,” Sirius clears his throat. “I worried. After I showed up at the townhouse. And I already lived with you all last summer, and we had that argument at the end of term, and I just, well, I know I’m easy to get annoyed with, and–” James shuts him up, literally, clapping his palm over Sirius’ mouth.
“Sirius,” he says, and then stops, drags Sirius, squirming, into a firm hug, the long lines of their bodies pressed against each other. “Sirius,” he whispers again, directly into his ear. “You are my best friend. Don’t say that shit, don’t ever– ever, say that. You’re being stupid, you know you are.” Sirius pulls back, eyes wide. “You’re always first, to me. Most important, Padfoot, you just are.” James finishes his thought with a big, stupid, wet forehead kiss.
Just like that, James and Sirius are James-and-Sirius again, and they spend the night whispering in the dark about Moony and kisses and Wales and fall asleep tangled up in one-another.
The second day of classes dawns hot and damp, and Lily’s staring into space at the breakfast table, sleep still pulling at her edges. It’s noisy in the Great Hall, like always, the trickle of early risers becoming a rush as the castle clock chimes seven-thirty. James is a few seats down, poking at Remus’ sleeve as his other arm drapes across Sirius. He laughs, suddenly, throwing his head back and exposing the long line of his throat.
“Aha!” Marlene starts pulling at her elbow with an intensity quite unbefitting for breakfast-time, especially when it’s only the first week of classes.
Lily turns her head sharply.
“ What – Marlene, stop, I’ll spill my coffee– what could it be now?” She’s a little cross, but to be fair, she’s still waking up, and it was from a very good dream–
“What? What? Lil, what in Merlin’s name was that ?” Marlene’s looking at her, incredulous.
“Marlene, I don’t know what you mean,” Lily says, really quite irritated now.
“You were looking over there, and you breathed a– like– a romantic sigh!” she demonstrates, and it sets Lily’s teeth on edge.
“I do not sound like that,” Lily says, turning back to her toast. “And anyway, I don’t sigh romantically.”
“Bollocks you don’t, I remember in fifth year when you had a thing for– oh, what was his name, Mary?”
“Casper Fingerling,” Mary’s putting her two cents in, snapping her fingers and pointing vaguely at the Ravenclaw table. How are any of them awake enough for this, Lily wonders desperately. “I remember because he had such an unfortunate name.”
“That’s right! Mr Fingers! And you– oh, we couldn’t stop you, mooning around like a bloody poet,” Lily cringes at the memory, but Marlene is on a roll. “And you’re doing it again now!”
Mary squints over to the direction Marlene is helpfully stabbing her finger in.
“Who is it, Lil? Not Sirius, surely– I heard he was–”
“No, gross , it isn’t Sirius– anyway, didn’t you go there, Mary?”
“Can you call two weeks when you’re twelve wherein we hugged twice ‘going there?’ ” Mary muses. Lily snorts.
“No, we’re getting distracted– Lily Evans, you will tell us–”
Lily clamps her lips shut tight, mimes locking them up.
“We’ll have to guess then! Mary– you’re on blush duty,” Marlene is like a dog with a bone, and Lily curses her fair skin. They always know how to get her.
“Let’s see– we’ve ruled out Sirius, which rules out Remus–” Mary begins, but is interrupted almost immediately.
“Why does that rule out Remus?” Marlene asks. Lily snorts again.
“Jesus, Marlene, for someone of your proclivities, you are blind,” she says.
“Nevermind, so– Peter? Doesn’t seem like your type, the little ones. Definitely a deviation from the norm. Or could it be–” Marlene has been leading up to this moment, relishing in it. Lily hates her, a little bit. Couldn’t this have waited til dinner?
“Oh, Lily ,” and Mary’s tone is so disappointed– disappointed! “Really? Him?”
“Shut up , it isn’t like that, I–”
“It isn’t? Your sighs tell a different story!” Marlene crows. “I can’t believe it! After six years, James Potter has finally worn you down, I– ouch, Lily!” This last part because Lily whacked her, hard.
“Stop it, Marlene, they’ll hear you,” Lily whispers, aggrieved. She can feel the blood rushing to her face, her cheeks skipping past pink and going straight to puce. She digs her spoon into her porridge, avoiding eye contact with all of them. There’s something small and warm sitting in her lower belly at the acknowledgement, at her friends noticing, seeing her. She gives a small, private smile. “Will you pass the jam?”
It’s almost as if the conversation, instead of ridding Regulus from James’ life, has made him pop up underfoot everywhere he looks. Around the corner from Charms, Regulus is chatting amicably to another student in the corridor, smiling even; after Quidditch practise, Regulus is stretching on the side of the pitch with his team; when James walks into the library, Regulus is at the table studying with Lily, reading over her notes with his lip caught between his teeth. The worst part of it, is that through all of these events, Regulus never seems to notice James at all. It’s as if he doesn’t even exist, that he doesn’t bother him when Regulus’ presence is like sand under his skin. When James heads up to the Owlery to send a letter, Regulus is there cooing at a scruffy little owl.
By this point, James is irrationally, furiously mad.
“What in Merlin’s name are you doing here?” he says hotly, letter forgotten. Regulus turns to look at him, eyes wide with surprise before narrowing; he can see what kind of mood James is in.
“Sending a letter,” Regulus says sharply. “I assume I’m allowed to do that? Or do I need permission from the Head Boy— sorry, I must have forgotten that part of the school rules.”
“You know that isn’t what I meant!” James splutters, indignant against the backdrop of the owls cooing overhead.
Regulus arches his brow, curved dark line. James can see the fine hairs at the edges, the tint of brown where the sunlight draws a line down his face. The only thing betraying his feelings is the trembling hand by his side.
“Do I?”
It’s a cold ducking under water, a flat and discordant note in a familiar song; James is pulled up short. If he didn’t know any better – and he doesn’t want to know any better – he would say that Regulus sounded hurt, underneath all the layers of haughty pureblooded stiff upper lip. If he didn’t know any better.
Well. If that’s the game he’s playing.
“Fuck’s sake, Regulus,” he bursts out and he hasn’t said the name in weeks, and it hits something– soft sunlight, warm sheets, golden butter melting into the grooves of his teeth. It hurts. “I don’t know what you want from me!”
“I don’t want anything from you!” Regulus almost shouts it. “I never have! You’re the one– the one that–” kissed him, followed him, shook his hand, was fucked by him–
“I’m not doing this,” James says, flat and final. “Fuck you, Regulus. Stay away from me.”
He storms back down the stairs, letter crumpling in his hand, a hot prickling behind his eyes.
James never checks the Prefect’s Bathroom schedule. Why should he? He’s been using it since Remus made prefect back in fifth, and in all that time, no one has ever used it after nine at night on a Tuesday. No one. So that becomes, unofficially, James’ time.
In many ways, it’s a highlight of his week. He finds himself looking forward to Tuesdays, to the relaxation of the hot water against stiff muscles, the luxuriation of not having to rush or muffle his wank. He’s humming to himself, muttering the password, swinging his shower caddy and still thinking about the cherry tart from dinner, so it takes him a moment to realise that the Bathroom is occupied.
There are clothes, folded neatly on the bench, a green-silver tie draped haphazardly over the top. The bath is filling, pink bubbles streaming in from the far-left tap. Steam coats the air. It smells like cherry-blossoms. And then–
Regulus steps out from behind the changing screen, a large white towel wrapped around his waist. He stops, dead in his tracks, eyes widening, when he sees James. That small crease appears between his eyebrows.
James feels a hideous anger roil inside of him, a sparking, dangerous thing. The air feels charged, chafing at James’ skin. It’s sixth year, only worse.
“What are you doing here?” They ask it at the same time, their voices bouncing around the vaulted ceilings. The synchronicity only serves to make James angrier– he doesn’t get to do that anymore.
“I booked,” Regulus snaps, looking more than a little hunted. “You can look. My name is on the sign-up sheet.”
“You! You b—“ James splutters, indignant. “This is my time!”
“What? Your name wasn’t on the sheet. I checked it!” James keeps glaring at him, like maybe that’ll make him go away. Regulus is flushing, red spots of indignation on his cheeks. “I did!”
“I don’t need— everyone knows this is my time!” James can’t get the words out right. They stick in his throat. He can feel the blood pumping through the artery in his neck, water frothing up behind a dam.
Regulus shakes his head crossly, letting out a huff of displeasure, then visibly reins himself in. “James, if you wanted to see me, this isn’t the place to do it.” His face has shuttered, that awful mask of placidity slipped down.
“I—!” James is now so furious he can’t breathe right. “I didn’t—!”
Almost gently, Regulus steps forward, his expression like a stranger’s overlaying a familiar face. “Please, James. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
This unleashes something deep in James. Something old, kicking and screaming and banging its head against the wall. The blockage of his words loosens, and they come tumbling out. The dam has burst and murky water is flooding down the valley.
“As if— as if! Regulus,” he all but spits the name, allowing all the venom to propel him forward. It feels good. Feels like a purge, feels like a hot and cleansing fire coursing through his body. “I don’t even think about you anymore. You fucking— you’re everywhere, and it’s fine, you broke things off, and I don’t even fucking think about it, and now this fucking bathroom, like I can’t even have one single place to myself—“ as he’s been talking, James has been moving closer. Forward momentum, he can’t stop. “And you’re fucking— not wearing anything, and I—“
They’re nose to nose.
James feels the last of his anger drain away, swirling down the drain in the tiles into nothing. The fire is retreating, trickling back from his limbs until it settles somewhere near his center, embers glowing orange, a deep earthy warmth.
“I—“
Regulus looks at him, steady grey eyes drilling a hole right through James. James looks back, panting. Time slows. Regulus’ eyes flicker, lightning-quick and just once, down to his mouth. The gaze feels like a brand on his skin.
“Regulus,” James says, whispers, breathes, and it’s like a spell is broken, or cast, and Regulus surges forward and clashes his lips onto James’.
The kiss is messy, angry, with none of the sweetness that had wrapped around them over the summer. It’s all tongue and teeth, and James loves it. Regulus’ hands are all over him, the warm weight of them creeping under his shirt, flat against his back. James groans, and Regulus pulls back, like he’s been shocked. He doesn’t take his hands away.
Regulus breathes heavily, his forehead against James’. The room is filling with steam from the bath, a sticky sheen of sweat forming between their brows. James takes an inhale, shaky and precious, and suddenly it feels profound, this thing they’re diving back into.
“Regulus,” he says again, and Regulus’ eyes flit open. James doesn’t even know what he wants to say next– he just needed to taste the name again, taste him again—
Regulus looks at him in despair, and James is cracked open, flayed raw with his want.
They don’t speak after that– as if that would be too much for this thread of whatever this is stretching between them, tenuous and strained already with anger and desire and hate and– and–
And really, the worst part is that this – the heat of Regulus’ mouth on his and his hands running along the length of his spine and his hair gripped between his fingers– is the first thing that has made James’ brain and all of his whirling thoughts finally stop. It’s as if he’s been in a room with a hundred people shouting at him for months, as if every muscle in his body has been locked tight with tension, and only now has he broken the surface and taken a gulp of sweet air. It’s as if he’s been drowning.
Regulus mouths at the curve of his ear, hand slipping down and palming at him, and James stops thinking at all.
The thing is– the thing is, James keeps promising himself that each time will be the last. It’s like a silent pact in his own head, shaking his own hand again and again, fingers crossed behind his back. He tells himself the Prefect’s Bathroom was a fluke, and really that it was normal, to have a last hurrah. An isolated moment, just something to get it out of his system, the dregs of whatever they’d had over the summer. Only it happens again. And again. And it keeps happening.
Regulus, catching his eye from the Slytherin table in the Great Hall at breakfast, a knife's-edge of desire slicing hotly down his spine as his eyes jump away, only to find his gaze again, again, again. It’s no wonder they fall into the nearest empty classroom, James’ hands already tugging at Regulus’ tie, his shirt rucked up to his chest. He gets to class conspicuously late and tells a bald-faced lie about an incident with the first years in the corridors. Regulus, after Quidditch practise, sweating with his hair plastered to his forehead; Regulus passing him on the stairs and the barest warmth of the back of his hand against James’; Regulus’ fingernails digging into his skin as James presses him against a wall in the library.
“Stop making so much noise,” James says, pulling back from where he’s diligently working at a mark just underneath Regulus’ collarbone– about as far up as he’ll allow him to go.
“I’m not–” Regulus hisses, and James can tell he’s about to continue with something pithy and cutting, so he drops to his knees and makes sure Regulus’ sentence doesn’t get finished.
Peter is asked to stay behind as they’re leaving Care of Magical Creatures, which is the only reason James is even hanging around by the greenhouses. He dropped Herbology after his OWLs– his only Acceptable grade, he’s sure the examiner had it out for him. Nevermind that his Flaming Tentacula could barely cough up a spark. He has no patience for memorising endless lists of genuses, fertiliser that stinks up his robes for the rest of the day, graphing leaf growth like it was important. The point is, he wouldn’t have ordinarily heard it.
Three Ravenclaw girls are stood around by the willow tree, the one between the greenhouses and the lake. They’re holding hands, like some kind of ritual circle. It isn’t even close to Mabon, so he’s really not sure why they’re doing it. He creeps closer, not snooping.
“My mum says she doesn’t want me to come back after Christmas,” one of them whispers, sniffing. “This year’s Defense professor–”
“Oh, I know,” the other one hisses, her hair so white-blonde she must be a Malfoy cousin. “Isn’t he horrible?”
“I heard that he’s been spreading talk about integration,” the third says, disdain mounting with every word. “Heard he spent time after his graduation in South America, says they don’t even have a Statute–”
James doesn’t get to hear any more, because Peter has just come bounding over, a rosy blush in his cheeks, talking about extra credit and Abraxan field trip. He puts it out of his mind.
The portraits mutter and grumble amongst themselves as James walks past. James stops and smiles at a frame depicting a host of wizened old men gathered around oak tables teaming with parchment. He’s always found it useful to be on good terms with the painted figures of Hogwarts. It’s a nice time of night anyway, his patrols all done with barely any issue– just another strange cluster of students looking fervently at something, a crumpled piece of parchment. They were broken up easily enough and bashfully retreated to their respective common rooms with just one stern glare from James.
“Hullo,” he says cheerfully, and a few of the men smile back, while others continue their conversations gesturing passionately at esoteric scribbled diagrams. “Anything odd tonight?”
“No, no,” one of them says. “Nothing to worry about, my boy, quiet night for us.”
“Well,” interrupts another. “There was that young Slytherin–”
“No, that was a prefect–”
“But not on duty,” comes an interjection from an old man with bushy eyebrows and a frankly overwhelming amount of facial hair. “And curfew is curfew!”
“Oh, he was only going to the kitchen,” says the first, exasperatedly. “Which is just where this one is going, so he can decide what to do when he gets there.”
“Yes,” James says,saying anything to get a word in before they start squabbling again. “Yes, exactly. Thank you! I’ll be off now.”
He leaves them still arguing behind him, the rumble of their voices fading as he walks quickly away. He wonders if they were that way when they were painted, personalities squeezed into being perpetually crotchety, or whether that was sheer old age.
James isn’t quite sure what he’s expecting when he ducks into the kitchen – prefect, said the portrait, and Slytherin, said the portrait, and he hadn’t exactly been hoping for Regulus but he had hoped it wouldn’t be Pious Prewett– only because he didn’t know him very well.
He first hears the sound of quiet voices over the comforting bustling noises of the kitchens; the sound of a pot simmering happily away over a fire, swelling domes of bread rising in pans by the furnace and sprigs of herbs twined together in bundles hanging from wooden frames. A head of dark curls, spelled into submission, comes into view above the rest of the elves.
Regulus is sitting at the end of the long table, his sleeves pushed up to his knobby elbows. One leg is drawn up under his chin and the other hanging from the stool; he has a sandwich clasped in both hands and chats through a mouthful at an attentive house-elf, her ears bobbing as she nods along. She spots him first, smiling in that nervous wide-eyed way they all do. James is halfway through thinking of what to say when Regulus turns and sees him. He sits up sharply, leg slamming down to sit up properly in the chair, hitting his knee on the countertop on the way down. It must have hurt an awful lot, but his face doesn’t give anything away. His spine straightens so stiffly and quickly it seems as though James had imagined his slouch, seems like he’s never suffered from a day of bad posture in his life. To top it all off, he drops his sandwich. It hits the floor with a soft thump, but he doesn’t give it a glance, tucking his hands under his thighs and staring at James, caught.
James, halfway towards the table, stops short. The spark of excitement and– something else in his chest shrank. Did Regulus not want to see him? The house-elf squeaks, and makes herself scarce, popping out of existence and reappearing on the other side of the kitchen. The silence between them stretches long, punctuated only by the far off murmurs of elves and the bubbling pots.
“Sorry,” James finally says, lamely, stupidly. Regulus doesn’t move. “Am I– I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
James watches as Regulus swallows the final bite in his mouth; had he been holding that this whole time?
“No,” he says. “It’s fine. Of course it is! I just didn’t expect– sorry, I mean,” he huffs. “I was just hungry.”
“I can see that,” James smiles, and he means it to come out teasing but Regulus flinches and he feels the corners of his mouth drop. He shifts on his feet. Regulus looks down and across the table. When he ducks his head, James can see the shadow of a bruise just under the collar of his shirt, and the sight of it makes his breath hitch in his throat, makes desire curl up in his belly, a satisfied dragon atop its hoard.
He licks his lips and tries again.
“Out past curfew, it’s like you wanted me to catch you.”
Regulus looks up, indignant and a retort gathering behind his lips before he pauses, seeing the grin on James’ face.
“Oh,” he says, and it makes James’ smile wider to hear the exasperation in his voice. “You’re joking. Right.”
“Right,” James agrees, and he sidles closer, like he’s approaching a wild, skittish animal. “I mean I’m glad I did. Catch you, I mean.”
“I don’t know if I would call it that,” Regulus says slowly, a little coldly, but James can see the flush creeping up the back of his neck. “Luc,k maybe. Or that you’re following me.”
“Oh, following!” James says, and he’s close enough now that when he puts his elbow down on the table and leans forward, he’s caging Regulus in, the warmth of his shoulder almost palpable centimeters away from James’ chest. “Sounds like the words of a guilty man. Are you doing something worth following?”
He wants Regulus to say yes, wants him to look up at him with that hot flame of hunger in his eyes. So when Regulus stiffens and stands up sharply, the legs of the stool scraping back noisily against the ground, James startles, pulling his chin back and leaning away from where he’d been drifting closer to Regulus’ heat; a moth to the flame.
“I should go,” he says sharply, and James blinks as he practically scrambles to walk away, quick and not-quite running.
“Wait– Regulus. Regulus!” He reaches out to him in an aborted movement, pulls his hand back at the last second. “I was joking! Come on– your food!”
“I’m not hungry,” Regulus tosses over his shoulder, “it’s fine. Don’t– it’s fine. See you later.”
James feels slightly winded, hand still outstretched, the conversational equivalent of a tornado.
“I don’t get it,” he says faintly. “What did I say?”
One of the house elves, a fairly young one, judging by the lack of wrinkling around her eyes, starts rattling off a retelling of their conversation. James cuts her off with a raised hand, and she quiets.
All thoughts of a late night snack forgotten, he slopes up to the dormitory, breathing a sigh of relief when all the boys’ curtains are closed.
Patrol is awfully boring. As Head Boy and Girl, Lily and James have to do one each every day, splitting the floors up between them and swapping times so they don’t get too complacent. Night duty is one thing– he does it after curfew, when the prefects have all finished, so it’s a quick one-and-done sweep for any stray students before he can head back to his warm dormitory. The afternoon patrols, though. James thinks that the Head Boy position is more of a curse than a blessing. The afternoon patrols are an exercise in determining what is worth his time. James doesn’t think of it as turning a blind eye, which sounds like he’s shirking his responsibility, and being horrible, besides. He’s simply– prioritising.
Hogwarts has always been a cesspool of teenage angst, and every one of the students seem to have tacitly, silently, agreed that they should hash it out every day, in the hour before dinner. Privately, James thinks his job is mostly unnecessary. Friendship spats are easily sorted out amongst themselves, and, he’s learned, are only prolonged by the intervention by a Head Boy. Especially friendship spats among the younger years. Especially friendship spats among the girls.
This is why James nearly walks away when he sees a group of second year Hufflepuff girls clustering around one of their number, who is audibly sobbing into a handkerchief. Before he can, though, one of them spots him, and puffs herself up, walking over.
“Excuse me,” she says, self-important the way only twelve year olds can be. “But you’re Head Boy, aren’t you?”
James tries not to laugh. “I hope so, otherwise they’ve given me this shiny badge for nothing!”
She doesn’t crack a smile. “I’d like to report something to you, please,” she says. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t joke. Katie is very upset.”
Just then, Sirius turns the corner, his arm slung around Peter’s shoulders. Their laughter echoes around the stones of the corridor. James looks at his watch– it’s just gone time for dinner.
“Ah– listen, if it’s something that bad, wouldn’t it be better to take it up with your head of house?” He’s interrupted– embarrassingly– by his stomach growling. Peter and Sirius have spotted him now, and are hovering down the way, waiting for him to finish. “Professor Sprout is very understanding! I’ve heard!” The girl frowns. “Or–” and he’s backing away, now, but he’d like very much to go to dinner and not have to deal with another kid whose crush doesn’t like her back. “Or, you could talk to Lily after dinner? If you wanted?”
“Fine,” the girl scowls, turning back to her friend. “Thanks for nothing,” she says, vitriolic.
“Making a few enemies, hey?” Sirius asks, playful, when James joins them.
“I think I’ll live,” James retorts, grabbing him into a faux-headlock and scruffling at his hair. “Dinner?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” says Peter, and they stride on to the Hall.
Keeping a secret — the secret — from James is unbearable. Regulus feels it squirming and painful in his mouth, a wound that his tongue explores relentlessly, a wriggling, bleeding tooth. If he just opened his mouth wide enough it would fall out, all bone and blood and tender gums. He can imagine it slipping out, parasitically attached to benign sentences, as if his body wanted to expel it from inside of him. Every word he says to James is now dangerous, tainted; I have Charms homework and my parents want me to get Marked. I missed you today, and I think my mother is frightened. I fell in love with you that summer and I think you’ll hate me after this but there isn’t any other way.
It doesn’t help that James seemed to have made it his mission to find and kiss him wherever possible.
“I have–” Regulus gasps as his head hits the back wall, “–class, James! James–!”
“It’s fine,” James said, and the reassuring effect was somewhat lost in the muffling of his voice from having his teeth in Regulus’ neck. “Just– they won’t mind. You’re not even– I can– give you my notes. Anyway, please–” He breaks away, frustrated. His eyes are bright in front of Regulus. He goes almost cross-eyed trying to keep James in his field of vision. “Kiss me!”
Regulus is more than happy to oblige.
He avoids the gaze of curious housemates, swollen lips and red ears, hair tousled. It’s obvious what has been happening, but as he sits straight backed in his Potions class, he can’t help but feel a tingle of gleeful superiority. He was making out with James Potter in every abandoned classroom they could find. Him! And it’s almost enough to make the rest of it go away, as long as he doesn’t think about it; the guilt, the shame, the weight that grows on his shoulders with each knowing glance from his housemates, each letter from home. And it works, is the thing. For as long as James doesn’t want to talk– and he never, ever does. It works.
“Hey!” James yells it, properly yelling as he hurries down the corridor towards the group of students gathered together in a mob-like circle– never a good sign. “Sweet Merlin– hey , wands down, everyone!”
He’s panting as he stops, half from the unexpected run and half from the adrenaline. It’s a strange mix of students, mostly Slytherins but some others, a few Ravenclaws, a Hufflepuff who looks on the verge of making herself scarce before James stops her with a pointed look. They look frightened, with the natural apprehension of being faced with a figure of authority but there’s still something– else. The way they glance at each other with the dregs of inflated satisfaction, the way that there isn’t any of the usual shame or guilt or embarrassment. They look, for lack of a better word, pleased with themselves. James sets his jaw.
In the center of them all, only visible once the crowd parts, is a first year, sniffling into his sleeve. He’s a Gryffindor, and James feels a pang of guilt at the way it takes him a few seconds to remember his name– Davies, Philip Davies. An unexceptionable sort, from what James could tell, fitting right in with the other first years and part of a steady group of friends, not making fusses in his classes and not making any particular impressions, positively or negatively. He’d just begun to get over that wide-eyed wonder that all the Muggleborn students had, coming to Hogwarts for the first time. Now, with tears welling in his eyes, robes rumpled, it is impossible for James not to feel a swell of righteous anger.
“What is going on here?” He crosses his arms and eyes down each of them, watching as they shift uneasily from side to side. Nobody comes forward, but he hadn’t really expected them to.
James leans down and gentles his voice as he tries to make eye contact with Philip, who is looking determinedly at the ground.
“Philip? Are you alright?”
Philip shrugs, nods, shakes his head. His lip wobbles. James waits, casting warning glances around the group, just in case they’re thinking of moving.
“I don’t know!” He finally bursts out, a plaintive wail. “I was just– I was trying to find my class and then– and everyone seemed so angry with me and– I don’t understand!”
“It’s alright, it’s okay,” James says, and he puts a steadying hand on Philip’s shoulder. “Hey, you’re okay! You haven’t done anything wrong. Why don’t you head up to the Hospital Wing and see Madam Pomfrey, tell her I sent you and that I think you should get a nice warm drink while you chat to her, alright? You know where to go?”
Philip starts to say something, then closes his mouth, nods, and after another nervous look at the silent huddle of students, darts off down the hall, his satchel of books thumping against his leg. James watches him leave, breathing out slowly, before turning around to look at the group again with an appropriately authoritative look on his face.
“Right. Are you sure you don’t want to say anything? Anyone? Because believe me, any explanation you give had better be worth it.”
Shuffling, sideways glances, and mouths firmly shut. James isn’t really expecting anything different, but he scowls still. It seems as though there have been more and more incidents like this recently, unrest in the corridors, and he wonders if it's just that he’s been conveniently in all the wrong – or right – places. He isn’t an idiot though. He knows – guiltily, very well – the sort of frenzy that can be brought on from teenagers being kept in such close proximity for years and years; the types of rivalries and silly spats and things that just escalate until you try and think back on what the original argument even was and really, it couldn’t have been one stolen sausage at breakfast, could it? He’d be a terrible hypocrite to pretend that Hogwarts has always been a kind place for every student that’s walked its halls, but he is invested in it being safe, for each and every young witch and wizard who passes through those great doors.
“Ten points off, all of you.” He says finally, and raises his voice at the groans. “ And detention, which will be handed out to you by your heads of houses. Now back to wherever you need to be, all of you, and don’t let me catch you again or it’ll be worse the next time, alright?”
He watches them all leave, arms crossed and eyes narrowed as they disperse fragmentedly down the hallway. He isn’t sure whether he handled that alright– never is really, toeing the line between a kind and guiding hand and bringer down of justice. He sighs. At least he knows that Pomfrey was the right call. There wasn’t any issue, in his opinion, that couldn’t be solved or at least helped with a hot chocolate and a good chat.
It isn't until Halloween that James realises something is going on with Regulus.
The other Slytherins— the awful ones, the ones who spit nasty things under their breath when Lily walks past— they hang around him more and more, clinging, like buzzing flies to rot. Even as Regulus refuses to entertain them, they draw closer; an arm slung around his shoulder on the way to dinner; a chair pulled up in the library and a whisper through a cupped palm. James watches Regulus’ face like a hawk, and feels, not for the first time, like a horrid snoop. He can’t stop. It feels like watching a broom in a tailspin towards the ground, a sickening accident in slow motion, even as he has no idea what’s going on. They don’t talk, not properly, so he can’t ask Regulus about it. Still, it creeps into their stolen moments in broom closets, the Owlery, the Astronomy Tower. Regulus grows thinner and sharper under his hands, and half the time has a horrible intensity in the way he looks at James, like he’s memorising his face. Like he might die before he sees it again.
The feeling sticks to his skin, dread and growing discomfort, an oil-slick slime. He doesn't know what’s happening, but whatever it is, he know isn’t good.
It’s around then that he really, really puts his foot in it with Lily.
They’re chatting after one of their patrols as they make their way back to the common room, one of those conversations that runs over a hundred different topics, like a river atop a bed of pebbled stones. Lily has just finished complaining about the latest friendship spat between the fourth year girls she’s had to sort out when James snaps his fingers.
“Ah! That’s right! I wanted to talk to you about this– if you’d noticed anything weird recently.”
“Weird,” she says flatly. “At Hogwarts. Surely not.”
James laughs, rolling his eyes at her.
“You know that isn’t what I meant. It’s just something I’ve noticed, that everyone seems–” he struggles for the right word, “I don’t know. Odd. The other day, that kid, Philip, there was this group of students messing with him, mostly Slytherins, you know the type, only– he didn’t even know why. And then of course they didn’t want to say anything to me but, it just felt a bit–” he finishes lamely, “off. I guess. What do you think?”
Lily has grown quiet next to him, and when James looks over he sees her mouth in a flat, unhappy line.
“Philip,” she says quietly. “He’s a Muggleborn, isn’t he?”
“Well, yeah,” James says. “But you know, he’s fitting in well enough, it’s not like it's that obvious from how he is– I mean he’s still a bit squiffy about the ghosts but plenty of kids are when they first get here. Anyway, I don’t think it’ll be because of that, he’s perfectly normal!”
It’s only when Lily stops and he has to look back at her that he realises, very belatedly, how that all might have sounded. She’s taking slow measured breaths through her nose, which means he’s really in trouble.
“Oh– oh bollocks, Lily, I didn’t mean it like that–”
“Perfectly normal,” she says dryly, coldly. James is in real trouble. “Great. I mean, you’re not even wrong are you, that’s the best sort of compliment you get if you’re anything but a member of the Sacred Twenty Eight. Perfectly normal, surprisingly bright, oh,you’re nothing like what I expected! ” Her voice goes shrill at the end as she cuts herself off, hand over her mouth as she looks away from him. Her cheeks are red.
James shifts his weight from side to side, feeling terribly awkward. That isn’t how he’d meant it and– he hadn’t even really thought of it as something sensitive for Lily! If he was really being honest with himself, he’d completely forgotten that she wasn’t at least a half-blood at all.
After a few seconds she sighs, and walks back up and past him, flicks her hand to tell him to hurry up and come along. They walk the rest of the way back in silence.
“Yes,” she says, right as they’re going up the stairs to the dorms, so quietly he barely hears her. “I’ve noticed. But I imagine we get quite different responses. Goodnight.”
The next day they meet for their after-patrol meeting, and it’s normal, so perfectly normal. So normal that it feels false, practised. James has an awful pit in his stomach the whole time, like he’s broken something special, and hadn’t even noticed until it was in pieces on the floor in front of him. He doesn’t say anything about it though, too invested in maintaining the normalcy, and they move on.
Regulus’ back is straight, rigid, as he sits at the dinner table, picking at a steak and kidney pie. There is a seam of fat along one of the chunks of beef, and it sickens him, that awful reminder that the meat in front of him was once alive, a living, breathing thing. He can hear his fathers voice in his head, it’s time to grow up now, Regulus. Leave the past where it belongs. He has never heard his father sound so tired. He has heard his father tired more in the past months than he has in his entire life.
He tries not to feel the same stabbing, aching pain when Sirius walks past him blankly in the corridor, or turns on his heel and avoids walking past him at all, or obviously, showily ducks into the nearest classroom. He doesn’t know if its better or worse when James is with him, an apologetic look on his face as he follows Sirius, Remus with a sympathetic smile, who has always had kindness in his tired eyes and unlike the rest of them has never done anything spiteful to Regulus, not ever, not even when he deserved it.
He knows what is coming for him, knows it like the pit in his stomach, once he has to go home for Christmas. He knows there is no stopping it, that this is how his story goes. Part of him wants to throw himself at Dumbledore’s feet and beg, plead for him to keep him at Hogwarts, to make up some horrible reason, to– to– to keep him safe .
He pushes his plate away.
He’s losing his chance. Regulus is pulling his shirt back on over his head, and James watches as the smooth expanse of his skin disappears under the rumpled fabric of his uniform. They’ve just finished up in the broom closet on the seventh floor – which, incidentally, seems a bit bigger than James originally remembers it being. To be fair, he’s not taking very objective measurements when Regulus’ tongue is licking at the inside of his mouth – and James needs to talk to him.
He isn’t sure why. It’s a mixture of things, really, of all the strange whispers and students clustering together like frightened sheep; the way arrogance has settled on the shoulders of a few Slytherins that James keeps getting a bad feeling about; the way Remus and Lily keep muttering in corners together, changing the subject as soon as anyone comes up to them. None of it makes sense, he doesn’t know what to do, and Regulus is in front of him, and so–
“Hey,” he says. “Hey, you’ve been– what’s going on with you?”
It’s clumsier than how he’d liked to have said it, and Regulus startles, freezing for a moment before turning to face him, face blank and calm. James hates it when he gets like this.
“Nothing’s going on,” he says, “I mean, exams, but–”
“Oh, but you aced those, I checked,” James says, waving him off. “As if you’d do anything else– no, I mean/ Well. I don’t know. You just seem so–” he gestures at him, up and down. “Weird, I guess, or I mean, like, I just feel like–” he huffs out a breath frustratedly, “I just feel like there’s something you aren’t saying. That you aren’t telling me. Are you okay?”
He’s worried, is what he doesn’t say. More worried as Regulus draws himself back, offended and haughty with his aristocratic nose.
“That’s not fair,” he says, with more vitriol than James expects. “That is not fair. This isn’t the deal.”
“The deal–?”
“The deal.” Regulus interrupts, ruthlessly. “As if you can care now about how I feel. You’re getting what you want, aren’t you? Aren’t the both of us? This,” and he waves his hand between them. “This is it. This is all we get, James. Don’t you go changing the rules now.”
James opens his mouth and closes it again, a fish out of water. Then, as Regulus turns to leave, he reaches out and grabs him, hand circling around his wrist, bony and fragile, and it bursts out of him.
“ This ! This is what I mean! You’re so– you’re so thin, I know you haven’t been eating, you look like you haven’t gotten a full nights rest in months, you keep hanging out with the–” his grip is firm around Regulus’ arm and he’s frozen now staring up at James and he’s too busy shouting to notice the growing panic in his eyes. James faulters, a little. “The, well, you know– the Averys and the Rosiers and– they’re— you know–”
“Not what,” Regulus says, cold. “My housemates? My friends? Is that it, James, you don’t like the company I keep?” He says the last part staccato fast, flying pieces of shrapnel. He snatches his arm back and pulls down his sleeve, buttoning it closed.
“No,” James says, mouth dry and something amorphous in his chest like anger, or sadness, or something just in between. “No, I suppose it’s none of my business, is it. Sorry Reg. Forgot myself there.”
Regulus watches, thin lipped and cross, as James puts himself together, tugs on his jumper. As he puts his hand on the door to leave, he pauses, turns back to see Regulus looking at him, for a second with something so hurt in his eyes that it almost makes him cave, makes him want to turn properly around and take two steps and kiss him. He doesn’t. He can’t think of anything to say, so he doesn’t say anything at all, just smiles wanly at Regulus, and closes the door quietly behind him.
As soon as the door clicks into place, a horrible pit opens up in James’ stomach. He’s gone about this all wrong. The hurt in Regulus’ eyes seems to follow him, radiating through the door at his back. He turns around, bursting back through the room.
Regulus – halfway through knotting his tie, straight-backed and miserable – starts. James doesn’t waste a second, striding over to him and capturing his waist in both hands.
“I’m sorry, Reg, really,” he says, dropping a penitent kiss onto Regulus’ forehead, onto his cheeks, his nose, each eyelid. “It wasn’t what I meant.”
Regulus sighs, put upon– and there’s a moment there, a fissure of hesitation, a heartbeat, before he accedes. Before he tilts his chin up, a concession, waiting for a kiss. James feels his chest swell with relief.
“You aren’t angry?” he whispers against Regulus’ mouth. Regulus doesn’t answer, just pulls him down and down, and James lets the words get lost between their lips.
Regulus waits all day, skulking around in the back-alleys of Hogsmeade, to get Sirius alone. He’d never realised, before, how much time his brother spends in the company of others, and how he’s always the loudest, the most boisterous, taking jokes too far and then whipping back around to soothe the hurt with a kind word, shouted over his shoulder as he runs along to the next thing.
Sirius is some kind of magic, always has been. He lives in a world with his own rules; never bowing, never bending to the will of another. Regulus has watched him for all sixteen– well. For fifteen years of his life. And he’ll never understand how he does it, that effortlessness. It’s striking, and yet, to him– the little brother, trailing after, the spare– it seems entirely exhausting.
The sun is just beginning its descent when Regulus finally catches his brother. The shadows are lengthening across the ground, pink and orange hues at the edges of the light, a watercolour wash heralding the end of the day. It had snowed, earlier, a light icing-sugar dusting, the first of the season. It covers everything in a fine white powder, not quite sticking, but enough to make itself known. As Sirius walks past, Regulus’ arm darts out, grabbing the edge of his robes. He hangs on, tight, tugging. Sirius whirls around, wand out and eyes narrowed. The tip of his nose is pink– Regulus wonders where his scarf went.
“What–” he hisses, and then his gaze tracks up to Regulus on the end of the arm still attached to his cloak. “Oh.” For a moment, there’s a flash of– a flash of something in his eyes. “What do you want?”
These are the first words they’ve spoken to one another since before summer break. Regulus takes a deep breath, and puts all his feelings to one side. Away, in a neat little box in the corner of his brain where all the neat little boxes like it go. After, when he’s alone in his dorm, he’ll take them out, examine the twisting betrayal, the terrible disappointment, and the knotty, thorny love underneath. Perhaps he’ll leave that last one.
“Sirius, can we talk?” He’s trying, trying so hard to keep the hope out of his voice. Sirius is looking at him, blank faced, that same odd look in his eye. “Please?” All of Regulus’ efforts to maintain his dignity crumble when his voice cracks on this last word.
“What do you want?” Sirius says, and his voice is cold, and bored; a flat freezing tundra. Regulus has always bored his older brother. He could never be warm enough, never interesting, or vibrant, or fun enough to be worth keeping around. Another deep breath, another feeling stuffed into the box.
As Regulus gathers himself, Sirius roots around in his pockets, patting down his jeans, his jacket before he pulls out a pack of cigarettes and his lighter – a lighter, how terribly Muggle! exclaims a voice in Regulus’ head – and before he can stop himself, Regulus blurts out–
“Can I have one?”
Sirius’ pauses, cigarette in his mouth and hand already cupped around his face.
“What?” The word is muffled and strange from how he has to talk out of the side of his mouth. He plucks it out and repeats himself, dark eyebrows coming together to meet in the middle of his forehead. “Did you just– do you even know how?”
Regulus bristles.
“Of course I– you think I would’ve asked if I’d never had one before?”
“Well–!” Sirius almost seems to bare his teeth, then appears to think better of it and breathes out a laugh instead, shaking his head. “Alright then. I’d just be a hypocrite otherwise. Don’t go running to Mummy telling on me.”
It is, admittedly, just what Regulus needed to settle his nerves. It’s almost nice, standing next to his brother and smoking in the crisp night air, smoke billowing out of his mouth to join the misty sky up above, stars caught between the fog and the clouds. Once his hands have stopped shaking, he decides to ask his question.
“Please, I need–” he stops, gathers himself. He’s only got one chance. “Please will you come home for Christmas?” It’s almost laughable, how pointless this is. Regulus knows the answer, he knows it even before Sirius’ face shutters, going from bored to angry in a moment; he knew before he ever even asked. But he has to try, this one last-ditch effort to– to do what exactly? Foist his fate onto someone else? Onto his brother? The one– the only one, bar Andromeda, that got away?
No! cries out a voice in his head, small and fragile. He’s the only one who— please– I need— I just need—! It’s futile, and gets snuffed out as quickly as it came, a white moth fluttering against stygian darkness.
Nice try, says a different, crueller voice, and it gives the end of the fishing line around Regulus’ neck a sharp tug. He takes another quick drag from his cigarette.
Sirius scoffs out a laugh – Regulus just catches the end of it “- the nerve!” – , before he turns, putting out the butt of his cigarette in one fluid movement and going to walk away.
“Wait–! Please, Sirius, I–” he’s scrambling now, frantic, hands in the dirt; anything to stop this, this horrible choking feeling. His eyes are wide, practically bulging out of his face and Sirius turns around, a look of utter disgust on his face like Regulus is worse than dirt– and he is, maybe not yet but he will be–
“Something bad is going to happen, I– something really bad, and–” there are tears in his eyes now, hot and stinging. The wind is whipping up around the two of them, and the lights are flickering on inside the buildings, casting Sirius’ face in a strange orange glow. He looks suddenly old– a man, almost. He looks very sad. Regulus battles on.
“I need– please, Sirius, I’ll never ask anything from you again.” He takes a deep breath. It rattles in his chest, his hollow lungs, the carefully packed box coming loose, spilling, emptied. “I need you there– I need my–” he doesn’t say brother, he doesn’t. “I need you.”
Sirius looks at him, really looks, searching his face. For what, Regulus doesn’t know. A gaggle of fourth years spill out of the Three Broomsticks, whooping and laughing. It’s nearly curfew.
“Regulus, I–” he begins, and his eyes are shining, catching the glinting light off the windows, the snow. Regulus feels something else shake out of the box, forgotten and crushed, something tiny and fluttering, a bird with a broken wing– is it– could it be–?
Then, a clattering behind them, and a sudden burst of noise as the door opens, laughter and cheer spilling out into the cold. They are still looking at each other. What a picture they make, two frozen figures; to any passerby they might seem barely more than strangers. Remus bounds out of Honeydukes, barreling straight towards Sirius. James and Peter are on his tail. Regulus shrinks back into the shadow.
“There you are, mate!” Remus swings an arm around his shoulder, and Regulus watches in real time as Sirius arranges his face into a jovial, bouncing smile. The life of every party, the centre of any room; the gravitational pull tugging planets back into orbit. “Thought we’d lost you!”
“Yeah, where’d you slink off to, you dog!” James says, good-naturedly rubbing his knuckles in the side of Sirius’ head. Regulus watches as he looks sideways, as his gaze slides across the wall and the shadow then catches on him, a small frown before— swinging his head back round to Sirius, and slinging another protective arm around his neck. “You alright?”
“Yeah,” Sirius says, and he doesn’t even look back once as they start wandering up the path. “Just got a little sidetracked.”
They’re off, back towards the castle, walking four abreast down the cheery streets of Hogsmeade; and what a picture that makes, those four perfect friends and their perfect friendships and their perfect lives stretched ahead of them, and this perfect moment now, where they are the kings of their own small world. They’re tight-packed into one another, arms twisting, always touching, a weird, eight-legged creature, sardines in a tin.
Regulus watches them leave, bereft and abandoned in the snow-lined street, and as he turns, as he walks away, he feels the one-winged hope inside of him waver, beating her wings against the water filled jar of his stomach as she tips, and falls, and drowns.
James
James, I need your help
James, I think something terrible is about to happen
James, can you please send me your family’s Floo address, I think
James, I’m really scared
James,
Merry Christmas. I hope 1978 is a good year for you.
X
Regulus
Notes:
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Chapter Text
Dear
Regulus.
Look, I’m sorry if I know things got a bit much last term. But is the silent treatment really the way to go? I’m beginning to feel like a lovesick abandoned third-year— I’ve sent three owls since break and all I’ve got from you is a piddly Christmas card.
Christmas Day at the Potters was much the same as it always is. Presents, roast, party. You know how it goes, I’m sure. Sirius and I I got up to some pretty inspired mischief on the various family friends that dropped in. Remind me to tell you about it when we’re back.
I miss you
Seriously, are you okay? I hope my owls are just getting lost or something. Maybe Mopsy is teaching me a lesson for all the wine we stole over summer and hiding your replies.
How are holidays at the Black family home? Reply back soon, please. I’m withering and fading without you (joke!!)
Don’t let the bastards get you down, Reg.
Love,
Yours,
James
It happens the day after Sirius’ birthday, and Regulus tries not to think about what that means.
It’s a family affair, with Him standing in the centre of the room – cold eyes, pinched mouth, long spider-like hands – smiling and smiling. Regulus can’t get the images out of his head, can’t stop replaying it in his mind’s eye, as he lies atop his blankets, in this horrible room he’d spent his childhood in. He had gestured for Regulus to come, gestured for him to kneel, and Regulus had. He had.
The Dark Lord is almost a decade younger than his own father, a fact that so horrified Regulus when he’d walked into the room that he’d almost balked, only saved by years of stinging hexes under tables of beautiful dinners. This was the man leading the charge of the Dark. He looked so ordinary, another Pureblooded, high-faluting man approaching middle age. His face had the same stretched, plastic look that many of the Society patriarchs had; the one that signalled too much time spent indoors, using Dark Magic, using glamours. The only remarkable thing about him, really, apart from the obvious and terrifying aura of sheer power, had been the warmth of his hand– real, human, alive– as it clasped around Regulus’ wrist.
He tries to be brave. He is trying to be brave.
The Mark hurt. It hurt when he’d been given– bestowed, graced, honoured with– it; and it hurts now. It throbs, an aching, nasty thing, unforgettable and unavoidable.
He thinks about how he doesn’t want this. A dangerous thought. He thinks about how he wants this, wants the strained, nervous look on his mother to go away and wants his father to stop looking at him like he’s nothing at all and he wants– he wants—
He is curled up on his bed, and James’ letter is open beside him, and he is crying, cradling his horrible, awful, dead, dead, dead arm.
Dear Regulus,
Have I done something wrong How are you? You’ve not been back for a week now. Is something I’ve tried using my Head Girl privileges to ask around, but nobody’s saying a word. Awfully loyal housemates of yours.
Sirius is James has Gosh. I’m picking up on James’ awful habit of scribbling out all his words. Listen, if you two have had a falling out, you’ve got a friend in me. Merlin knows he’s been a right dickhead to me enough times. You can tell me all about it if you’d like.
Hoping to hear back soon,
Lily
It’s the most Regulus has ever shouted at his mother. He thinks that something about him is frightening her. He is frightening himself.
“I’m not going back!” They are two hurricanes ripping through the house, and there are empty portrait frames on either side, curious eyes peeking out from behind painted furniture. “You can’t make me!”
“You–” Walburga is screeching, her voice reaching unholy pitches. “You will not disrespect us like this! You are going back to that school and you are going back now! ”
His hand is clenched around his wand and all the most terrible curses he has ever known are rippling just under his tongue. Instead of letting them fly, he laughs, and it’s a mirthless, shrieking thing.
“So what–” and his lack of decorum is shocking, but it’s like all his manners, all his humanity has been stripped away, flayed from him, sucked out and devoured by the thing on his wrist. “I’m of age enough to be some– some kind of political pawn for our family, but I have to keep going to school? Because my education is so important to you now? Because that is what is going to help me when I’m out there–” he gestures with his arm, his right arm, towards the window. “Torturing Mud– Muggleborns? Killing witches and wizards on the streets? Your grand plan, Mother? Is this –” he gestures to himself, mocking, “the great legacy of the House of Black?” He laughs again, throwing his head back, and he is in pain, so much pain, a fiery coursing awful hunger that won’t stop from eating him alive.
Walburga has gone cold, her spine ramrod straight and her hands trembling with rage. These are moments that Regulus would’ve found terrifying just a week ago. Now, if he looks inside himself, there is nothing but apathy.
“You will listen to me,” she says, glacier sliding across a bed of sediment. “You are the Heir to the Great and Noble House of Black and you have a duty– ”
“A duty!” He snorts. “A duty. What utter– utter bollocks. You still wish I wasn’t the Heir! If– if you had it your way it would be Sirius getting the Mark, and you wouldn’t care if I were alive or dead! Even after everything, even after–” he chokes, spit going down the wrong way, keeps rushing forward, “–you still hate that I’m the one here and he’s gone. Well–” his voice cracks, he hates himself for it. “Well he isn’t coming back. This is what you’re left with! This is how it is!”
His father is nowhere to be seen.
His mother stands in front of him and he has never before seen her this terrified, this furious, this filled with feeling. It’s unfamiliar, grating. The emotions twist her delicate features. She is hideous.
He keeps going, the bandage ripped off now, blood pouring, incessant, a fatal wound.
“You did this to me!” He rips his sleeve back, shakes that filthy, ugly Mark, right in his Mothers face, and watches as her eyes widen, lips white. Spit flies from his mouth as he speaks, and he feels like some kind of feral animal, something that was never meant to be brought into a home, domesticated. “You did this.” And he is sobbing now, great heaving sobs that shake his entire body, crumpling forwards and knees hitting the ground. “You did this. I never– You–”
And it is so faint, above him. A whisper of his mothers wand through the air, a spell cast so gently it sounds almost like a lullaby.
“ Imperio .”
Lily’s nearly done with her nightly patrol when she spots a first year out of bed in the fifth floor corridor, almost invisible in the window-seat by the portrait of Nero the Nervous. It’s only nine, barely past curfew, but usually the firsties don’t venture outside their common rooms after dark. Especially not Slytherins. And this one looks to be in a right state, her face in her hands, shaking with sobs.
“Bit far from home, aren’t you, love?” She says quietly, not wanting to scare the poor darling even more. It isn’t any use. The first year’s head whips up, fear painted across her blotchy face. Lily takes a seat, gingerly, next to her, holding out a handkerchief.
“I’m sorry,” is the first thing the girl gets out, once she’s blown her nose noisily.
“No bother,” says Lily. “I was up and about anyway. Want to talk about it?”
“No, thank you,” and even through the tears and the snot, it’s so prim that Lily has to hold back a laugh. For all that a Slytherin will stay a Slytherin, she does think that by the end of school they do seem to have shed a little bit of their pride, relaxed into their status.
“I miss my family too, you know,” Lily starts conversationally. “Whenever I come back from the holidays, I always feel–”
“It isn’t about that,” she says, cross. “I’m not a baby.”
“Of course you aren’t,” Lily soothes. “But it is past curfew, so if you’d not like to talk, I’ll have to shoo you back to your dungeons.”
The girl nods haughtily and stands up, clearly waiting for an escort. Alright, then. Lily has time.
As they walk, she finds herself thinking about Regulus. Something about this first year in particular sparks it for her. The way she looks down her nose, nevermind that Lily’s a foot taller than her– paired with the wobbly lip, something she’d only seen once, over the summer. The sheen of vulnerability peeking through Pureblood training, that’s Regulus, through and through.
They get to the flat stretch of wall that signals the entrance to the Slytherin dorms, and the girl– Lily never did learn her name– leans in with a suspicious look at Lily, covering her mouth and whispering the password to the stone. Lily decides not to tell her that, as Head Girl, she knows all the passwords– McGonagall has even let her set the Gryffindor one, once or twice.
She turns to go back the way she came, having done her good deed for the night, seen the first year out of the perilous woods of outside-after-curfew, of tears-in-the-Charms-corridor. Pleased with herself, she lets her thoughts drift, again, to Regulus.
She misses him. She wouldn’t have even called them friends when they left for the break, hadn’t spared him a thought while she was home for the hols, but now it’s been well over a week without him, and her study sessions in the library have felt lopsided, anxious, like she’s trying to read with one eye on the door. Stupid of her, it isn’t like he’s just going to turn up–
Which of course, in classic Hogwarts fashion, is exactly when she sees him, walking stiffly down the stairs she’s about to head up.
Lily waits at the bottom of the stairs, a smile playing around her lips. The light must be lower than she thought, because he doesn’t seem to notice her standing there. When he reaches the bottom step, she places a hand on his arm, her smile widening into a grin.
“Regulus! I’m so glad to see—“
“Get your filthy Mudblood hands off of me.” His voice is utterly, utterly cold, and his eyes are blank, but there’s a nasty twist in his mouth that makes her feel like he means it.
“Wh—“ she steps back, caught off-guard, winded. The empty corridor seems cavernous, his spat-out words bouncing around and around the flagstones, between her ears, rattling the lit sconces. “Regulus! That’s not—“ you can’t say that, why are you saying that, who—
She gathers herself up and looks down at him sternly. Lily Evans has never, ever, backed down from telling her friends when they’re wrong; that is an old hurt, scabbed and scarred and callused over. This is not the first time that she has been friends with someone who has hurt her. This is not the first time she has missed someone.
“That’s so out of line Regulus. I can’t believe– I’ll have to take 10 points off Slytherin.” She tries to pull authority over the hurt stabbing deep in her stomach, squares her shoulders. He doesn’t even react to the words, just standing there, waiting, blank faced. Lily might hate him, actually. She turns on her heel and walks past him, away.
It’s late, the fireplace crackling happily away where it’s eaten through great logs of wood and reduced them to hot glowing embers. Across the floor are scattered chocolate frog cards with frowning witches and wizards; Peter’s family always seemed to be convinced he’d starve on the way to school, and that his sustenance had to be given in the form of endless sweets. Remus is sprawled across the couch on his stomach, his head pillowed in Sirius’ lap. The last full moon had been a bad one– it always was without them, but they had been markedly worse, recently. It’s left Remus with several horrible scars across his chest, and a nasty laceration across the back of his scalp that needed an awful smelling ointment applied nightly. Sirius is doing it now, fingers of one hand stained green and the other brushing absent-mindedly through the long strands of hair at the crown of Remus’ head.
The portrait opens, and Lily walks through. James is about to call out to her, the words on the tip of his tongue– how’d patrol go? Didn’t I say there was no need for two of us? – when he sees her face. It’s milk-white, like she might be sick, her freckles standing out starkly. She’s walking up to them, her legs stiff and hands balled at her sides.
“Alright, Lil?” James asks, but she ignores him, going straight up to Sirius and whispering something, urgent, sharp syllables, into his ear. This is strange enough, made stranger when Sirius slides Remus out of his lap, shoots a cleaning charm at his hand, and runs– runs! – out of the room. When James looks back, Lily is gone, and he, Remus, and Peter all exchange bewildered glances.
It doesn’t take long for Sirius to stumble back into the common room, swinging his legs over the portrait hole. His face is ashen, like a ghost has walked right through him..
“What is going on out there,” Peter wonders aloud, his tone half-mocking. It’s met with silence.
Sirius walks straight up to Remus, murmuring something with bloodless lips. Remus pales, sits up and grasps at his hand.
“Pads? Mate?” James and Peter are sitting by the fire, ankle-deep in a game of chess. It isn’t really a good place for them to stop, but James has only seen this expression on Sirius’ face once before. Pale, silver dawn; the flash of blood. He stands up, twisting his signet ring, those godforsaken antlers, around, and around.
He’s sure it’s nothing.
Remus nods, once, and strides out of the room, robes trailing behind him, a man on a mission.
“What was that about?” Peter snips. He’s cross that James has abandoned their game. Sirius sits, gingerly, on the couch, and James perches next to him on the edge.
“Sirius?” he tries, soft. “What happened?”
“She– she–” his voice comes out in a creak, and it opens up a pit in James’ stomach. “She– did something. Reggie–”
James’ brain skips and he’s out of his seat, charging ahead, the Map whipped out of his pocket, watching Remus’ name approaching Regulus outside the Slytherin dungeons. He runs.
He’s tearing through the corridors, down the staircases, wild and afraid. He didn’t need the Map after all. He can hear the yells from a floor away.
When James reaches them, Regulus is shouting, blank-eyed, about filthy half-breeds. James is stunned. He hadn’t even thought that Regulus knew .
“Something’s wrong,” Remus calls, over the racket. He’s calm, calmer than James would be. “Sirius said–”
“Pomfrey, yeah?” James forces his panic down, right down. He can’t afford it, not right now. He doesn’t want to do it, doesn’t want to even look, but he must. “Regulus– can you–”
“Oh, it’s you .” Regulus’ dead-grey eyes swivel, empty sockets staring James down. His voice is a hiss. James has never seen this expression before, such writhing hatred, not even last year, not even in the early throes of their summer. “Fucking blood-traitor, Potter–” and it’s sneered, and cold, and something rears its head in James, anger, maybe, a ghost of the hatred of sixth year. Only now it is different. He knows that voice. He knows that voice, and for all his feelings about Regulus, for all he’s felt like he’s been watching a stranger walk around in his skin– here, a stutter-stop in his thoughts, something too large and terrible to comprehend.
Even without that, he has a target. The whole force, the tumbling whirlwind of his emotions has shifted, turned, laser-focused onto that woman – that harpy , he thinks, as Regulus’ voice builds in his ears, blaring. She is a mother , and James can feel his face turning red, words piling up against the seam of his mouth, a cork stopper on his lungs, not one of them something he can say. It seems simple to him, like all complicated things are; love. He’s looking at Regulus, at his wrong and empty eyes and his wrong and screaming mouth and he–he hates her. James hates her like he has never hated anyone before, and his ears are ringing with it. He does the only thing he can.
James raises his arm, and casts a clean, precise stupefy . The sudden absence of Regulus’ voice ricocheting against the walls is deafening.
“I think I’ve heard enough from you, hey?” He jostles Remus with his elbow, but his face– both of their faces– are pinched and scared.
They levitate Regulus’ stiff body to the Hospital Wing in silence.
When they arrive, they sit quietly as Madame Pomfrey casts diagnostics spell after diagnostics spell. The suspicion in her face at the admittedly dubious scene of James-Potter-Head-Boy – somewhat infamous bully – and Remus-Lycanthropy-Lupin – her favourite – levitating in the prone sixth year, has faded into an utterly still focus.
“One of you,” her wand doesn’t stop moving as she waves a spare hand in their direction. “I don’t care who, get his Head of House. And Dumbledore. Slughorn and Dumbledore, quickly now!”
James can feel Remus looking at him, a silent question, a hand on his shoulder before he’s standing.
“I’ll get them,” he says quietly, and again, a squeeze of James’ arm– low voiced. “I’ll be quick, promise. Secret passages.” And then he’s off, the swish of his robes against the stone floor.
Time stretches. There’s an ache beginning in James’ back where he’s sat hunched in the bedside stool. He can’t stop looking at Regulus’ still face. There is a tight pinched line of stress at his brow, the corner of his mouth. His hair is limp. Madame Pomfrey’s face is pale.
“James,” she says quietly, and he doesn’t know if it’s the first or fifth time she’s said his name. “James, dear, I need you to move out of the way for a moment. I need to do a private examination.”
“No.” He says it before thinking, then shakes his head, shudders from the back of his neck. “I mean– sorry– Yes. Sorry. I’ll–”
“You can stay here,” her voice is soft, so soft. “I’ll just pull these curtains and– you have to let go of his hand, dear.”
He releases Regulus’ hand with a flinch, fingers pink and white from the tension. There’s a hot prickling flush creeping up the back of his neck, embarrassment. He stands unsteadily, and retreats to the far end of the Hospital Wing and watches as white curtains fold shut with invisible hands, fresh white cotton, and the glow of Madam Pomfrey’s wand; the low murmur of her voice running through spell after spell; James’ slow, meditative breathing in his ears; his hands, numb; and then a door opening somewhere in the distance and three pairs of hurrying footsteps.
“Wh–” Slughorn is out of breath and his nightcap is slipping loose off his head and any other day James would’ve been bent over laughing but today– “What’s all this then? Lupin said– and Poppy–”
Dumbledore cuts over the top of him, sedate. He is looking at James over the top of his glasses, something considering in his gaze.
“As it seems Madam Pomfrey is still assessing the young Mr. Black, perhaps we can get a clearer story now from the two of you,” Remus, standing up straighter, James slouching further, “about the events that have transpired this evening.”
James looks sideways at Remus and catches him doing the same thing. It’s familiar, a flashing memory of McGonagall stood in front of them with crossed arms, the four of them in third year and jostling each other from side to side, a story that gets more unbelievable with each additional sentence from their young, guileless lips. It’s almost enough to get him to smile.
“Well,” he says slowly. He trusts Dumbledore. “It started with Sirius, I think.”
“And Lily,” Remus adds. “There was an incident earlier. I don’t– I don’t know the details.”
James glances at him, wide eyes. Remus shakes his head. Later .
“Sirius came into the common room,” James continues, retracing his admittedly blurred memory. “And– he didn’t look well. He went straight over to Moons– Remus. And then–”
“He said that Regulus needed help,” Remus filled in, voice smooth, “and that he needed to get to the Hospital Wing, as quickly as possible.”
“I followed him,” James says, and the Map is burning a hole into his left pocket. “And when I got there, Regulus was shouting. And– he–”
“It was out of character,” Remus says, succinct and awful. “We both realised something was wrong with him quite quickly. James–” a shift in his weight, left to right, “–incapacitated him.” A kind way to put a stunning spell. “And we brought him here.”
Dumbledore hums, a hand stroking at his chin and his eyes staring somewhere far in the distance. Slughorn is a silent, pale figure beside him. He opens his mouth, presumably to ask another question when–
The curtains swish open behind them. James turns, a moth to the flame. The only visible sign of Madam Pomfrey’s exhaustion is a wisp of hair curling out from her forehead.
“Dumbledore,” she sighs, “thank Merlin you’re here. This is– there has been a serious violation here.”
James flinches. Remus’ hand finds its way to his; a lifeline.
“What do you mean, Poppy?” Slughorn mops at his forehead with a handkerchief, his hat discarded. His face is a blotchy mess of red-pink-white. “Does he– will you need potions? Ingredients? I can–”
“Calm yourself, Horace,” Dumbledore intones. His eyes are fixed on Madam Pomfreys. “Let Poppy tell us herself.”
“Thank you,” she says, primly. She clears her throat, straightens her apron. “I– Well I suppose if you’re comfortable with the students being here?”
As the three adults turn to look at them, James and Remus straighten properly, serious gazes, responsible. Dumbledore’s mouth quirks into something of a smile.
“Yes,” he nods, “I would say that they should be here, as they brought the ailments of Mr. Regulus to our attention.”
“Alright then,” she takes a deep breath, “Well. The first thing I found was–” another breath, as if this is enough to make her sick, “–an Unforgiveable. The Imperius curse.”
James flinches again, and he feels it as Remus does too, full body. There is no doubt in his mind who has cast it. Slughorn’s face drops, and he becomes impossibly pale. Dumbledore’s face is unreadable, and still, there is a tensing of his muscles.
“That isn’t all,” she says, and here she hesitates, looks at them all individually, seems to come to a decision in her mind. “There are– there are many complex, dark spells working over him. Albus, I may need your expertise here. More than that, I can’t say.” Her eyes dart, conspicuous, obvious, to James and Remus.
James feels, distinctly, the curtain being drawn shut, the drawer snapped closed. There is a secret that they have been shut out of, a line drawn in the sand; they – the young people – and the adults.
His gaze drifts to Regulus, behind them all; his soft cheeks pressed into the hospital bedsheets; the soft flutter of his dark eyelashes against white cotton; his hands lying limply at his sides. He thinks again about what Madam Pomfrey has just said – Imperio– and feels bile crawl up his throat, imagines his mothers wand, how familiar it is, how comforting, the number of times she’s cast a Cheering Charm, a warm Lumos in the darkest night. Imagines it turned against him and a cold, distant voice casting an– an Unforgivable–
He turns, still clutching at Remus’ hand, and is sick into the nearest bin.
James waits, after Dumbledore and Slughorn and Pomfrey have disappeared. It’s late, the stars crowding into the small windows of the Hospital Wing. They wink, alien and far-away, unreachable and unperturbed by matters of humanity. The only disturbance, the only wrinkle in the silent blanket draped over them, is Remus, who is trying, periodically, to get James to leave.
“Come up to bed, James. He’s probably just going to sleep through the night.”
As the words leave his lips, Regulus stirs, fingers curling around the scratchy-soft coverlet on the bed. Remus starts tugging at James’ arm, urgently now.
“Seriously, Prongs, I don’t think– sometimes you don’t want company, when–”
“No, Moony,” his voice is sharp. “You go, please.”
Remus gets up, shooting a last, pitying glance at James, and walks away.
Regulus’ eyelashes flutter, and he opens his eyes. For a moment, just one, he looks happy to see James, warm-eyed, the ghosts of freckles sprinkling his cheeks. James opens his mouth to say–
And then the sun leaves Regulus, shutters snapping shut and leaving nothing, a cold absence on the floor where it had been beaming.
James watches Regulus, mute, mouth opening and shutting like a fish. He watches him as he snatches his robes from where they’ve been folded on the chair. He watches him grab his wand, deft, delicate in his grip. James sits, still gaping-mouthed and watching, as Regulus turns his back on him and starts to run away.
Regulus’ breath is catching in his chest, his heart thudding in his ears. He couldn’t do anything but run, not after waking up in the Hospital Wing, not after seeing James– James, with all his lightness and goodness– looking worried by his bedside. If he was in the Hospital Wing, that means Pomfrey– at least, and knowing his luck, more– knows. Knows his most secret, awful shame, knows the vile thing on his arm, the vile thing he’s pledged himself to, the vile thing he wants. What can he do but run? He’s a prey animal– no, that’s not right, he doesn’t get to be the victim here, but James’ footsteps are so loud behind him, almost as loud as the roaring in his ears, and–
James catches up to Regulus, grabbing his arm, when they are just outside the entrance to the Astronomy Tower. His hand is warm, and slightly damp.
“Reg– hey, I was worried, you didn’t write, and then–” James rambles, panting from his run. His eyes, the corners crinkled with relief and joy, bore into Regulus’ face, looking, searching, drinking him in.
Regulus’ gaze flicks down to the Mark on his forearm– staring out from the gaps in James’ fingers– just for a moment. It’s enough. James looks down too. An intake of breath, a sharpness. Shards of glass line Regulus’ throat.
Regulus feels wretched, his wrist caught in James’ iron grip. He’s trapped, a bird flinging itself against the bars of the cage. Useless. There’s horror in James’ eyes, bewilderment and betrayal, and Regulus realises James has probably never seen a Mark up close like this. That his family dinners were filled with light, and laughter, and warmth; that no one has ever sat at the Potters’ table terrified, white knuckled around polished silver knives; that the Potter dining room sees no boasting or ranting tirades, that James has never spent torturous seconds counting down, waiting with baited breath for the inevitable snap, the first glass shattered on the floor. That in the late-evenings, after all the guests have gone home, James Potter has never sat stone-still and watched as a house elf smooths shaking fingers over deep scars gouged into ancient wood, scorch marks licking up the wall.
The voice in the back of Regulus’ head starts up, mean and gleeful. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, it whispers. You thought this story would go another way? You thought– what– that you could escape it? That it wouldn’t matter? That the power of love– its disdain is sickening– would free you from your obligation? Naive, ignorant, simple, soft little boy.
James laughs, and it shoots through the air, a high, mean sound. The exposed Mark on Regulus’ forearm aches.
“I should have known! I should have fucking known that this was going to happen!” James’ voice is loud, and Regulus flinches away from it. His arm is still caught in James’. It hits Regulus that this is probably the last time that they’ll touch.
“I–” Regulus starts.
“What, Regulus –” he spits the name like a curse. “What? Are you going to tell me that they made you? That they forced you to do it? I know–” his voice cracks. “I know that he only gives it to those that are willing. Do you even know what they do? Cecilie Smythe’s whole family got wiped out the other day, and they weren’t even involved in politics. I was– I was in class when they told her, Regulus.” A high-pitched, wailing scream fills his ears, ricocheting around his head, breaking into hoarse, moaning sobs. An unimaginable grief. “Tell me– tell me you didn’t know what you were signing up for.” And here, his tone turns sickening, a pleading note wheedling its way into the condescending words. It turns Regulus’ stomach. “Reg, if they made you, somehow– I know there was a– a spell, and we– we can stop it. We’ll go to Dumbledore right now, he’ll help you, and you don’t have to go back– you can come and live with Sirius and me, and we–”
“Enough!” Regulus wrenches his arm back, hard, feeling something pop in his shoulder, but the pain isn’t anything compared to the relief of being free. He circles a hand around his wrist and rubs, as if to peel the feeling of James’ fingers off his skin. He bares his teeth, white, saliva filled mouth. Something far away from him wonders if he’ll be sick after this.
“You had it right the first time. I don’t need saving,” he spits out the word like it disgusts him, watches it land like some dead thing at James’ feet. “I— Nobody made me. I chose it. I did this. I wanted it. He—“ a cold laugh, two, James’ overlaid with the Dark Lord’s, a ringing in his ears, white hand on a long, twisted wand. “You know He only bestows it upon those who are willing. I was— I am, willing.”
James flinches back from him and something cold and wicked and mean in Regulus’ stomach relishes in it, snapping its teeth and twining further into his organs.
“You don’t mean that.” There’s something doubtful in his voice, as if he’s looking at Regulus with new eyes. He cradles his hand to his chest, rubs unconsciously at his palm where Regulus had just been.
“I do.” Regulus draws himself up. His voice sounds clear, strong. He pushes down the small, wailing part of himself that is throwing itself against the wall of his chest, the inside of his skull. “And I don’t care who knows. Tell your friends. Tell my brother. It doesn’t matter.”
He turns and walks away, walks back down to the belly of the castle, straight-backed and stiff, and he doesn’t look back at James, not even once.
The morning is awful. Somehow, everything seems worse in the light of day. When he gets up, Sirius’ bed is already empty. A cursory glance tells him that Remus’ is as well, barely a surprise. He can hear Peter still snoring away. It seems too normal, for Peter to be sleeping in, the dust motes catching in the sunlight and the soft smell of sleep still permeating the room.
James gets ready slowly, and doesn’t think about how he’s avoiding whatever is downstairs, as if staying up here, staying in bed might make it all go away, one long bad dream that can’t touch him for as long as his day doesn’t start, the future held at bay by this safe and warm cocoon. It’s not though. Already, the golden sheen of the light through the windows is fading, and his sheets are going cold. Already, time and all its change has seeped in through the cracks.
They – Sirius and Remus – are stood together in the common room when he makes it down the stairs, Remus’ hand curled around Sirius’ arm, Sirius’ forehead pushed into the curve of his shoulder.
He knows he has to talk to Sirius, but it’s only that– it’s only– he can’t stop thinking about it. All of them look as if they had barely gotten any sleep that night. He finally musters up the courage as they begin to make their way to breakfast.
“Sirius how are you–”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Sirius’ voice is flat as he straightens, turns, brushes past James. Remus – just behind him – shrugs, mouth twisted sympathetically.
“Alright, mate,” James says, slow, easy-going. “Talk about what? That was rhetorical.” He adds, hastily, as Sirius turns with a true stink-eye.
“Right,” Sirius says, still suspicious.
“What was all that last night!”
James groans as Peter rattles down the stairs from the dormitory, still pulling on his jumper.
“Nothing.” Sirius’ voice is sharp, and he hurries out the common room in front of them. His mood is such a dark cloud James can practically see it, heavy and rain-laden above him. It’d been a while since one of his truly explosive tantrums. He felt a pang of guilt; tantrum. It wasn’t exactly the word he should’ve picked when the picture of Regulus in the Hospital Wing was so clear in his brain, a ghost on the bed, so transparent he could’ve been blown away in the next gust of wind.
“But what happened? ” Peter hisses in James’ ear as they listen to Professor Binns’ droning voice, repeating the same nothings about Goblin-Wars and Wizard-Taxations that he has for the past hundred years.
“It was–” James looks around, even as he knows Sirius hasn’t taken History of Magic since third year, complaining how it was a boring, poncy subject and he couldn’t see the point in it anyhow. “I mean. Wormy it’s really– It’s a bit sensitive, for Pads I mean. I dunno, you should ask him about it.”
“But you know he won’t tell me.” Peter’s voice takes on a whining quality, one that James is intimately familiar with. “And you know, and Moony knows and– and– and I’m the one left out! Come on! Marauders!”
“Mr Pettigrew,” comes Binns’ creaking voice, and they both flinch. “What year did the Rebellion of Hogsmeade take place?”
“Uh–” Peter’s eyes are comically wide, practically bulging out of his face. James grimaces, flicks through his textbook (unread). “Um–”
“Mr Pettigrew,” the ghost frowns over them, his body half through the desk. “Quickly now, or it’s points from your house.”
“16–” he squeaks it out. “16–” A sharp whistle from across the classroom and his head shoots up to see Remus holding up a piece of parchment. “1612!”
Professor Binns blinks, once, twice, bushy eyebrows moving like aged caterpillars across his face. “Well! That is correct. 5 points to Gryffindor.”
“Oh thank Merlin,” Peter whispers, slumping down his seat. “Oh I’m going to kiss Remus right on his whiskery face after this, you see if I don’t.”
James supposes it’s too much to hope that he’ll forget to ask about last night again.
“Hey, Evans.”
Lily looks up, hastily swiping the remaining tears off her face as Remus sits next to her in a heap, sending her books clattering onto the floor. He looks exhausted, like he’s been chased down the corridors all night. She supposes she doesn’t look much better.
“Hullo Remus,” she says wetly, trying for a smile. “How’re you?”
“Alright,” he says easily. He isn’t looking at her directly, gaze politely averted as she shoves at her face with a handkerchief, sniffs audibly. “Just had Arithmancy– free period now. You?”
“I have Charms,” she admits, laughing self-deprecatingly. “And I’m skipping! Some bloody Head Girl I am.” She doesn’t know what she wants from telling Remus that; admonishment, maybe, or just a witness.
"Blimey, Evans, and here I was thinking you were crying about something serious!" He's joking, trying to get her to crack a smile– a proper one, not the wretched half-on thing spreading across her face currently. "Are you really? Crying about missing Charms, I mean?"
She gives a shrug, shoulders rounded. She knows she looks pathetic, hiding in a window seat like this.
"Lil–" and his voice is softer now. "You know, you're just another student," he elbows her in the ribs. "And a bloody great one at that. I've missed triple the number you have, and I'm okay.”
She leans into his side, conceding. It isn’t much, but it’s enough to have her feeling a little better. Lily finds herself wondering if a side effect of Lycanthropy is always having the right thing to say, or if that’s all Remus.
They sit quietly, on the empty stairwell, staring at the sky through the arching windows; there’s Quidditch practice going on outside, the Ravenclaw team running drills in blurs of blue and copper.
“James and I stayed up pretty late yesterday,” he begins, a bizarre non-sequitur.
“Oh?”
“There was a bit of an incident,” he looks at her sideways, “with a certain mutual acquaintance of ours. The Slytherin one.”
“Oh.” Her stomach, which had just been settling, flips, curdles.
“I think,” he says, and he’s choosing his words carefully. His hands fiddle with a bit of string in his lap, two loops, a knot. “I think that he would be alright with me telling you. We had to take him to the Hospital Wing last night.”
“The Hospital Wing?” She sits up. “Well is he—“ alright ? Lily hears him saying— sees his twisted up face. Imagines if she were a different person, her wand burning at her hip.
“Sirius reckons his mum did something to him.” Remus’ hands falter, trembling slightly before he picks the pattern back up; loop, loop, knot. “I… think that I would agree.”
“Right.” There’s something complicated happening in Lily’s stomach. Something cold-hot-angry-sad. “And you’ve told me because—“
“I just,” and here he puts a hand on her leg, reaches further and takes her hand — shaking — into his. “I thought you should know. What he said to you was properly, properly out of line. I’m not dismissing it, of course I’m not. But there might be more going on than we think.”
“Sure,” Lily says, and doesn’t think about childhoods of scabbed knees and tree-climbing and dark hair running through the fields. She feels flat, deflated. “Thanks.”
“No problem. And hey, if you need those Charms notes, let me know.” Remus slaps his hands on his thighs and stands up, a middle-aged gesture that makes Lily think of her step-father. He smiles down at her. “Don’t feel like you have to talk to James about it if you don’t want to.”
“Thank you, Remus,” she repeats, and it feels truer, now. “Really. You’re way too good for those boys, did you know that?”
He laughs, hefting his bag back onto his shoulder. “Yeah, Lil. I’m aware.”
It’s almost comical, how easily they slip back into routine after that night; James and his friends, Regulus alone. Except– it isn’t routine at all. Regulus misses it, the hexes, the heckling, the shoves in the corridor. At least that meant James was paying attention to him. Now, it’s like he’s a shade, or a boggart, or some other horrible, worthless thing, and James avoids him like the plague.
He and Sirius are the same in this. It would be enough to make Regulus laugh, if he found anything about this funny. Turning on their heels in the corridors when they see him coming, eyes sliding deliberately past when he’s unmistakably in the way. It’s like there’s a bubble around him, a shield that he never put up, and James slides past it unruffled and unbothered.
It would be easier to play-pretend at normalcy if there weren’t still the teething problems, the grooves of well-trodden paths that became sinkholes overnight. Lily tries to sit with him in the library, after the holidays. She looks nervous, a horrible tense smile on her face. He looks at her, blank, as she stands over the table, and he doesn’t think about her in a sweet white dress over the summer, doesn’t think about the writhing thing on his arm that means he might kill her one day, doesn’t think about the needle-sharp teeth he’s expected to sink into her neck. When she sits down, he gets up, chair scraping against the wooden floor. He leaves the books, picking up his bag and walking away.
He doesn’t know why she’s bothering. He sees Severus lurking around the corner, behind the bookshelf, that hungry, desperate look in his eyes. The disgust in his stomach churns, and he doesn’t know whether it's for Severus or himself.
When Bartemius Crouch Jr. sits down next to Regulus in Potions, it’s a surprise. He puts his bag down faux-casually, slouching down into the seat as if nothing is out of the ordinary. Regulus is – only marginally – sure that he had been previously sat next to some other hapless Ravenclaw, maybe a girl, even.
They don’t speak that first class, beyond the usual required amount of ‘pass that here’ or ‘have you stirred that three times clockwise?’ so Regulus dismisses the change of pace as a strange whim of Crouch’s– who he’s never really known anything about, aside from derisive comments around dinner tables about his father and his too-obvious ambition. Embarrassing, was the general opinion, to have his aspirations displayed so transparently on his sleeves.
The next time they speak, Regulus is asking him to go and get the bat spleens when Crouch interrupts him, leaning toward him and smiling. Regulus looks at him oddly and pulls away, but he doesn’t seem to notice– or care.
“You don’t have to call me Crouch, you know,” he says, congenially. “Honestly, all it does is make me think you’re speaking to my father, bad old Senior. I prefer Barty– more me, don’t you think?”
He waits for Regulus’ response with a crooked and over-eager smile, still leaning forward, and really most irritatingly, still not getting the bat spleens.
“Barty,” Regulus says flatly. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to recall that in friendly company that’s what your own father prefers. Apple not very far from the tree after all, are you? I’ll rephrase. Barty, could you go and get the bat spleens. Please .”
Barty’s smile wavers, but remains fixed in place. One thing a parent in politics is good for then. He nods, and disappears to the storeroom. Regulus watches him leave, then shakes his head, looking back down at the potion which is turning a distinct and froggy shade of green, rather than the desired violet. Pointless.
“–and the blood is so much more potent than hair of course,” intones Slughorn at the front of the class, waving his wand languidly as the chalk scribbled rapidly across the board. The class is in varying stages of rapt–bored–and completely asleep, if Avery’s forehead flat against the desk was anything to go by. “But the cost of unicorn’s blood… well. You would be alive but at what cost? Not one worth paying, no. Not one worth paying at all. Enough of that. Turn to page three hundred and forty two, and we’ll get started on Dreamless Sleep.”
This time, Barty, Regulus can admit, is being exceedingly helpful. Has been for the last few classes if he’s going to be honest, even if he still doesn’t understand why– not that he’s trying very hard. He is finding more and more that his time is being swallowed up by His wishes and machinations.
Rosier cornered him the other day to talk to him about the ceremony, face paler and more solemn than he’d ever seen, none of his usual humour anywhere to be found on his face. His family had decided, he’d said– the Rosier’s had been on the fence it seemed, with cousins that felt it was better to keep courting the balance and those that saw the rising Dark Lord would feel no amount of favours to those he perceived as wavering in their loyalty. Loyalty– it almost made Regulus want to laugh. What a thing to call it, this mix of fanaticism and utter terror, loyalty. Yet wasn’t that the very backbone of their Houses, their families? Wasn’t it just the same, now funnelled into the greater cause, His cause?
Rosier had been frightened. His questions had all been evasive, skittering around the point until Regulus finally teased it out of him.
“Does it hurt?” He’d said, voice so low that it was just a hissed whisper across the air, eyes big and hand tight on Regulus’ arm. It was so– so childish that it almost made Regulus want to laugh. He would’ve, if it hadn’t cut him so close to the bone. If it hadn’t been exactly what he had been afraid of, in the end.
He looked into Evan’s face, eyes large and watery blue, his upturned nose and the smooth porcelain surface of his well-bred face. The Rosier’s had kept their hands out of the dirtiest of politics for a long time. Regulus had the distinct sense – pupils huge and black, hair at the back of his neck standing up – that this was another slip, rocks scattering down the cliff, the endless, slow decline into the darkness. He saw— Saw, if he’s being frank with himself— Evan’s limp body, face squashed against the cobbles of Diagonal, eyes staring out at nothing, the swirl of red robes and black Auror issued boots stamping around him. Evan didn’t matter to them— the boots moved around him like he was a piece of discarded rubbish on the ground, like he was less than that, like he was nothing at all. It wasn’t his first vision of a death, but it was his first of a peer, a classmate. Regulus choked down the bile.
When he told Evan that it hurt, it was the most honest he’d been in a long time. It didn’t help either of them. It didn’t help the aching, the constant aching under Regulus’ sleeve. It didn’t stop what Evan knew was his inevitable fate, hurtling towards him.
He doesn’t know if it’s better when people seem gleeful about it– as if it’s just another part of school, Quidditch, House points, who was in His confidence or not. Shoulder nudges and meaningful glances and coded exchanges in the corridors; as if it’s all a game. Regulus doesn’t want any of it but it seems like he doesn’t have a choice, as though he is now– as if the Mark doesn’t just sit on his forearm as an ugly black thing, as if it is growing larger and larger until it someday will subsume his identity itself, until it doesn’t matter who he might be or what he might think. What matters is what he has chosen. Whenever he sees James, Sirius, all of them in passing it makes it all the more acute. What matters now, is what he is.
Barty Crouch Jr. waits for him outside of class that day, artfully casual, blasé in that obvious and overhanded way. He falls into step with him as Regulus sweeps past, eyes fixed firmly ahead. It seems as though he’s given up on the dance of toeing around his point and meaningful glances.
“I know what you’re doing,” he hisses.
“And what is that?” Regulus is quite proud of the way his steps don’t falter, up the stairs and to the left and is Barty really going to follow him the whole way to his next class?
“You know,” Barty says, stride lengthening in order to try and catch his eye, back curving and now Regulus can see the frantic element in his gaze. He doesn’t even seem to care about the light of day streaming in through the windows, the placid chattering of their fellow students and the warmth soaking into the stone tiles. “ Him. The Dark Lord.”
Regulus stops short, a group of first years parting around them like minnows, heads down but glancing back at them curiously. He scans the corridor briefly then turns promptly into the nearest empty classroom; he knows Barty will follow him.
As soon as they are inside he whirls around, wand sparking at his side and enunciating each word crisp and clear.
“Are you an idiot, Bartemius, or do you just have a death wish?”
“What?” Barty looks surprised, a wide-eyed and stupid look. It’s all clicking into place for Regulus, the way that he’s been bowing and scraping and frankly, now, looking back, not being subtle in what he wants at all. In fact, Regulus is almost surprised it has taken him this long to spit it out.
A beat of silence. The tableau: Barty, faux surprised but his eyes trained hungrily forward, swaying toward him as if by magnetic pull; Regulus with his wand drawn, straight backed and chin tilted up, mouth one thin, straight line.
“You’ve got my attention,” Regulus says, finally, each syllable crisp and clear in staccato rhythm. “Now come on. Spit it out.”
What he doesn’t expect is for Barty to come forward, one-two step until he’s right in front of Regulus – too close! – and he flinches back, almost on instinct but it’s too late, and he’s grabbing his arm, tight-red-and-white-knuckles, and shoving his sleeve up to his elbow unceremoniously and then–
And then it’s there. The vacuum of silence, the black hole beating and falling inwards on his arm: the Mark. Regulus has a moment, only a moment of incandescent– rage, fear, disgust, anger, anger, anger, before he wrenches his arm back, away from the cagey grasping fingers of Bartemius Crouch.
“I want it,” Barty says, fervent wet mouth and bright eyes. He doesn’t even seem to care that Regulus has retreated from him, is cradling his arm to his chest. His gaze is fixed on his forearm as if he can see through the sleeve straight to the black and pulsing serpent. “I am– I know I can be of service to Him. I must be of service to Him.”
Regulus laughs, mean and ugly. His wand is shaking in his hand and he has three hexes lined up on the tip of his tongue.
“You ? You seriously think you can be of service –” mockingly, “to Him, that he would even want you while your father is running up and down the country killing every Pureblood he disagrees with? For what? For his petition for Minister of Magic? As if he doesn’t know that all of us– all of us, we are the Wizengamot.”
“I hate my father,” says Barty, which may be the truest thing he’s said to Regulus so far. “He is– he is wrong. He is a fool , he is–”
“He is,” Regulus says, regathering himself, “the head of your House . I don’t care if you disagree with him, I don’t care if you’re rebelling against him! It is not– I don’t care!”
It isn’t as if Barty doesn’t have a chance. The Crouch’s– recently disgraced as they are through the machinations of Bartemius Crouch Sr. and his mudblood wife, are still a powerful family, a powerful name, an only recently fallen scion of the Sacred Twenty Eight. But it would be different if his position wasn’t so clear, if his father hadn’t already marked their line in the sand. The Dark Lord isn’t– it seems profane, almost, to use him as some sort of misguided teenaged rebellion.
Regulus sighs. Barty is silent, a sullen look on his face as if he’s been slapped.
“If you really–” he holds up his hand at Barty’s intake of breath, “if you really want this. Fine. Who am I to stand in your way? But don’t talk to me about it.”
He levells him with narrow-eyed glare, and doesn’t let up until Barty nods contritely.
“But then who should I–”
Regulus casts about for a name– any name, honestly– someone in the crowd, obviously, but not too much and–
“Severus.”
Barty blinks.
“Snape?”
Regulus nods decisively. He’s quite proud of himself for that one. A quick and easy solution. One that takes this whole mess firmly out of his hands. He leaves Barty, and the situation, in the classroom behind him as he leaves. He’s late for Charms.
James’ final year at Hogwarts seemed to be split, quite neatly, into Before and After. The months after James found out about Regulus became a hazy whirlwind, made up of tooth-baring grins and an ever-growing list of Last-Times— last Easter holiday, last Quidditch game of the season, endings and endings, piling up around his ears. The whole Regulus incident– it feels like a blip, honestly, a dark spot in an otherwise completely normal year, the final year. He refuses to let his mind wander back to it. It was an unfortunate mischaracterisation, an indiscretion, summer house cabin fever, and nothing could have convinced him that he could have turned whatever their torrid affair was into something real.
He’s filing out of the Quidditch stands, his voice hoarse from cheering– last Quidditch match, a close one between Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw– when a piece of parchment pops up in front of his face– a nifty trick from Zonko’s, by the looks. He reads it before it disintegrates:
Sixth & Sevenths– Masquerade in Ravenclaw comms. Tell the statue any old thing, the riddle’s a piece of piss this week. Beverages kindly and unknowingly provided by the DMLE. BYO smokes.
“Oi!” he reaches over, nabs Sirius by the shoulder, but he’s already turning towards James, a sparking grin on his face.
“Thank Merlin,” Peter says, coming up behind them. “I’m due a decent snog.”
Remus groans. “Have you ever kissed a girl that isn’t off her face, Worms?”
“Nope!” Peter pops the ‘p’, and Remus looks a bit aghast. “Have you ever kissed a girl, ever, Moony?”
Remus grins, his eyes sliding across James to meet Sirius’.
“Nope,” he echoes. Sirius– perplexingly– begins to flush.
“Right!” James decides to put a stop to this before Sirius gets nervous. “What’re we going as, lads?”
This is a joke. They’ve been wearing the same masks to every masquerade since fifth year. There’s at least one a year, since the Ravenclaws like to get airs, and can’t throw a normal rager to save themselves. It isn’t very creative, but it’s what they’ve got.
Lily shows up to the party late, hanging off Mary’s arm. Her mask is slipping down her face, the ribbon tied shoddily, probably mucking up her hair at the back. She straightens it when they reach the statue.
“What has a thumb and four fingers but is not alive?” The statue intones, looking as disappointed as a statue can at the three tipsy girls in Gryffindor colours.
“A glove,” Lily says– at the same time as Mary goes– “A taxidermied gorilla!” and Marlene shouts– “My nan!”
“Well reasoned,” the statue sighs, rolling forward to let them through.
The party is in full swing when they get inside. In credit to the Ravenclaws, they’ve done up their common room and they can throw a bloody good function. Lush blue brocade curtains fall gently from the ceiling, coppery bronze stars glinting from between the folds in a disgusting show of house loyalty. They create shadowed alcoves interspersed throughout the room, little pockets that seem to shield you from the world, lit by sparkling golden lights that hang themselves like tiny suns, like stardust against the navy blue-black fabric sky. Someone has cleverly enchanted the chandelier in the middle of the room, and it spins gently, the flame-light of the candles casting wavering ghostly shadows against the walls of the room, of animal masks twisting and turning, light refracting through crystal glasses. There are swan-necked strings of pearls bedecking the silvery arms of the chandelier, hanging down over top the guests like plump and opalescent wisteria. Music flows out from an unknown source, a crooning woman’s voice crackling over top of the hum of conversation. There’s a veritable feast of a platter laid out on the long table at one end of the room, already pecked at with cheeses oozing over silver blades and ample bunches of grapes spilling over each other like Dionysus’ hoard. Lily’s eyes snap, as though drawn, as though summoned, to James, wearing his usual stag-mask, dancing with abandon in the middle of the room. She flushes bright and hot under her mask. She’s come as a doe, flopping ears and freckled nose. She’s liked them ever since she cast her Patronus for the first time a few months ago, and she’d forgotten all about James’ masquerade costume until she’d gone to get ready for the night– and by then it was too late. She’d been holding out a hope that he would have gone for something else, for once, but– no dice.
She turns to complain to Mary and Marlene, but they’ve already got their masks (a cat and an owl) pushed up to their foreheads, lips locking like they can’t breathe without the others’ help.
Remus comes bounding over, a black crow, tonight. A cigarette dangles from his fingers.
“Lil!” He’s drunk, but not wasted, not falling down. “Come have a fag with me,” he pauses, taking in her mask. “Matching with Prongs? Something you want to tell your good friend Remus?”
Lily is suddenly, furiously glad about the low lights and the mask covering her upper face. She’s sure she must look like a tomato by now. But she’s never been one to shy away from what she wants, and she’s had just enough vodka to nod, wink, and saunter away to the drinks table. A sixth year Ravenclaw is there, wearing a raccoon mask and tending the bar.
“Drink, dearie?” He leers, a grotesque pantomime of the trolley lady.
“What did poor Mrs Potts ever do to you?” Lily says, before gasping. “Was that a pun?”
The boy grins. His incisors are uneven, poking vampirically into his lower lip. “Compliments of my bastard of a father’s cellar, madam, I can offer you tonight a fine Firewhiskey, an above-average Elven wine, or a Muggle beer with Pixie Dust mixed in– what’ll it be?”
“Whiskey, please,” Lily says, not feeling daring enough for a Pixie Beer. Some Gryffindor, she giggles a little to herself. Taking her drink, she walks back over to Remus, who is waiting for her by a cracked open window, arching tall and elegant above them. They’re hemmed in by the pooling stream of silk, rippling out with the gentle breeze to give the effect of a cascading waterfall, one lonely starburst of light hanging overhead.
“Good so far?” He asks, blowing a stream of smoke over her head. It wisps gently upwards, meandering towards the open window.
“Can’t complain,” she replies, knocking back half her drink in one. “Seems I’ve got some catching up to do.”
“Right you are,” he says, pouring something into her cup from a flask and shooting a cooling charm at it. Always detail oriented, is Remus. “James is on the Pixie Beers. In case you were curious.”
“Braver man than I,” she grins back. “Bum a puff?”
Remus lifts his cigarette up to her mouth, holding it as she inhales. The burn of the smoke hits her mouth, her lungs, making her head spin. She smiles, leans against the wall.
“You can finish this one, if you’d like,” Remus says, half-distracted by someone across the room.
“Please,” Lily sighs, and he gives her a sweet peck on the cheek before floating off into the crowd.
She watches, for a moment, the writhing mass of bodies– it hits her, again, the sour-sweet reminder that this might be the last Ravenclaw Masquerade she ever goes to. It’s wistful, this last-time feeling. Been happening with increasing frequency, too. She sees a head of black curls, feeling her stomach drop momentarily– why would he come, why would he want to– and then the figure turns, and it’s Sirius, wearing a shirt unbuttoned to his sternum and a black dog mask, hitched high on his head. He throws his head back, laughing with abandon, white teeth, and she sees him in camera-flash snippets, her mind saving it up.
“Hullo,” comes a voice from beside her, jolting her out of her reverie.
“James!” It comes out too high-pitched, too eager. Embarrassing, how keen she sounds. James doesn’t seem to notice.
“Having a good night?” He asks, pulling his mask up. He looks dazed, a little, and strange without his glasses. His eyes glint, pupils massive in the dim light, black-brown pools drawing her in. An unlit cigarette hangs from his lips. Lily nods, not trusting herself to speak. She sways, a little, pushing her mask up to her forehead.
“Have you noticed,” James continues, not noticing her blush. “Have you noticed that we’re matching?”
“What?” Of course she has, of course, and she’d been subject to an hour of teasing from the girls back in her dormitory as well, but she’ll die before she lets him know. “Never, are we?”
“Yeah,” he says, swaying towards her. They’re very close. He takes the cig out of his mouth, tucking it behind his ear. “I’m a stag, and you–” he plucks the cigarette out of her mouth, flicks it out of the window next to them. “You’re a doe.”
“Really,” she whispers, stupidly, nonsensically, and then they’re kissing. James’ mouth is hot, and sweet, opening almost immediately under her lips. He tastes like beer and tobacco and copper, like he’d been biting his lip before he came over. He does something clever with his tongue, and she lets out a gasp– who taught him to kiss like that? His hands are at the curve of her waist, pulling her in by the small of her back. She’s pressed up against his body, the whole warm line of him. She smiles into his mouth– his wonderful mouth, and he pulls back, kissing her once, twice, quick little pecks, before he breathes out hard, his forehead resting against hers.
“Worth the wait?” She jokes, and he laughs into her mouth, pressing them together again, a slow, sweet, drag of his lips against the seam of hers.
Then he straightens suddenly, his hands leaving her. She feels their absence like an ache.
“I have to tell Padfoot,” he whispers, and she laughs, but it peters off. He’s serious. “Wait here?”
“James–” she wants to protest, wants to keep kissing him, wants him to stay, but he’s already halfway gone, eyes looking beyond her.
“Wait here!” He laughs over his shoulder, and she waits a long time, but he doesn’t come back.
When James wakes, his head hurts, and he’s surrounded by blue. He groans, a terrible and pressing ache beginning in his bladder. Judging by his state, he had fun last night, though he can barely remember it– they’d started off with Dwarven Gin right after the game, and each had a line or two of Pixie Dust before they left the dorm. As a result, the rest of the night is only James’ in snippets, playing through his mind like a Muggle film– flashing lights on the dancefloor, laughing at Lockhart, a cigarette by an open window– something else that he can only remember in the heartbeat thundering of his ears and a warmth spreading out from his chest. Probably the Pixie Dust. He disentangles himself from Peter’s squidlike grip– Merlin, but he’s a clingy sleeper– and stumbles out of the alcove.
The Ravenclaw common room is a mess. There are the usual casualties littered about the room: glasses tipped over on their sides resting crystal heads against the floor, scattered remnants of feathers and fur and what have you, shoes kicked off in migratory patterns underneath tables and couches that are equally strewn with jackets and shawls and– scandalously– a pair of bras. There’s already a pair of house elves hard at work, directing a cavalry of brooms and dusters and gathering student belongings into heaped floating piles.
There’s one Ravenclaw– a second year, by the looks– reading a book by the fire. James spares a moment for the humiliation of the moment, the Hogwarts Head Boy unsteady and mortally hungover, before his need overcomes his pride. He has to clear his throat twice before he speaks.
“Bathroom?” It comes out hoarse, croaking. He sounds utterly wrecked. The Ravenclaw sighs, points, and he nods a thank you to her, hightailing it across the room.
Once he’s sorted himself out– had a piss and a puke, and necked an expired hangover potion from under the sink– he makes his way down to the Gryffindor Tower. Halfway there, he remembers he left Peter snoozing in the alcove, but he’s a big boy, and he can sort his own self out by now. James can’t face climbing all those stairs again.
Climbing through the portrait hole, he’s brought face-to-face with three things: first, Remus, grinning over a cup of coffee, a network of hickeys patchworking his throat. Second– oh, Merlin– a heaving mass of third years, because of course, it’s a fucking Hogsmeade weekend. And third– Lily Evans, watching him with a very strange amalgamation of feelings splashed across her face.
They’re about halfway down the hill when James starts thinking something might be going on. He’s staring at the back of Lily’s head, frowning, the swaying of her ponytail back-and-forth a hypnotic rhythm that was doing no wonders for his hungover stomach. Right before they’d left, she’d sidled up to him, tucking a piece of hair artfully behind her ear. She’d looked far too well and put-together for the morning after a Ravenclaw get-together, she even looked like she’d managed a shower! James had looked down at himself, with the clothes he’d thrown on in a frantic tumble of one-minute-to-get-ready, hair still a mess and what felt like a film of bile and alcohol still lingering in his mouth even after a militaristic dental charm– he’d never really gotten the hang of those– and felt utterly inadequate, heinously unprepared for the role of Head Boy, chaperone and friend to needy third years.
“James,” she’d said, her tone light and casual, “I’ve heard that the cakes at Madam Puddifoot’s are rather nice these days.”
“Really?” He said. He hadn’t heard anything of the sort. “I didn’t– I mean, that’s nice.”
“Yeah,” she said, slowly, as if she was talking to someone a bit thick. They’d been doing something strange where they weren’t really looking at each other. At least, Lily hadn’t really been looking at him, and he was following her lead. She seemed to be in a sort of sideways glance-and-smiling mood. “Cakes are probably better shared though, don’t you think?”
“Right,” he drew out the word. It felt like he was treading water, and the conversation was a current moving underneath his feet– there was something else going on here but he wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe– “Would you– d’you want to go? Together? To Puddifoot’s?”
Lily had turned to him then and beamed, and James had to blink in the face of it, full daylight opening the curtains.
“James! How nice of you to ask. I would love to. Well– see you down there!”
Then, bafflingly , she’d leant forward and pressed the whisper of a kiss to his cheek, before turning away and flouncing away to the front of the pack, clapping her hands together and gathering the third-years into some semblance of a line.
This is the predicament he finds himself in now, watching as she leans over to listen indulgently to a third year, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and squeezing, probably offering some big-sisterly advice.
“Madam Puddifoots,” he says, under his breath. The third year walking slowly just in front of him startles, glancing back before spinning his head back around, ears red. “Why not… why not the Three Broomsticks? Why–”
“Um,” says the third-year, eyes round. “Um– am I meant to– are you asking me?”
James is about to laugh and tell him no when he stops himself, pushes forward to fall into step with the kid in front of him— was he so small when he was in third year?– and nods.
“Yes! You know what, yes. Why do you think a girl–” a girl because while Lily is his friend, it seemed that at this moment, friendship was being superseded by her girl-ness, “would want to ask you to Madam Puddifoot’s. Hypothetically, of course.” He adds, genially at the end because– well– his newest advisor does seem a bit wet behind the ears and like he’d scream if a girl looked like she even wanted to hold his hand.
“Er,” he says, his knuckles whitening on his satchel. “My big sister says that if a boy asks you to Madame Puddifoot’s then it means he has a crush on you and wants to take you on a date.” James’ eyes widen, and the boy hurries on. “But I don’t know what it means if a girl asks you! I haven’t ever asked a girl to Puddifoot’s, not even Madeline Fromage, and everyone wants to invite her– I haven’t even had my first kiss yet, and if Joey Biggs tells you different then he’s a fat liar, I never liked him anyway–” he catches himself rambling, words tumbling over each other to a stop. “I’m sorry, um, Head-Boy-James-Potter, what was the question?”
James laughs. “Being thirteen is tough,” he says.
“I’m nearly fourteen. In April,” the kid retorts, miserably.
“Right, well. Thank you, that clears it up,” James replies, still utterly clueless. “And don’t worry about your first kiss. When it’s right, it’ll happen.” He congratulates himself on advice well-given, and falls out of step with the third year, his eyes drifting back to the back of Lily’s head. Honestly— Girls! James would never be able to figure them out.
They set the third years free at the entrance to Hogsmeade, watching them stream off into Honeydukes and the Three Broomsticks. James’ stomach turns at the thought. The idea of putting anything into his body right now is a dangerous one. He shifts his weight back and forth, suddenly wrongfooted and stupidly nervous at the idea of being alone with Lily.
“Shall we go straight there?” He asks, breaking the silence. Lily crushes a leaf under her shoe.
“Want to go for a walk first? You’re looking a bit green,” she replies. James is ridiculously grateful for the suggestion. Surrounding himself with the pinkened frillery of Madame Puddifoots would be terrible, and the wind is picking up.
“Please,” he says, trying to keep any pathetic gratefulness out of his voice. “I’ve some cobwebs that could use blowing out.”
Lily laughs. “Isn’t that a Muggle turn of phrase?”
James shakes his head, starting off on a random path. “Wizards have cobwebs, too!”
They chat around the subject for a while, trading notes on idioms from their disparate childhoods and making up silly rumours about their classmates, keeping half an eye on the third years still milling about the streets. James slowly begins to feel better, the knot in his stomach unfurling.
They end up by the river– well. Hogsmeade technically has a river, but it’s more of a trickle, muddy banks and foliage often utterly obscuring the thin stream of water that dribbles from the Great Lake. It’s a scrubby place, really, the trees just barely beginning to bud after their long winter. The gravel path crunches underneath their feet, and pebbles go skittering off with each step they take. The both of them are quiet, having run out of things to say in their sideways conversation. James can see shoots of new growth trying to shove their way up through the still cold and cracking dirt, the damp layers of mulch from endless frosty mornings. It’s the awkward time between the changing of the seasons, the part where you wish it could all just hurry along already, be verdant and lively and full of colour and life. It’s like the earth's version of getting spots, too-long limbs and feet growing seemingly overnight. The wind is quite strong, now, whipping Lily’s ponytail nearly straight up into the air.
“James,” Lily says, a question in her tone.
“Lil,” he copies, dragging out the vowel sounds like she did.
“Oh, don’t–” she starts, and he grabs her wrist.
“No, I’m sorry! I’m sorry. What were you going to say?”
“Well– I just, I wanted to talk about last night, and I really did want to try those cakes, and I thought, well, two birds, but now we’re here, and–”
“Wait, talk about last night? Is that why you invited me to Puddifoots?” James interrupts, the question barreling out of him before he could stop it. Merlin, he hopes he didn’t do anything too embarrassing.
“Of course it’s why I invited you to Puddifoots! What did you think?” Lily is starting to look cross, a little pinch between her eyebrows. Her arms are crossed, mocking.
“Well I don’t know, I thought it would be– I thought you were–” James stumbles over his words. Takes a deep breath. Tries again. “Listen, Lil, I know this is ridiculous, but I really didn’t know what to think, and it’s not like I haven’t asked you out a thousand times, but I thought you wanted to be friends, and I–”
He has to shut up then, because Lily is kissing him. Lily is kissing him! Her lips are soft, and sweet, tasting of some kind of sugary lipgloss. He unfreezes, puts his hands on her waist, deepening the kiss. Her tongue flickers into his mouth, once, and it’s enough of a shock that he pulls back, breathing a little fast.
“I thought–”
“You’re always doing that, James,” Lily says in a whisper. “I wish you wouldn’t,” and she moves back in.
This time, James doesn’t stop it. He lets his face tilt to the side as their mouths meet, his neck tilting down as hers tilts up. It’s an exercise in temperature, the warm friction between their lips and the cold skin of his cheeks. His eyes are still slightly open, thin slits in his face where he’s peeking at her between his lashes, a nosy neighbour behind the blinds. Her face blurs but he can see the freckles just underneath her eyes, her strong brows and the curve of her nose. She’s a good kisser, enthusiastic but not too much. She loops her arms around his neck and his hands fall naturally to the curve of her hips as she presses forward and flicks her tongue against his lips, tasting the top and bottom. He smiles a bit and nudges his nose against hers, feels her mouth open in a soft hot gasp. They get lost in the dance of it, the back and forth of small movements, of learning each other's mouths. When James pulls back, they’re both breathing a bit heavier, mouths red and kiss-swollen, Lily’s eyes gleaming with satisfaction; the cat with the cream. James licks his lips and watches as her gaze flicks down, following the movement.
“Does this mean–?”
“Yeah,” Lily has a pretty blush dusting across her cheeks. James wants to kiss every single one of her freckles. “If you want.”
“If I want!” James lets out a whoop, startling several birds out of the trees. “Lily Evans, will you–”
She pulls him back towards her, laughing, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yes, you silly man, I’ll be your girlfriend.”
At that moment, perfectly, so perfectly, the sun comes out from behind the clouds, the rays filtering through the empty tree branches and hitting Lily’s face. Her eyes look so green. James kisses her again, long and deep.
They hold hands all the way back up to the castle.
James is on his way back to the common room, having left Lily to go to the library– honestly, that girl never stops– when he spots Remus, wandering out of the Great Hall.
“Moony!”
“Ah, Prongs, good to see you up and about,” Remus says, a sly grin quirking up the side of his mouth.
“Up and about? Mate, I’ve been down to Hogsmeade and back! And–” he’s going to tell Remus about Lily straight away, but he remembers something from this morning, and pulls Remus’ scarf to the side instead. He leers. Remus is pants at healing charms, especially on himself– and the hickeys from this morning are still purpling up the side of his neck. “Who’s the lucky lady, Moons?”
“The luck– James?” Remus looks heartily confused, which turns James’ teasing on his head.
“Don’t tell me you don’t remember,” James says. “You weren’t nearly as gone as the rest of us.”
“No, I– wait, I thought Pads told you,” Remus says, suddenly looking mighty shifty.
“I haven’t even seen Sirius today, the lazy sod,” James laughs. “Probably still laid up in bed with his girl-of-the-week, given he wasn’t there when I woke up with Pete in the Ravenclaw comms.”
Remus laughs too, still a little on edge. He gets like that sometimes, prudish in the strangest moments.
“So, who?” James prods.
“Oh, I think I’ll leave that for me to know and you to wonder about, my dear,” Remus says.
“Not a good enough reason to give me a deer pun!” James shouts, but Remus is already hightailing it away on his stupidly long legs. James gives chase.
Regulus is minding his own business, wandering back to the common room after dinner, when he sees someone storming towards him. He steps back, to get out of their way, but– ah. No, it’s him they’re storming towards.
“Snape,” he says, coolly. “To what do I owe this, pleasure?” Regulus is sure to make his voice fairly drip with sarcasm. It wouldn’t do for Severus to think he actually enjoys him.
“Why did you do that?” Snape hisses, bitter, coffee-tinged breath blowing into Regulus’ face. He wrinkles his nose on instinct.
“Pardon?” Regulus can’t possibly think of a single thing he’s done to Snape, not since third year when he pinched his Potions notes– helpful, but when Nott had pointed out that Snape was a Half-Blood, he’d stopped. Unbecoming to be seen to rely on those beneath the House of Black; use but not rely. “What did I do?”
“You set Crouch on me,” Snape snaps.
“Oh, that,” Regulus says. He’d forgotten. “I thought it was something bad.”
“It is bad,” he says, uncomfortably close. “He’s like a bloody rottweiler, and he won’t leave me alone!” He raises his hands, despairing. “What the fuck have I ever done to you, Black?”
Regulus is struck by his intensity, and he does wonder what a rottweiler is– a breed of Crup? An unhelpful aside. “What would you… like me to do?”
“Take him back!” Snape says, his beetly black eyes bulging. Regulus thinks he’d rather die than be that unfortunate-looking.
“Ah,” Regulus answers, “no.”
“What?” Snape is aghast, his brows twisting up and creasing his forehead.
“No, I won’t.” He’s thinking about the essay due in Arithmancy, two feet of parchment which he’d meant to start working on during dinner– and which he’d never get to if Snape didn’t finish buzzing around with his inane questions.
“Why?”
Regulus rolls his eyes, involuntarily. “He isn’t my kind. I’m doing it as a duty to my House, to my legacy,” he’s leaning into Snape’s face, now, looming, a dangerous note creeping into his voice. “He’s just doing it to get back at his piece-of-shit father. Now wouldn’t you say that’s a little like you? Am I wrong?”
“Yes– wait, no–” Snape splutters.
“Oh, no? The Half-Blood Prince? You’re practically flaunting it, all over your notes. Disgusting,” Regulus spat, and turned on his heel. “Keep him,” he tossed over his shoulder on his way through the dungeons. “Perhaps the Dark Lord can find some use for the two of you, but I honestly couldn’t care less.”
Falling together with Lily is so easy, after the Masquerade, their kiss in Hogsmeade. James supposes it makes sense. It feels like the end to a particularly satisfying storyline, one where they’d been chasing each other day and day out, and now they were side by side, and the easy smiles became easy kisses became lounging together in the common rooms, at meal-times, any spare moment out of class.
He tries not to think about how easy it had been to fall in love the first time, and how hard it was— how hard it still is, trying to fall out of it.
The differences are just their growing pains, from the second-time-around, from the way Lily’s mouth under his is different to the one he’d gotten so used to. But habit was just that, something that could be broken and reshaped and remoulded. He likes Lily. He might even love Lily.
Sex with Lily is different too. It’s loose, fun, the two of them laughing against each other's lips, fighting for air and racing to make the other finish. There isn’t anything missing from it– that isn’t it. It’s just that it’s never desperate, never want-you-need-you-now-now-now . James finds himself craving seeing Lily unguarded, completely given over to the sensation, wanting her eyes glazed, rings of green around pools of black. This doesn’t happen very often. Their sex is mostly cursory— something to do on a sunny afternoon, a rainy morning.
It becomes something of an internal competition, to James, to see if he could draw out the flush on Lily’s chest, make her thighs tremble, make her squirm beneath him, so that he could see her wanting, needing – the way– well. Nevermind.
He’d look up, nose still buried in her thatch of hair, to see her staring back at him, bright eyed. She’d say something cutting, teasing, a smile playing on her face, and he’d sigh to himself. Not even close.
When he stops to think— and he tries to make this a rare occurrence, he really does— James feels a pang of sympathy for his sixth year self. He’s got Lily in his lap, nipping gently at his ear, and he should feel like the luckiest man in the world. He does, and he can hear his younger voice screaming at him to enjoy it. But all he can do is watch, as Regulus, across the Hall, pokes at his food, his gaze distant and bottom lip protruding, ever so slightly. He’s gotten very thin, lately.
James doesn’t care. He doesn’t, and Regulus did this to himself, anyway. He drags his gaze away and squeezes Lily’s arse.
Regulus finds out about James-and-Lily somewhere in between vomiting in the third floor bathrooms and the blur of classes-essays-exams; which is to say, he almost doesn’t hear about it at all.
He doesn’t even remember who told him, some snot-faced fourth year who couldn’t wait to run their mouth. He remembers shouting, a bit, and Rosier’s hand on his shoulder, the back of his neck, practically wrestling him back to their dorm room. He’s standing above Rosier, now, and they’re both panting, and Rosier looks terrified, trapped, bloody. Nott is peeking around the door.
“Slytherin’s great saggy balls,” Rosier breathes, wipes his bleeding nose. Regulus’ knuckles ache. “Get it together, Black. What’s got you in such a mood?”
Regulus stares up at him moodily, sneers, bares his teeth. He wouldn’t be able to say, even if he wanted to.
“Leave it,” says Nott, quietly from the doorway. “Come on, Evan. It’s dinnertime.”
Rosier shoots him a dirty look as he leaves. “I was just trying to help you, you twat. You could at least say sorry.”
He scrubs at his skin in the shower that night until it’s pink and sore, a lobster under the hot steaming water. His arm hurts, and it’s almost enough to pretend that it’s just that, a surface level twinging, not the bone deep rotting ache that has overtaken his senses one by one.
He’s thinking of James, and the spray of the water isn’t enough to distract from the hot stinging tears tracking down his face. He feels discarded, and feels ridiculous for feeling that way, and feels like you can only be discarded if you were cared for in the first place and–
He thinks it was childish naivety that kept him thinking that James was ever, ever , seriously going to–
James Potter is going to marry Lily Evans and then he will have done his duty to his House, and he will never, ever, think about little, meaningless, secondary Regulus Black ever again.
It doesn’t even matter anyway. The Mark stares bleakly back at him from his arm.
It’s swelteringly hot, the way the school always gets right before the break. No amount of magic baked into the stone walls of the castle is enough to combat the way heat sank into every crevice and hung in the air, the kind of heat that sits on your skin and breathes out, hot and clammy.
James’ hand trails against the walls as he climbs the stairs, the arrow-slit windows in the stone letting in yellow-white slivers of light. He bemoans any and all circumstances that were sending him up here— namely, being a good friend. Remus had left a book in the Astronomy tower, and desperately needed it but was too busy to get it, and James, being the saint that he is, offered to get it for him, since he has a free period anyway. Only now, now that he’s climbed up so many flights of stairs with his hair sticking uncomfortably to his forehead, does he regret that.
He isn’t sure what it is that alerts him to another presence in the tower when he finally reaches the top: perhaps it’s the door, pushed slightly open, or the rustling of wind through an open window, the strange and animal ways that one body knows the presence of another. James pushes the door to the classroom open gently and he sees him, head pillowed on his sleeve and eyelids shut against purpling, sleepless skin, back hunched and thin wrist just barely revealed by the shadow of his robes. James stops, heart and breath catching in his throat, hand still on the door, one foot stepped forward into the room.
He almost walks all the way in, the string in his chest tugging him forward, the memory of that night; the terrible look in Regulus’ eyes, the vitriol and the coldness and— and the wrist, caged between James’ fingers, where James’ brain keeps stumbling like a floorboard jutting slightly up under his feet— the hunted, frightened, cornered animal that was behind it all. That is what keeps coming up, like a sickness at the back of James’ throat. That is what keeps pushing him to step forward and reach out and help him, help him.
Regulus shifts, a hitching exhale that makes James freeze in his tracks, but he doesn’t wake, pushing his face into his arm and the shadow, turning away from the sunlight beaming hot and strong against the surface of the table. His sleeve rides up with the movement— and there it is. Black and writhing lines set deep into skin. The last time James saw it, it seemed raw still, reddened and puckered, skin caught halfway between rejection and healing. He doesn’t know if he would call what this is healing, doesn’t know what he would call it, what it is when something has forced its way into your body and has made its place there, when it has embedded itself without care for flimsy resistance; if you can call it an invasion if you extend the invitation; the fault of the vampire when you open the door.
The wind shifts again, clattering against the window, and James turns, walking swiftly away. He isn’t brave enough to stay, to let Regulus’ gaze stray from anything but bleary confusion, to even see him wake and flinch at the shadow running from the door. No, he is already halfway down the stairs, down to his friends and his life with an apology to Remus on his lips and his hand at Lily’s waist to stop from trembling. Back down to sunlight and sweltering heat and a future that doesn’t feel like a wavering silver blade.
It begins when Remus doesn’t show up for Charms, which is normal enough, seeing as he could probably pass all his NEWTS in his sleep if he wanted. James doesn’t think anything else of it, until he walks into the common room to see Sirius pacing the floor back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth, muttering under his breath all the while.
“He’s been at it for an hour,” says Peter mournfully from the couch. He turns, putting his head in his hands. “Please, James, make it stop!”
“Alright, alright,” says James congenially, putting his hands on his hips. “Dad’s here. Come on Pads, what’s going on?”
Sirius doesn’t stop his pacing but does raise his voice to an audible volume.
“It’s– Dumbledore called Remus to his office and I don’t know why, and that was this morning and he wasn’t at lunch or Defence, and he never misses Defence, why would Dumbledore want to talk to him, and does he know? About us? Do you think he knows? But then why not–”
“Hey, hey, hey,” James strides forward, takes Sirius’s head into his hands cradling him just behind his ears. His curls spring out from between his fingers. “Hey, Pads. Come on. It’s alright, you– what, you said that Dumbledore called him in for a chat?”
Sirius nods, miserably. James bites his lip. He’s trembling, he can feel it, the tremor running through his body underneath James’ hands, one long bow-string pulled to the absolute.
“Well what’s the worry then?” He tries for soothing, thinks he comes out somewhere around convivial sympathy, “Dumbledore is Dumbledore, he’s always got something going on. Honestly he’s probably making Remus take a break, if anything, you know he’s been working himself to the bone recently!”
Sirius shrugs, nods, looks down and away on the floor as if finding some new and intricate detailing on the rug he’s never seen before.
James frowns, worrying at his lip with his top teeth trying to think of something to say when–
“Remus!” Peter exclaims from behind them, with so much relief that James wouldn’t have been surprised to turn around and see the second coming of Merlin. “Thank goodness! We’ve all been worried sick!”
Before James can say a word, Sirius is already out of his grasp and across the room, pressing his hands to Remus’ face, his shoulders, hands, any part of him he can reach as if to convince himself that he’s real and hale and whole in front of him.
“Sirius– Sirius! Sirius get off, come on, I’m fine.” Remus is– he’s smiling to take the edge off his words but as James looks closer, he’s not happy either. There’s a tired dragging under his eyes that was different to what had been there this morning, his shoulders sagging under a new weight.
Sirius pulls back from him reluctantly, but not by very much. There’s silence for a moment, filled only by the crackle-pop of the fire behind them, the murmuring of two first years in the corner, heads bent over a piece of parchment and too far gone into homework to be paying any attention to their conversation. They have a wordless conversation, Sirius and Remus, in that way that only they seem to have mastered, meaningful glances and a tightening of corners of mouths and–
Remus turns and walks up the stairs to the dormitory, and Sirius jogs along behind, shooting a look behind them that even James can interpret– don’t follow, be back soon!
James and Peter look at each other, heaving twin sighs of exclusion– there’s always been something between Sirius and Remus, something extra, something special. So they’re used to this, a little. It’s like Sirius can’t help but make whoever catches his gaze feel as though they’re the most important person in the world, and anyone else in the room pales, faded and drab, in comparison. James is used to being the one in the spotlight of Sirius’ love, so it hurts him a little less than it does Peter.
“C’mon, Pete– Gobstones?”
It isn’t until the moon– waxing crescent, James always knows– is high in the sky, her light crawling over the floorboards of the dorm, that Sirius emerges from behind the drawn curtains of Remus’ bed, popping the pointed silencing spell and padding over into James’ bed.
“Psst–” comes his voice, his arse still hanging out from outside the curtains. “Prongs!”
James grumbles, stuck momentarily in that almost-asleep, half lucid feeling. He tries to hold onto it– he had been dreaming of thunderstorms and cliffs and something sweet and wretched– but Sirius tumbles into his bed, and he’s properly awake, now.
“Remus okay?” He asks, his voice raspy and creaking.
“Yeah, well–” Sirius pauses, hesitates. “No, he’s fine. James, Dumbledore– he wants Moony– our Moony! – to, er–”
“Spit it out, Pads, please. It’s late,” James can’t keep the fond note out of his tone, can’t bring himself to be properly cross with Sirius.
Sirius takes a deep breath, the sounds coming tumbling out on his exhale. “DumbledorewantsRemustosignuptothewareffort.”
“Come again?”
“Dumbledore wants Remus to sign up to the war effort,” he says, clear and slow and enunciated, every word dropping heavy like a stone into a shallow pool.
“Oh,” James says, stupid. “Oh! Well! Is he going to?”
“He doesn’t know,” Sirius whispers. “He’s really freaked out, Prongs.”
James shakes his head. “Why?”
Sirius almost laughs, clapping a hand over his mouth before reaching for his wand and casting a silencing charm at the curtains. He keeps up his whisper, though, the sanctity of the night air remaining unbroken. “Why, James? He might die!”
“We all might die,” James says, rational. “It’s war. Also, it’s life. Dying is always on the cards.”
“Yeah, but Dumbledore said he wants Remus to work with his strengths,” Sirius says, a little exasperated.
“So, he’ll be doing Arithmancy?”
Sirius does laugh, then, a short, loud bark that devolves into snickering. “Merlin, James, you can be dim. He wants him to use that furry little problem of his.”
James feels like he’s missing something. “What can a werewolf do that Remus can’t?”
“I don’t know, James, what can any of us do?” Sirius quietens, his face pensive and sullen. He lies down on the pillow next to James, their legs tangling together. James suddenly sees this for what it is, a cry for help, Sirius saying I don’t know what to do without his words.
“Well, what can we do?”
“I just said, I don’t know,” Sirius says, utterly frustrated and quite close to hitting James, if James’ usual sensors are correct.
“No, me neither,” he reaches out an arm, blocking Sirius’ fist. “Which is why we should ask.”
After a quick scuffle, they make a plan to go to Dumbledore the next day, after dinner, and fall asleep wrapped up in one another, like they did when they were little kids.
James comes bursting into the abandoned classroom they use for their Head-Boy-Head-Girl meetings– which, these days, tend to be about ten percent work and ninety percent snogging. Lily has just enough time to grin at him, his puffed up chest, his look at me, see how important and beautiful I can look, which used to piss her off and now turns her on, a little bit– before he’s sweeping her up in his arms, tucking his chin into her neck and spinning them around.
“James!” She squeals, trying not to be too shrill. “James, what–”
He’s already speaking, the words tumbling over hers. “We were planning on going anyway, tonight, after dinner, but then he pulled us out of class–”
“Oh, yeah, I meant to ask what on earth that was about,” Lily says, but James hushes her absentmindedly, keeps barrelling forwards.
“And so we get into the office and Dumbledore is in there, of course, looking insane and powerful and so bloody strong, in these awesome magenta robes–”
“Oh, my god, James, I don’t need the set dressing,” Lily says, laughing. He still hasn’t let her go, their noses pressed almost together as he babbles excitedly into her mouth.
“And he asked us if we would consider being a part of it! He asked us! And we were going to ask anyway, we wanted to ever since he called Moo- Remus in, but then he said he thought that with our familial connections, which of course means Pureblood nonsense, that we could really make a difference!”
“James, James, slow down, please! What does Dumbledore want you to be a part of?” She can hear herself getting frustrated but she’s keeping a tight lid on it. He’s keeping it from her and she knows, she knows it isn’t on purpose but it’s making her feel like a child tugging at a sleeve and asking and not getting an answer and she hates being in the dark so if he could just hurry up and say–
“The resistance! He says it’s called the Order of the Phoenix, which is a wanky bloody name, nearly had me and Sirius in stitches when he first said it– it’s like, um,” he pauses, clearly trying to remember the exact words. “An opposing force to the elements of Darkness creeping into Wizarding Society. So, basically, fighting against You-Know-Who and his lot.”
James stops, waiting for a reaction, and Lily can’t give him one. She can feel her chin wobbling, that old hurt, again, because it turns out that the shiny badge on her chest wasn’t enough. It’s reaching into her stomach and turning and twisting and reminding her of everything she’s lost, everything she wasn’t enough to keep.
“Lil?” All the excitement is gone from his voice, now, and he’s tender, soft; pitying. . “What is it?”
“I–” and it’s so embarrassing, the tears filling her eyes, filling and filling and spilling over onto her cheeks, quite without her permission. “I just–”
“Yes?” He swipes his thumbs under her eyes, smearing the tears away. She bats his hands away and rubs roughly at her face. “What is it? I’m sorry, Lil, I really thought you’d be pleased–”
“No, I am! I am, I– it’s just–” here it comes, this childish need, swarming out of her, humiliating and raw. “Why didn’t he ask me?”
Lily sets her jaw, as if she’s expecting to be pushed back, as if she’s bracing herself for rejection. James blinks. He hadn’t thought— he actually didn’t know why he hadn’t considered the possibility of Dumbledore asking Lily, hadn’t really considered anything outside of the feeling of standing in front of his desk shoulder to shoulder with Sirius and that sparkling wonderful wave of being wanted, needed, important; the feeling of letting the stress of his future rest in more capable, wizened hands.
Lily is still in front of him, face pale and— and when had she gotten so thin, looking at him wan and bleary-eyed. He’s got that feeling again, the one that keeps haunting his steps this year, as though he’s been living half out of step with time, his body going through the motions while his soul trudges on behind. He could’ve sworn they were— that she was happy. He remembers her happy, green eyes gleaming, narrow-eyed and pleased in bed when he’s crooked his fingers just right and–
“I just need to do something.” It bursts out of her, and she sounds angry, she is angry, but there's something else, something like the feverish buzz of a hive, a dog's wet and drooling smile; the anticipation of the hunt. What else can James do in the face of that but nod. What else can he do but see the mirror of his own pain-hurt-desire in her eyes.
The Mark, the war, Regulus. Things that he hasn’t been able to do a single thing about and now this; his hands itching to do something. He understands that more than anything.
“You won’t–” she seems lost now, as though she had been gearing up for a fight and didn’t know what to do with herself now she wasn’t getting one, wind gone out of her sails, and her hair settling back down over her shoulders. “You’re not going to tell me– no?”
“Why would I do that?” James is about to laugh, but doesn’t. She’s serious, really properly serious. He gentles his voice. “Lily. Why would I ever– you– you have as much stake in the war as any of us, more than any of us. Of course you should talk to Dumbledore about joining up. Honestly, it’s sort of ridiculous he hasn’t asked you yet.”
“Right,” Lily says, and she really does sound mollified now; James wonders only briefly what she thinks of him, who she thinks he is, to imagine that he might stand in the way of this, of her own chance at that sparkling, wanted feeling. “I suppose I can– I mean. I suppose I’ll talk to him then.”
James nods, once, decisive, sure in his decisions and surer in Lily’s. He grabs her hand, leads her out of their class towards the common room, and feels good. Their future is standing, open-armed, waiting.
It’s a Wednesday night when he asks, one of the last before the break. There isn’t anything special about it– they’re in front of the fire in the Common Room. They aren’t touching, except that Lily’s feet are tucked under James’ legs, wiggled under there hours ago, the warm weight of him a comfort as she staggers through her Runes homework.
“Lil,” he says, a questioning tone in his voice. Her head drags up, slow, anxious not to lose her train of thought.
She hums, an answer and a busy, what do you want, all at once.
“What are you doing next year?” He’s looking at her strange, big eyed, almost cervine.
Lily puts her quill down, giving the sentence up as a bad job.
“Probably I’ll head back to Cokeworth. Save some money. Tuney’s looking to get married in the Spring, I think, and–” she’s interrupted.
“Fuck that!” There’s a light in his eyes now, a mischief. “Fuck Cokeworth. You hate it there, I know you do. Come live with me. I’ve got it all sorted out, we’ll do the Kent season with my parents over summer, then find a place in London. Moony and Pads have a flat already, and Pete’s set up in the Ministry.”
Lily’s head is whirling. She thinks maybe this might be moving a bit quickly, but then. She really hates Cokeworth and Tuney has been particularly unbearable as of late and she doesn’t know if she can take much more of her sharp and snippy comments–
“Okay.”
“Okay?” James beams. “Okay!”
That night, after a conversation about logistics and the Kent season and some Order business that Dumbledore wants relayed to Lily about potioneering – derailed only slightly by a quick round of sex– she turns to face him, face half sagging into her pillow.
“So, about Regulus—“ she begins slowly; a tentative creeping into uncharted territory.
James’ breath catches oddly in his throat and he coughs. He has endeavoured to forget about Regulus, but his name still evokes a physical reaction in him, an allergy, an intolerance.
“What about him?” He aims for casual, ends up in slight dismay. Lily looks at him, really looks, raises her brow and waits. She knows him too well.
He squirms.
“What about that ,” she says, once it’s clear he isn’t going to continue.
James fidgets, spinning his signet ring around and around on his pinky, takes it off, puts it back on again. The metal is warm under his fingers, breathing, alive. His fingers spasm through his muscle-memory and the ring falls, a silent exhale into the warm sheets of their bed. James, in moments of confrontation, has always found himself gravitating towards a practised confusion, an intentional ignorance.
“Merlin, Lil he–” his brain is silent, and his mouth is moving, “I mean, he was just a snotty kid, cooped up in that house of theirs over the summer. Merlin knows without Sirius he was bored out of his mind. I just felt sorry for him.”
“Sorry for him,” she echoes. She’s staring at him, a crease in the centre of her brow, and she’s searching his face, for what he doesn’t know.
He reaches out and tucks a stray piece of hair behind her ear, turns it into smoothing his hand down the beautiful column of her neck.
“Just sorry for him. Although Merlin knows he doesn’t make that easy.” He laughs, disparagingly, and doesn’t think about how it stabs into his chest, doesn’t think about Regulus looking up at him with hurt eyes, doesn’t think about how wrong it suddenly feels to make fun of that sad, solemn boy he had once been.
James walks out of his final exam – his final exam! Ever! – stunned, bewildered, and with a creeping sense of ecstasy at the back of his throat. He makes eye contact with Remus, approaching from down the corridor; he’s just sat Arithmancy. He’s got his hands in his pockets, and he seems tired but he’s smiling, a crooked and charming thing that pulls at the side of his mouth.
“How do?” He calls out, lilting and amused and James laughs, jogs up to him and doesn’t resist the urge to sweep him up into a hug. He feels the huff of Remus’ laughter above him, the rumble of it in his chest by James’ ear.
“Aced it, of course,” James replies once he’s set him down, sweeping himself into a bow. “And you sir?”
“Good enough,” Remus says genially, translation, aced it .
They look at each other silently for a moment, before bursting into peals of laughter – a group of second years passes them by, glancing back at them with tentatively judgemental expressions, oh the arrogance of being fourteen – rib-shaking, stomach-hurting kind of laughter. It’s a Thursday afternoon, and James has just finished the last interaction with formal education he’ll ever have.
“Right,” says Remus, once they’ve gathered themselves into some semblance of sanity. “Shall we find the others then? Peter’s finishing up with magical creatures in the afternoon and Sirius has got– oh Astronomy or something, which I still don’t understand why he took that–”
“James! Sirius!”
They both turn, Lily’s voice echoing down the corridor ahead of the thumping rhythm of her feet as she sprints towards them, grinning, robes flapping behind her. James turns properly and leans down, arms out and catches her as she jumps up toward them, spinning her around in a blur of robes and hair and giggles. Lily looks up at him with shining eyes as they come to a stop and leans up to give him a firm kiss on the mouth before turning to Remus, standing slightly back and watching them with a smile.
“You too Lupin, don’t hold back on me now, we’re free!”
He yelps and makes to run before she’s on him, an over exaggerated kiss on his lips that leaves him pleased and pink, James belting out a laugh once again. He’s smiling so hard his face feels like it’s going to burst and honestly, for all that he’s looking forward to saying goodbye to Hogwarts once and for all, he wouldn’t mind it so much if they could stay in this one moment forever, frozen in time.
All at once, it’s graduation, as though the second half of the year has compressed itself into a series of events tumbling after each other in a flurry to the finish. James feels as though he’d blinked, and the year had run up ahead of him, calling back over its shoulder for him to hurry on and catch up already.
Lily is waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs when he stumbles down– they all are, Remus and Sirius already standing together, close enough that he can barely see their hands intertwined between their robes, Peter slouched next to them still rubbing his eyes.
It’s a Hogwarts tradition that all the seventh years in the early twilight hours, before the sun starts to peak its head over the horizon, traipse up the stairs of the clock tower to the very top to greet the dawn of their final day, together. When they enter the corridors, hand in hand in one long and straggling line, and begin to make their way to the clock-tower, they slowly band together; the Ravenclaws come down from their lofty spire, the Hufflepuffs just before the Great Hall, the Slytherins joining them as they make their way into the courtyard, heels clicking as they come up the stairs from their basement lair. None of them are wearing their house colours, not now. It’s like they’re all held in stasis, faces grey and blurred in the purple-blue haze still spread over the world; no houses, no barriers, all of them in their plain black robes, rubbing the chill from each others fingers with their interlocked hands and watching their exhalations billow out in great puffs of clouds, dragons-breath.
There isn’t any speaking as they lead each other up and up through the narrow wooden stairways, only the sound of their footsteps which themselves seemed somehow dampened in the stillness of the world, the usual clattering blanketed by softness.
They make it to the top just in time, and all bunch in together as each person makes their way up the stairs until they’re all huddled together in one amorphous blob, like some strange band of crepuscular creatures, shivering in the early dawn chill. James turns his head to each side; Lily, on his right, cheeks pink from the cold, the tips of her ears where they’re peaking out from between the strands of her hair. She glances up at him and smiles, eyes soft. He smiles back. On his other side, Sirius and Remus and Peter, his heart swells– beyond them, Mary and Marlene, Gilderoy, Mulciber, and Avery, and Emmeline Vance and Amos Diggory and Beaulah Schwartz and Severus, even. It is unbelievable but he feels– it feels so– this moment, the wavering nature of time just before the sun breaks the surface and he can see it coming, that wondrous yellow-orange golden glow but– but he almost doesn’t want it to rise because now, right now– there is no division, and he– for all their differences, and all that is going on out there in the world, and every small and large and petty and serious, for every difference between them, he is suddenly so grateful. He is suddenly so full of it he feels as though he could burst, for the years that they have had together, for the way they all stumbled off the Hogwarts Express that first day and– the lake down there with the reflection of the castle glimmering on the surface, the way he can still remember coming around the corner on the boats and seeing the fog lift and there it was in all its glory, the castle – and the sorting where they’d gone from a huddled mass of children to splitting off into their houses, into their separate lives as individuals, seeing baby fat slough off of cheeks, boys and girls to young adults– and now, almost cyclically returned to that state, a huddled mass of children with no identifiers other than their faces peaking out from their robes, nervous looks in their eyes for a future, for an uncertainty, for the rest of their lives. Bigger fish than what house the hat might give you now. He feels Lily grasp at his hand, takes it and seizes someone else’s with his left, knows with something deep in his heart that they’re all holding hands, holding their breaths, holding each other until–
An exhale. The sun breaks. The transient, fragile eggshell of twilight cracks. The sky opens up into a wash of colour as the sun finally peaks its head over the surface and greets them all with the kaleidoscope of pink, purple, orange streaks, golden rays splitting themselves between the perfect bountiful clouds, the sun tracing her golden hands over their edges to grant them gilded edges. James feels it touch his face, the warmth and heat, the sound of birds raising their heads and warbling their age-old song, hello hello the new day is here!
A moment of silence, a thread pulled waveringly taut from that brief stillness before the dawn– then someone laughs. And James doesn’t know who it is, doesn’t know why, but he feels it too, a bubbling, rising giggle that bursts its way out of him, and he turns and looks at his friends, at Remus who beams back at him and at Sirius who leans over to give James a great big smacking kiss on the cheek, and Peter who’s crying, and on the other side Lily who’s tucked herself into the crevice of his arm and his chest and she’s laughing too, or crying maybe and– and that’s that. The dawn breaks, the final day begins, and the rest of their lives stretch out ahead of them.
The castle is abuzz with the rhythmic thumping heartbeat of graduation, graduation, graduation. Regulus walks through the corridors head down, skirting past clusters of weepy seventh years, who seem to be making it their mission to loudly and emphatically seek out each and every housemate, professor, ghost, bloody house elf they’ve ever spoken to in order to proclaim how much they’ll miss them. Half of the rest of the school seems to be more excited for having the day off – as if that even matters, with classes after exams more about wrangling students into some semblance of organisation, definitely not for actual leanring– rather than the ceremony itself, which is really just a lot of sitting and listening and applauding and suchlike.
At breakfast in the Great Hall, they’ve got the banners up and flickering between each of the four houses, and the house elves have outdone themselves with the four tables laden with everything a starving teenager could want; haphazard piles of juicy sausages and bacon, plates laden with buttery glistening scrambled eggs, fried eggs with crisp brown edges and orange faces ready to burst, stacks of triangular crisp hash browns, perfectly browned toast and fried tomatoes. It’s enough to make Regulus’ stomach hurt just looking at it. He deliberately doesn’t look at anything beyond his knife and fork for the entire meal, for as much as that helps. He can still hear them, the pealing laughter from the Gryffindor table, doesn’t even have to look to see them perfectly enough in his mind. James, with his knuckles buried in Sirius’ hair, Lily looking fondly at them with a forkful of her favourite baked-beans-on-toast, Peter surreptitiously trying to sneak another piece of bacon onto Remus’ plate while he isn’t looking. Regulus’ stomach tightens, and he stops his fork where it's been pushing around a frankly miserable congealing mass of scrambled eggs.
He stands up and leaves; behind him, a head of dark hair turning, turning, following him, until Sirius gets another cuff to his cheek from James, and he turns to jump on him, tackling him to the floor with barking laughter.
Regulus,
It is wonderful to hear from you, my darling. How we miss you at home. Not long now before we will see you again. I must admit to some confusion regarding your previous letter, however. Your father and I will not be attending graduation this year, as you know. Our Heir still has a year left of schooling, and there is no one else in the world that we care enough about to make the trip up to Scotland for.
Do not forget your place, your duty.
Toujours pur,
Mother
Regulus scoffs, crumples the parchment in his hand. It’s about what he expected. Still, he can’t help the childish pang of disappointment flooding through him, nor the heavy mantle of responsibility that settles, inevitable and horrifying, across his shoulders. The clock chimes, and he hesitates, before he makes his way back down the stairs, back into the fray.
The ceremony takes place on the green, just before it begins sloping gently down towards the Great Lake. There’s a stage built of warm oaken wood, the headmasters lectern centerstage with its wings proudly outstretched. Regulus watches from the window of the library – completely empty, of course, because why would anyone want to be indoors on a day like this with the sun beaming down from a blue and cloudless sky, a sirens call – as the professors work diligently at putting it all together, wands up and moving methodically through the air. Floating rows of benches arrange themselves gently on the carpet of the field, small white daisies bending their heads against their weight, as Flitwick arranges floating multi-coloured parasols overhead, bobbing gently in the summer breeze and casting wide circles of shade, like flowers without their stems. The air is thick with the fragrant scent of herbs, florals, the smell of the grass and cool breeze wafting off of the surface of the lake; it is Hogwarts at its very best.
When they’re almost done with the preparations, it's Regulus’ cue to go down; the prefects are in charge of wrangling their respective houses, and so have to get a briefing beforehand on who-goes-where-and-when. He thinks, privately, that a lot of it would go more smoothly if they were at least allowed to send a stinging jinx – just a little one! – at the backs of the heads of the students who started chattering at each other, seemingly convinced that nobody could hear them.
He studiously avoids eye-contact with James, who runs them quickly through the events of the day, clearly itching to get back to whatever his friends are doing. Lily keeps elbowing him to slow down, and the show of casual intimacy almost makes Regulus sick to his stomach.
Finally, finally, with the hours dragging like treacle dripping from a spoon, the families begin to arrive, and students file back to their dorms to get changed, the graduating seventh years into formal dress and the rest of the school into their regular Hogwarts robes. Regulus, who has already been ready since he got up in the morning, crisply collared, his prefect badge pinned just-so, waits – does not lurk – in a corridor off the main entrance to the Great Hall, watching as students run up and hug their relatives descending onto the school grounds. There’s a mix of transportation methods, with most preferring portkeys that had been sent out specially the week before, and some coming in on the train for the sake of nostalgia; just a few fly in cross-country on brooms, such as the Diggorys, with tousled hair and wide smiling mouths. He doesn’t know why he’s waiting and watching, won’t acknowledge the small and private hope that he’d made up the letter he’d gotten that morning and that he would see familiar faces appear, pinched smiles and crisply buttoned up collars. He knows it’s fruitless but he still can’t give it up.
So, he startles quite badly when he sees a familiar and familial head of unruly black curls and upturned nose march through the entrance of the school, heels clicking on the stone floor. He hasn’t seen Andromeda Black– no, Tonks, in years, certainly not since the change in her last name and the betrayal of their family bloodline. The last part is sneered in Orion’s voice, who had been most outspoken against that marriage, even louder than mother. He watches as the other Pureblooded families notice her, and he watches as they turn pointedly away, sideways sneers and voices raising just enough to be heard while maintaining plausible deniability. Andromeda doesn’t seem to care, and then her mouth is breaking into a grin as she opens her arms. A shout, from the top of the stairs and then Sirius is flying down, a streak of black hair and robes as he jumps into her arms. She has always been his favourite cousin. They start chattering, a mile a minute, twin smiles, twin faces, and Regulus steps back, and back, and turns crisply on his heel and walks away.
The ceremony is hideously long, boring, and just the same as every other year. The only difference is a barely there, yet still palpable level of tension. Usually, families mingle in the social hour before, students seated in front divided along crisp House lines, the adults behind in mix-and-matching social circles. This year, the divisions continue into the back rows, historically Gryffindor families with Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, Slytherins. It’s not as though they ignore each other, as no one is as uncouth for all that, but there is a tenseness to smiles, a bite to otherwise sterile small-talk.
Regulus, in the midst of avoiding Andromeda like the plague, finds himself running into – horrifyingly – the Potters.
“Regulus!” Fleamont exclaims when he spots him, Regulus freezing in place from where he was trying to move surreptitiously through the crowd. “Regulus, my boy, come over here, oh Effy– she’s just gone over to get us a glass of champagne– Euphemia!”
It seems that James hasn’t told his parents anything about– well, anything, as Regulus ends up answering question after question with half-truths and white-lies and oh-I-don’t-really-remember-it’s-been-a-busy-one! Effy comments lightly, and with a crease in her brow, that he’s gotten awfully thin, but Regulus breezes past with the ease of high society chit-chat, saying something off-handedly about the stress of exams and how he’s sure he’ll get it all back and more once he’s back home for the holidays and yes Hogwarts is wonderful but it really doesn’t hold a candle to the house-elves at home. He almost manages the whole conversation that way when Fleamont steps in closer at the end, lowering his voice.
“And now– well, I don’t mean to make anything awkward for you, my boy, but– I have to ask.”
Regulus feels a sort of dread creeping up the back of his spine. Effy has gone quiet beside them. Fleamont continues.
“I don’t know how much news gets through to you lot here, and of course you’re young and you shouldn’t have to think about all these things just yet, but you–” he hesitates here, uncharacteristically, and carries on with that careful air for the rest of his sentence, “your family being who they are, and your situation being what it is… I wanted to reiterate what I said in the summer, about our home being– about how we loved having you with us. And that if anything is going on, we’re open to listening. It’s dangerous times, serious times, and it’s only going to get worse before it–”
“We’re concerned, is what we’re saying,” interrupts Effy gently from his side. Regulus flinches, and tries to disguise it as a cough, watches as it fails to convince either of them.
“I–” there’s something caught in the back of his throat, like a bit of dust, a moth flapping its wings, “I– I don’t know what you’re talking about. We are– my family is– we are perfectly happy. I’m perfectly happy.”
They are all silent, a horrible bubble encompassing the three of them as the world moves on around them, and suddenly the chattering and laughter is too much for Regulus, the sun beaming relentlessly down on the top of his head. Just then, a bell rings out and the guests quiet as they begin to move towards their seats. Regulus has never been so grateful for an interruption in his life, and he makes his excuses swiftly as he pulls back, evading Effy’s outstretched hand and Fleamont’s call behind him. He walks away.
It happens towards the end of the ceremony, in the middle of James’ speech. Regulus is half-dozing through it, James-and-Lily blurring together behind the podium as the heat of the day seems to sink deeper and deeper through his skin and muscle and into his bones, the rhythmic chirruping of cicadas in the distance. Then he’s blinking and the world softens and ripples, a stone into a placid pond, and James and Lily are suddenly grown up, suddenly older, suddenly changed before his eyes. They’re holding something, a lumpy bit of fabric between them – bile in his throat – a baby, and they’re wavering between being dressed for a wedding – white dress and a tie around James’ throat – and in casual, homely get up, and they’re young but they carry experience in their eyes, and they’re looking at each other, so happy, so content, practically glowing with perfection it’s coming out of their pores, shining light behind them. Regulus feels cold and sick, and there’s an odd taste in his mouth like lavender and comfrey, mercury and iron and–
He looks down, trying to get his bearings, and his hands are covered in blood, up to his forearms, thick and dark and congealing. He starts violently backwards and opens his mouth to scream but instead the bile comes crawling up and blood is pouring down his chin, blood with silvery liquid dancing through it, blood that is not thick and warm but cold, thin and watery, slimy and vile. He doesn’t know what’s happening, can’t– can’t think– spots in his vision– James and Lily still perfect, still laughing– untouchable– unsullied– his dirty, filthy, horrible hands–
He blinks, and the world snaps back into focus, the warbling song of birds underneath James’ speech coming slowly to a finish, the rustling noise of the person in the seat next to him adjusting their robes, a murmured conversation somewhere behind him.
Regulus stands up, one hand pressed tightly white-knuckles over his mouth, the other in a tight fist, and leaves, hurrying up to the castle. He can’t get away fast enough.
James thinks he’s done a bang-up job with his speech, when near the end he sees a figure, a Slytherin, Regulus, leaving hurriedly, knocking legs aside in uncharacteristic haste. He slows slightly and would’ve stopped talking if Lily hadn’t jabbed him precisely between the ribs to make him start up again like some sort of demented wind-up doll. He finishes up in a haze and smiles as people applaud, catches the eyes of his parents in the back who are beaming up at him, so proud, and he gives them a cheeky little wave, watches as his father laughs and his mother rolls her eyes, waving back.
Then it’s on to Lily’s speech and he stands to the side and watches her, can feel himself grinning like an idiot but– honestly! She’s a wonder, eyes sparkling passionately, just the right mix of sincerity and humour and gentle critique of the school that has everyone nodding along, chuckling in all the right places. She gets a well-deserved round of applause at the end, and James can see a particular group of Purebloods clapping along reluctantly as well– so there for Muggleborn prejudice, take Lily Evans on for size!
His parents find him in the crowd afterwards and his mother sobs all over him, blowing her nose noisily into her handkerchief as his father pats her back and congratulates him on a job well done. Sirius bounds over to them with his cousin Andromeda, who shakes hands with Fleamont and folds Effy into a hug. They’re soon joined by the rest of the gang, Peter and his family all with the same stature and rosy cheeks, Remus, who’s got a hand at his mother’s elbow, helping her navigate the crowd. Lily even comes back with her parents who look cheerfully bewildered at all the goings on, her dad saying something about the tek-nology and special eff-ex, shaking James’ hand enthusiastically.
They all get gathered into a motley group, kids in front, parents in the back, in front of the camera set up specially for that day, a vat of potion and a string of drying photographs above it, small figures already beginning to stretch their arms and look around.
“And three…”
“Shove over James, come on–”
“Mum– Mum! Mum, over there, smile, okay don’t blink–”
“Sirius, shouldn’t your brother–”
“Two….”
“Wait, wait, wait, your robes, Peter dear–”
“Funny or serious–?”
“We-ell–”
“Don’t start!”
“Serious! Shut up!”
“One–!”
A flash, James smiling so widely his cheeks hurt, arms looped around shoulders, Lily on one side and Sirius on the other, and utterly, perfectly happy.
[A photo of a large group of witches and wizards crowding into the frame, laughing and jostling each other and waving out toward the viewer. In the center, James and Lily, who periodically turn to look at each other and kiss, before laughing and looking at the camera again.]
Hi darlings,
We’re on our way out to Kent now, on the train– James’ mum and dad have caught a Portkey and gone ahead of us, but we thought it would be nice to take the Muggle way down. He’s already eaten all the snacks we’ve taken with us, the bastard!
I thought I’d send off a copy of the photo we took to each of you (sorry for the duplicate letter, but it really is easier, and we’re nearing the station now anyway) – and it’s better I do it now than forget to do it at all.
I’m a little nervous about the Summer Society season. Last time I only went to the one party, and I was in a dreadful state about the dress code. Hopefully this time will be lower stakes, easier, maybe. A girl can dream.
Anyway, here’s the photo. Love to you all, and to your respective families and summer plans. Please don’t forget about us, down here in Kent. We’ll miss you all dreadfully. See you in August!
All my love,
Lily xx
Notes:
heyyyyy....... hiiiiii,......... sorry...........
okay. remember that slow burn tag. i'm going to ask you all REAL NICE to keep that in mind. because, well. did you really think the slow burn was one and a half chapters long, at the start of the fic? we were raised on drarry, and you're all going to suffer because of it.
ALSOO REMEMBER THE EVENTUAL HAPPY ENDING TAG. SPEAKING OF SUFFERING. regulus he is 3 apples tall. i am so sorry. i know. i know. our poor darling. OH GOD (head in hands).
this is the end of act one, storywise. we will still work on getting updates out as soon as they're ready but like, if you're reading this in the future when we have finished it, now is a good place to pause! or don't pause. but this is the end of act one.
OKAY. OKAY!!!!! PLEASE leave us a comment to tell us what you thought!!!!! genuinely every time we get an email from ao3 we are messaging each other exclaimation points. EVERY TIME! and you would hate to deprive us of our exclaimation points!!!!!!!!!
come visit us on tumblr at stegulus and swanmotifs
OKAY BYE. bye!!!!!! byeeeeeeeeee
Chapter Text
The headlines are getting worse and worse, and Lily begins to dread even seeing the Daily Prophet. She feels a little like she’s living in two different worlds, in the excess and luxury and, honestly, ignorance of the Summer Society Circuit, and the real world, where people are getting attacked, killed, murdered, seemingly with nobody caring at all about stopping it. Certainly not the people in power, who she is rubbing elbows with every other day and trying not to scream, why are they here and not there, why should they be able to smile when– a whole family, dead, Muggle bodies piling up with the flimsy coverup of a terrorist bombing, the Dark Mark writhing in the sky in black-and-white newsink.
She tries to talk to James about it, though it’s hard to catch a moment when they’re both quiet, both sober, both calm. James is rifling around in his closet in the Summer Cottage when she corners him.
“James,” she says, and he starts, looking a little caught, though he hasn’t been doing anything except look for his dress robes. “I want to talk to you.”
“Merlin, Lil, you didn’t give me half a fright! I thought you were taking a nap,” he smiles at her. As it happens, she had been trying to have a lie down, but that day’s Prophet had had a full retrospective on all the mystery deaths, complete with family portraits, and she saw them every time she closed her eyes. “It’s not anything serious, is it?”
She smiles, wobbly, and he quietens. “Come on,” he says, sitting on the bed. “What’s going on?”
Lily joins him, twisting her fingers around and around each other. She knows what she wants to say, has rehearsed it in her head to death and now, standing in front of him, she can’t bring herself to begin. But she must, they’ve another party this evening and she doesn’t want to go a single second more without saying something. “James, how can you stand it?”
“Stand what?” He catches her hands, going white at the tips of her fingers, and holds them in his own. She wavers. She could– it’s not too late. There’s a voice in her head, awfully convincing, that’s saying she’s just making a big deal of this, why can’t she just let it go, it’s all been fine hasn’t it, and does it really matter, in the long run if she’s a little uncomfortable– Her mouth is moving before she can finish her thought. Her body and her mind in opposition.
“The Season! The Society! They’re all– the Pureblood circle, they’re all in on it, I know that you know, you were chatting really personable with Dolohov last night, and–”
“Lily, deep breath,” he says, cool and calm and confident, and she scowls. She hates it when he sounds so reasonable; he’s using his Head Boy voice on her. “I know. Don’t you think I know? But it’s the Season, it’s just the way things are. We can’t let the politics get in the way of tradition.”
“Tradition?” She asks, scandalised and hurt. “Your poxy tradition would see me and my parents hunted for sport!”
“Oh, don’t be like that. You know what I meant,” he snaps. She shakes her head, and he does too, like a dog, a one-two of conversation-over. He smiles at her, traces a spiral on her hand. She can feel herself shrinking in front of him.
“Now, I was thinking light blue for our robes tonight. Would you like that, or do you want to stick with jewel tones?”
That night, Lily tries– oh, how she tries– to be sweet. To be the loveable Muggleborn girlfriend, the precious outlier, the shining example, pretty and perfect and, above all, nice.
It falls apart when the Evening Prophet catches her eye, discarded in a corner near the buffet table.
Ten Muggle Families Slaughtered In Broad Daylight! The headline screams. Blamed On Gas Leak! Wizenmagot Weighs In On Protecting Traditions And Maintaining Statute!
She feels sick. That happened today. Today, while she was putting on lip gloss, lacing up her shoes, making small-talk about corsages with James’ mother. Today, ten families were killed, for no reason at all.
James is talking to one of the Carrow twins, the boy. Lily walks up to them, grabs his arm, tight, pulling him away into a curtained alcove. She can feel her fingernails digging into his skin and it must hurt but she can’t bring herself to care. There’s another couple there, his hands just at the border of impropriety on the edge of her robes. Lily glares at them, and they scurry off, cowed.
“Hey! I was in the middle of–”
“Do you know where he was today?” Lily snaps, her throat full of knives, creeping out and cutting the sides of her cheeks.
“No, I– well, probably getting ready for tonight, same as us,” James says, cross. “Look, what’s this about, Lil–”
“He wasn’t. He wasn’t, he was out, he was out–” and mortifyingly, her eyes fill with tears. “He was killing Muggles. No, don’t shake your head, he was–”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Wake up, James! If you pulled his sleeve up, what would you see?”
“Lily!” He’s aghast, his eyes rounded with hurt. “You can’t say things like that!” In this moment, she hates him. She hates all of them, pretending that life is going on, that no one is dying, that she doesn’t have to justify her existence, unseeing of how tired she’s become, how fruitless her struggle to be recognised as human is.
“I want to go home,” she says, short. “I don’t want to do this here.”
“But we’ve barely–”
“Now, James.”
They walk over to the Floo, stiff backed, James’ wrist still clamped in Lily’s fingers, his pulse thudding, skin going pink-red-white under her grip.
“We are being so rude!” James hisses in her ear, and she ignores him, dropping the powder into the grate.
When they touch down in the Potters’ drawing room, she lets go, whirling on him. The house is dead-quiet, James’ parents still at the Ball, the house elves disappearing for their leisure hours. James is rubbing his forearm, and she can see four crescent shaped marks from her nails. She can’t bring herself to feel sorry about it. He’s looking at her warily, as if she’s some sort of feral animal, as if he’s a zookeeper and she’s his charge broken free, as if he’s a person and she’s not; as if he is reasonable and sympathetic and she is emotional and spitting and wild. She hates it.
“I feel like I’m crazy!” Lily shouts, breaking the seal of silence, her thoughts rushing too fast for her to even keep up. She’s been holding everything back for so long, pressurized dam, being nice and pleasant and fucking understanding. “Or maybe– maybe I’m the only sane person here! Because this, James? This is fucked! How can you be even marginally okay with this? They want me dead! Half of them are Marked! They think I’m a fucking thief of magic!”
James scowls, his face twisting into something cruel and unrecognisable and ugly. He’s had enough, he won’t entertain this any longer; she’s throwing a fit and she’s got to stand in the corner. “Oh, so now you have a problem with it,” he sneers. “Now, we’re out of Hogwarts and into the real world, and you’ve decided you’ve got an issue with it.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Regulus!” He roars, and she claps her mouth shut, feeling her teeth clack together, reeling back like he’s struck her with just that one word. He hasn’t said Regulus’ name since that awful night at school, back from Christmas– always skirting around the syllables, sometimes going as far as starting them before backing down, R- I mean, Sirius’ brother, like she doesn’t know exactly who he means, exactly why he can’t say the name anymore.
“What about Regulus?” She wields his name like a weapon, sharp clear enunciation. She is not frightened of words.
“He was Marked all through our last year at school, Lily! You didn’t seem to give a single shit about it then, did you?” He looks almost smug as he says it, like this is some sort of debate, fencing foils dancing back and forth, one point to James Potter!
Lily’s brain shuts down. She feels– literally feels, like some kind of terrible thriller novel– the blood drain from her face, leaving her pale and clammy and lightheaded. Her hands shake.
“What?”
“Oh, Merlin, fuck,” James says, suddenly soft, suddenly sweet. He’s over by her in a flash, his hands cupping her elbows. The picture: Lily, shaking and pale, the victim, the loser, the damsel in distress; James the reasonable, the calm, the hero and saviour. “You didn’t know?”
“He– he what?”
“He was Marked last year, Lil,” James says, so gentle, she wants to be sick. So gentle, while earth-shattering, world-turning truths drop from his lips. “I think over the Christmas break.”
She presses a hand– damp and trembling– to her mouth, feeling suddenly like she might actually vomit.
“How do you know?” She asks it between her fingers, taking slow, deep breaths, her heart thundering in her chest. She doesn’t know if she actually wants the answer, but can’t bear the alternative.
“I saw, Lily. I saw it.”
“And no one–” she has to stop for a minute, breathe in, breathe out. “No one told me? No–” a worse thought springs up. “No one else knew?”
“Well, Dumbledore did,” James says, matter-of-fact. “And I think Slughorn, as well. And Pomfrey.”
Lily feels a swell of anger, so profound she has to choke out her next words around it. “And– James, are you telling me that everyone– everyone knew– and no one did anything?”
“What were they meant to do?”
“I don’t know!” She’s stumbling out her words, now, half-hysterical, and she knows what she looks like but she’s just so furious. “He was just a kid! Why didn’t they help him, or– or kick him out, or–”
“Lil, fuck, I don’t know what to say, they just didn’t,” James is ice-calm, burning cool against her fire. “I don’t know why.”
She’s not going to get anywhere with this now. James has shut her down, again and again, refusing to look for what he doesn’t want to see. He’s stubborn, bull-headed, well-practised in his ignorance; doesn’t want to see his Society for what it is, ripe red apples glistening with dew while worms writhe at their core. She shakes his hands off of her.
“I’m going to sleep in my room tonight,” she says, drawing herself up and daring him to argue. James’ parents, bless them, had put Lily in a separate bedroom, just down the hall from James’, though everyone in the household knew she snuck into his bed every night. “No, I’m not cross,” she adds, when James’ face falls. “Really, I’m not. I just need– I need a night.”
James nods, and she leaves him, in his sickly powder blue robes, slumped on the chaise.
After their fight, the big one, their first– like a milestone, like the first real, adult thing they’ve done since school ended– Lily is different.
James can see it, in her sullen gazes, the way she doesn’t care anymore. She stops putting on makeup to go to the balls, refuses to speak to the old Slytherin families– though James has pointed out that most of them aren’t even aware of You-Know-Who, still wrapped up in the aftermath of Grindelwald’s failed coup. She’s inhospitable, graceless, often actively rude, to the point of James’ mother dragging him aside.
“Is she sick?” Effy asks, with no preamble.
“No,” James says, miserably. “I think she’s just tired. Or– no, just tired. Society season must be wearing on her.”
Effy grins, ridiculously pleased with James’ lame excuse. “Well, it did take me some getting used to!” She chirps. “I’ll have an espresso sent up to her in the morning. Perhaps some Pepper-Up, as well.”
James tries for a grin, lands at a weak grimace. His mother doesn’t notice, though as the events drag on, he catches her and Fleamont both frowning at them from across the room, their brows twin twists of disappointment. Truthfully, James is struggling. He’s desperate for the Season to end, which is insane, given that he’s never, not even once, felt this way before. The glimmering lights of the Houses feel oppressive, the small-talk feels lame and boring, and Lily is a constant pressure next to him, like a Dementor, sucking up all the ease from every conversation. He becomes more aware of the headlines, can’t help it, she gives him the paper every morning after she’s finished with it, and so he’s fully up to date with the deaths and disappearances. It’s the worst when it’s names he recognises. Never any in the Society circles, of course not, but Muggleborns from school, the year above, the years below, even the parents of poor Philip Davies, the sweet first year he’d taken under his wing for a bit. James feels a bit green at that headline, though he’s relieved to read that Philip was away visiting family at the time, and plans to transfer to Beauxbatons in the autumn.
Lily isn’t horrible all the time, of course. She makes sweet conversation with James’ parents when they have tea, or dinner, the four of them settling into a wonderfully homey routine that’s only disrupted by their events. And after that first night after the fight, she’s back in his bed, whispering secrets and filthy nothings into his ear, riding him with a silencing spell draped across the door.
So it isn’t all bad. Just different. And James can’t wait for the summer to be over. Which also isn’t bad. Just different.
They’re sitting around the dining table in the Summer Cottage when it happens.
“And James, darling, I’ve got your bedroom all set up for when we return—“
James freezes, a spoonful of cold cucumber soup halfway to his lips. Deep breath. Spoon back down. Now is as good a time as any.
“Actually, Mum, when we’re done with the Season, I won’t be moving back home. Lily and I are—“
He’s cut off by a long, loud squeal from Effy. It’s a juvenile thing, odd coming from his mother’s mouth. Lily looks at him, terrified.
“James! Lily! And neither of you said , oh my goodness! Have you set a date? If we’ll be doing it this summer, it’ll have to be—“
Fleamont, whose gaze had snapped to Lily’s conspicuously empty left hand when James started talking, places a firm hand on his wife’s arm, cutting her off efficiently.
The silence stretches, languishing. James feels sick, guilty, like he’s committed an unforgivable indiscretion, dragging the corpse of his parent’s approval into the dining room and dumping it onto the table, forcing everyone to look at it as it lies, stinking, amongst the salad plates.
James stares at Lily, eyes wide. Helpless. She looks back, raises her eyebrows. Your family, your problem.
“Mum– we aren’t– I haven’t–” he looks at Lily, beseeching now, begging. Rounds his eyes.
“Effy, he hasn’t asked me,” Lily begins, after a put-upon look that only James seems to recognise as patently, blatantly, false. “Yet.” He still doesn’t miss the sharpness in her tone.
Fleamont claps his hands. It rings through the space.
“Alright, son, I think it’s time for us man-folk to retire to the study.”
“But– we’re only on soup–”
Fleamont stands up. Dinner’s done, then. James will have to wheedle very hard indeed to get Mopsy to fix him and Lily something after.
He trails off to the study behind his father, feeling awfully like he is heading to the chopping block.
Fleamont Potter has never been a man to hedge his words. James knows this about his father, and he loves it, revels in his frankness, proud that his family speaks so differently from the mincing subtleties and layered barbs of his peers, up in the clouds of High Society.
James is not revelling in Fleamont’s frankness now.
“ Are you going to marry her?” His father asks, flinty stare fixed on him. James has never seen his father look this cold, his eyes this emptied of joy, of laughter.
He nods, not trusting his voice.
Fleamont heaves a sigh, sits down in one of the big leather armchairs by the fireplace. He gestures to the other one– it isn’t a request, and waves his wand. A decanter of whiskey– the good stuff, James thinks sourly– and two rocks glasses float over, the crystal winking in the soft light of the heatless fire.
“When?”
“I don’t–” James starts, but he’s cut off by a wave of Monty’s hand.
“Drink your whiskey, James, and I want you to think hard about your next words,” the steel in his father’s eyes bores twin holes into James’ chest.
James nods. Swallows. Thinks. His father breaks the silence, again.
“There has not been a Potter born out of wedlock in all our family history. I do not intend for my son to be the one to break this tradition.”
The words take the air out of James’ lungs. The signet ring around his pinky, once such a point of pride, feels like a manacle, the twin antlers mocking, mocking. James begins, careful.
“I want to marry her, Dad, but we’re still young. There’s time. I– plenty of people do it this way, anyway, these days, and we’re always careful , I–” James hears the words spilling out of his lips, sees his father watching him, and feels like a child.
“There is a war coming, James. I would like to see our bloodline safe and secure before I die.” Fleamont’s voice is grave. He is swirling his whiskey around in his glass, a finger balanced on the rim.
James is shocked. This is the most blunt his father has ever been with him about the burden of the House of Potter. Usually, it’s murmured words about legacy and honour, his mother dropping casual hints about grandchildren. Not this. Not–
“I don’t mean to surprise you, James, but surely you’ve thought about this? We have allowed you so much freedom, but you are the Heir to a Great House. You have a duty, and with it comes opportunity. Do not squander it.”
At this, Fleamont gets up, opens his safe, and takes out a large yellow stone– no, a ring. James feels sick.
“It’s topaz. It was my mother’s. I do not mean to pressure you, but I would like for you to take this now, and use it when you’re ready.”
The ring falls into James’ waiting hand, and his father leaves the room. The stone is hot in his grip, slippery.
James puts the ring into his jacket pocket. He feels heat building in the back of his eyes, but he doesn’t cry.
Instead, he slips back into the dining room, watching, unseen for a moment, as Lily and his mother sit in stony silence. They aren’t looking at each other. Lily draws a breath, about to speak, then stops herself. His mother does the same, but does not stop.
“I’ve got a pile of wedding magazines in the upstairs loo, if you’d ever like to borrow them, dear.”
James knows this tone. It’s her Society voice, uncomfortable, prissy.
“Thank you, I– I don’t think I’ll need them for a while, but– thanks.”
James recognises Lily’s tone, too. Though her back is to him, he can almost hear her grit her teeth as she smiles, the tense and horrible line of her shoulders. He decides to put them both out of their misery, stepping further into the room, putting a hand on the back of Lily’s chair.
“Shall we retire, Lil?”
She looks up at him, open faced, with a wrenchingly grateful expression.
They go up to bed and have long, slow sex, little breathy moans filling the silence between them. Afterwards, Lily asks if he’ll ask her, and James gives a non-committal hum, and then asks if she will ask him. She laughs, and slaps his naked arse on her way to the toilet.
After the Season ends, they’re dumped straight into Order work. James thinks this might be some kind of punishment, some kind of horrible payback for taking the summer off to go to parties– nevermind how much he’d wanted to come back to London, by the end. They’re staying at Sirius and Remus’ while they look for a new place, commandeering Remus’ bedroom, in an act that Lily seems ridiculously alright with, given how guilty James feels about turfing Remus– with his aching joints and his stiff back– out of his space and onto the couch. He’s guilty about it all the way up until Sirius forgets the silencing spell one night, and– well. It certainly explains some things about their seventh year.
James doesn’t bring it up– doesn’t feel the need to. Sirius and Remus are as settled as he and Lily are, and they’re all drowning in their basic training requirements, anyway.
Remus and Lily never join them in their battlefield training, which is a shame, because James loves it. He loves learning new spells, Defence and Charms and Transfiguration all wielded in a way to win a duel, the lateral thinking of turning the floor to marbles beneath an opponent’s feet, of squeezing the perfect stunner right through the cracks of an ill-cast shielding spell , the thrill of a fight. Sirius is phenomenal on the training mats, all sparking energy and raw power. Sometimes, James sees him, not as he is, but as he could have been, the haughty Lord of the House of Black, ancestral power thudding through his veins, the weight and honour of legacy a mantle across his broad shoulders. Then, he’ll blink, and he’s looking at the ceiling, someone having taken him down with a sneaky Knockback Jinx, and Sirius will be there, extending his hand to James, laughing.
He comes home, sweaty and tired and wrecked, to find Lily and Remus. It’s uncharitable to say that his face falls when Lil is already in, sitting on the couch, a mask of misery clouding her eyes. She’s cross, with Dumbledore, for putting her on potions duty as soon as she signed up, her hands cramping and back aching, eyes red and teary from the fumes of hundreds of healing draughts she’s meant to keep an eye on.
“I don’t even understand why,” she whinges one night over the top of her wineglass. “I wasn’t even top in Potions! I was top in Charms– I swear this is some kind of outdated view of women– if not in the kitchen–”
Remus chimes in, finishes her sentence– “then in the potions lab!”
They laugh then, together, which is good, because Remus has been quieter and quieter, his meetings with Dumbledore leaving him wan and reticent and miserable. James and Sirius exchange a look.
It’s not long after that, when Remus goes to bed, making his excuses though it’s barely eight. The conversation continues, all of them languid and warm, cups of tea in hand and Lily falling into the corner of the sofa when Sirius speaks.
“Has he– he hasn’t talked to you about those meetings, has he?” He’s looking at Lily, who blinks; her mind is starting to go fuzzy with sleep and she doesn’t quite understand what Sirius is talking about.
“What meetings?”
“The ones with Dumbledore.” Sirius looks oddly shifty as he asks, and Lily begins to feel herself frowning. She glances over at James, who looks as confused as she feels.
“Why would he talk to me about them? Surely he’d tell you if there was anything–”
“He doesn’t.” Sirius’ voice is sharp, and Lily snaps her mouth shut, begins to sit up. A creeping realisation that this conversation is more serious than the way she’s been treating it so far. “He doesn’t talk to me about anything , and yes I’ve asked and– and I mean he doesn’t look well, does he, so it’s not like I don’t have anything to worry about!” He cuts himself off, back of his hand to his mouth and looking off to the side. His fingers clench and unclench around his mug. Lily imagines it falling and shattering to bits on the floor.
“Pads, mate,” James says soothingly, “Remus is just– he’s stressed, you’re stressed, he probably doesn’t want to put more stuff on your plate.”
“The full moon is coming up,” Sirius says, flatly. James’ statement goes unacknowledged. “He’s spending it alone.”
James breathes in sharply, tearing paper. Lily blinks, looking between them.
“Does he usually spend it here?”
The both of them are silent. There’s a secret here. She bites her tongue, watches as they flick looks at each other back and forth.
“He’s spending it away,” Sirius says, delicately. “He’s spent the last few, away.”
James is frowning when she looks at him, but his face clears when he rises to his feet, reaching out a hand and pulling Sirius up along with him.
“Come on. It’s– come on, it’s just hard times. You– sometimes you just have to let him come to you, you know how it is.”
“He’s making it bloody hard,” Sirius says, but he lets James tug him to his feet, sways a bit. “He is, you have to admit it. Stubborn git.”
“Yeah, yeah.” James has an arm around his shoulders, glances back towards Lily and rolls his eyes comically, mouths an apologetic sorry! She shrugs, smiles, waves them off. She promises herself that she’ll talk to Remus about it in the morning, or whenever they’re both free, but in the rush of finding a flat and moving in and the Order and– it gets lost, an opportunity slipping out of her grasp.
They move into the new flat on the first of September. It feels fitting, somehow. James imagines all the shiny-faced kids tumbling onto the Hogwarts Express as he shrinks and unshrinks piles of boxes, and he feels warm. It’s a new type of beginning.
The warm feeling fades throughout the day, as the delivery van had gotten emptier and the flat fuller. They’d insisted– Lily had insisted– on furnishing the flat themselves. ‘We’ll go round the charity shops,’ she’d said, ‘it’ll be a laugh!’
It was not a laugh. Standing in their new home, James’ stomach is twisting in knots. He’s trying very hard not to miss the Potter Estate– the quality fabrics, the curlicues and polished woods, the knowledge that hundreds of his ancestors had sat in the same seat he had, it was all so comforting– made it feel like home. This new flat does not feel like home. It smells odd, like old socks and leftovers, and everything is too-small. And nothing matches – they have four different dining chairs and the armchairs clash with the couch.
James knows it is very silly to be upset about these things, and tries to rationalise the tears prickling behind his eyes. It’s normal to feel this way, when you’ve moved out of the family house. Plenty of people are sad to leave their parents behind– the comforts of home, of never doing your own laundry, or worrying about the grocery bills. This isn’t really why James feels strange, though.
It’s just– well. It’s all very adult, isn’t it? Striking off on his own, in a flat furnished by himself and his girlfriend. And James feels like he should be waiting at Kings Cross, whooping when he spies his mates, enduring his mother’s cheek kisses and looking longingly down the tracks for the Express to come– to take him away, another year of magic. That’s the crux of it, he thinks. Their flat feels so very mundane– so Muggle. There’s nothing special, nothing magical about it.
“Is that the last of them?” Lily asks, blowing hair out of her face.
“I think so,” James says, catching her by the strap of her overalls and pulling her in. “What do you say we leave unpacking til the morning and christen the place?”
Lily smiles into his lips.
“James–” she says, muffled. “Do you think I don’t– mm– do you think I don’t notice when you do this?”
James looks up from where he’s been mouthing down her neck, tasting the sweet-salt of sweat from a day’s moving boxes.
“What am I doing, Lil?” He says, mischief playing in his eyes. “What could I possibly be doing, aside from trying to get my gorgeous girlfriend into bed with me?”
“Every time–” her breath hitches a little as he sucks on her fluttering pulsepoint, darting his tongue out to smooth the hurt over. “Every time you feel some big emotion, you– oh, that’s nice– you want to have sex about it–”
James doesn’t take his mouth off of her neck. He’s sick of talking. He winds his hands around the back of her thighs, and lifts her up, carrying them both up the stairs towards the bedroom.
“James– we aren’t done talking! Or– shit, yes – or unpacking the kitchen,” Lily breathes, but he can see from the flush spreading up her chest that she’s fighting a losing battle.
“Later, Lil,” James is fully grinning now, a sharklike thing, and Lily’s breath is coming in little gasps. “Can we talk later?”
“Oh, fine,” she hums, and that’s the last they exchange for quite some time.
The first few weeks of living with Lily are fun. They make a production of everything, feeling very adult, inviting their friends over. James would waft around the kitchen, laughing at nothing and lighting candles at the dinner table while Lily preps the salad courses. Remus and Peter and Sirius would arrive, or be helping with the food, ‘just come whenever, honestly,’ and they’d eat, then move to the lounge to get outrageously drunk on Muggle beers and elf-made wine.
It starts getting old quicker than he thought it would. The shiny performance starts stretching thinner and thinner, when it starts slowly sinking in that they aren’t just playing house and this isn’t just for fun and this is really his life now, really , not just a costume he can put on and take off again. He tells himself it’s just teething problems, because everyone always talks about getting past the honeymoon phase and into the comfort of living, really living alongside another person. He still loves waking up next to Lily, and he still definitely loves fucking her; he doesn’t love the dishes that come from the dinners, or the cleaning up of bottles discarded on every surface, or her voice when she says very sparkly and very tight how she’d asked him to pick up flowers for the table on the way home but it was fine that he’d forgotten, no, she didn’t mind, really, James, it was fine–!
They get a cat. James is not fond of the idea— it feels too much, too soon, somehow. He expresses this to Lily, gently, explains how they’re never home, asks whether it would be fair to the poor creature to get it, only to abandon it for days at a time. They’re both just so busy, he says, with their respective families, and friends, and Order training, and– well, he doesn’t bring up the coming war in so many words, but he certainly hints at it. He thinks, perhaps, that pulling on the heartstrings will work.
Lily looks at him, hands on her hips.
“It’s not like we’re having a baby, James,” she says, eyebrows raised. “Cats are independent. I just— it would be nice. To have something that’s happy to see me when I get home.”
James doesn’t miss the jab.
They go to the pet store the next day.
The Magical Menagerie crouches in the middle of Diagon Alley, amongst the shiny bricks and glowing shopfronts, brown and dark and sour, like a molehill. James has never been inside– never needed to. He’d had his parents’ owls to use, his own presented to him on his tenth birthday, and hadn’t ever really wanted a pet.
Lily stands beside him in the doorway, grim-faced and certain, like it wasn’t her idea in the first place. She swings open the door, marches in. Doesn’t wait for James to follow. James had a wild rushing thought– what if he didn’t go in? What if he said, actually Lil, hang the cat, hang the flat, hang the whole bloody thing, let’s go and fuck whoever we want and go back to being good mates–
He walks inside after her.
She’s already deep in conversation with the attendant, and James catches a few words– pedigree, kneazle-blood, not a tabby– before he wanders off, leaving Lily to her negotiations.
There is an enclosure at the back of the shop, dimly lit, shredded pages of the Daily Prophet lining the interior.
James steps over to it.
At first, he thinks it’s empty, and he draws his hand through the newsprint, enjoying the rustle. A paw darts out from a particularly high pile, quick as lightning, and slashes its claws down his thumb.
“Merlin, fuck! ” It isn’t so much the hurt as the shock of it, that paw coming out of thin air, that makes James leap a foot into the air. Sticking his thumb in his mouth, he looks sheepishly about, to see if anyone witnessed it.
Three kids that can’t be older than eight or nine, tiny things in sibling-hand-me-downs, who were peacefully browsing in the toad section with their parents, have snapped their heads over, looking at him, eyes wide. Lily is staring daggers at him from across the shop.
When faced with situations like this, James has never, not even once, backed down. He isn’t intending to start now. He rakes his hands through the scraps of paper until he hits fur, and grabs the squirming thing by the scruff of its neck.
When he pulls his arm out of the enclosure, he comes face to face with the ugliest cat he’s ever seen. A scrappy white thing, with red eyes and a squashed-up face as if it’s been hit with a brick, snub-nosed and evil looking. He doesn’t even know if he could call it a cat. Commit, James, the sly voice in his head– it sounds a lot like Sirius, actually– says.
“This is the one!” He shouts across the shop.
Lily looks horrified.
The cat– James’ new best friend, for how well it is playing along– has stopped scrambling to be let down and settles itself gently in the curve of his forearm, laying its mashed face into his elbow and letting out a startlingly loud purr.
“Yep– Lil, the cat has chosen the wizard!”
Lily pinches the bridge of her nose, exasperation high in her shoulders, but she gamely turns to the shopkeep.
“Anything we need to know about this one?”
“Only that it’s the last of the litter! Mother was an alley cat, we think. Let’s see–” he muses, clearly enjoying himself. “Albino, obviously. No particular magical gifts that we can ascertain, aside from a rather supernatural anger– though he seems to have taken to your husband quite well–”
“Oh no–”
“We’re not–”
Lily and James speak at the same time, cutting over each other. The shopkeeper’s eyes sparkle. He’s spied a sale.
And as James puts the money down, collecting food and choosing a collar and deciding on a bell and a litter box and all the other necessities he didn’t even think of, the cat remains snuggled to his chest, fast asleep and actually snoring.
They walk outside, dazed, overstuffed bags dragging along the ground, and make their way to the nearest Floo. As they move through the crowds, Lily is looking pensively at the cat.
“Any thoughts on a name?” She asks after a while.
“No idea. Shall we brainstorm when we get home? Oh, drat– pub night.”
“Why don’t we ask them to come over instead? We have a few bottles of wine left from summer, and we can all get outrageously drunk, and the cat ends up with a name at the end of the night.”
“Oh, how I love you, Evans.”
They’ve gathered in the lounge, forming a loose circle. The cat, who has already pissed on the floor twice, is enclosed between all of their legs, prowling one way, then another, searching for the weakest link.
“Babette!” Peter crows, his cheeks pinked, eyes already glassy from drink.
“It’s a boy cat, Wormy, and weren’t you dating a Babette last week?” Remus says, a cigarette dangling from his fingers, leaning back to blow the smoke out of the open window behind him.
“Dreadfully passé, old chap, naming a cat after your ex-girlfriend,” Sirius cuts in. His voice always gets posher when he drinks. James can almost smell it; the fresh growth of a rounded grove, trees rustling overhead, a whistling bird. He blinks.
“We’re still going out! I’m taking her– hic! – to the theatre next weekend!” Peter’s tone is still pointedly cheerful, but underneath there’s a sheen of hurt. “She isn’t my ex-anything!”
“Yet!” Sirius retorts, because he doesn’t just get posh when he drinks, he can also get mean.
James puts a hand on Peter’s shoulder.
“Leave off poor Wormy, it isn’t his fault he’s–” wherever this sentence goes, it’s going to be disastrous– “Er–”
Lily, his beloved, the angelic, beautiful woman that she is, interrupts him. Merlin, he loves her.
“What about Snowy?” There’s mischief in her voice.
Remus raises an eyebrow, and there’s almost a smile on his mouth. It shocks James, how unfamiliar the expression looks on him.
“Tintin’s dog?”
“Who?” Comes a chorus comes from around the room.
“That’s worse than Babette! At least that was original! Everyone has a cat named Snowy!” Sirius is aghast, the unoriginality of the suggestion genuinely offending him.
“Except Tintin, who has a dog–” Remus is properly smiling now, seeing the chaos unfolding around him.
Questions, overlapping each other: “Who the bloody fuck is Tintin?” Peter says it like it’s something foreign, two separate words, Tin - Tin; “Was he in the year above us?” James, wondering; “I think I would have remembered a ponce like that–” Sirius, clamouring; “No, I swear there was a guy, Ravenclaw, maybe, French, or Belgian–” Peter, again, starting as the cat makes a break for it, only to be dragged back into the circle by Sirius.
“Tintin would be a nice name–” Remus breaks through, now self-satisfied and just wanting to keep the mayhem going.
“Stop, stop, they don’t get the reference–” Lily again, and she’s almost laughing too hard to speak. They share a fond look from across the room.
The oven timer goes off. They scramble to their feet, as one. The as-yet-unnamed cat bolts.
For a week afterwards, James and Lily call the cat Untitled James And Lily Project; or Ujalp for short. Ujalp settles in nicely, peeing on the floor only occasionally after the litter box is set up, but does not seem to be a fan of his name. They try different ones, every day a surprise as to how Ujalp will react.
On Monday, Lily calls him Angel, and he bites her forefinger, hard enough to draw blood.
On Tuesday, James tries Nimbus, and he immediately turns tail and takes a shit in the middle of the lounge.
Wednesday, while Lily is feeding him, she tries Ghost, and he hides under the couch, refusing to come out for hours.
By Thursday, they are both exasperated. James threatens to make Ujalp permanent, to which Ujalp yowls, and yowls, and yowls.
Friday evening comes around, and Remus walks in, early as always for dinner, and he’s humming a tune. James hugs him, slapping his back as Ujalp winds around their legs. Remus picks him up.
“Hello, handsome!” Turning to James, he says, “still no name?”
“We’re thinking of keeping Ujalp, just to spite him.” As he says it, James holds out his arms, which are covered in scratch marks.
Remus sweeps his gaze across the pathetic little marks on James’ hands, gestures once to his own face, at that wicked scar from fourth year slicing it down the middle, and coos to the cat.
“They don’t appreciate you, no they do not! You’re a real toughie, a real rough-n-tumble guy, a real Hungry Man– hey, what about Ziggy?”
The cat squirms up to Remus’ neck, wrapping himself around his neck like a scarf, and rumbles a purr, disconcertingly loud coming from the tiny body. He stays like that until they leave for the pub.
“Bye Ziggy!” They call, and Ziggy yowls in answer, and when they return, hours later, voices loud and cheeks pinked, they don’t find any pee on the floor at all.
The four of them are in the training gym– well, more of a padded room, really, the headquarters of the Order some country house way out in Devonshire, easy to get to by Floo, but a real pain to apparate to. After meetings, while Lily’s clearing up in the lab, they like to practise, two-on-two, all the duelling methods that Sirius and James learn through the week, catching Peter and Remus up to speed. Not that they need it– Remus has just swiped Sirius’ legs out from under him with a clever kick to the back of the knees, no magic required.
“That’s dirty!” Sirius accuses, scrambling up from where he’d been sprawled on the ground, long aristocratic limbs akimbo. “That’s— that’s basically cheating!”
“Oh yes,” Remus says dryly. “Because that’s what the Death Eater is going to think about before they Bombardo your stupid head off.”
Peter snorts, quickly shutting up when Sirius shoots him a dark look.
“Boys, boys,” James puts on a voice that sounded not-too-far off his father’s. “I’m sure we can settle this in a civilised manner.”
“We can settle it–” Sirius says, and James turns his wand on him but too late as– he jumps, transforming smoothly into a dog and barking gleefully in his face.
“Pads! Pads get– get off, you great lumping–!”
Peter, at this point, is in stitches.
“Definitely also something you can’t do in front of the Death Eaters,” Remus calls, but he sounds too amused to be taken seriously. “I mean, should be fine it’s not like you’re, oh I don’t know, illegal Animagi that nobody knows about.”
“Actually,” James says, as he finally succeeds in pushing dog-Sirius off of himself, “I was thinking about that the other day. About telling Lily, I mean.”
He hears the familiar unsettling sound of bones cracking and skin reshifting as Sirius shifts beside him.
“What?” He sounds offended, and James turns to see him scowling.
“What do you mean, what?”
“Well it’s–” he blusters, looks at the others as if for support. Peter and Remus stare back at him blankly. “It’s our secret! A Marauders thing!”
“Yeah well–” James shrugs. He’s not sure what about this could be bothering Sirius so much. “I mean, you’ve said it yourself– she’s practically one of us.”
“Yeah, but not actually !” Peter has waded into the fray, sputtering and indignant.
“What makes her qualified to know?” Sirius says, slowly, dangerously.
Remus is pointedly silent.
James can feel himself getting a little offended now, on her behalf.
“What makes her– she’s my girlfriend, you numpty! I live with her! It’s– I mean, it’s pretty serious– don’t start– don’t you think she deserves to know?”
“What, because you’re going to transform into a great hulking stag on your wedding day?” Sirius is standing now, and James scrambles up to join him.
“Because– because I don’t want to keep secrets from her!”
“Oh grow up, James!” Sirius scoffs.
“You didn’t let me when I wanted to tell my girlfriend!” Peter is whining now, and it grates on James’ ears.
“This is not the same as when you were dating Lauretta for three weeks. Lily and I live together! I mean, she’s going to find out someday! And I’d like to tell her!”
“James, how is she going to find out?” Remus has decided to put his oar in, and James waits for him to take his side, the voice of reason. “Do you tend to hang out around the house in fucking form? Do you sometimes turn into a stag when you get off?” James scoffs, incredulous. “No, really. How could she possibly find out?”
“There!” Sirius points at him, triumphant. “Mum agrees! Don’t say a thing.”
“Pads, don’t .” There’s something in the air between Sirius and Remus, and it’s ugly, rippling through their good-natured argument.
Peter shrinks into his seat. He looks about a minute from turning into Wormy, just to hide.
“Remus, I–”
“No, I’ve told you not to, and you don’t listen– you never listen to me,” Remus is off, now, a growl in his throat. A gentle voice in James’ head reminds him that the next full moon is two days from now.
“Oh, you’re one to talk. When was the last time you asked about my day?”
Peter turns into a rat with a pop.
James hurries– too late! – to de-escalate.
“Moony? Pads? I don’t have to tell Lily, it was just an–”
“Fine, Sirius, how are you? How was your fucking day? Because I have to go to another meeting with Dumbledore tomorrow, and I’m terrified, and he wants me to– to–” Remus’ voice cracks, and he stops short. His face is white, crumpled.
“See! See–” Sirius has whipped around, a cruel showman, throwing his hand out, looking at James and Peter. They stare back, mortified. “He won’t even tell us what’s going on– and he expects us to– to– to trust him, or something– but he never tells me anything !”
Remus gets up and leaves. The door slams behind him.
The next day, James gets a– slightly bedraggled– owl from Sirius.
Remus says that he doesn’t want to spend the moon tomorrow with us. He said he’ll tell us when he’s back. You can tell Lily about the thing, it’s okay. I’ll deal with Pete.
SOB
Regulus decides not to go back to school during the summer, two weeks after his father’s death.
“You can’t make me,” he says, cool and deadly calm, to his mother. “I’m the Head of the House now, and you can’t make me.”
She nods, once, cowed and straight-backed at once, and retreats up to her quarters. The funeral is that afternoon. The sun is white-hot and unfeeling in the sky. As Regulus looks impassively forward, all he can see are shaded faces, a crowd of black lace parasols. He is a porcelain figure, shaking hands and accepting well wishes, the vice-grip of the ring on his finger and his mother silent and silhouetted beside him. When Lucius comes up to him, grabs his forearm in embrace, he shudders under his skin, blinks impassively at him.
“Many apologies for your loss,” Malfoy says, sharp glittering eyes. “However– your dedication to the cause. It will not go unnoticed. Well done, Lord Black.”
It is not the first time he has been addressed as the Head of their House; he remembers vividly mere hours after his father’s death, sitting stiff-backed in a gilded office on the upper level of Gringott’s, their estate manager peering up at him through bushy eyebrows as they shook hands, an ancient contract on the table in front of them, bands of purest Goblin magic sinking into his skin. He wondered idly how many bonds one could take, how many vows and constrictions before he was held together by nothing but the chains of obligations to others.
The Dark Lord calls to him– and him alone, Regulus notes with a secret, illicit thrill tickling down his spine, the electrifying rush of the chosen. Regulus goes, the marble floor of the ballroom in Wiltshire that He is situated in echoing under his shoes, bows at His feet. The aura of power surrounding Him is no less terrifying, but now, with ancestral magic running through his veins, it feels almost familiar, a potency that Regulus is beginning to realise is ever-present in his life.. Regulus feels a little drunk on it, as he straightens.
“My Lord,” he greets, and the Dark Lord smiles. His teeth are perfect, straight and square and so white that Regulus is sure they’ve been spelled that way. The only flaw is a thin seam of blood between His two front teeth, blue-red and stark against the bone.
“Regulus Black,” He intones. “My condolences. And my congratulations.” Regulus grins, despite himself.
“Thank you, my Lord,” he says, calm and waiting. The Dark Lord would never have brought him here for something as banal as condolences.
“I wish for you to join me– join us, in an extra meeting,” He continues. Regulus flushes. He knows what this extra meeting is– how could he not, when Bellatrix cackles her boasts about it– the only woman He trusts, holding it over Regulus’ head like she did with toys when he was very small – when Lucius smirks, tucking his slyness into his smile lines and murmuring something– not tonight, Regulus, as I’ve a prior engagement– when he’s been left for weeks with Crouch and Snape and the others, sitting abandoned and sulky on Wednesday evenings and knowing that the Inner Circle is meeting.
Regulus clears his throat. Reminds himself that he is a Lord, now, and Lords do not blush, or scrape. They take what they are owed. “Thank you,” he says, solemn. It’s silent in the ballroom, the Dark Lord waiting, expectant, for more. “It would be my honour.”
The Dark Lord sighs. “Very well. Wednesday evenings, at the Lestrange Manor.”
Regulus bows again and leaves, feeling oddly like he has failed some kind of test. It doesn’t matter. They’re going hunting tonight.
The strangest part of the grief is the freedom. It felt at the beginning like the floor dropping out from underneath him, the constant and steady presence of his father gone, the foundations of his world suddenly upended. It was strange to wake up and suddenly realise that those foundations, the floor, the walls, the ceiling itself, had all been inventions of his mind; that the terror of his changed life was not the terror of precarious uncertainty, but the terror of control, power, his life suddenly and unequivocally in his own hands.
It is a slow and creeping realisation that turns into outright exhilaration, the giddy hedonism of seeking things out for no better reason than he wanted to. It tumbles together with his newly rising status among His favoured as a heady and intoxicating cocktail. Finally, his most private and base desires for power and status and respect are all fulfilled, and Regulus is holding court with an over-full glass of champagne, sharp smiles and cutting remarks in rooms where he holds the threads of attention indifferently in his other hand, pulling and tugging according to his whims. He is shining, a cut and polished gem, a bejewelled asset in His hand; all of his childish, teenaged whims have been sloughed off in one fell swoop, and he has emerged glimmering and perfect and exactly what they crafted him to be. He is the second son no longer.
His wand becomes more accustomed to curses and hexes than it ever did in school, all sunlit afternoons of vapid Charms and meaningless Transfiguration spells disappeared, cobwebs blown away into the night air. He laughs and laughs as he duels, is electric, stepping out of the way of spells and all the way up to terrified eyes, mouths moving to cast something, anything but he’s quicker, thoughts racing ahead like comets, lightning, every nerve lit up. He is never arrogant, never showy, is cold and efficient and does exactly what he needs to do, no movement ever wasted. He masters himself, and in return, is granted mastery of others.
There is only one moment where he hesitates, stumbles, a fragmented pebble in his shoe. It’s a Tuesday, and it’s absurd of Regulus to even notice, not just because he’s started losing dates like water through his fingers. He’s just flung a curse at some hapless Mudblood witch, desperately throwing up shielding charms which are batted through like flimsy gossamer, when they appear, six telltale popping cracks of apparition. It’s raining, the kind that falls in sheets with the wind pushing the droplets in waves of freezing icicles, the pattering relentless on the ground. Thunder rumbles overhead and every so often, Regulus watches as they all become illuminated in white electric light, each flash a tableau of violence.
Them again, the Order of the Phoenix, the righteous vigilantes, the do-gooders, the neighborhood militia. Regulus sneers under his mask. They practically glow with their sense of pride and moral good; he wonders if they even bother to keep track of how many Mudbloods and Muggles they actually manage to save, watches the witch fall in a flash of green light as one of the wizards surges forward to stun Malfoy, who ducks out of the way of the spell with practised ease. It’s pathetically easy to deal with the Order, even more-so than the Aurors; they’ve taken to toying with the Magical Enforcements like a cat with a mouse. It’s all pathetically easy, Barty reporting religiously on each and every movement with a listening bug set up in his fathers office. The only one who seems at all suspicious of Barty’s new loyalty to his father is Moody, who seems relentless in his hatred, and would sooner see every Death Eater dead than in Azkaban.
Then suddenly, in another camera flash of lightning, he sees him. All his fears confirmed, the fears he didn’t even know he had. James’ face, twisted in focus and a manic grin as he thrusts his wand forward, wielding it sharply through the air. Regulus blanches, and he is, for the first time, grateful for the mask, dramatic and unwieldy as it is. He stumbles, and knows he’s left himself wide open but can’t move fast enough, can’t move, and he can see the wizard in front of him frown and take aim and–
From behind him, a shout, and Rosier is there, casting a protego and stupefy in the same breath, his wand a quick flickering movement in the corner of Regulus’ eye. He recovers and steps forward, casts a horrible skin stripping curse that leaves the man wailing and cursing on the ground; his blood is thumping rhythmically through his ears, and he breathes out raggedly as he casts spell after spell, needs to get this feeling out of his skin and the only thing he can do is crucio, crucio, crucio–
When someone grabs his arm, he whirls around, eyes wild and wand pointing straight up, and it’s Malfoy, mask off and staring down at him. Rosier is behind him, panting, and Regulus realises suddenly that they’re alone. The rain is still pouring down, and thunder booms overhead. James is gone.
“–Regulus,” Malfoy says, louder, as if he’s already said it once, twice. “Regulus!”
“I’m fine.” Regulus finally says, and he’s shuddering under Malfoy’s grasp. He can feel the Mark underneath Malfoy’s palm, can imagine the snake pushing up and up against his forearm, black and risen ink, as if the snake is alive and waiting to burst out, parasites with eggs laid under skin. Malfoy and Rosier glance at each other, and he raises his voice, hears it crack through the air. “I’m fine .”
Silence. Rain falling. Regulus feels cold down to his bones; a stone sinking to the bottom of a lake frozen over.
“We should go,” Rosier finally says, into the quiet.
Malfoy nods, mechanically, is still just looking at Regulus, brow furrowed as if he’s a puzzle he can’t quite figure out. Regulus coughs, tugs slightly at his arm. Malfoy drops it, almost embarrassed, as if he’d forgotten he was holding on, before stepping back sharply and turning on his heel, Disapparating with a crack .
Regulus studiously avoids Rosier’s gaze, and shaking out his wand hand, does the same.
The thing about the Order is that it feels a bit like being back at Hogwarts again.
James doesn't really say this to anyone, because he thinks it wouldn’t be a popular sentiment, what with Remus looking increasingly run off his feet, and Sirius turning up every other day with some kind of injury. It’s just that James has always loved duelling – his father loved duelling – and if he squints and looks a bit to the left, what they’re doing just feels like, well, duelling with the training wheels off.
It’s a bit unsettling, how easy it is to slip sideways into being at Hogwarts again. Imagining the curses are just a new set of jinxes that he’s flinging at Snivellus, a well-timed hex to the back of Lucius’ head. Just like school. Same people on either side, a nice, clean Gryffindor-Slytherin match , says a voice in his head, suspiciously like Madam Hooch.
And– alright, he knows it isn’t right. Knows that he is taking something that is full of carnage, and hurt, and pain for so many people, and making it into a sort of, childhood game. He rationalises his mindset to himself as trying to cope with the realities of war, a statement growled out by Moody one night as they sat around the Order table that had stuck in James’ mind. But he knows it’s not. He knows that he has barely anything that needs coping with, his friends all happy and healthy and a stunning girlfriend at his side. James knows that his life a life that so many would kill to have.
Then, one night, on a routine stakeout gone wrong, a body falls with a slump beside him.
“Oliver–!” He yells, over the cacophony of spells and curses ricocheting off the walls. “Olly! Oi! Are you alright!”
He drops, and crawls under the cover to Oliver’s prone body. He takes stock of him quickly, and his stomach begins to drop. His mouth is canted half open, head tilted back and neck bent at an unnatural angle. His eyes are glassy, and dark. His skin has already gotten an unsettling grey tint.
“O–” he chokes on the word, clears his throat. His ears are ringing. “Oliver?”
He’s dead.
That’s when it becomes real for James. Not the uptick in crimes against Muggleborns, not the suspicious reports of raucous Purebloods hunting down Muggles, not even when Lily herself walks in the door white-faced and asks if James can come to Diagon Alley with her next time. When he is faced with the dead body of a schoolmate from Hogwarts, who he barely ever even talked to.
He ends up being sick, crawling a couple of metres away from Olly’s prone body, to be polite.
“Merlin, James,” Sirius says later, gamely patting him on the back. “Bit of a sensitive stomach there, mate. First dead body?”
And he means it as a joke but– as James looks up at him, he realises, this is something he can’t say to Sirius, the man– the boy– that he’s been saying practically every thought in his head to since he was at least 10 years old.
“I–” he breathes in deep, swallows the bile, the disgust, back down. “Yeah. Yeah just– he just didn’t deserve it, you know?”
Sirius looks at him sympathetically, but there’s a confused curl to his brow. “Did you– did you know Olly, mate? I could’ve sworn you’d barely spoken to him, even at school.”
“No, yeah, I just–” James feels like his tongue is fat and swollen in his mouth, “I dunno. Just hit me, that’s all.”
“Right,” Sirius draws out the word, claps his hand two more times firmly on his back. “Well then. Pint later?”
“Yes,” and James doesn’t even have it in him to disguise how grateful he is. “Yes, definitely.”
After Oliver Plimmford dies, James goes to bed for four days.
At first, he’s met with sweetness. Cups of tea delivered to his bedside along with Ziggy, the cat curling into his side, kneading at his knees.
“Just a bit weird. Sure it’s nothing. Maybe a cold,” he tells Lily, and she can see the lie in his eyes, but she knows what happened, on that stakeout, and so she doesn’t push.
At night, James sees the slump of Oliver, the glassy, unseeing eyes– he was in Hufflepuff, James remembers the Hat taking a while to decide, shuffling in line as he watched blond hair poking out of the bottom, nervous eleven year old fingers tightening into the folds of his robes as he sat– when it happened, he’d just been talking, telling James some inane story about his budgie, and he wouldn’t talk again, James would never know the ending of the story– a little yellow bird lying on the bottom of its cage, neck bent at an unnatural angle, Oliver’s eyes staring out of its tiny face–
James wakes up, tears rolling down his face.
On the second day, Lily has to go out, brewing more healing potions for the Order. She comes back, late in the afternoon, tired, smelling of doxies and mint, her hands sticky, a smear of something across her cheek. When she walks into James, an unwashed lump still in the middle of the bed, staring at nothing, she sighs, strokes her hand through his hair, and tells him she’s going to sleep in the spare room tonight.
The nightmares that come then are different. James dreams of his friends– Remus, Peter, Sirius, Lily– Marlene and Mary and Emmeline and all the others, necks bent, eyes blank. But he also dreams of other faces, ones he avoids thinking about. He dreams about Mulciber, who used to sneak James and Sirius Firewhiskey during dull Society Gatherings in Kent. He sees Rosier, always lovesick, trailing after whichever girl had the brightest dress at the ball. He sees Malfoy, like he was on his wedding day, resplendent and unable to take his eyes off his new wife. He sees Regulus– Regulus, whose presence on those beautiful mornings still lies in James’ chest, a bottled up feeling he can’t forget, can’t throw away, can’t rid himself of. In his dreams, none of them are throwing the curses– or maybe all of them are, one falling after another until they’re all lying in a row, necks bent at that horrible angle.
A hurried letter from Sirius, on the third day, just when he thinks he might be able to put one foot in front of the other to shower, get dressed, completely derails any progress he might have made.
Missed you at the meeting, mate. Olly’s funeral Saturday. Will you make it? See you at pub, if not before – Pads
James begs off their pub night, even though they never cancel. He begs off the full moon, too, though it’s the first they’ve been able to spend together in months. Lily’s eyes are growing narrower, as she walks in and out of the bedroom, dressing for the day, undressing for the night, and James stays under the covers, as still as he can.
When Saturday morning rolls around, Lily walks into the room and announces that if he’s going to make such a fuss, he’s going to have to go to the funeral. Her face twists after she says it, as though she can’t believe it came out that cruelly. James doesn’t mind. The hurt feels good, after days and days of terrifying numbness. A reminder that he– unlike Olly– wasn’t dead.
James has never been to a funeral before. He isn’t sure what to expect. It isn’t this. It is an unseasonably warm day, mid-November, freezing in the shade and punishingly hot in the sun, and he’s sweating in his black dress robes. Lily’s hand is moist and firm in his grip. Peter and Remus aren’t there. Sirius is, fluttering his hands around James, eyes darting worriedly at Lily– are you seeing this? He looks wrong? What happened? Lily shrugs, flits her eyes, the universal speak later .
Olly’s parents, his girlfriend, his friends from Hufflepuff, get up, one by one, a parade of them. They speak, read poems, talk about his life. None of them talk about his budgie. James hopes someone took it in, is feeding and watering it, caring for it like Olly did. They talk about his death, and his bravery. James knows that they weren’t there, at the stakeout. Olly wasn’t brave. He wasn’t anything. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and now he isn’t anywhere.
At the wake, Olly’s parents walk up and ask James how he knew their son. James swallows, throat clicking, and feels cowardly.
“School,” he says. His voice comes out hoarse. Maybe he hasn’t spoken in days.
“He never mentioned you– were you close?” the father inquires. The mother’s handkerchief dabs at her cheeks, patting, patting.
“No, not really,” James says. He wants to ask about the budgie. He doesn’t. He stands there, in his sweaty robes, while Olly’s mum pats and pats at her dry cheeks, and when he goes home, he fucks Lily, hard and raw, hoping for another stab of feeling.
The winter slips past Regulus in a blur. The nightmares that had always haunted him seemed to be a constant presence now, slipping thin fingers through the cracks of his consciousness, the horror of his waking hours sometimes surpassing that of his sleeping ones. His dreams have always felt prophetic, now so much more than ever before, as if the dreadfulness of his life is just catching up to what he has always known in his mind, what he has always known his fate would be. There are days where he isn’t sure which is which, where the terrible actions of the night have begun to outstrip anything he could even imagine in the day. There are enough times where he collapses in Grimmauld place in the early hours of the dawn, waking covered in sweat and with an ache in his bones as if he hasn’t rested at all. And perhaps he hasn’t. The line between sleep and wake was but a strand of gossamer, taut and glimmering. It was getting more and more difficult to tell which side he was on.
The others begin to notice, commenting snidely on his lethargy, his lack of enthusiasm. He is silent behind the cold silver mask, feeling the way it begins to come loose on the newfound hollows of his cheeks, all remnants of his youthful vitality falling away.
He doesn’t think of James, he does not think of James, even as the others speak about the Order, gleefully recounting the murders, the torturing, the myriad of new ways they have discovered to cause pain.
It’s easier if he doesn’t think about him, doesn’t think about the day coming where he has to stare at him from behind the mask, doesn't imagine day coming ever closer, creeping and running and Regulus wonders sometimes if time is moving in free-fall to bring him back to James, to bring James back to him, the two of them together the catalyst for something better or worse.
He doesn’t think about the ravenous hunger that awakens in his stomach when he imagines this day, doesn’t think about the traitorous part of his mind would have him turn and take every curse that was aimed at James, if only— if only to have him—
His nightmares go like this: James, face lit by flashes of green and red, his eyes wide and skin pale behind his glasses. Regulus, frozen, moving through thick sludgy air, hands scrabbling and feet pinned to the ground.
He is always unmasked in these moments, cold air whipping against his skin.
James, looking at him, hatred in his face and spitting all the things Regulus wishes he would say; how much he hates him; how disgusted he is by him; he never liked him at all and he’s so happy to have seen the back of him; how it was all a bit of fun and frankly, it’s pathetic that Regulus ever thought it was anything more; it wasn’t real ; it was never real and how could it be when it’s so obvious how real his life is now with Lily, with Sirius, how happy they all are; their real-happy-beautiful-loving family; how Regulus would have denied him all these things and more, and how cruel he was to even think, to dream of doing that to James when it wasn’t ever real at all; what’s real is his perfect marriage and perfect friends, and how they all sit and laugh by the fire about their schooldays, and they don’t think of Regulus at all.
Regulus, falling on top of him. Regulus, feeling curses flay at his back, open weeping sores. James, vitriolic and inhuman and letting him take the pain.
And then there’s a moment, between the terrible pain and the terrible, terrible fear that it all stops. And— it stops, and perhaps this is the most terrible part of it all, because Regulus looks up and sees him, James, kneeling above him, the ugly blotchy redness of his face, tears tracking down the side of his beautiful nose, seeping into the corners of his mouth. Regulus looks up and he imagines a knife cutting deep into his arm where that horrible Mark is, imagines James holding it, as delicate and unfeeling as a surgeon. He imagines the sharp edge of it glinting with otherworldly coldness, the silver sleekness in his beautiful hands, his fingers deep in the tender raw flesh of Regulus’ arms; he would be so gentle, it wouldn’t even hurt, just a cold numbness cutting and slicing, and he would be free, if James would only cut him open he would be free.
It would hurt James so badly for Regulus to even ask, so he doesn’t. But this — and he finds it shameful every time, a secret sweet that he only allows himself in the worst and darkest moments — is something he likes to imagine. The sanctifying wound, the beautiful mutilation. The life that he has denied and ruined for himself, of being with James in the sun.
Regulus’ nightmares end like this. James drops the knife. And he walks away.
The big attack happens on New Year’s Eve. They’d known it was coming, the Order intercepting increasing numbers of excited letters between Death Eaters, whispers of plans. But to have it out in the open, to be At War, James hears it capitalised, is a new and horrible thing. It’s felt real since Olly died, so it isn’t that, it’s just– well. Everything is more overt, now. Peter is getting busier and busier, frantically scurrying around his job at the Ministry, his cheeks hollowing and undereyes purpling. James worries about him, worries about all of them.
He thinks, privately, guiltily, shamefully, that the only good thing the attack has done has been on their relationship, his and Lily’s. They’re too busy to even think of fighting, both walking around their flat exhausted. James has felt– he’s just felt like he’s been able to take care of her is all, rubbing her back as she sobs into his shoulder after Mary Macdonald disappears, walking protectively beside her as they go to Gringott’s, to the Apothecary. It’s not that he needs recognition or constant praise, but it’s nice to finally feel out of the shadows a bit, to be firmly on the right side and having his work be seen for what it is.
With all the worrying about the war, it startles James when he turns around and realises that his parents are getting older.
James hugs his mother, mechanical. It feels like he’s noticing new things about them every day; wrinkles, a thickening spray of grey hairs at his fathers temples, the way his mothers smile lines grow deeper and deeper. They’re starting to smell like old people. He wonders if hating it makes him a bad person.
He sees it in their words, too, and hates himself for noticing it. His father, fumbling sentences– his mother, asking Lily how she is thrice– these are ordinary, almost to be expected. What is most jarring to James is what they say, when they get going.
“Really, darling, you shouldn’t be working, not in your condition. Of course, in my day, a woman’s joy was in the home– the family, and I don’t see why young people these days are so dissatisfied by fulfilling their role–”
“Of course I disagree with this fanatic, James, but he raises an interesting discussion regarding the traditions of Good Wizarding Society, and one that has been unsaid for far too long–”
After their visits, James apologises to Lily, incessantly. She shakes it off–
“James, really, it was no worse than usual,” she says, sweet and resigned.
James wonders if they’ve always been like this, and there is something in him that has changed– a Muggleborn fiancee, a nineteenth birthday, the war. Is Lily right? Had he been blinded by the glow of his parents’ unrelenting, sticky-sweet love?
He worries that it’s settled into his core, slowly rotting him from the inside out. He wonders if Lily can smell it on his breath, the sweet pungent smell carried out with every hot exhalation, the maggots squirming in his intestines. The stench of duty, honour, the House of Potter. He wonders if it disgusts her, and imagines her hands pressing into the flesh of his belly, fingers puncturing skin and his organs spilling out into her hands, the soft decomposition of his body, soft and warm forest floor, wet mulch and fungi.
And then, Fleamont and Effy get sick. They’d both had dragon-pox in their youth, succumbing to the pandemic that had struck the Wizarding World after Grindelwald’s defeat, and they’d pulled through, of course, but it left them weak, vulnerable, and when it swings around again, they’re rushed to St Mungo’s.
James knows, logically, left-side-of-his-brain, that it’s alright. His parents have had long, happy, fulfilling lives. They’ve achieved all they want to, they’ve loved, and they’ve been loved in return. James would be lucky to live even half of their glorious, golden lives.
There is a ring in his underwear drawer, and the indent it creates is like a leaden black hole in his mind, a stone sinking slowly through water.
He doesn’t know why he can’t do it. Why the idea of going down on one knee, of looking up into Lily’s shining face feels more like falling in front of a guillotine, her face become the silver blade swinging down and chopping him in two, neatly at the neck, no cleanup.
He has taken to twisting his signet ring around and around his pinky finger, the worn-smooth metal gliding across clammy skin.
He pictures his parents, their still, disappointed faces disappearing under the lid of a coffin, Lily with a conspicuously bare left hand, his own clenched at his sides. Imagines clutching at their lifeless, gentle fingers and having nothing to show for himself.
Lily knows he’s upset, knows it’s bothering him. She’s taken to petting him, kindly, like he is a wild animal, like he is a dog shaking out of his skin. Sometimes he feels like laughing right in her face, imagines the sympathetic crease of her brow becoming anger as he sobs, yells at her, I have to marry you and– and I don’t know if I–
He can’t finish the thought, even in his own mind. Everything in his life has become dangerous, abandoned shells, pitted fields.
He hasn’t been able to conjure his patronus in weeks, a sad white dribble of smoke pouring out of his wand.
Effy’s hand is cool and dry, papery in Lily’s grip. She’s holding onto Lily with the strength of the dying, her fingers gnarled and bony. Lily can feel her hair, greasy and unwashed lying limp against the back of her neck. She hasn’t had the time to shower, her and James going back and forth from their flat to St Mungo’s daily since his parents were admitted. It’s horrible, all of it, but Lily’s least favourite part has become the smell; the over-sterile surfaces that still manage to waft sickness and medicine and hopeless decline. There is a permanent itching under her skin and she just wants to get out , finds herself taking endless laps around the ward to a soundtrack of coughing and alarms ringing and the patient soft voices of doctors and nurses.
“Take–” Effy pauses, wheezes out a breath. Lily nods, nonsensically, deadly uncomfortable. James has only popped out for a moment, a cup of coffee from the cafeteria, a breather, but it’s been five minutes and Lily is in over her head. Fleamont gasps from the other bed, pain potions wearing off. An alarm begins, dim at the edge of Lily’s awareness. “Take care of him,” Effy whispers, and Lily nods again, promises, swears, and James is coming back into the room, grinning, a paper cup of bitter coffee in each hand, and the Mediwizards are just behind him, rushing, casting, and the coffee cups hit the floor.
Lily is still holding Effy’s hand when James’ parents breathe their last, entwined, in tandem. They die at the same time, and somewhere from very far away she thinks how romantic it is– not on this earth for one single minute without one another– and then she looks at James, his face crumpled, his glasses torn off, staring and staring at the flatlined monitoring spell, and she goes to him, letting go of Effy and folding him into her arms, taking care. The spilled coffees are pooling together at their feet, twin discarded cups rolling gently on the linoleum floor.
“Those fucking Longbottoms,” Bellatrix snarls, throwing herself onto an armchair and letting her hair down. “Blood-traitors, the lot of them. Augusta has done an utter disservice to her House. Fucking disgrace.”
“Did he get you?” Regulus asks automatically, his mind still half in battle-mode, triaging his emotions away on silver platters.
“He didn’t, but that bitch Alice nearly took my ear off,” Bellatrix says, and Regulus turns to look at the side of her head, though it’s fruitless. It’s covered by shining black curls, he’d never be able to see a wound– and Bella wouldn’t let him, anyhow. “I got her back, though,” she adds, twirling her wand like a baton and grinning, mouthing Crucio to him like a scandalous secret.
“Merlin, I wish your brother had been there!”
Regulus flinches as Mulciber flings his mask away, collapsing onto the sofa with a groan.
He looks down. There’s blood on his shoes, one-two-three droplets, all in a row.
“Poor ickle Sirius,” Bellatrix echoes, laughter in her voice. “Never where the action is.”
Regulus scowls, thinks of Sirius, flashing images of childhood in Grimmauld, sliding down the banisters with a wicked, barking laugh– come on, Reggie, even if we’re caught, she won’t run after us– summers in Kent, sneaking chocolates at the balls and sticking his tongue out behind their father’s back; or grinning, sunstruck, underneath the dappled light of their Clearing– at school in the Great Hall, playing Gobstones and cackling with– and here his mind shutters, pitching and whirring like a machine with a broken cog. Bellatrix is still speaking, waxing lyrical about the look in those Mudbloods’ eyes when they saw her coming. Regulus is caught, trapped, tangled in the net of his own thoughts. He sees, his pupils flattening out, knuckles whitening on his knees, Sirius curled up in a small dark room, the ocean raging far beneath him– Sirius in battle, spells flying, barking out his laugh– nice one, James– and he swallows as Sirius falls, falls and falls and falls and never reemerges, as Lupin screams, as James–
Regulus closes his eyes. Opens them again. Mulciber and Bellatrix are looking at him, expectant.
“Say again?” He says, his thoughts flat and dead, Occluded within an inch of their lives.
“Are you staying for the meeting?” Mulciber asks, while Bella huffs and summons a bottle of wine.
“Is it Wednesday, already,” Regulus says, distractedly, miserably, and they nod, and Rosier passes him a glass filled to the brim with blood– with red-wine, he shakes his head, it is so funny how similar the two can look cached in the Lestrange silver– and he drinks.
The Potters’ funeral passes Lily in a blur. She handles the whole thing, James too distraught to get out of bed, curled around Sirius in a miserable pile and asking her, stuffy-headed, if she wouldn’t mind sleeping in the spare room, please. She leaves them to it, feeling an aching, burning envy in the pit of her stomach. When her mother and Steve die, she doesn’t think she’ll be nearly as sad– and so she picks out sunflowers and lavender for the funeral flowers, writes a eulogy for James, chooses a reading for Sirius to do, and tries to stay busy enough to get through the week.
“There’s so much,” James sobs at the lectern, the crumpled piece of parchment abandoned, Sirius standing tucked under his right arm. “So much I didn’t ask them– didn’t say– and I– I–”
Sirius takes over, reading the poem she’s provided, a sweet Muggle thing she’d got from the library about the sea and the stars that had made her think of Effy and Monty, not in their dying moments but as she first met them, resplendent in their best robes, commanding the room and welcoming her with open arms. He gets through the whole poem, James shuddering at his side, his voice only hitching a little bit.
After the reading, she and Remus stand as one, open armed and waiting for the two of them to rejoin. James falls into her, chest jumping, his glasses squashed into her best black cardigan, and she eases them down onto the pew, lets him curl up beside her. Later, he will be cross, she thinks, that she allowed him to seem so weak in front of all these people. But she can’t bring herself, can’t even imagine, propping him up, scolding him for the hot tears falling down his cheeks, reminding him he’s the Lord of his House now. It’s all rot. So she and Remus sit, straight and tall, putting down their roots as James and Sirius collapse into them.
He doesn’t know why he does it. It feels foolish to even go back to Kent– foolish and lazy , somehow. As though he is enacting another tired trope, his feet falling into old and familiar grooves, things he ought to have outgrown but he hasn’t. He can practically see his mother’s sneer.
Yet another disappointment, Regulus thinks, as he throws the Floo powder into the fireplace.
He lands in the Green Study, the air of the Kent House close and still around him. Time is frozen, even the dust suspended in flight. Sheets are draped over the furniture like shrouds, children playing at ghosts. When he was a child, Regulus had hoped to become a ghost one day. He’d told Sirius, little hands scrabbling under the sheets, gripping and releasing, that he’d like to stay watching, when he died. He can’t imagine a worse fate now. Or perhaps– and this is not a new thought, to Regulus– perhaps he is already there. A spectre, haunting his own life.
As he wanders through the house, he lets his feet take the lead. His mind takes its leave quietly, flying up and over anything of substance. He will not look into the Ballroom, the Red Sitting Room, will not peek his head into the kitchens, or the poolhouse. Especially not the poolhouse.
The house is silent around him, not breathing– a dead thing, uncaring as he picks his way through its ribs. The vultures have already been, carrion stripped away to leave shining white bone. Regulus is carefully, carefully not thinking about how the house used to open itself up to the family — Come in! Welcome home! — how it felt pleased to see them, how its arms spread warm and welcoming and sheltered him against the summer storms. He doesn’t think how it should be acting, carefully skirts around the cracked open hurt; doesn’t think about the creak of skeletal memories crunching underfoot; doesn’t think about how the house knows that it isn’t a dead thing at all; doesn’t think about how he’s been the corpse picked clean all along.
While Regulus isn’t thinking about any of this, he arrives at the clearing. It, at least, is still beautiful– stark, the snow piled in drifts, the oak trees bare, a robin hopping about amid the branches, the red of its chest a splash of blood against blanched white sheets. There is a hush, in the clearing, as though Regulus is the intruder, interrupting a sacred ritual– shh, he’s coming, don’t move. He doesn’t think about the vile, pulsing thing on his arm, doesn’t wonder if he still has a place, here, amongst the serenity, amongst the pure, unblemished splendour. He knows the answer to that question.
The tie– James’ tie– is still there. It has been bleached almost white by time, the changing seasons taking their toll, taking turns to leech the colour, the vitality, out of the once vibrant thing. It is still, he thinks, with a pang of distant amusement, unmistakably Gryffindor. Regulus, who doesn’t think about his reasons for doing anything, these days, reaches out, holds it. It is surprisingly soft, a silken, weathered thing, the threads like spiderwebs in his hand. He rubs it against his fingers. Does it again. Stands there, feeling the sensation of the tie, for what feels like hours– as though this is the last thing, the only thing, that he will feel for the rest of his life, as though his fingertips are being rubbed clean, and the whorls are being replaced by the textile pattern of cotton and thread.
He knows he must keep going. Knows about the next plans for an attack. He knows he’ll have to be there, have to aim to kill, have to mean it. He will– mean it. He’ll do all of it, and he might even laugh while it’s happening, and then he’ll go home, and he’ll feel a pang of guilt, perhaps even some pain– although, perhaps not. It’s human, to feel pain, and he hasn’t let himself do anything like that in a long time. He’ll dream of the faceless Muggles that met their end at his hand; in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then he’ll get up, and they’ll still be at war. That is how the story goes, and who is he to disagree?
Regulus takes the tie and, trying not to feel like he’s running away, Disapparates.
They decide to go back to the Kent house for the spring. James thinks it’s a last ditch effort to fix whatever has been wrong with them for months, a rusted cog in an otherwise well-oiled machine. Maybe it’s the city; maybe it’s the war; maybe it’s their friends; maybe, maybe, maybe. They are hungry to outsource their problems.
None of that matters in Kent. None of it matters in that glorious, beautiful, sun-soaked house. It’s almost a fresh breath of air just to imagine it, the creeping ivy and fresh green growth, a perpetual wafting smell of baking from the kitchen, bare feet among sprigs of wildflower. He’s aching for it.
It’s a bleak day when they arrive. Lily insists upon taking the train– wants to make something of the journey, instead of a portkey, like James had suggested. They end up having little spats the whole way there, about nothing, about everything. Who forgot to pack what; the half-empty state of the water bottle; if the cat will be okay with the sitter; that was the last of the chocolate, James, did you really have to eat it all at once without asking–
When they finally arrive and set down all their things, it’s a relief that turns out to be only momentary.
The sky is caught in a dreary grey, and there’s a drizzle of rain coming down, halfway between muggy and an outright storm. It’s like the weather itself can’t make up its mind on how to feel; sad, or angry, or bucketing down.
“Great,” Lily says, and she swipes her damp hair back from her face. “What a wonderful way to begin our holiday.”
“Don’t start now.” It comes out flatter than he means it, or maybe exactly how he means it. Lily ignores him, and in a mess of bags-in-hand, pushes her way inside.
It’s somehow worse, the two of them at the Summer Cottage. The house, so glorious and grand and spacious, seems to have almost shrunk in their absence, and he has the distinct feeling of being constantly underfoot. He’s heard his name snapped by Lily almost more times than he could count, in tones ranging from faintly annoyed to downright irritated. He’s no saint either. They got in a row the second day about– well, nothing really.
Lily is pottering around the house to clean– James’ parents had left Mopsy to take care of the Cottage, in their wills, but it seemed she was staying far out of the way of the two of them– when she’d moved something. James couldn’t even remember what exactly the object had been, except for the white hot indignation that had overcome him, and before he knew it they were in a full on shouting match, a windows rattling and floor thrumming kind of row.
“That’s not fair–!” Lily says, her eyes shining with tears and fury. “You– you always–”
“Always what!” He shouts back, and he wonders in the back of his head if his parents ever fought like this in the house. “Go on. Say it!”
“I just wanted to do something nice ,” she spits it out, vitriolic. “For once, James, and how was I meant to know that I shouldn’t clean the, honestly, mouldy mug left on the desk–”
“My father’s desk, ” James roars, and he knows he’s being irrational, and he’s scaring Lily, but he can’t stop, the monster inside of him unleashed. “It was the– it might’ve been the last piece of–” he can’t finish his sentences. There is a choking, aching grief that has made its home between his heart and his lungs, and he has been feeding it his resentment and it has grown and grown, until it is suffocating everything else left in him. “You had no right. ”
There are two spots of red high on Lily’s cheeks, and her hair looks like it’s almost flying, fury coming off of her in waves.
“Right? Right? ” She sweeps her hand outwards. “I don’t know what else you want from me, James! I’ve been here, for all of it! For everything, and I am–” she falters, “I am important to you!”
“But he was my father!” He roars, but can barely even hear himself over the rushing in his ears.
The sudden stillness between them is a vacuum of sound, the bellowing absolution of complete silence. James’ chest is heaving, but his eyes are dry. The fury in Lily’s face twists, writhes, and then subsides. She looks very tired.
“I miss him too.” She finally says, and it’s a long, drawn out thing, a fraying rope, barely a twig of an olive branch. “And– and I know you miss him, them, so much. I’m sorry, James. But– it’s not– you can’t do that, just hold it all in and then explode. I can’t–” a hitch in her breath, a long sigh. “ I can’t deal with that. And I’m sorry that I can’t be– whatever you need me to be. I just can’t.”
He’s breathing hard, still, his shoulders dropping lower and lower, and in place of all his righteous anger, his fury, a cold shame is beginning to trickle in. The portrait frames around them are empty. The house is cold. There is no life to be found, least of all between their two, panting bodies.
James turns on his heel, and runs away.
He stumbles through the trees like a great wounded bear, leaves and branches snapping against his face in reproach, slow down, slow down! You’re hurting us!
He doesn’t feel much better when he reaches the grove. It’s smaller than he remembers it, just like the house, shrunken and grey. He remembers it so, so, vibrantly , birds warbling in the trees, the way the grass and flowers and trees would sing around them, the sun touching each blade with the tenderness of a master artist’s paintbrush, how it made beautiful everything it touched, Regulus’ flushed cheeks underneath him, his tousled curls, the sweet curve of his mouth.
He feels hulking and out of place now, none of the warm welcome he’s so accustomed to. The trees are still, leaves bending under the drizzle, droplets gathering together before dripping onto the ground. He could just hear the shrill shrieking of wild doxies ahead, the rapid pattering of their wings. The sun strains to make its way through the grey cover, and only succeeds in emitting a weak light into the clearing, barely enough to cast a shadow on the ground.
James sits, and then lies back on the ground. He puts his hands over his face, as hot, wet tears begin to leak out of the corners of his eyes. He doesn’t even have it in him to properly cry.
For a lack of anything else to do, after sulking, laying around, and being generally a bit teary, James decides the only thing to do is have a wank.
He wants to feel better, or maybe worse, or maybe just distracted.
He closes his eyes, thinks of Lily. Thinks of the early days— of playful trysts in broom closets, making out and feeling the heat of her against him, Lily gasping and her hands scrabbling, thighs trembling—
He’s getting close now, and he turns his face into the grass, breathes in the familiar earthen scent. He throws his arm over his eyes, clenches his fist to feel the bite of his nails into his palm.
Grey eyes flashing in the dark, a mouth open and gasping his name, hands shoving desperately at his pants, fingers slipping inside James and curving up and—
He comes, soft noises into the dirt. His hand is sticky. The rain is still dropping steadily on his face, the damp front of his shirt.
“Fuck.”
The cold drip of guilt in his stomach crystalises into shame. His eyes catch on an empty, barren branch. His tie is gone.
His stomach tightens. He rolls over, and is promptly sick into the grass.
After he cleans himself up – a quick scourgify to the mess on the ground, his hand – he slinks back to the house. It’s empty– Lily must’ve gone on a walk. Her wellies are missing by the door, and an umbrella too.
He doesn’t know if it’s a bad thing, how relieved he is to not come home to her, resentful and seething or cold and unreachable. He doesn’t know if it’s a bad thing that those are the only states he can imagine her in.
He walks past his father’s– his brain stutters here – the study, doesn’t look at its newly cleaned surface, the pain is still lodged sharply in his throat, straight through to the bedroom that used to be his, all those summers year after year.
He coughs as he cracks the door open, dust flying out in a rush as if it’s relieved to be let out, to spread their presence over the rest of the furniture before meeting their end at Mopsy’s furious hands.
Everything is the same, his bed, posters peeling on the wall, books and papers left discarded on the desk. Something about it is almost– and it doesn’t make sense but– it makes him feel sick, this museum, this untouched artefact. He wants it to have changed, wants to walk in and not recognise a thing. Instead, he feels all of sixteen, as if he could open the door and flop down onto his bed, shucking his jumper up and over his head before running straight back out into the wild, Sirius waiting for him, grinning in the clearing, taking his hand and running, running, before the world gets to them and time continues its slow and relentless, plodding trek.
He collapses against the doorway and breathes out hard, lungs punctured. He wonders if this is what a heart attack feels like. He thinks of his father, pale dead hand soft and lifeless against the bed. He can’t breathe. His chest is seizing, ears sealing shut. The house is falling down around him, brick and wood and tiles falling down all around him, the house is falling down, the House is falling down.
He doesn’t know how long he crouches there, hands plastered over his ears, barely breathing, muscles twitching. When he stands, his knees ache and protest. There’s a cramp in his right leg. His eyes are damp.
A clatter downstairs. Lily’s home.
The Kent trip lasts all of three days, in the end, before they give up the ghost and go home. It’s a miserable three days, the spitting shroud of rain never lifting. James keeps finding new things in the house to be grief-stricken about– his father’s spare spectacles, his mother’s comb, silvery hair still caught between the teeth. Every time, they punch him in the gut, leaving him useless and furious in the face of his loss.
The morning before they leave, Lily half-heartedly says something about the Society Season, perhaps meaning to be kind, perhaps apologetic, perhaps flinging her net wide to find anything, anything that could break James out of this funk he’s been in; the funk of his entire year. He doesn’t reply, shrugs, makes a noise and picks up their half-full barely picked at bowls of porridge and dumps them in the sink.
They don’t come back for the Season in summer. It isn’t even a decision, in the end, not warranting a moment of discussion once Lily announces that she doesn’t think it’d be proper, what with our Order work. James is pathetically grateful, and he isn’t sure whether that’s actually because he’d rather avoid rubbing shoulders with murderers– ones he’s seen firsthand, now– or because they managed to not have a fight.
Regulus’ life starts to slip and fold over itself, sliding between weeks and months and back again; each time he blinks, it seems like a different day. He feels almost as though he has been split down the middle, that his body is being occupied by two increasingly disparate characters, who push and pull at his mind like a favoured toy between children. He is being ripped apart at the seams.
In the daylight, he is the head of his House, attending the events of Society now that the traditional mourning period has passed. He drinks tasteless cups of tea that he couldn’t tell apart from sewage water, picks at small pastries which taste like ash and paper in his mouth. He knows he is being peculiar, that his smile is taking on more and more of a manic edge, that he keeps losing himself in conversations, blinking to find his partner has abandoned him once more after elongated terrible silence.
In the night at least, he is alive. It is impossible not to be, amidst toeing through conversations with the precision of mountain-climbing sherpa, aware at every turn of the precarity of the mountain surface, ice and cliffs and jagged hungry pits; amidst being a bringer of death, each spell another thick layer upon his tongue, when will all of this come back to him, when will his karmic fate return?
He seems to waver on the knife's edge of the Dark Lord’s favour. Never quite in, never quite out; he is too powerful for that. His smile twists privately. His mother would be horrified to realise the true reward of being the Lord of the House of Black: being permitted to crawl ever slightly forward, to be among the first to kiss His feet in penitent worship. Raised above the worms to approach him, elevation to a thrall that may bask in his greatness. They are all of them crawling through the dirt, all of them dragging their family names into muck and tar and swamplands– for what. It is a treasonous thought. The Dark Lord’s will is absolute, His power divine, His plans infinite. And so, for what?
He catches things only sideways these days, whispers that slip through and poke at his mind, insisting on their importance. That is how he begins to put together the beginnings of the Dark Lord’s plans; His most secret and perverse desire; His pursuit of what all men dream of; His thirst for immortality.
Regulus thinks that the Dark Lord has begun to grow careless, drunk himself on his power, the way that he seems to glut and grow, every opposing force falling before him like paper soldiers. He begins to brag.
The red wine sloshes over his hand; pale long fingers, delicate knuckles and clean crescent moon fingernails. Bellatrix is simpering by his side, her curls looped artfully to accentuate her slender neck as she throws her head back and laughs.
“There will be nothing to stop us,” he says, smug, arrogant. He looks at Bellatrix with the sort of desire one has for a particularly shiny new accessory, the satisfaction of parading an aged vintage wine in front of an adoring crowd, the vanity of kicking a dog and watching it run slavering back to your feet. “Nothing– not after, well.” He smiles, presses his hand up to his well-formed lips. “No need to spoil all the fun now… All shall know soon enough.”
Next, an overheard conversation, Lucius and Narcissa whispering frantically in the corridor. He is cupped around her like a shield, his arm around her waist as they speak. Regulus shrinks into an alcove, old habits of being unseen, unheard, wide eyes and straining ears.
“–if we’ll be safe." Narcissa sounds harried, almost desperate. That is enough to make Regulus’ hackles rise, the sense of something wrong. Narcissa, endlessly presentable, calm, still water. “Such an object, and– He is– He favours you now but– oh, Lucius–!”
Regulus watches Lucius, steady and firm Lucius, fold over his wife, his hands on her shoulders, smoothing down her back, holding her at her waist as she drops her face into his neck. She has one hand on her stomach, and he lays his over it.
“It is a good plan,” Regulus barely catches his murmur, mouth pressed into Narcissa’s hair, white and black strands looping together in the space between their tilted faces. “And He– Narcissa, I cannot afford to displease Him. Not now. Not now we– we have–”
He breaks off, looking away. Regulus can’t see his face. He watches as Narcissa lifts her head, places her palm on his cheek and raises herself up to kiss him; he looks away, blushing. The moment is intimate, and all at once he feels like an intruder.
The last is at the Lestrange’s soirée. Regulus’ arm burns as he is spinning one of the young Goyle cousins along the ballroom floor, and he stumbles, barely covering it by lifting her into the air in a flurry of skirts and delighted laughter. He makes his excuses hastily, bowing low and brushing his lips over the back of her hand. His shoes click in the empty corridors of the house, only dimly lit by the moonlight filtering in through linen shrouds.
There is a door cracked barely open, yellow sliver of light cutting across the floor and up a portrait in one straight line. Regulus pushes it open to see the study; Bellatrix, Lucius, Rookwood, Dolohov, a scattered gathering of His Most Trusted. He feels out of place but tries not to show it, steps inside and strides across the room to go to his knee in front of the Dark Lord, murmurs a greeting.
“Stand, Black,” He chides. He is in a good mood. When Regulus raises his head he gestures outwards towards the room. “Go. Be amongst your peers– as I grant you all the privilege of my instruction.”
Blinking–slipping–time–folding–in. Regulus tries desperately to keep hold of himself as he stands, barely wavering, beside Lucius. The fireplace is crackling by his side, one side of his body hot from the heat licking outwards. His left hand is so cold.
Here, he stands, perfectly still as the Dark Lord regales them all with his genius. Here, he stands, as he realises there will be no escape for him. That this chain around his neck is no temporary thing, that the Mark on his forearm is more than a hastily made decision of his youth, that he was a fool to ever even imagine that he might one day slip through the noose and take off running into the night. For the Dark Lord’s ecstasy at his newfound immortality, his fervent exhilaration and the celebration of Regulus’ peers is matched only by the terror taking root in his stomach. He has never been free at all, had just slipped from one gilded cage to another, his wings unburdened by the death of his father only to run thoughtlessly into the rule of another. Regulus’ life has never been his own. He finishes his wine.
It is an odd thing, Lily muses as James’ tongue makes its way around her mouth, a very odd thing indeed, that they only have sex on Sunday nights. Sunday night, to Lily, seems to be the least erotic part of the week. Sunday mornings are far better, but on Sunday mornings James goes to see Peter and she takes herself to the farmer’s market down the road. Sunday nights are for laundry folding, for listening to the Wizarding Wireless, for finishing tasks left undone during the week. Not very sexy at all. Yet every Sunday night, like clockwork, James turns to her in bed with an irritatingly heavy look in his eyes and she goes to him with only a very small sigh.
She remembers a time when it wasn’t like this. The hazy days of seventh year and the summer after, when they were going at it like rabbits. It seems a long time ago, but really, it has only been a year since they treated sex like a game, one which both of them were winning. It was all a competition to them: who would be first to pull the other into a darkened corner, who would try that new daring thing with their tongue, who could wrench the most surprising orgasm out of the other, all the while taking pleasure in each other’s pleasure. That was nice. It hasn’t been like that in a while.
Perhaps, she thinks, as James began to kiss down her neck, his hand moving to her breast, perhaps having sex was another one of those weekly chores that they’d left by the wayside. He tweaks her nipple, and she gasps.
"Ouch, James!" He looks up at her, an impish grin playing on his lips, and there he is, that boy she’d fallen in love with. A little spark of heat rises in her belly.
"Sorry." He doesn’t bloody sound sorry, and after a split-second of eye contact, his attention is back on her tits.
She doesn’t know what his fascination was with her chest, but she supposes that if he enjoys it so much then she doesn’t mind awfully. It was just that he always spends so long with them, and her nipples have never been particularly sensitive, and it does tend to get tedious. She wants him to look back up at her, wants to see his pupils dark and huge with want, she wants him to look at her like he’ll eat her up, like he used to. Lily wants him to want her, badly, desperately, truly.
He doesn’t look, so she pulls him back to her, kissing him hard, trying to fan that spark she’d felt before into a flame. He lifts his head, smirking.
“Randy tonight, are we?”
The effort Lily puts in to suppress her eye-roll at this is almost painful. She fucking hates it when he tried to be sexy. It doesn’t suit him, and it makes her so embarrassed that she often loses the mood entirely.
“Nope.” She wraps her legs around his waist and flips them over, a move she hasn’t used in a while, that used to drive him mental. She’s on top of him now, grinding down into his crotch.
They kiss some more, and Lily finds herself thinking of the farmer’s market that morning. Did she end up getting those carrots? She can’t remember.
James is slipping her underwear off, and Lily is thinking that if she did buy the carrots, then perhaps tomorrow she’ll glaze them with honey and roast them.
James’ fingers slip into her, and Lily is thinking about– well, alright, that does feel quite nice. She lets out a few cursory moans, to let him know he’s on the right track, but just when she begins to feel the heat build at the base of her, when she is actually nearing something close to an orgasm, he pulls away and starts fiddling with a condom.
Bastard.
“Honestly, James, don’t worry about it, I’m on that Muggle pill now.” She’d told him this twice already, and it had been a hassle to get re-registered at her parents GP after nine years, but she doesn’t trust the No-Gro-Baby Potion that Mary swore by, and that seemed like it might be her only option. Wizards are shockingly behind the curve when it comes to seemingly very basic things. She supposes they could just vanish the foetus if one did occur, but that does seem rather cruel.
While she is thinking this, James enters her. She tries to get back on track, dispelling all thoughts of vanishing babies (honestly, Lily, you’re trying to have sex, with James , who you love ), and focusing on the dull-sweet ache of him. He has his head tilted down, watching himself slide in and out of her. She wishes he would look at her face.
He does the next best thing, reaching down to press his thumb to her clit, rubbing slow circles in time with his thrusting. Maddeningly slow circles. She huffs.
‘James, please . I’m not going to break.’ Her voice, which she had wanted to sound breathy and aroused, comes out flat, mean, brutal. It seems to flip something in him, and she sees a flash behind his eyes.
All of a sudden, he’s turned her around, on her hands and knees, face mashed into the pillows. He puts himself back in, driving hard and fast. Her breath escapes her in messy gasps. It feels good like this. That neglected heat that had been lying coiled in her stomach begins to stretch, and it builds, and it builds, and–
And James comes with a grunt, rolling off of her in one smooth motion and giving her arse a slap on his way into the shower.
“Blue for a baby, brown for a beer,” Lily whispers under her breath as she searches the bathroom cabinets. The Pregnancy Potential Potions had to be around here somewhere. Years ago, Mary and Marlene had bought her a whole box as a gag gift for Christmas. She’s never opened it before. She’s also never been three weeks late before.
“Blue for a baby, brown for a beer.” The repetition is soothing for her frayed nerves, smoothing them down to something resembling indifference. Finally, she spots the box, hidden behind the Muggle cleaning products that she’d insisted they’d need when they moved in, and had since remained totally untouched. “Blue for a baby, brown for a beer.” Sliding a kit out, she pricks her finger and holds it over the vial. She sticks the finger in her mouth while she waits, walking in circles around the tiled space.
A soft chime from the sink indicates that the test is done. A pit opens up in her stomach as Lily turns to look.
A soft, periwinkle blue bottle stared back at her.
Blue for a baby.
A baby.
Lily stares down at the potion on the bathroom counter and wills the squirming thing inside her to turn into happiness.
No no no no no no, chants an awful voice in the back of her head. She doesn’t know why . She loves James. She has already found the topaz ring (gaudy, but tolerable) in his underwear drawer. Surely this is the logical next step.
No no no no no no, goes the voice. It’s getting old, fast.
She says it again, and nothing changes.
“James? Did you hear me?”
He’s sitting so still on the couch, a million things flashing behind his eyes. All the years that they’ve known each other, and perhaps this is the first time she’s struck him dumb. It isn’t a nice feeling. Lily’s stomach turns.
Once, when she was a little girl, her parents were driving her and Petunia home from their grandparents house. It was late, and the road was windy. As they turned a particularly sharp corner, the headlights had lit up the face of a deer. They had been driving too fast to stop, and the deer hadn’t moved. It had just stood there, gazing out of its massive brown eyes, watching its death hurtling towards it, utterly frozen. She can still hear the sickening thump of it against the bumper.
James looks like that deer now.
She wonders, hysterically, if she’s killed him. A massive cardiac event. A fatherless child. What will the neighbours think?
And then he looks up at her, his face breaking into a grin. There’s only a little crack in his facade, just a hairline fracture. She pretends she doesn’t see it. He sweeps her into his arms and kisses her, close-mouthed and firm. Pulling back, he takes her face into his hands, joy and something else sparking behind his eyes. She focuses on the joy.
“Oh, Lil, I can’t believe it! Are you sure? Really?” They’re pressed up against each other, and she can feel his knees shaking. She’s glad for this small display of weakness, like she’s not alone in her terror. She gives him a small nod.
“Wow. Fuck, wo w . Okay. A baby.” She sees something hit him.
“Fuck it, I was going to do this properly, but it doesn’t matter now. No time like the present!” His voice is pitching up ever so slightly, missing the mark by millimetres. He lets her go, sinking– oh god, he’s sinking to one knee.
“Lily Evans, I love you. We’re going to have a baby, and you’re going to be a mum , you’re going to be such a great mum–” she notes, horror rising in her, that he doesn’t say anything about himself being a great father. “And I love you so much. I love you so much! I think we should make a go of it, I really do, I think we’d have so much fun, and– oh, fuck!” He jumps to his feet, racing to the bedroom. Lily takes the moment to put her hands on her knees and take several deep breaths. The writhing thing in her stomach that has been there since she saw that godforsaken blue bottle on the bathroom counter is contracting, twisting up tight. She wants this. She does.
James comes back in, holding a gaudy yellow ring. He goes to get back down on one knee, but she pulls him in. She doesn’t wait for him to ask. Something in her doesn’t want to hear the words, afraid of what might come dashing out of her mouth if she doesn’t take control.
Lily pulls him into a kiss, and it’s soft and hard and frantic.
“Yes, you daft bugger, yes,” she says against his lips. “Let’s do it. Fuck, why not.”
She’s done it now. Agreed. And it feels good, it does. And if the tiny part of her that wants to be Evans, not Potter, not wife-mother-martyr, is screaming, then she isn’t listening.
Lily is up to her neck in wedding planning when she has an idea, a horrible one that keeps her up at night. She spends three days wandering around in a sleepless haze before she pads down to the kitchen, lit only by the street lamps outside, and addresses a letter.
She posts it, and she doesn’t hear back.
She didn’t tell James about it. She already knows what he’d say, and she’s too tired for the fight that will come with it. She doesn’t know why she sent it, and the longer it goes unanswered, the stupider she feels. It was just a save-the-date, no damning information available until an RSVP with good intent – a tricksy charm she’d read about in one of the wedding magazines that James’ mum had dropped off pointedly almost a year ago when they’d moved in together.
She knows she shouldn’t have made contact at all. He’s a Death Eater. He’s Marked. The last time they spoke, he’d said horrible, horrible things.
But he’s also Severus, and since she was five she’s been imagining him by her side at her wedding. It’s terrible, this childhood wish lodged in her throat like a fishbone she can’t choke out; why can’t she ever let anything go! But once upon a time it had just been the two of them– three of them when Tuney could be bothered getting the stick out of her arse and running along with them to play in the trees, climbing overhead because she was always the best at that, sitting above them on a branch and kicking her feet, her and Lily ganging up on Severus who took in well-meaningly because they were always laughing with each other and not at.
Nothing is the same any more, and she thought she’d made her peace with that. All grown up with her new friends and her new life and her sparkly future ahead, and yet all she wants is the familiar, the nostalgic, the past.
She’s glad when he doesn’t reply – the seating plan already complex, a horrible conversation missed – but it’s not quite enough to cover up the bitter hurt at the back of her throat.
Darling–
I’ve tried to send this letter back with that bird of yours. I don’t know why you insist on using it. Doesn’t your flat have a phone?
I need to tell you something– will you come round sometime on Thursday? I’ll be home all day, just me. Steve has golf.
Looking forward to seeing you, my sweet girl,
Mummy
The notepaper that her mother sent back in Whiskey’s beak is crumpled, and torn, and sitting like a rock in her pocket as Lily lets herself in the back door, calling out. “Anyone home?”
“Oh, Lily, good. I’ll be right there,” her mother calls back, moving closer.
“Tea?” Lily says, already flicking her wand at the kettle, a practised movement, mundane.
Lily’s mother stands in the doorway and tries not to gape as she watches the tea set arrange itself. Lily goes over and kisses her cheek.
“Hello, Mum.”
“Yes–” her mother murmurs, transfixed. Lily feels a pang as she remembers how removed she is from her family’s world, these days. And how entrenched she is within James’ world– within magic. It had seemed obvious, to wave her wand and make tea, but she has hands , she knows how to– a voice that sounds like Petunia nuzzles close to her ear, the whispers bouncing around the shell, striking home. Lazy , it says, freak, not-normal, can’t even pretend–
“Sweetheart, will you come and sit down, please?” Her mother’s tone has lost the awe, the magic drained, and it now sits, sickly sweet, syrupy, settling in with the note in Lily’s coat pocket and pulling her down, further down.
Lily sits.
Her mother fusses– pouring tea, ‘how is that nice James?’, ‘why don’t you bring him over for dinner?’, ‘how is the planning going?’, ‘how’s the morning sickness?’, ‘did you try those tablets I gave you?’, questions and questions and never waiting for an answer, until Lily feels like she’s going to choke on the words crowding in her throat.
“Alright,” and her mother takes a deep breath. “I won’t beat around the bush–” Lily nearly snorts. She’s been here for nearly forty-five minutes.
“It’s about your wedding, darling. Your sister–” the rock in her pocket is pulling Lily, down, down, through the floor and into the earth, she doesn’t need to hear it– she knows what’s coming, she does–
“Your sister and Vernon won’t be able to make it, I’m afraid.”
It still stings.
Lily thinks about her big sister, the uptick of her thin mouth, marching Lily down the hallway in a white dress, a piece of tulle in her hair– ‘Lily, we’re playing weddings, and I’ll be the groom and you the bride, because I want to say I do first–’
Lily thinks of trailing in Tuney’s wake, always two steps, two years, behind, the constant refrain of her childhood– wait for me, hang on, please–
Lily thinks of the half-burnt letter from Dumbledore that she found in Petunia’s sock drawer when she was twelve– Miss Evans, I regret to inform you there has been no mistake. I understand this is disappointing news–
Lily stops thinking and lets the rock drag her further down.
Her mother is saying something, but Lily’s ears are packed with soil, plant roots going in and out of her skull, wriggling into the grey matter.
When did Tuney-Lil become Petunia-and-Lily become Petunia, Lily, become née Evans?
Her hands clench at her sides. She gives her mother a stiff nod, just one, to show she’s got the message, and then she asks about Steve. Steve, the latest and most long-lasting of Lily’s stepfathers– nearly seven years, at this point– is the closest thing Lily and Petunia have to a father figure, and she’d like for him to walk her down the aisle. When she says this, her mother’s eyes tear up, her chin wobbling. She captures Lily’s hands in her own soft, dry ones– she always smells of violets and face powder– and says how wonderful that is, how honoured Steve will be, and Lily smiles in the right places and thinks of the speech that Tuney will never make at her reception.
Everything that could possibly go wrong at Lily and James’ wedding, does.
It’s a disaster of a day, from beginning to end– and James couldn’t care less.
The morning begins, bright and hopeful, with a flurry of snow. It’s early January, a few days into the new year, and James opens his eyes to see grey ones staring back at him, an inch from his face.
He blinks.
Sirius leans back, crowing at his bewildered expression, and starts bouncing on the bed. Peter shoves his glasses onto his nose. Remus is standing, hugging the bedpost, an open smile across his face.
James looks at his friends, grins, and it’s so close to real, so close he can’t tell the difference anymore.
“Boys–” a low, dramatic tone– “today, I am marrying the love of my life.”
Sirius pulls at his hands, and he leaps. They bounce, and his voice goes breathy, high.
“It’s only Lily bloody Evans! The woman I’ve been chasing after since I was eleven–”
“Merlin, look at you!” Peter’s voice, rounded and joyful, a child that’s had too many sweets. James wonders if the three of them had gone to sleep, after his bachelor party the night before. “You’d think it was the happiest day of your life, or something!”
James jumps off the bed, catching Peter in his arms, spins him, dips him, presses a fat, sloppy kiss to his forehead.
“Right you are, Pete my good man!” he says, dropping Peter, who falls to the floor in a giggling heap. James turns to Remus, opens his arms, makes eyes at him, his lips pouting.
“Shouldn’t you be saving those kisses for the big event?” Remus says warily, looking like he’s about to dash.
“Remus, I will be spending the rest of my life snogging Lily Evans,” James says, pleadingly. “Can’t I have one for the road, Moony, please–”
Remus cackles, and starts for the door, running down the corridor, as James shouts after him.
“Moony, that kiss in third year still haunts my dreams! Moony I miss you– Moony! I’ll give it all up, Moony, just say the word! Show up at my door, anytime, I’d leave it all behind for you!”
Sirius throws his arm around James’ shoulders, and they run downstairs after Remus, following their noses to the breakfast table, Peter trailing in their wake.
At breakfast, Remus spills hot coffee all down his chest. They are derailed from the meticulous timeline set out by Marlene almost immediately, as Peter and James crowd in around the two, watching Sirius painstakingly heal the burnt skin.
“Boys, please!” he finally snaps.
“James, we made Pomfrey angry!” James cackles at Peter’s words, and runs upstairs to shower and change.
The Summer Cottage– and really, Lily can see what Peter and Remus had meant by ribbing James so much about the name now– is beautiful.
She already knew it was, from the Society season the year before – again, the ridiculous nature of her new life that she was saying the words Society season unironically – when she’d seen it in all states, luxurious and casual, dressed up and anticipatory. She can still remember the wonder of coming across it for the first time, sixteen and in her stiff party dress, floating candles and ribbons suspended in the air, bobbing fairy lights and, well, every bit of it covered in magic . Their awful, abortive spring visit had been less magical, and her first time in the Cottage without James’ parents, and she’d been almost afraid that the magic had died with them.
The thing about Wizarding Houses, the thing that Lily always forgets, is that they are so wonderfully alive. Lily isn’t often very impressed by posh houses, or the people that live in them. But this– this is different. Every inch of it is homely, and lush, and lived in. And– in a weird way, it’s like a living embodiment of James, of James and his family. And for all her wedding jitters, she wants it; she wants to be a part of this enchanting, marvellous family.
The Cottage had opened enthusiastically to the ceremony, windows given a new shine, floors so polished you could see your reflection. The interior had become generous, with rooms and rooms to house every one of their guests, and several to spare. The sunlight spills through stained glass in enchanting mosaics of shapes and colours, painting the room in streaks of watercolour.
Lily had asked James when they’d arrived, in slight confusion, if the house had changed since she’d been there last spring, a renovation perhaps, or remodelling. He’d just looked at her, confused. Of course it’s changed! We’re getting married. You should’ve seen it for my parents' wedding. Then he’d looked– and then Lily had changed the subject.
She doesn’t have the head for decorations, certainly not at the moment, but she’s happy to watch as it all comes together. It still awakens childish wonder in her; walking through a brick wall and coming out into a secret train station; a hidden world of shops selling fantastical products; sailing across a great, wide lake and seeing a castle rise out of the mist, lit up in amber gold.
She’d wanted it simple– or at least as simple as Marlene and her mother could bear. There had been deliveries of flowers coming in all day, sprays of colour in blues, pinks, citrusy yellow. There were so many types, too many for her to name, hydrangeas, lilies – ha! – daffodils, sprigs of lavender. Somehow, they came together into a semblance of cohesion, instead of the wild mess they’d started as. The verdant smell of them fills the air, and fat bumblebees bob their way between each patch, humming with delight.
White paper lanterns hang suspended in the air, already emitting a warm golden light, in anticipation of the evening creeping in. They are each of them like tiny floating moons, orbiting their own suns. It’s a gorgeous little bit of magic, and Lily feels again like an outsider, still, she’d be playing catch up for the first eleven years of her life, where she had lived without knowing that this world existed at all. She has carved out her place in it, staked her claim, puffed out her chest and dared them to push her out. But there is something in her that has to wonder if it was enough. There is something in her, spinning her yellow ring around and around her finger, that wonders if it is enough.
It’s almost sickening, the perfection of it all, like gorging yourself on too many sweets. That there could be so much unrest in the world and yet, here she is, stepping straight into an idyllic fairytale. All anyone can ever talk to her about is how lucky she is. She is trying to believe it.
Before he knows it, James is standing at the top of the aisle, Sirius, Peter, and Remus giggling and nudging each other by his side. They’d already been at the champagne. It’s cold, the old stones of the courtyard never having taken well to warming charms.
Then music begins, and a hush falls over the crowd.
Lily steps out, resplendent on her step-father’s arm. She’s wearing a simple, creamy-white dress. It’s silk, and it runs over her body like water, simple and beautiful, no frills. The long sleeves are gathered up at her wrists with tiny, infinitely delicate buttons. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, and snowflakes are beginning to catch in it, sticking in the red, twinkling. She shines.
The ceremony itself is beautiful. The officiant forgets the words they’d asked for, and needs prompting by Remus at least three different times. James cries twice. Peter spends the whole thing sobbing, periodically blowing his nose noisily into a handkerchief provided by Lily’s father. When they kiss, James dips Lily dramatically, both of them smiling into it, noses bumping and teeth clattering, and the whole congregation erupts in cheers.
Afterwards, James looks out into the crowd, feels the twin aches of his signet ring and wedding band on his fingers. He imagines his parents’ smiling faces, beaming with love and pride. He’s done his duty. He only wishes they were there to see it.
The reception is lovely, too. They move inside, and the ballroom is shining, splendid, golden light shimmering through the air– Come in! Come in! Jasmine flowers are twining up the columns, reaching towards the ceiling, perfuming the air with their heavy scent. More flowers, countless types that James can’t even begin to name, spring up wherever anyone puts their drink down, magical little party favours. Silver trays holding delicate flutes of champagne float, unmanned, amongst the crowds. James’ hand doesn’t leave Lily’s, not even for a moment. The drinks flow, the speeches are made, Peter, Lily’s step-father, Sirius– James grins throughout it all, slowly sipping his wine, letting it wash over him. He finds himself wishing, again, for Effy and Monty. How they’d hold court, laugh, the speeches they’d make. The thought of them warms him, even as their absence bores a neat hole in his heart.
There is an air of– something, hanging steadily over their heads. After the second attack on New Year’s– the Prophet called it an annual event, worrying Moody to the point of speechlessness– James and Lily hadn’t been sure about even going ahead with the wedding. Was it insensitive, was it even safe – but eventually, they’d decided that it might be their last chance. It’s a bit surprising how enthusiastic people have been about it, but also not surprising at all. There’s not much to celebrate these days, and people need reasons to be happy, to lose themselves in it, now more than ever.
James casts his gaze over the room, smiles, waving at his friends, old schoolmates. Lily’s parents– the only Muggles in attendance– are attracting stares that verge a little too close to pity for his liking. He draws Sirius aside, giving him a murmured word, and he’s off like a shot, dragging Remus along behind him. The pair stick close to the Evans’ side for the rest of the night. James loves them for it. Peter’s raucous laugh cuts close to James’ heart. He’s been drinking steadily since the morning, and James knows it isn’t just to celebrate.
There is something desperate about the mood in the ballroom, the voices a little too bright, laughs a little forced, a pitch that was climbing higher, higher. That’s what it is, James thinks, and he squeezes Lily’s hand, drawing her closer. Fear.
The highlight of the night is their first dance. They’d spent weeks agonising over a song– James had wanted traditional, classical, something wizarding and formal, but– and this was the one thing that she had put her foot down on– Lily had insisted on something Muggle. They’d ended up with something sweet, a dreamy, jangly thing that had made James’ feet tap when she’d played it for him. As they take the middle of the stage, all their friends and family crowding along the edges, James leans in to whisper in Lily’s ear.
“How about it, Lil?”
“How about what?” She giggles, and really, she is so beautiful, it makes James’ teeth ache.
“How about–” he plants a kiss on her left cheek, “we show these dirty dogs–” a kiss on her right cheek, “exactly what we Potters are made of?” A big wet kiss, right on the mouth.
“James–!”
The music begins. They start to twirl, Lily enclosed in his arms, slow and soft. She’s whispering gently in his ear, sweet words, about their future, how she loves him.
As the song hits the chorus, he spins her out, and they’re off, in earnest. It had begun one night, when they’d been silly and over-tired, planning out seating charts. James had suggested choreography, and may have implied that Lily’s situation would make her too delicate to handle it. She never was one to back down from a challenge.
They hop, jiving, spinning one another around and around, catching hands, releasing them again, laughing and laughing and laughing. James never looks away– the golden light is catching Lily’s eyes, the snowflakes melted in her hair, leaving tiny wet patches on her dress. She’s perfect– truly.
And this is the rest of his life.
After the first dance, James drinks glass after glass of champagne, his eyes growing glassy and flat, and Lily tries to hold onto that sparkling, alive feeling of the ceremony. It’s like trying to grasp a fleeting beam of sunlight, a fairy, a slippery glistening bubble of soap. She tries quite hard, actually. She lets it go, or works toward it, because it really has been such a nice day and a perfect ceremony and there’s something here, and something like the disappointment in her parents eyes when she was five years old and they’d gone to the zoo and she’d started fussing because she was hot and tired and hungry and oh Lily can’t you just let the day stay nice, just once?
So she doesn’t let herself tap her foot or cross her arms or let the flush rise from beyond warm into angry and she smiles and smiles until her cheeks hurt right at the seam of her jaw.
Almost everyone is gone by the time she drags James out of the second floor bathroom– his head in the toilet, Sirius’ hand on his back, and into their bedroom.
“Darling,” he slurs, and she tries not to grimace. “Darling Lil.”
“Yes, James, I’m here,” and she isn’t cross with him, she just isn’t. She loves him, has just had to swear by it in front of all their friends and family; her husband .
“Your eyes are so green, did you know?”
“I did know that, as it happens,” she smiles, indulgent.
“I love green. I love green eyes, like springtime. Like leaves in the spring,” James says, as she takes off his dress shoes. “Not grey. Grey’s like winter, like a storm, like the rain. Green is–” he pauses, thinking of a word. “Verdant. Like life.” He frowns, his voice dropping to a whisper, words slurring together and Lily has to bend down to hear him. “Grey is like death. Like Death,” and then, bizarrely, he begins to cry.
Notes:
the poem that sirius reads at the potters' funeral is crossing the bar by alfred, lord tennyson
the song that lily and james' first dance is to is crimson and clover by tommy james and the shondells
i made a period accurate playlist for the jily wedding (insane behaviour), you can listen to it here!
ummmmm i think thats all! MANY events happened in this chapter. MANY MORE TO COME! yay!
thank you for reading! love you! leave us your thoughts! bye!
visit us on tumblr: stegulus and swanmotifs
Chapter Text
Regulus wishes he could say it was a dark and stormy night when he realises that the Dark Lord had to die, but it isn’t. It is a perfectly ordinary, if unseasonably clear and bright, morning in February. The thought drifts into his mind, unbidden, as most thoughts do, these days. Sitting at the table in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, alone, and pouring his second cup of black coffee– and all of a sudden, there it is.
He has to die.
Alright, Regulus thinks to himself. Alright.
He wonders, idly, as his fingers trace the bannister, back up the stairs and towards the library, whether his brother will be a part of it. The great murder of the Dark Lord. More likely Dumbledore will sweep in, saving the day. Perhaps then, finally, after everything, will Regulus’ wings be unclipped.
It’s a quiet day, no Society events, and, barring an emergency of some kind, no requirements of his presence by the Dark Lord. There are no novels in the Black Library, but that doesn’t mean Regulus can’t choose something light, an easy read. Nothing heavy seems to penetrate the fog in his head these days, anyhow. He’s just at the top of the landing when it strikes him, a memory, pure and clear as a vision–
“The secret of immortality, Regulus Black,” the Dark Lord was in his cups, wine staining the cracks in his puffy lips. “Is mine.” In the moment, Regulus had been wrapped up in a haze of not-real, adrenaline after a raid melding with Firewhiskey in his blood, his soul drifting along somewhere to the left of his body. He hadn’t said anything, which somehow emboldened Him to continue. “I will never die,” He’d whispered, harsh and grating, a devastating secret meant just for his closest few. “Never.”
Regulus feels more alive than he has since– for a long time, a bolt of energy jolting him out of his haze. Never die, the Dark Lord had said. He feels sick, the coffee fizzing through his veins, the sudden adrenaline of his realisation making his heart hummingbird-fast. His hands flutter at his sides. Regulus Black has never been the hero, will certainly not start now. He has slid and stepped and run too far down this hill to start crawling back now; his hands are too dirtied to ever be seen by the light again. So it is not heroically that he dreams of the end of the Dark Lord. It is another act of cowardice, of frantic self-preservation.
He sweeps his hands over the shelves, fluttering, almost manic. He begins by pulling out books almost at random, carefully levitating the ones he knows will bite his fingers. The windows of the library are covered by sumptuous embroidered curtains, the air still and stagnant; the house elves refresh the alcoved sconces of herbal candles, which serve only to add a layer of thick and oppressive fragrance that puts him in the mind of the Divination classroom the few times he ever went in. He still feels the fissure of fear and exhilaration that stepping inside this room entailed when he was young, under his father’s keen and watchful eye. There is no need for that now, not with the ring on his hand and the title hanging above his head. The gilded goblin-head knockers on the door hadn’t even flinched when he’d pushed them open, silent and still.
Even with the Black’s extensive library, there is a dearth of information on how to make oneself immortal. Regulus pores for hours over tomes that detail the Darkest of magic, makes himself sick twice just picturing the results of some of the curses– and still, he can’t work it out. Most of the ways to cheat death– Unicorn Blood, Monkey’s Paw, a multitude of potions and draughts– all fracture one’s appearance irreparably. The Dark Lord, though visually off-putting, his stretched-tight skin and too-white teeth, is not a wraith, with no overt signals of his choice to live forever. He could narrow it down, if he had more evidence, if he had more information, if he had
time–
The Mark twinges, not enough to be a full Call, just a reminder of his servitude, of the Dark Lord’s ever-shifting whims. Just as quickly as the energy had come to Regulus, it drains out of him. There is no point in this. He will live forever, and Regulus will be a squashed-flat Doxie on the sole of his shoe. It’s a pointless endeavour, and always will be. Regulus is not trusted enough to be gifted with evidence, information, or time. He had failed some crucial test he didn’t even know he was taking, is only kept around for his political sway, slavering at the chance to do the Dark Lord’s bidding. He looks around, at the books scattered about him, at the window grown dark as the day has progressed into the evening and it is impossible not to feel suddenly childish; what is he thinking? Playing around with dark magic, imagining that he might discover the secret key. He might as well be making up potions with leaves and mud in the back garden. He slams the book in front of him closed and stands, red faced and sweeps out of the library. He’s being foolish. He knows his duty, and his purpose, and therefore who he is. There is no need to pretend that he can be anything else.
James grabs Remus and Sirius after an Order meeting, sandwiching himself in between them and snagging their elbows with his own.
“Plans tonight?” He asks, a hopeful spark beginning to fan itself in his chest.
“Nope,” Sirius says. “Was going to see if Dumbledore wanted me to pick up an extra patrol shift, or something, and I think Moony’s just home, aren’t you?”
“I was thinking of getting an early night,” Remus mumbles.
“Bollocks to that!” James says, nearly shouts it. “Come for dinner!
Please!
I’m going mad cooped up in the house all the time–”
“Your own fault for not taking a honeymoon, you know Albus would have made an exception for you two,” Sirius smiles.
“What, and leave my friends to fight while I’m on a beach somewhere? Not bloody likely. We’ll have a proper one after the war’s over, when we can actually relax. Lily agreed!” James cries, feeling oddly like he’s defending himself– though Sirius knows why he’d said no to Dumbledore’s offer of time off, knows how terrible he still feels when he has to miss a shift– Lily’s bump is getting harder to hide, and they’ve been to three Mungo’s appointments in the last month, all coinciding with James’ patrol shifts. He thinks Lily might be scheduling them that way on purpose, but he’s saving that fight for later.
“Is Wormy around?” Sirius says, craning his neck, though Peter’s missed the last two Order meetings, run off his feet at the Ministry. “We should give him a Floo, make it a proper Marauders gathering–”
“I told you he’s in Liverpool this week,” Remus sighs. “Some sort of issue with the shielding spells in their Wizarding District.”
“Oh, that’s right. Merlin, his job is fucking boring. I’ve never understood why he won’t sack it off and come do the Order full time with us,” Sirius says, and Remus’ brow pinches.
“Order work doesn’t pay anything,” Remus says, an edge in his voice. “Not all of us are living on giant inheritances.”
James, for once, sees exactly where this is going, and whisks the two of them towards the Floo, tossing the powder in and escaping.
“Home!” He calls to Lily, who’s eating three slices of bread at once in the kitchen. She startles, dropping crumbs into the sink.
“And not alone!” She says, gamely smiling. They abscond into the living room, and, for a bit, James can almost pretend that they’re back in that summer after school, playing at house and drinking Elven Wine and not bothering about any of this serious adult nonsense that seems to dominate their lives. He’s taken out of his fantasy every time he looks at Lily, resting her cup of tea on her belly.
He’s cooking dinner, munching on his own slice of bread, when Lily swoops in, ducking past him to snatch away his abandoned crusts.
“Why didn’t you tell me something was going on with those two?” She hisses into his ear. It’s just them in the kitchen, James keeping an eye on the sizzling pan and Lily now leant on the counter and chewing.
“Who?” He pushes his glasses up his face with his forearm, shakes his hair out. “What, Moons and–”
Lily looks at him like he’s a bit dim. “Yes, Remus and Sirius. Obviously , those two. What’s going on?”
He shrugs in a gesture he knows she finds infuriating. “Dunno. They haven’t told me anything’s wrong.”
Lily mutters a curse under her breath, casts her eyes up to the heavens in a well practised movement.
“Do they really have to tell you for you to notice there’s something going on?” She sounds despairing, ‘ how have you survived so long like this?’
“I don’t–” he flounders, “I’m not some kind of Seer, Lils. Sure, they’re being a bit awkward but–”
“A bit awkward?” Lily swears as her voice rises, drops it back down to a hissing whisper, “They haven’t even looked at each other the whole time they’ve been here! Remus asked for a book that was right by Sirius’ elbow, and I had to get up and go get it for him. Me! And if you somehow haven’t noticed that either, I’m pregnant! ”
James tries not to feel too offended at that. Of course he had noticed Lily’s pregnancy, the bulbous waddling presence she’s become.
“You are going to finish up here,” she says, gesturing her wand at the pan, “and while you do that, I’m going to go down to the shops with Remus, and you can go out there and do something about Sirius, because I am not having my dinner ruined by your friends’ lovers spat.”
James nods, poking halfheartedly at the pan while she gathers together all the things she needs, her keys and her list and Remus and her handbag.
“Cuppa tea?” James asks as soon as the door slams shut behind Lily and Remus. Sirius looks up and tilts his head back and forth, sulky.
“Stronger?” He asks. James frowns, but he dutifully gets a couple of beers from the fridge. Sirius drains half of his in one long pull. James sees the bob of his Adam’s apple, the crawling blue veins of his neck. He winces. His fingers itch for a cigarette. Lily had made him quit the day she’d found out she was pregnant, and he hadn’t kicked the cravings yet, not even a little bit.
The kitchen sink is dripping. James doesn’t want to get up to turn it off, because it is the only thing breaking up the silence that stretches over the room like a shroud. Sirius knocks his knee once, twice, against the table. Scrambling for conversation, James hears himself begin a sentence in the hopes that he’ll end up in the right place.
“So, how’s Moony?”
Wrong. He winces internally, again once he sees Sirius’ face. He smiles, and James wonders when his smile started getting so dog-like, wolfish, almost. He hopes Lily would tell him if he started getting suddenly stag-ish. He wonders if it has always been that way for Sirius, and it just sits differently on his now-haggard face, so far removed from the smug overconfidence of their youth. A lot of things are different now.
“How’s Moony? How’s Remus?” He sounds over-sarcastic, pitching his voice high and whiny. James hasn’t ever heard Sirius talk about Remus this way before. He isn’t sure how to feel about it, doesn’t know if it’s patronising — one thing he has picked up from Lily’s lecturing — the urge to defend, protect. “You’d know better than me. Hardly ever talks to me, and I barely ever see him anyway.”
James coughs, clears his throat uncomfortably, wishes they were doing this in a pub; wishes they weren’t alone; wishes this wasn’t happening at all. He wishes everything was fine.
“Well aren’t you—?” He still isn’t sure what they are. Everyone knew they were something , you just had to look at them to see it, the gravitational pull of Sirius-and-Remus.
“What?” Sirius raises one eyebrow, a dark line tilting across his face and James doesn’t, really doesn’t think of— “dating? A couple? Fucking? Honestly if you could get an answer from him I’d love to hear it. Too fucking busy, isn’t he?”
James is silent. Sirius scoffs. He’s so angry, nowadays. James feels his skin prickle with it, the dark cloud that hangs above him, between them, the way it invades every space and makes it hard to breathe.
“He’s helping,” is what he settles on. His sentences still aren’t coming to him and he feels unbalanced, “you know, Dumbledore, the Order—“
“Fucking Dumbledore and the fucking Order,” Sirius just sounds tired now, anger leaking out of his voice, a deflating balloon, “I know. I know. It doesn’t make it any fucking easier.”
There’s a familiar clattering at the door, Lily saying something and Remus’ laugh, strained and quiet, just barely audible. She’s struggling to get her keys in the lock, and if James closes his eyes he can see her, rummaging around in her bag and complaining for the thousandth time that everything gets lost in there.
“Well,” Sirius says, leaning back from the table, “Mum’s home. Don’t worry, James,” he laughs, and it grates down James’ spine. “Me and Moony, we’ll be just fine. It’ll all shake out in the end.”
James doesn’t know what the worst parts of the dinner are; the awkward, tense silences or the chipper, too-bright small talk. They never make small talk, hate it, but Sirius is smiling-snarling, Remus is looking fixedly at his plate like it’s the most interesting thing in the world, and Lily is staring across the table at James, fingers wrapped tightly around her fork and shooting daggers with her eyes.
They’re in the middle of another silence, seconds stretching themselves luxuriously across the table as they never have before. James stop-starts a dozen sentences in his head, all shriveling up before they can even crawl their way out of his mouth: how is– what about– I think–
Remus has been methodically cutting a bite of food so small that it's been reduced to crumbs, a paste of gravy-meat-pastry-vegetable. James looks away, back at Lily who is staring at her glass of water so intently he wouldn’t be surprised if it transfigured into wine; which she can’t drink, of course. Half the issue.
They manage to make it through to almost the end without giving in to the pending shouting match from either couple– although James knows that he and Lily are going to have a row after this. He wonders if it makes him a terrible person if he’s sort of looking forward to it, to just having it over and done with and then maybe a quick shag before bed– and then Sirius opens his mouth. James, lost in his thoughts and mindlessly sipping at his beer– another thing that got him a glare from Lily– tunes quickly back in.
“Because, I mean, us–” Sirius says, gesturing with his knife between himself and Remus. “We’re just a couple of perpetual bachelors over here, aren’t we? Fucking about, never settling down– Lily’s probably dying for some company that understands what she’s going through. Like– like–”
“Sirius–” says Lily, and she’s trying to get him to stop, smile weird and wobbly at the edges, “Don’t– I love being around you too, of course you understand–”
“No but real grown ups, you know, not–”
“Sirius–” Remus, looking pained, staring at him for probably the first time in thirty minutes– not that James has been looking at the clock. “Stop, please, come on–”
“Like Alice! Frank and Alice!” Sirius slams down his cutlery, triumphant. They all flinch. He doesn’t notice. “They’re expecting! Announced in the meeting Tuesday last! Now those are some real grown ups– a house, a baby, careers, they’re some of the top Aurors now, have you heard?” His voice is climbing higher and higher, a grotesque imitation of his Society-speak. “Putting away any Death Eater they catch– which is a fair bit more than the others are doing.”
“Even if they can never keep them long enough to charge them.” Remus says, quietly, looking back down at his plate. Sirius ignores him, barrelling on.
“Come on Lily, you like Alice don’t you? More than us I’d reckon, some girl-friends–”
Lily’s face is pale. James thinks, too late, of Mary. He opens his mouth, closes it again; Sirius is still talking.
“Come on, you agree, don't you. James? James don’t you think, Alice and Lily–”
“Yes, ask what James thinks,” Remus says tightly. “Not Lily, of course, why bother asking the person you’re talking about?”
They’re all looking at him now, Sirius with a manic-edged grin, Remus with his mouth a flat line and already disappointed, Lily with– with a look he can’t seem to read on a face he thinks he knows like the back of his hand.
“I dunno,” he says, weakly. “Maybe. Sounds like a nice idea to me.”
“I’m so glad we could do this!” Alice squeals, genuinely squeals. Lily tries not to flinch at her enthusiasm. “I don’t have any other girlfriends that are in our boat– I mean they all say it’s a crazy time to do it, but it just happened, and Frank and I agreed that we can’t let all this war nonsense get in the way of living our lives! How far along are you?”
Savannah Hinde, Lily’s old dorm-mate, was recently killed in action in ‘all this war nonsense’. Mary's parents held a funeral for her with an empty casket on Valentines Day. Lily is trying very hard not to hold this against Alice.
“Three months,” she says, and it’s perhaps a little curt, but Lily gives herself a little mental pat on the back for not being outright nasty.
“Oh, darling,” Alice must be interpreting her shortness as nausea, which, to be fair, isn’t incorrect. “All the parenting books say that the first trimester is the worst one. Have you been very ill?”
“I’ve been sick every morning, Alice, how do you handle it?”
“My mum swears by Wheat-Thins and chamomile tea. I’ve been lucky, though, with mine. Little bubba’s not giving me any trouble.” Alice’s hands go to her stomach, which is barely protruding, and she looks down at it, crooning. “You are good for Mummy, aren’t you?”
Lily fights the urge to vomit, again. She resolves to tell James that if she ever refers to herself as Mummy before the baby is born, that she has taken leave of all her senses, and he is to take her into the back garden and give her a swift Killing Curse to the head.
Alice prattles on, and Lily tries to think of something to say. There’s one thought battling around her head, starting soft and raising to a screaming pitch. Alice is debating the benefits of a vegan diet during pregnancy with herself when Lily can’t hold it in any longer.
“Aren’t you scared?” She asks, involuntary, her mouth speeding ahead of her mind.
“Of what?” Alice replies, looking a little put out that her tirade on tofu had been interrupted.
“Having a baby? Putting a whole new
life
into the world? This world, which is so f–” Alice shoots her a look. “Screwed up? I’m terrified, Alice. I’m so scared, and I don’t know how to–”
Alice puts a hand on her knee, gently, terribly. Lily stops, heaving breaths.
“This is how everyone feels,” she says, after several beats. “I think this is what it’s just like, whether we’re in a war or not. This is how it goes.”
Lily nods, shudders, a little.
“I was talking to Molly Prewett– well, Weasley now. I’m not sure if you’d remember her, she was a prefect when I was in second year, so you wouldn’t have had any overlap– but. Well. She told me that parenthood is just that. You feel worried and terrified and lonely all the time, until you realise that everyone else feels the same way, and you’ve got a beautiful baby out of it.”
Alice smiles, pleased with her offered comfort, and Lily tries not to vomit.
The months trail by. Dumbledore insists– and Lily agrees, to James’ consternation, that the two of them should take some time off from their Order work, after they announce the pregnancy. It’s horrid. The only thing that proves to James that time is passing at all and that they aren’t stuck in some weird stasis is Lily’s pregnancy, the slow ballooning of her stomach, the mutation of her body. He lives vicariously through the others, knows that he’s being annoying when they get together, can hear himself asking question after question about raids, attacks, defence, Order tactics, can see them flagging and looking away, their flat rote answers. He can’t seem to stop. His mouth keeps running, hands itching, leg jumping under the table. He is so sick of not being able to do anything.
Him and Lily have been snapping at each other more and more. It’s as if their flat has shrunken overnight, the two of them are constantly underfoot. It’s about the stupidest things, Lily biting his head off when he walks behind her in the kitchen to get a glass of water, his frustration when he wants to shower and why did she have to go for a piss right then and just to let him in it’s not like its anything he’s never seen–
He says something to her about her hormones once, the pregnancy; she gives him a glare so foul that he never brings it up again.
Then the Prewett twins are killed. Sirius shows up in their living room one night, interrupting another evening of icy silence, tears already drying on his cheeks. Lily heaves herself up, makes them cups of tea– Sirius shouts after her to make it something stronger, and James winces– Sirius doesn’t like to be sober, these days, and they don’t keep alcohol in the house anymore. Lily calls back that he’s getting tea and he’s liking it.
“What happened?” James asks, dreading the answer.
“Another fucking ambush,” Sirius replies, his mug abandoned on the side of the sofa. “They’re getting their information from somewhere, I swear. Gid and Fab were doing routine rounds on Diagon and then–” he chokes a little, but continues. “At least six of them. Dolohov was the leader, apparently. Dungy was there, that’s how we know, but he didn’t even step in, the fucking coward. They got some licks in, and Fabian went down first. After that, Gid could have escaped, but–” another moment, another breath, in-out. Tears are tracking down Sirius’ face, but he bats them away, almost irritated with their presence. “But he stayed. Took down three before a cutting curse–”
“Okay,” James says, interrupting. Lily’s feeling especially nauseous this month, and he doesn’t want to have to clean up vomit after they hear about Gideon Prewett’s severed aorta. His imagination is doing the work, anyway. “I–” tears fill his eyes, suddenly, as he remembers Gid and Fab and Molly, all grinning, wearing silk dresses to the Rosiers’ party, Walburga’s shrill voice echoing in his ears and Regulus’ stifled laugh shaking at his shoulder. “Is Molly okay?”
“Devastated, of course,” Sirius is being so clinical about it, though his eyes haven’t stopped streaming since he arrived. “She just had
another
baby, fuck, imagine grieving with
six
kids under Hogwarts age.”
“I’ll send her some flowers,” Lily pipes up, voice thick with snot and tears. “And a lasagne, or something.”
Dumbledore Floos the next day, asking James to come back for low risk missions; asks but they all know that there’s only one answer. They can’t afford to keep him out of duty anymore. Lily nods, when he tells her, grave-eyed and pale faced.
When Lily wakes up, James is already gone; another Order mission. He had been practically giddy all last night, like a kid going to sleep on Christmas Eve. She’d done her best to entertain him, don’t have a cow Lily – ha! – smiling, nodding, feeling her eyes drooping with sleep and her mouth straining at the edges. He’d been too excited to notice.
There’s a cold cup of tea on the bedside table beside her, over steeped with the bag bloated at the bottom, a bog body corpse. Well, it’s the thought that counts. She tips it out in the sink, putting the kettle on and groaning as her bones creak and rearrange themselves in her body, hips and knees popping. She’s been scrambling to fill her days recently, meaningless tasks that she has to try to make herself care about, as if they’re at all life-changing. Do the dishes, make plans for dinner, send a few owls proclaiming her okay-ness. As if any of these things matter at all when her friends are being killed, Muggleborns just like her being slaughtered, while she’s kept in this ivory tower just because she opened her legs. That’s a cruel thought. She loves James, loves her family, loves this baby. But if she has to hear anyone else say how brave, how strong, how rebellious her pregnancy is, she’ll scream.
She putters around the kitchen for a while, forces down a piece of toast that tastes like cardboard and an egg that she can’t think too hard about eating; the voice of the Mediwitch in the prenatal classes rings through her brain, the nutrition of young mothers is important, every nutrient essential for that bundle of joy! Once she’s tidied the spice cabinet to the point where she really can’t do anything more except put them in alphabetical order – which might be a task she saves for later – she supposes that she should have a shower.
She looks at herself with a dull, critical eye in the bathroom mirror; her naked body like a cadaver, her gaze one of a medical student. She is excited about being pregnant, she is, keeps getting a thrill when she puts her hand on her stomach and thinks about the fact that a child, her child, their child, a life, is at this very moment taking shape inside of her. At the same time, the idea is almost too abstract still; however much she knows that at the end of this there will be a baby, right now all she feels is swollen, bloated, overfull, and useless; because of this, her feet ache and she has to piss ten times a day; because of this, they’re trapped at home; because of this, she can’t go out and hex half a dozen Death Eaters no matter how much she wants to even though, oh wait, she wouldn’t be able to do that even if she wasn’t pregnant because Dumbledore doesn’t seem to believe that female witches are good for anything except potions–!
She runs the shower so hot it’s almost scalding when she steps in, her skin going red under the spray. She stands under the stream of water with her head tilted back and doesn’t think about anything at all as the steam billows up around her, fogging the door, the window; she doesn’t exist among the clouds. Her hair lies in wet, lank strands down her back as she scrubs herself down perfunctorily. Even this basic maintenance of her body has become a chore. A small voice in her head: you’re not even going outside, so what’s the point? But James had started looking sad when he saw her at dinner in the same clothes that she’d slept in. Nevermind how quickly she would jump– really, jump – to change if that meant going outside, if that meant her on a stakeout– nevermind her condition, she always loved duelling classes–
She brushes out a particularly stubborn knot in her hair and grits her teeth against the sudden pain in her scalp.
She hates what this – the Order, the house arrest, the pregnancy, the marriage, James – has made her. She sits at the kitchen table, the patch of sunlight fading into the grey of the afternoon fading into the cool darkness of nighttime. She only turns on the light because she thinks it’s far too melodramatic to be sitting in the dark. She can see herself, as if from a third person perspective. Pregnant wife waiting for her husband to get home, pregnant wife worrying at table, pregnant wife caring and homely and motherly, pregnant wife. She hates it. Her fingers are tapping a rapid rhythm against the table; why isn’t he home yet? He said he’d be home in the afternoon. Even that makes her lip curl in disgust– she knows that it isn’t a moral failing, but she feels pathetic, to have her life shaped completely around her marriage, her husband; it’s as if she can feel herself shrinking and shoving herself into a box, prodding in all the fleshy outpourings that keep trying to fling themselves out and away. It’s almost a relief when the windows darken and she begins to be properly worried about the time. It feels far more acceptable than this bubbling, frothing anger.
They burst through the door, and Lily springs up from her vigil at the kitchen table. She flings herself at James, hands fluttering around the cut on his forehead.
“Fuck, James,” she’s terrified, “you’ve been hours. I was so scared . Do you need–”
“S’not deep,” he mumbles, embarrassed that Sirius is witnessing her fussing over him.
“You told me it was just a stakeout! Low-no risk!” Her tone is accusing now, the fear slipping easily into anger. James feels something in his body relax, the familiarity of routine.
“Ambush,” Sirius says shortly. He’s still panting, gasping for breath. “It was– it was bad, Lil. Moody’s at St. Mungoes–” he and James both wince, reliving the curse flung, the vibrant stripe of blood across Moody’s face, his scream like a roar, the throes of a great animal. “He– they said he’s going to lose his eye.”
“Shit,” Lily breathes. “Were there many of them?”
“A few familiar faces,” James says, and he’s chuckling, a wry, awful thing. “I don’t know why they bother with those masks at all, they never stay on in battle. Let’s see,” he checks off his fingers, “on the menu tonight we had… the Carrow twins, Lil, you were right at their Ball after all; and Rosier, that wet little sixth year– not so wet anymore, though, he’s the one that got me; and of course, the Malfoy special! Although Lucius was by himself tonight– I wonder where Cissy went. Probably too much dirty work for her, I– Pads?”
Sirius has gone very pale.
“You– you saw their faces?” He asks it so softly, and James knows what’s coming, a train barrelling down the tracks, twin headlights lighting up his face.
“You didn’t?”
“Stunner to the back. Just after Moody went down, right at the start. Woke up when they were apparating out.” Sirius is speaking clinically, mechanically, a battlefield report.
“Oh!” James is trying so hard to outrun the train, can feel its hot steaming breath on his back. “Merlin, Sirius, you should have said! I would have Side-Alonged you if I’d known–”
Lily’s hand, a warning in the curve of his elbow.
“James–” there’s a danger to Sirius’ voice now, the cold Black madness curling its way up and through him, smoke billowing out of a draconic mouth. “Cut the shit. Did you– did you see him?” His voice cracks on the last word, and James is faced with a choice.
Lily is squeezing his arm, her nails cutting crescent moons into the soft bare skin of his bicep. He can feel her eyes darting between them, but he can’t look away. The train is pulling into the station.
“I don’t know.” Something inside him winces, dumb flapping mouth around unconvincing words.
“Fucking liar ,” Sirius spits. “You know I can always tell. Did you see him? ”
“Sirius,” Lily tries, her voice small and pleading. “Do we have to do this now? He’s bleeding, and–”
Sirius ignores her outright, launches himself at James with a growl. Lily jumps back.
“You fucking saw him,” and there’s a contemptous sneer twisting his face, spit flecking James’ face. “What, were you just going to keep it to yourself? Didn’t feel like telling me that my own brother was in the fucking line of fire?”
Something in James breaks, a neat snap. A fracture, spreading its fingers through the foundations of the wall he’s put around that part of his mind.
“The line of fire, Sirius, really?” His voice is climbing, pitching up, mocking and cruel, a remnant of long-forgotten school days, of spitting insults at one of the Brothers Black. “He’s one of them! He isn’t a fucking prisoner– he chose this, could have been the one that shot that curse at Moody for all we know– when are you going to get this into your head , Sirius, he’s not your brother anymore, he hasn’t been for a long time, and he’s on their fucking side!”
Sirius snarls, an inhuman noise; now, the climax is reached and the train has arrived, the beaten-down, barely human carcass of a brother, a lover, left on the tracks behind it, and they are beyond words, primal and ancient; now, violence is the only language between them.
And James is horrified, and he doesn’t want to hit his dearest friend but– there’s also something inside him, a not so small part that roars, clenches sharp white teeth in a predator’s smile, ecstatic and un-caged and free.
James is panting hard, one hand fisted in the collar of Sirius’ shirt, the twisted up faces of some muggle band just below his fist. He can’t read the expression on Sirius’ face, a face that he used to know just as well as his own. He’s baring his teeth, a cornered animal, wild eyes. A voice that James doesn’t like to listen to is whispering in his ear.
Sirius looks like he wants James to hit him. There is something in James that wants to give it to him.
Another noise finally breaks through the ringing in his ears, muffled and growing louder. The sounds meld together, and he can’t tell whether he really is hearing a scream or if it’s something ricocheting around his skull.
James turns his head and feels the air resist him like wet concrete. It’s Lily, making that noise. She has one hand braced on the counter, the other unconsciously on the just visible swell of her belly. She’s shouting something, and his brain isn’t all the way back yet. His breathing echoes like thunder.
“—Let go of him, now, listen to me! Lis—“ her speech comes and goes and James blinks at the realisation that he’s still there, still holding onto Sirius, still standing in the middle of their tiny flat, still has his other fist clenched so tightly he could open his palm and see blood. He thinks distantly that they’ll need to apologise to the neighbours.
The aftermath of a fight is always awkward. Putting the house back together after a hurricane, overly-polite; Sirius leaving,
go home to Remus, please,
and James watches him hold back a retort to Lily, who is only trying to be nice.
“Don’t you miss it?” James asks, once they’ve put the kitchen back together. “How it was?”
“How what was?” Lily flicks on the kettle, only half listening.
“School,” James says, the words coming fast, a secret he didn’t even know he was holding onto. “It was so easy, and when it was hard, we understood why. Now,” he waves his arm at the fireplace, where Sirius had just left, still in a huff. “Now, there’s all this shit to wade through before I can even comprehend the problem, let alone figure out what to do about it.”
Lily’s facing away from him. The kettle screams into the silence between them, dead-air as James waits for her to respond. She seems frozen, but James is running his sentence back and can’t find any fault with it, can’t find out where he tripped into offending her. He doesn’t know why, but he feels ashamed.
“I think,” she starts coldly, turning off the kettle. She still isn’t looking at him. “I think that you had a very different experience in school than most of the rest of us.”
James takes his tea from her and, before she asks, sets himself up in the guest room.
Peter Pettigrew, doughy-faced and pale, coattails practically visible in his hands, is inexplicably at the table in the Wiltshire Manor. Regulus notes his presence absently; his hands are on the table and his fingers are not shaking, silver ring tight on his finger. He can hear Bellatrix’s crooning voice from further down, halfway out of her seat to press forward towards the Dark Lord, as close as she can get without touching. Regulus’ eyes keep getting drawn back to him, Pettigrew. He looks uncomfortable and out of place, gaze darting back and forth, ill fitting robes and unflattering haircut. Regulus thinks distantly, that he doesn’t like the fact that he’s here. He hasn’t been so base as to feel anything in months, but there is something like disgust as he observes this shivering, trembling mess of a man; a prey animal trying desperately to blend in. He wonders if he’d become tired of clinging onto the social capital of James-and-Sirius-and-Remus, wonders again how many parasitic growths the Dark Lord will allow to latch onto him, social climbers in the death throes of their dignity.
Of course, Regulus would never be so bold as to question the wills and ambitions of the Dark Lord.
He sits, and watches, and waits, as the table laughs and laughs, as wine is drained from cups, as His hand trails through the air in languid, imperial movements, as the still-warm Mudblood corpse twists and writhes above them.
The next night, the Dark Lord pays him a visit, and leaves with Kreacher trailing behind him.
Regulus is pacing back and forth in his room, and he is beginning to worry the elves. Bipsy had popped into his room at least three times asking if Master was wanting some dinner, or a cup of tea, perhaps some cake– before he’d had to raise his voice and tell her that he was fine and he didn’t want to be disturbed this evening anymore. She’d started punishing herself, of course, started even before she apparated away.
He is refusing to think about the source of the intestine twisting, gut clenching bundle of nerves inside of him. His pacing is beginning to enter into the domain of frantic; he wishes there was a raid tonight, or a Calling, or something . Yaxley has been complaining all week about the Dark Lord’s reticence, but His only response was a slow, thin-lipped smile, and the promise of great things at hand.
Regulus is about to do– something, go to the Malfoy’s, Lestrange’s, anything. He’s about to turn into an apparation when he stops, wonders what he’d even say– he knows he’s been odd the last few months– perhaps longer. He knows the whispers about the old Black madness, and he doesn’t care about them, not really, but what would he say? Oh, Bella, oh, Cissy, he thinks, the Dark Lord stole my elf, took him away somewhere, and I’m afraid– no. That won’t do. He slumps back onto the sofa, tossing an arm over his eyes, and that’s when, with the sharp cracking sound of the universe bending inwards, Kreacher appears before him.
It seems as though he’s transported a small pond with him, his meager pillow case that passed for clothing dripping wet and torn; the smell of foul brackish water rising off of him and causing Regulus’ nose to wrinkle on pure reflex. It takes him a moment to realise that the trailing lines of dark shadow are not just weeds and algae but blood; black, pulsing blood still pushing out in congealed gummy droplets from deep wounds, grey like corpse-flesh around their ragged edges. He looks up at him, huge and bulbous eyes almost luminescent in the dark and opens his mouth to speak. He manages a sound before retching, bile spilling over his quivering chin and down the mess of his front, his small hands clutching at his stomach.
Regulus is frozen. He is– hysterically, he didn’t even know that house elves could vomit, that they even had bodily fluids, or needs. That was not the sort of thing you had to think about the help.
He kneels, hurriedly, in the muck and dirt and foul liquid, and begins with the most basic healing charms he knows, against the weak and barely comprehensible protests of Kreacher.
Slowly, haltingly, he begins to tell the story. His voice is hoarse and raw, and his eyes are bulging out of his head, mouth twisted as if even speaking the words is taking all of his effort. Regulus sits in silence as he illustrates the true quest of the Dark Lord, of a lake with millions of pale reaching hands, of an island with liquid fire-mercury-light-poison, of a locket and high pitched taunting laughter echoing across the rough and jagged walls of the cave as Kreacher crawled to the water, of a silver-light boat moving further and further away, of hands and claws and teeth and hunger, of an order to come home to your Master when your task is done .
They are both shaking by the end. Regulus, dirtied and shivering and with sweat beading at his brow, leans forward and vomits.
When Regulus realises what he is going – what he has – to do, he runs.
He apparates, and apparates, until he’s sick and his body feels twisted up like he hasn’t managed to spell himself all the way. He can hear his instructor's disapproving voice in his head, the further you go, the more likely you are to splinch!
He ends up on a craggy hillside, the middle of nowhere. Untouched green spills over the range, windswept grasses and colourful splashes of wildflower, scattered like someone has taken a giant paintbrush and splattered it all across their great canvas. The dawn mist is still clinging to the ground, fat droplets of dew twinkling across blades of grass in their own imitation of constellations. The land drops off sharply, a clean white edge, all the way down to the crashing waves. The white cliffs cut themselves across the seam of the earth and the sea, holding out their pale wings against the wind.
When he breathes in, the air is fresh and cold, and there’s a trace of salt in the breeze; the sound of gulls circling somewhere in the distance. This is when Regulus begins to cry.
Great heaving sobs rip their way out of him as he crumples, knees hitting the ground. His forehead is pressed into the damp earth, and the smell of it fills his nose. His hands are clenched in the grass and he can feel the grit of dirt under his nails. He is digging his own grave.
There is no small amount of humiliation burning inside of him. He thinks that shame is all he feels, nowadays. He thinks it is a horrid growth inside him, steadily gorging itself on everything else that makes up who he is until that is all that remains, and he could cut himself open and it would be sitting inside his chest, bloated and smug.
Regulus Black has been humiliated about a lot of things. It is not an easy thing to do, to stand being humiliated as one of the members– the heir to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. The last year has been an exercise in having his face ground into the dust under a filthy heel.
It has made him a slavering, desperate thing. It has been nothing like Bellatrix convinced him it would be, nothing like how Narcissa’s careful, considered words made it seem.
There is nothing glorious, or grand, about killing.
That is the real power of the Dark Lord. Taking something so– so abhorrent, or at the very least uncouth– and making you desperate to do it. Desperate to do it for Him . Regulus has become no stranger to that feeling. The air-crackling, hair-raising need for his attention, the constant, constant uphill sprint to cast your devotion at his feet. It is another thing that humiliates him, that he can look at himself now, and see how much of himself he has chipped away, how much he has degraded himself, for minutes, seconds of feeling the utter rapture of His approval.
He understands, intimately, how Bellatrix has become the thing twisting out of her seat, whispering in the Dark Lord’s ear, desperate and degraded, the eldest daughter of the House of Black reduced to a courtier, a harlot, selling her honour, the honour of their Magic, for a fraction of His glancing gaze.
It is altogether too easy, to cast the lives of Muggles, of Muggleborns, of people that they have already spent their whole lives thinking of as beneath their notice, as being nothing at all. As less than that. As deserving.
It makes him sick to think of his Hogwarts days, of his simple, easy prejudices, of words thrown around without meaning, of saying Mudblood without batting an eye, with letting derision be the mould that his tongue was shaped into, and not having a single thought to question if he might be wrong.
For there is an ecstasy Regulus feels, when they go hunting. The joy, the belonging, of being beloved– a cherished part of a whole. It feels brand new, and addictive. It is all too easy to fall into step in the pursuit of acceptance, praise, belonging, purpose driving him into heinous act after heinous act. In the moment, he feels a wild joy at the death spilling out of his wand; part of the crowd. It is only later, when he is alone, that the saccharine feeling abandons him– fairy floss dissolving into water, leaving him with nothing but a sick emptiness, a gap in the middle of his sternum. He is disgusted by himself, day after day, disgusted by what he is doing, the ugly twist of the Killing Curse, of his face in the mirror– and the reason he hates himself most of all: no matter how disgusted he feels, it still isn’t reason enough for him to stop.
Even now, the end to his career – a bitter laugh here, a career, as if he isn’t just a boy with a taste for murder – is coming selfishly. The horror of Voldemort’s rising immortality, of his inhumanity, of his reign stretching its long white hand forward forever and ever. It is enough to make him sick. He has twisted up so much of what Regulus loved, of what seeing his cousins, and the Rosiers, and the Averys, and the Notts, and– and what it used to mean. Or perhaps Regulus has always had a naive view of the world. Perhaps everyone else was just waiting for him to catch up.
He already has a plan. He has a plan for all of it, for Voldemort, for the future, for himself, for his shame.
None of it will be an issue for him anymore.
He only wishes – a flash of memories: eyes sparkling behind round glasses; a mouth split open in laughter; a warm spray of freckles across rounded shoulders; a clearing, round and green, peaceful in the sun – well. Regulus doesn’t wish for anything, anymore.
He takes a moment, sits back on his heels and stares around him. It seems like unfamiliar scenery to him, the wind-buffeted fields and the sound of the sea below. Only– it does seem familiar. Something about it sends a pang down to his heart. Something about it is familiar, familiar like his hands around a favourite mug, opening a well-worn book, the particular scratch of his most-used quill.
This is–
“Kent.” He says, softly, reverently. He has apparated, without knowing, right to the edge of the White Cliffs of Dover. And as he tilts his head up to the sky and closes his eyes, he feels the first heavy droplets of rain beginning to fall.
Preparing to die is strangely methodical.
He puts his affairs in order. Makes Kreacher swear never to tell his family what has happened to him.
His mother hasn’t spoken to him properly in months.
A peculiar apathy has overtaken him. For the first time in his life, his hands have stopped fluttering.
He picks a date. A Tuesday, early May. Spring.
It feels anti-climactic. Death always is.
James Potter’s Tuesdays go like this:
Come home from whatever aimless busy-work Moody had assigned to him this week. Find Lily, round and beautiful, in the bedroom packing an overnight bag. Make a pointed comment about how it isn’t safe for her to stay with her parents anymore, even just for one night. Make another pointed comment about how he misses her when she goes. Make a third pointed comment about not trying to start a fight. Have a fight. Shout about his fear, about the war, about his in-laws, about Sirius and Remus, about Mad-Eye’s distrust. Watch Lily shout back and think about school, just a little bit. Watch Lily’s fiery eyes and fiery hair. Shout a lot about the baby. Slam the door, sulk in the bathroom. Hear Lily bustle around, wait for her to leave. Go out into the kitchen and find a note. Read the note (she loves him, she’s sorry, she doesn’t like how they always fight about this, she’ll be back in the morning). Feel so guilty. Cry a little bit. Put the note into his special hiding place (third floorboard from the left in the hallway). Go into the kitchen and heat up some awful tinned thing. Eat the tinned thing. Go to bed early because there isn’t any point in staying up.
For months, James’ Tuesdays have remained unchanged. The routine of them is a comfort, something steady in the whirl of change wrought by the war. He enjoys his Tuesdays, with their fights and their terrible dinners. More often than not, he felt a nasty little shiver of anticipation on his way home to begin them. He thinks that Lily might like their weekly arguments as much as he did, relishing in the blow-ups and penance and reconciliations– he is a frequent customer at the Muggle florist down the road, always asking for their biggest and best blooms– like it’s an ordinary thing for a young couple to do.
He doesn’t know if it is normal. His parents had certainly never fought like they did, but then his parents hadn’t lived through a war like this. It was just so nice to be able to shout, to indulge that tiny sliver of outrage that this was his life– Lily’s pregnant and he’s going to be a father, yet they were fighting more often than not– and they were at war; and he couldn’t go a week without one of his friends dying, and he was too young to feel this tired. Everyone was scared, he knew everyone was scared, but he was scared too, and the selfish part of him has always been the loudest. Just on Tuesdays, he’s allowed to be angry about all that. That is the rule.
Except for today. Today, James’ routine is shattered right around when he hides the note. There’s a commotion on the porch. He grumbles to himself. Lily must have left something behind. He’s still caught in that messy place between anger and guilt and he really doesn’t want to see her yet. He’s used to having the evening to calm down and ready himself for the apologies and the tears that will come when she returns. Then a knock comes, a dull thudding, like Lily is using the side of her fist to bang on the door. It doesn’t sound angry, which should be a comfort, and isn’t at all. James marches over to the entranceway, still wound up, and wrenches open the door.
“Lil, did you forget something, because–”
It isn’t Lily standing in the doorway.
He blinks. Blinks again, his brain screeching to a stutter-stop.
It’s Regulus.
James can feel the blood moving through his body, his heart beginning to thud in his chest. Regulus is here. Regulus is here. James is aware of every single cell in his body, and they’re all on fire. He’s twenty, a man now, a father-to-be, but this moment takes him back to that glorious summer when he was sixteen. Before everything went wrong.
He can almost feel the memories of those sun-champagne-chlorine soaked moments returning in a rush, lightness flooding through his arteries, his veins, pooling in his heart. Regulus is here, and with one look at him James is transported back to before he closed himself off, resigned himself to the numb-waiting-fighting-fearing-mourning-numb of the war. He feels more himself than he has in years.
Something in the back of his mind registers that he should perhaps be afraid: he has just opened the door to find a Marked man standing on his porch, but– but it’s Regulus. Suddenly James realises that it doesn’t matter that he’s a Death Eater, and maybe it never mattered to him at all. It doesn’t matter that they’re on opposite sides of the war, that they’re both killers, none of it matters, and James is unrepentant with this thought, revelling in the secret wickedness of it. He doesn’t care about any of it.
It’s like the wool has finally been pulled from his eyes, leaving him squinting, blinded by the sudden bright thought that they could just run. Regulus is here, and James will follow him wherever he goes. They’ll run away to the continent and leave it all behind. James feels a splinter of his soul click back into place. Regulus is here, and for the first time in years, things are hopeful.
They stare at each other for a moment, and James sees those eyes, those grey eyes he never thought he’d see again. A smile splits his face, the muscles aching with disuse, the last cobwebs around his heart are breaking loose– he can’t believe it, he’s so– so happy– actually happy, the feeling curling through him, draping over his shoulders like a well-worn coat–
Regulus bends neatly at the waist and vomits on James’ feet.
James jolts out of his reverie, vanishing the sick with a nifty spell he’d found in one of Lily’s parenting books, and reaches out to Regulus, cupping his chin in his hand and grasping his elbow to pull him upright. Regulus looks up at him, mouth parted, eyes unfocussed, and something is wrong.
He’s soaked through, wet and freezing. His hair is plastered to his forehead, hanging down in lank strands, longer than James has ever seen it. His clothes stick to him, black on black on Black, and James would laugh, but– Regulus is so thin, almost skeletal, the skin of his face stretched tight across his bones. The freckles that appeared during that heavenly summer are nowhere to be seen. The shadows under his eyes are a bruised purple, his skin waxy, cheeks mottled and patchy. He looks sick, looks like he’s dying.
Regulus is shaking like a leaf in a storm, hands fluttering at James’ chest, and he doesn’t even seem aware of their movement. Those thunderous grey eyes that haunted his dreams for years don’t even register his presence now, glazed over and drifting back and forth, catching on things that James can’t see. There is nothing behind them. No anger, no fear, no disdain, there’s nothing. Blankness. James is beginning to feel very afraid.
Regulus is leaning heavily into him now, feet still planted on the threshold, his forearms against James’ chest, bent awkwardly into themselves, and he’s still looking up at James with nothing even resembling recognition. His sodden clothes are leaving patches on James’ shirt, icy water soaking through to his skin. It isn’t raining outside. It isn’t even cold. How is he so wet ?
The first time James touched Regulus, he was surprised by the warm solidity of him. He’d always thought that Regulus would be cold and hard, like porcelain. The Ice Prince of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black. He wasn’t. He was warm, human, his pulse fluttering, a person underneath all those layers of decorum and disdain, and James had been shocked. The thought that Regulus had a beating heart and blood in his veins, that he was solid and real, had given James a warm feeling, the beginnings of a spark catching in his chest.
Now, Regulus’ skin is clammy, feverish, too-hot and too-cold at once. It’s almost slimy, like a layer of pond scum has attached itself to him. It feels like James is propping up the body of a drowned man. A corpse. They stay like this for a minute, Regulus locked in whatever trance he arrived in. The pit in James’ stomach is widening and widening.
All of a sudden, the fluttering of Regulus’ hands against James’ chest becomes scrabbling, and, for the first time since his arrival, he speaks.
“Where is he? Where is he? He should be here– he should be here. Why isn’t he here, oh, he’s going to miss it–”
He’s mumbling, tripping up on his words. His voice is creaking and barely audible, every syllable being scraped out of his throat. James is reminded, uselessly, of Regulus’ voice very early in the morning, or after sex, the gravel of it never failing to send a thrill up his spine. There is no thrill now. He feels frozen, helpless against the tirade of speech spilling out of Regulus, a dam just beginning to break. There’s a little bit of sick on Regulus’ chin. James wipes it away. The movement doesn’t register.
“He’s going to miss it– oh, I’m going to miss him. Sirius, please come out. Sirius? Where are you?”
Regulus is gathering steam now, his volume rising. His voice frightens James, the way it drags, jumps, pitches up and down. He’s never heard Regulus speak this way before, so uncontrolled, his cool, methodical voice nowhere to be found. He sounds like a child. Like a scared little boy.
“The train, Sirius, you’re going to miss the train, you have to go. I– I can’t go with you–” his voice cracks here, bruising something nestled close to James’ heart, “–but you should still go, you should–”
He untangles himself from James, swaying woozily but straight-backed, and James feels a twang of long-forgotten memories, recalling how he’d teased Regulus about his ‘prissy Pureblood training,’ how easy it had been to needle him, relishing in every flash of annoyance, every time he pulled out the angry red flush that sat just under his skin. Regulus drags one foot in front of the other, a sloping rhythm, and he doesn’t make a sound but it looks like the movement hurts, badly. A voice plays back in James’ head, hurt and haughty and yet so much warmer than whatever this is, telling him about hard-earned lessons of a stiff upper lip, of not letting anyone see your pain.
“Regulus–”
He doesn’t know what to say next. The name alone feels so foreign in his mouth, the grooves in which it used to sit shifted, grown over. That name– it’s been a long time since he’s said it. It aches on his tongue, an ache of loss and guilt and memory, like finding a childhood toy sitting in the back of a cupboard, covered in dust, and realising that no one since you has loved it enough to look for it.
“No! You can’t have him! He’s my brother! He wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye!” Regulus is shouting now, a hoarse, disused tone, completely at odds with his childish words. “He wouldn’t! Where is he? Are you hiding him? Did you hurt him?”
“Regulus, please, you’re hurt.”
“I’m not.” Even as it comes out of his mouth, James can see a trickle of blood dripping from his ear. What has happened to him? What has he done to himself?
“Regulus, Sirius isn’t here. It’s just me.”
“You’re lying! I always know when you lie!” He staggers into the living room, scaring the life out of the cat.
“Sirius!” He bellows, knocks into the couch, the coffee table, a bull in a china shop. His robes fly wildly around him, slapping wetly into his sides. Prim and proper Regulus, who would rather incinerate his cloak than let it drip indoors, is shedding pond-scum and treading it into the carpet. Lily is going to kill him.
“Regulus!” James’ voice is sharp and hard with fear. He hears his father in its echo. Regulus turns to look at him, his mouth a small ‘o’ of surprise. James remembers how difficult Regulus had found their arguments, remembers the few times that he’d lost his cool and released his barbed words at top volume, the effect it had. He tries again, gentler, coaxing.
“Regulus, if you’re in trouble, if you– if you took something, I need to know.”
He shakes his head, spraying James with salty water. It tastes like tears.
“No, no, no, this is wrong. This is wrong, I’m not meant to be here.” He is still now, knees locked. Still but for the movement of his hands, trembling at his sides, and muttering like a man possessed, words tumbling out of him, the murmur of a stream.
“This isn’t how the story goes. I shouldn’t have left the cave. I was going to drown, I would have drowned and– and then someday they’d find the locket, but I’d be dead. No one would know what I’ve done. By the time they did I’d be long gone. They’d have to puzzle it out, puzzle my name out, because they don’t know, because I’m already dead and gone. I’m not here anymore. Oh, what have I done, what did I do? Nothing’s right. The whole story is going to change.” His chin is dimpling, lips wobbling around the diatribe.
James treads silently towards him, soft and slow. He keeps his hands where Regulus can see them, just in case.
“Regulus, I’m going to touch you now, is that okay?”
“The whole story has to change now, because I got out. I had to come out, to see you, but I changed it, I didn’t mean to, I just wanted to see you, and see Sirius, I had to tell you, I had to warn you about the traitor, and I had to tell you, I–”
James brushes his arm, so gently. Fingers feather-light against the sleeve. Regulus doesn’t react, his wet, blank eyes staring into the middle-distance.
“There’s a spy– a spy! He’s spying on you, he’s your friend but he’s spying on you– and I know who it is, I have to tell you– he’s my brother, you can’t have him– but I had to tell you, the locket, I can’t breathe– fuck, the locket– Kreacher, a bird, a seagull, there’s water, water everywhere and I was so scared– I can’t breathe, and the feathers– water, soaked through– I was so scared, and I thought of you– in the water, with the locket– I thought I saw you, but– I want my brother, my traitor brother– and I’m here, I flew here– no, I didn’t, I don’t know– I was so scared–”
Now that he’s made contact, James tries for jovial, though the words falling out of Regulus’ mouth are scaring him more than he can possibly say.
“Right!” It comes out false, the bravado cracking. He clears his throat, continues. “Regulus, you and I are going to go upstairs, and get you out of these nasty robes, and once you’ve had a rest, we can chat, okay?” He doesn’t expect an answer, and Regulus doesn’t give one, lost now in his thoughts, mouthing soundlessly.
He circles his arm awkwardly around Regulus’ torso, under his armpits. He’s reassured by the expansion and contraction of Regulus’ lungs, the hummingbird heartbeat. James half drags, half carries him into the hallway. Regulus is staring wide-eyed around the house, like he’s never seen a flat before. Perhaps he hasn’t, James thinks, remembering the brief glimpses he’d had of Grimmauld Place when he was growing up.
They make their way up the stairs, entangled, a lumbering four-legged creature. Regulus’ whole body weight leans against James. He is disturbingly light, brittle bones, a little bird. When they reach the landing, James tries to turn them right, towards the bedroom, but before they take another step, Regulus’ eyes alight on the nursery. Fuck.
Hauling himself up and out of James’ arms, Regulus sways towards the little room. It’s tiny, really, just a step up from a cupboard, but Lily had spent hours in there, agonising in the decision between marginally different shades, and then insisting on painting it all herself, the Muggle way. James can almost see her now, poking her head out with her bright hair pulled back, in her painting jeans, a smear of blue across her cheek. He’s glad she isn’t here.
“Is– is there?”
“There isn’t a baby.” James swallows, hard, yet. Whatever state Regulus has gotten himself into, he doesn’t know how he’ll react to this knowledge. If he’ll remember it, or if this simple fact will set him off again. James creeps closer to him. He can probably pick him up if he takes him by surprise.
Instead, Regulus drops softly to his knees. He looks around, lips parted, his eyes saucers. When he speaks, his voice is a reverent whisper.
“You have to be good to babies. They– they don’t know any better. Sometimes they cry, but it isn’t them being bad. They just don’t know how to say it any other way. They’re never bad. You have to want them. Because all they want is you.”
He turns to look at James, a hardness behind his eyes. He almost looks sane, this new sharpness solidifying him, but he’s still a shade of the Regulus he used to know.
“Will you love him?”
James feels a shiver run down his spine. They don’t know the gender yet, but something in his body settles, whispers, yes, that’s right.
Will you love him? Do you want him? The words have been rolling around his head, making a sickening twist low in his belly, since the day Lily told him she was pregnant. He still doesn’t know the answer. His mouth is opening and closing, the words crowding on his tongue. Yes. No. They’re fighting for it, and he doesn’t know which will win, which will bubble to the top first. He doesn’t know if he wants to find out. He doesn’t get the chance. Before he can order his thoughts into a semblance of something that doesn’t make him want to cry, Regulus’ eyes roll back into his head, and he falls to the floor in a dead faint.
James is on him in an instant, hands shaking, finding his pulse points and heaving hot relief when he feels a thready thrum under his fingers. He sits back on his heels and takes a breath, feeling stupid for the prickle coming at the back of his eyes. His hands are still touching Regulus, one on his neck, one on his wrist, like they taught him in basic training. The skin under them feels cold, sweat-slicked and foreign. The sudden silence feels deafening, ringing through his ears, wrapping around the base of his skull. His heart is thudding, making him feel jerky and tired all at once.
It hasn’t even been an hour, and he feels like his life has turned upside down. Regulus, arriving on his doorstep, out of his mind on something, shouting about Sirius, a spy in the Order, and lockets and death, and then giving him a weird, half-lucid pep talk about fatherhood. James pushes all of it down, the fear and the anger and the uncomfortable desire that persists, even now, even after all this time, he pushes it down, gets to his feet and scoops Regulus’ loose-limp body into his arms.
Once they reach the bedroom, James takes off the sodden black robes, and shoots a succession of Drying-Warming-Cleaning Charms towards the slump of Regulus’ body, dressed just in underclothes now. He really is painfully thin. With as much gentleness as he can muster, James levitates Regulus into the bed and tucks him into Lily’s side, smoothing the covers under his chin and brushing his hand through the tangled curls splaying across the white sheets. Spilled ink, he thinks idly.
Regulus’ eyelids flutter, once, twice, and then he’s peering up at James through his eyelashes. His eyes are clear now, and bright.
“There you are,” Regulus whispers, and James can feel tears spring to his eyes.
“Regulus? What– what happened to you? Why are you here?”
“I like your garden. It’s pretty. Pretty house, too. Is this your bed?” Regulus is looking around the room slowly, taking it in. His hand absently strokes the quilt. James can feel his frustration bubbling up inside him. He’s flung back to that first afternoon in the grove by the Summer Cottage, the feeling of shock burning into anger turning his words sharp, his voice flat.
“Hang on– you show up at my door out of the blue and vomit on my feet and run around my house shouting the bloody roof down and you– you’re complimenting our home decor? ”
“Oh. I’m sorry about that.” Regulus swallows, and his mouth twists into a wince. He’s in pain, James can see it now behind his eyes.
“Regulus, I don’t understand. What’s wrong with you? Why— why are you here? Are you sick? Did you take something?”
Regulus looks up at him softly, and a tiny smile lifts his cheeks. James’ gaze is drawn in by the sweet mole at the corner of his mouth, a kiss that he could never quite reach.
“James, I– I don’t really know what happened. But I think I’m going to die, really soon.” His words are at odds with the peaceful expression on his face, and James feels a cool trickle of dread run down his spine.
“Are you in trouble? If you’re in trouble, I can help, but you have to tell me what is going on–”
“Not in trouble. Not anymore,” and he breathes out with a hitch. It breaks James’ heart. “Hey, James, will you do me a favour?”
“What is it?” James is wary, and the cold trickle is gushing into a stream now.
“Will you– oh, this is embarrassing. Will you please, um, give me a kiss? It’s just that I can’t remember which one was our last one, back at Hogwarts, before–” he breaks off, raising his arm weakly, “–you know. And I’d like to have one, just before I go.”
James is suddenly furious.
“Is this a fucking joke? Did your fucking– your Death Eater pals put you up to this?” He’s shouting, and Regulus isn’t flinching, is barely reacting at all, and this makes the high pitched whine of fear in James’ head so much louder. It almost deafens him to Regulus’ response.
“Oh, that’s alright then.” It comes out in a sigh, and he closes his eyes.
James has to leave the room then, so he isn’t sure when it happens, but when he returns, Regulus is dead.
James’ life, which he used to see stretching before him, an endless bolt, cloth-of-gold– shrivelled, withers in the months after Regulus’ death. It was like– like Regulus had caught hold of a loose thread, just one little one. Perhaps he’d had it clutched tight in his hand since their summer in Kent– as this was when the thread had first come free, a tiny snag at the base of James’ self-image. Regulus had shown up at James’ door on an unremarkable Tuesday in May and he had tugged at that loose thread, and James had watched the tapestry of his selfhood unravel with a speed that terrified him. Now, it was as though he was floating, untethered and unclothed, the grey mists of reality gathering around him, chilling him to the bone. He’d been cast out of the safe womb he’d encased himself within, the warmth of Lily, of his friends, the knowledge that they were on the side of Light no longer bringing him any comfort.
He wakes up in the night, often, chest heaving, seeing swollen eyes, empty, slimy hands reaching, and reaching. Sometimes he sees– remembers?– the aftermath of the affair. He’s looking up at the stretching branches in the grey mists of early morning in Ellenden Wood, dirt underneath his nails, a blackbird warbling the first notes to the dawn chorus. James, in his dream, is levitating earth out of the ground and then back in, and not listening to the creaking breaths coming from the hole he’s dug.
Only in these moments, shrouded in the darkness, Lily’s oblivious body safe and warm beside him, does he allow himself to think about Regulus. He uses this time to replay the hour they spent together, picking over their interaction with a fine toothed comb, searching for the thing he could change– perhaps if he had said this instead, done that– and all the while those eyes watch him, balefully.
Even in the safety of the dark, he doesn’t think about Regulus’ last request, doesn’t think about leaving him alone. Doesn’t think of how scared he must have been.
During the daytime, James thinks, very carefully, around Regulus. He skirts past his memories of the Tuesday, averting his eyes and pinching his nose.
He can’t get Regulus’ words out of his head.
He’s your friend but he’s spying on you, and I know who it is, I have to tell you, he’s my brother, you can’t have him–
He feels sick, all the time. He feels sick when Sirius looks at him, laughter in his eyes, dying as it meets with the coldness in James’ face. He feels sick when he sits in Order meetings, listens to Moody delegating tasks, the lists growing shorter and shorter as his friends fall, intercepted, killed, ambushed– again, and again, and again. He feels sick at funerals, when it rains, a gentle pattering on his umbrella, dripping cold fingers down the back of his dress robes; or when it’s sunny, the shadows of the gravestones in stark relief against the grass, so many of them, the heat beating down on the top of his head, mocking.
He doesn’t say anything, can’t possibly prove anything. The thought of this is sickening alone. What is he meant to say– a known Death Eater, brother of my best friend, came to my house and told me Sirius is the spy and then he died? Yes, James, very credible indeed.
Dumbledore comes to their house, their own gorgeous decrepit little flat, standing in ruby-red robes and looking through his pince-nez with a pained expression on his face. He tells them a story, about a prophecy and a baby and the Dark Lord, and Lily claps a hand over her mouth and leaves to be sick, and James says yes, but she’s due in August, though, and when Dumbledore says that even with magic, due-dates are a guess at best, and isn’t it better to be safe than sorry, and so they go under their first Fidelius charm.
“Well, it’ll be Sirius, won’t it,” Lily says it matter-of-fact, doesn’t even look at James, doesn’t really need to. She knows the answer already, studied and prepared for like a pop quiz in their Potions classroom– and not so long ago that would’ve been it. Dumbledore nods, makes a noise of assent. He’s watching him, James can feel it, prickling attention on his skin.
James is silent. He feels sick. He feels uneasy– like his head is spinning and his lungs aren’t getting enough air, only everyone around him is acting normal, is being normal, so it must be normal, and he must be normal–
“James?” Lily’s hand is on his shoulder. She sounds gentle, and a bit frustrated, but like you might be with a child trying to fit a block where you know it won’t go, a silly dog barking at the postman.
His tongue is stuck to his mouth, sticky peanut butter, toffee. He doesn’t know why he hasn’t said anything about Sirius– but he’s had no reason to he hasn’t even done anything– but Regulus– but Regulus the Death Eater – but to say that all now to Lily and to Dumbledore; and to watch Lily’s face change, and to watch her be horrified, and watch Dumbledore be disappointed, and to hear himself speaking the words–
“Fine,” he finally manages to say, bursting out of him like a crumb lodged in his throat, forced and grotesque. “I’m fine. Sorry. Got a bit lost there. Sirius, of course.”
They call Sirius in, and he does the spell, and it takes, and James thinks, hopes, prays, that perhaps this has all been a great misunderstanding, Sirius would never do a thing like that– and then he remembers Regulus, a bare half-hour from his death, nothing left to hide, nothing left to lose– my traitor brother.
James tries hard to forget all the ways he’s doomed himself, himself and Lily both.
They are on a stakeout, and it is raining. Sitting in a shed, the wall spelled one-way-transparent. Their backs against the wall. James is watching a can on the floor as it collects water from a leak in the roof, one fat droplet at a time. His sitz bones ache. They’ve been here for a while.
He isn’t, is not , looking at Sirius.
The silence stretches long, taut. It is not comfortable.
Sirius is staring straight ahead, blank faced. The only sign of his emotional state is his hands. He’s picking the skin around his thumbnails. They’re already red-raw.
The can is rusty. The drips leak out from a crack in the side, a slow seep that dampens the packed earth beneath them.
“James, I—“ Sirius begins. James tenses. Whatever Sirius is going to say, whatever excuses he’s coming up with, James doesn’t want to hear them. Even the tone of his voice, the pleading whinge, sets his teeth on edge.
And then– divine luck– there is a flicker of movement outside.
“There, did you see that?”
Sirius’ head snaps back to the wall, the wet, dark garden beyond.
“Where?"
“Something moved! It was right– right—“ James points, squinting. Sirius follows his gaze, his finger.
A tabby cat, bedraggled and yowling, steps out from behind the hedge.
A beat. A month ago, James thinks, they would have both burst out laughing. A year ago, Sirius would’ve cuffed him on the shoulder, maybe gone full dog against all safety orders just because he could, just because it was fun.
Now all Sirius does is shrug and turn his face away. Now, all James does is duck his head and clench and re-clench his hand around his wand. Now, the raindrops trickle their path down the back of James’ neck, into the space between his collar and skin, a cold trail down his back.
They sit in silence.
James wakes to a pained gasp from Lily.
“Lil?” he murmurs. “You okay?”
“I think–” she’s interrupted by a sharp intake of breath, a hissing exhale. It sounds like it hurts. “I think it’s tonight.”
James makes the jump from mostly-asleep to entirely awake almost immediately. He flings his hand out, turning on all the lights, jumping out of bed all in one flurried movement.
“Where did we put the bag, Lily?” He says, high and nervous, desperate. His eyes scrabble across every surface in the room. “I know we packed it, I remember because you made me read that chapter in the horrible book–”
Lily smiles at him, an odd, twisty thing. It takes him a moment to place it as fondness, mixed with the wincing pain. It’s been a while since she’s looked at him like that.
“By the front door, silly boy,” she says. “Just like the book told us to.”
“Okay– okay!” He can feel his blood pumping, the flexing muscle of his heart. It’s scary, and it hits him as he runs about the house, frantically dressing and collecting things that this is the moment. There are only a few hours left of him being James, and then after that– for the rest of his life, probably– he’ll be Dad.
“Lil?” He calls. “Do we have time for me to throw up?” He’s joking, he is joking.
“What?” Her voice comes faintly, accompanied by a few puffs of air. Is he meant to be timing the contractions? Or the distance between them? He’s suddenly cursing himself for not reading more of the books Lily left piled on his bedside table. “Why? Are you sick?”
“No, I’m fine!” He decides that he probably shouldn’t make this about himself. “Are you ready? Want to Floo?”
“You’ll have to help me downstairs,” Lily huffs, coming around the corner. “I don’t like my chances.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Mrs Potter,” James says as he wraps an arm around her waist.
Everything happens rather slowly after that. James had always thought of childbirth as a rushed, hectic affair, but really, there seems to be a large amount of waiting around. The Medi-wizard at the neonatal department of St Mungo’s informs them that they’ve done the right thing to come in, that Lily is– ew– four centimetres dilated, and sets them up in a little room off to the side of the nurses’ staff room. Scents of coffee and reheated fish fill the air. If James thought he was going to be sick before, he certainly feels like it now.
“Next time, I’m springing for private care,” James says, after yet another waft of someone’s foul-smelling dinner reaches his nose. From the bed, Lily snorts.
“Next time, you can have the damned thing. I’m not doing this more than once,” she laughs, but the trepidation in her eyes belies her anxiety– whether it’s for the birth, or the statement, he doesn’t know.
James has to put a lot of effort into keeping his face neutral. They hadn’t discussed more kids after this one– had barely discussed this one, if he’s honest– but he’d always hoped for a few. Being an only child had always been lonely, and his father’s words echo endlessly in his head– secure the bloodline. He shudders, dispels the thought. Now is not the time.
“Alright,” he says easily as Lily’s face contorts. Another contraction, and they’re definitely getting closer together now. “Do you want me to hold your hand through this one?”
She nods her head, whole body tensing against the pain. There’s a line of discomfort drawn across her forehead, mouth pinching rhythmically with her punched-out exhalations.
“James–,” she gasps out. “Can you– fucking hell , can you tie my hair back please?” She waves her wrist in his general direction, a colourful elastic tied around it.
James has never done this before– tying up hair. He doesn’t think too much of it though. How hard can it be?
Very hard, as it turns out. He keeps accidentally pulling it, and they work up to a row twice before the contraction ends. Eventually – finally– Lily waves him away, grouching about how she does everything herself around here.
The birth itself happens all in a blur. When James thinks back, he remembers only flashes. Lily’s hand, gripping his own in a vice. The thin hairs on the back of her neck flattened, spiralling across the pale skin, stuck down with sweat. The Mediwizard’s soft, encouraging voice. A keening cry.
“Congratulations, Mr and Mrs Potter. A boy,” one of the nurses provides.
With this, the world falls sharply back into focus. The baby is bundled, swaddled tight and placed, carefully, so carefully, into James’ arms. As soon as it’s placed there, James wants to give it back to the nurse, to Lily, anyone. His hands are too big, too rough. He’s holding it wrong– he’ll hurt it, or drop it, or–
He turns, sees Lily’s expression, her head fallen back on the pillows. She’s panting still, red faced and exhausted, but she looks the most beautiful he’s ever seen her. And she’s smiling, taking in the pair of them. James and the baby. Their baby.
“Give us a go, will you?” She asks, like it’s her turn with the Gobstones. James laughs, which jostles the baby, and he freezes, shock returning anew like ice through his veins. He stares at the soft pulsing of the fontanelles, the still damp hairs. Who trusted him to hold this? He can’t move, can’t extend his arms to hand it– him – over.
One of the nurses remarks that he looks just like his father. James reflexively smiles, nods, I get that all the time – but it isn’t directed at him. Of course it isn’t. Monty isn’t here, hasn’t been here for months. James is the only father in the room.
He thrusts the baby over to Lily, sits down heavily, suddenly exhausted. He rubs his eyes, runs his hand through his hair, going through all his nervous gestures too quickly and then sitting and fidgeting.
“James, will you stop? Anyone would think you just gave birth, with the way you’re carrying on,” Lily snips, but it’s tempered by the look in her eyes, soft and new, her face angled towards the baby like he’s the only thing in the world.
“Come and look.”
War is a funny thing. You think it’s going to be all action, all dramatics– but really, there’s very little of the fighting. What there is– and there is a huge amount of it– is waiting. Really, in this way, it’s the opposite to having a new baby. James had expected that a new baby would slot right into his life, like Lily had, like it had been there all along, fitting itself amongst the grooves.
This is not what happens.
A baby, James is coming to find out, is a little like having a Bombarda in the house. He and Lily take turns snatching sleep where they can, a half hour there, forty minutes here. They both look absolutely awful, stumbling around the house at all hours. Lily has taken to calling herself ‘the cow,’ for the amount that the baby eats. Ziggy, having been abruptly cast aside from his position as centre of attention of the household, yowls ceaselessly, and always just as they’ve got the baby to sleep.
Another thing is that it’s been a week and they still haven’t named him. It’s like the cat debacle all over again, except worse, because this child will have the name they choose for him for the rest of his life. And they can’t call him Ujalp in the interim– James asked. So they have a nameless baby, and an angry cat.
They also have no visitors until the eighth day after the birth. Lily will later tell him that this was intentional, that she told everyone they’ll spend the first week as just them, a family – those bloody books, again– but James just thinks that perhaps everyone has forgotten them. When he voices this thought, Lily pinches the bridge of her nose.
“Have you not noticed me owling everyone, every day?” She asks. He doesn’t want to tell her that he hasn’t, not at all. He’s been in a haze of bottle-burp-nappy-puke-sleep-cry-wake. He thought she was right alongside him, but apparently she’s been making time for owls.
“Well, James, I have. After Sirius’ sixth unanswered owl to you, he started writing me instead. The handwriting on that one! I thought he was posh, but clearly not enough of it got in– James? Are you listening to me?”
“When can they come? When did you say we’d have enough of being a family– just the three of us?” James isn’t really hearing her, having tuned everything out bar the important parts, his ears focused on the stirring noises coming from the nursery– will they have to get up again? Or might he settle?
“I told you, we can start having visitors on the ninth. I thought– well, frankly, I thought we’d take to it better than we have,” Lily says with a sigh.
James goes to her, holds her hands in his. He looks into her eyes, green and red-rimmed, violet underneath like she has borne witness to a great violence. He tries to dredge up a feeling that isn’t exhaustion, or the fear of doing it wrong.
And the baby begins to cry, again.
Lily’s on the stairs, halfway up and already taking her tit out of her top when James bursts it out. “I think it should be Harry.”
“What?”
“His name,” James says, quieter, “Harry. My grandad was Henry, it just seems–”
“No, I like it,” she says, thoughtful. “Better than Eustace, at any rate.”
“We were considering Eustace?” James is aghast.
“Or,” a hint of a giggle in her voice. “Did you hear that Tuney named hers Dudley?”
James barks out a laugh, a real one, from his chest. “Never, that poor boy!”
They go up together, in the end, picking the baby up from his cot– so tiny, so fragile, his blue-baby eyes already turning to green. He screws his face up in a yawn, gummy mouth searching for a feed.
“Hello, Harry,” Lily says, soft and sweet, and James’ heart swells.
Of course, on the eighth they have a fight, and it’s a terrific one, honestly, legendary, mythic. Their first parental-family-unit fight. James wonders ironically if they should get a card, if that’s one of the many milestones; first crawl, first step, first tooth, first row. They try to start it quietly, for the baby, but that doesn’t last very long, and then they’re yelling at each other and the walls are shaking– or maybe that’s just James– and Harry is wailing from the other room, one long background siren.
It’s not that James wants to argue with his life-partner-wife; he just also can’t deny the satisfaction of having it all rip through him. The anger, frustration, the cooped-up-animal; the fear, the uncertainty, the feeling of his life running away from him and each step sinking into quicksand. No holds barred, going for it, he and Lily are two gladiators in the ring bashing their swords on their shields in bloodthirsty gusto. That’s one thing he can be sure of, is that as much as he wants this, Lily wants it more. She’s been waiting to get her teeth in him, he can tell. He reckons if she bit her tongue any more it would fall clean out of her mouth. So he thinks of it as a bit of a charitable act too, that he’s letting her get out some steam. Sure– that makes it so much better.
They’re both panting by the end, nose to nose. James isn’t even sure what was said; probably things that should’ve stayed inside their heads, things they can’t take back. Then they’re surging forwards and they’re kissing, messy, teeth-clacking, too spitty, hands clawing at collars, scalp, neck, a bit like they’re still fighting. James pushes Lily back against the wall and she gasps before turning her head and scraping her teeth against his neck as he frantically pushes up her top.
After they’re done, panting, with her face turned toward James with that well-fucked glow on his cheeks, he takes a deep breath in and speaks.
“Lil,” he says, one hand on the curve of her waist. Lily feels a prickle of something run up the length of her spine. “I– I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I don’t think we can do this anymore.”
For one hysterical moment, Lily thinks he’s talking about their marriage.
“Do what?” She asks, because she knows that that can’t possibly be it. James looks at her like she’s a bit daft, in that fond way, eyes crinkling.
“Well– the fighting! It’s not– we shouldn’t–” he’s struggling with his words but Lily can fill in the gaps. His parents probably never fought like that, at least never in front of him, or perhaps not at all in their perfect lovely house and their perfect lovely life; he’s probably horrified by the prospect. Lily thinks of her and Petunia, holding hands in Tuney’s big-girl bed while their mum and dad went at it again downstairs, her mother’s high-pitched wail and the answering disdain of their father, before the door would slam and the house would quiet, filled only by the sound of soft weeping. It hadn’t been a shock when they’d split, more of a relief really. It hadn’t taken her dad too long to move on either, shiny new wife and shiny new kid, and her and Tuney left behind standing on the road as his previous life shrank away from him.
“I agree,” she says, to save him the pain. “We shouldn’t fight anymore– it’s not good for Harry.”
“Exactly,” he says, relieved. She always forgets the way he looks without his glasses, the way his eyes go kind of soft and unfocused, the delicate curve of his lashes; he looks younger without them. She doesn’t know why she feels sort of disappointed, even as he kisses her gently, softly, hand dropping down to her chest and kneading at her breast; she gives him a cursory moan and reaches up to loop her arms round the back of his neck. She’s still thinking about it as he begins to go down on her, about this seed of disappointment and what it wants, where it’s from, what it will grow into. It’s not as if she enjoys the fighting either– can remember being eight and her sticky pinky interlocked with her sisters and the both of them promising that whenever they get married it’ll be to the right man, the perfect man, and they’ll never fight, never ever, and they’ll be neighbours and best friends, and forever and ever and–
She throws her arm over her face and endeavours to stop thinking.
It isn’t until the tenth day– the second that they’re allowed any visitors– that Dumbledore comes through the Floo again. Lily is furious, white-faced with anger and terror, and James tries to say something about prophecies, about Divination as a wobbly art anyway. Dumbledore stares at them for a very long time.
“Do you think that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named believes that, too?” He asks, quiet and solemn and utterly unmoveable, and James bursts into tears.
Their house is already in a safe-enough location– Godric’s Hollow, which was meant to be close to James’ parents and ended up being close to their graves, so it’s decided that they don’t have to move. James feels a spark of relief at this, almost immediately upended by Dumbledore’s next words.
“I’m terribly sorry to ask this of you, but until the situation is rectified, I’m placing you under an Ultimus,” his blue eyes are a little wet, damp under his glasses, and James hates him. “The Longbottoms, too.”
A Fidelious Ultimus is for the worst kind of safe houses. James had only heard of it being used once before, for an author that had tried to publish a book on You-Know-Who’s origins. He’d not been heard from since. The Ultimus meant that James and Lily would be stuck inside their house, only a select group knowing their location, no Floo, no visitors, no popping out, no dropping by. Total lockdown.
James can feel himself nodding, dumbly, the four walls of their lounge already closing in on him.
“We– sorry, Albus, to be clear,” Lily’s voice cuts through the haze. “We won’t be locked down with the Longbottoms?”
“No,” Dumbledore says with a wry smile. “You’ll be separate, keeping to your own residences."
“Do we need to get Sirius in here, to perform it?” Lily asks, and Dumbledore nods.
“I think that would be best,” he says. “James, if you would?”
James gets out his mirror, and within minutes, Sirius is falling through the Floo.
“Is my godson desperate for another visit already?” He grins up from the floor, before he sees Dumbledore and scrambles to his feet. “Albus, sorry, hi. Didn’t see you. Practically blending in with the furniture, those greens sure make your eyes pop–”
“Sirius,” Lily interrupts fondly– he rambles when he’s nervous. “We’re going under an Ultimus.”
“Oh,” Sirius says, his eyes round and frightened. “Oh, Lil.”
“We just need you to perform the new spell,” James says, numb, holding his arm out for Sirius to take. He doesn’t.
“Actually, I’ve been thinking about this,” Sirius says, his hands clasping at each other, picking at the skin around his nails. “I think it shouldn’t be me.”
James lets out a little gasp, looks around, Lily’s face screwed up in confusion, Dumbledore’s inscrutable, as always.
“Why?” Lily asks, into the dead air.
“I’m obvious,” Sirius says, bursts out, really. “I’m the best friend,” he puffs up a little in pride, “the godfather. I think– well. We’ve been lucky so far, but if I’m caught, they’ll know what to ask. So I think it should be someone less– someone less obvious.” He doesn’t say what they’re all thinking, the glaring hole in the Fidelious system; the susceptibility to torture of the Secret Keepers.
James’ thoughts are racing. He’s– he doesn’t know what to think. He’d expected more of a fight if he was being honest, or resistance, or– something! Even apathy, not whatever this was. Sirius suggesting it himself– that had to mean something. He felt like his brain was trying to play catch up, a record skipping, sluggishly waking up from hibernation. He doesn’t want to be– but he– in the perfect position to– You-Know-Who would want– and– he feels his face tentatively, slowly, break out in a grin. Hope against hope– Sirius, by doing this one small thing, by refusing the Ultimus, is protecting them. It’s so obvious, James doesn’t know why he didn’t think of it before. Of course he doesn’t want to betray them– and so here he is, giving them an out. James feels like he could jump over the table and kiss him.
Dumbledore nods, once. His expression is as unreadable as ever.
“Very well,” he says. “We will discuss who will be your replacement.”
It’s a clear dismissal, and Sirius takes it as such, giving James a shy wave and swooping to kiss Lily on the cheek before he ducks out the way he came in, promising to come by later in the week.
“Remus?” Asks Dumbledore into the silence. Lily frowns.
“I don’t want to put anything else onto his plate,” she says, and James nods. “Albus,” she starts, trepidatious, “I don’t see why it shouldn’t be you.”
“Too much risk, my dear,” he says, and James feels Lily’s back stiffen under his hand. “If I am caught, there is so much that can be wrought from my mind. No, I can not have that on my conscience as well.”
James nods, then, finally, it comes to him. “How about Peter?”
“Mr Pettigrew?” Dumbledore asks, far away. “I don’t see why not. He’s a good friend, and a wonderful choice. Not overly involved in the Order, yet–”
“I’m not sure,” says Lily. “We barely see him, these days.”
“And whose fault is that?” James retorts, his voice climbing a little. “He owled me, said he’s dying to come and see Harry!”
Like Harry had heard his name, he starts up, wailing for a feed. Lily sighs, gets up.
“Whatever,” she says, knowing the battle has been lost. She doesn’t have it in her for a fight, not about this. “I’m fine with whatever. It’s only our lives.”
It’s a horrid conversation. James can tell Lily still doesn’t agree with him, her mouth tense and her hands clenched in her lap. Sirius takes it on as well as he can; if James didn’t know him any better he wouldn’t be able to tell he was distressed at all. It’s all in the little things with Sirius when he’s putting on a show, the twitch in his brow, the too-wide edge to his grin, his laughter going on for a second too long.
“–I mean, thank Merlin, really.” Sirius was saying, leaning back in his chair and comically pretending to wipe sweat from his brow. “A lot of responsibility, if you know what I mean. Yeah, no– I mean I did think you wouldn’t go for– well. Pete’s always been the responsible one, haven’t you chap!” He slaps a hand on Peter’s back at this, and laughs again, a rough, barking sound.
“Yes,” James says, jumping gratefully onto this line of conversation. “Yes, Pads, you’ve just been– I mean, to take the stress off your plate, I’m sure Moons will be happy that you won’t be at our beck and call anymore. It was a perfect idea from you, mate, really!”
Sirius laughs again but it’s not a nice sound, sarcastic and drawling; like he’d get at the worst of their Summer parties, too much time spent with the sneering upper-crust.
“Right, sure. He’d appreciate it if he were ever around, right? I mean– look.” He gestures to the conspicuously empty seat. “I don’t think he’d care if I didn’t come back for a month. Probably wouldn’t even notice.”
“Don’t say that,” Lily says, chidingly. Her hand is a vice grip on James’. “I’m sure he’s– we’re all busy. It’s horrid out there, Sirius.”
He snorts, but doesn’t say anything else, tapping his fingers in a rapid rhythm against the table.
Peter coughs into the silence.
“Well,” he says brightly. “Shall we get started then? Where should we do the oaths– over there, by the fire? Brilliant. Can’t wait!”
After it’s all done, James breathes out– heaves out, a sigh of relief. Sirius has already got up from the table, saying something about a cigarette and stepping quickly outside; Peter slips out behind him, like a note under the door. It’s odd– he doesn’t think that Peter smokes but he’s honestly too relieved that they didn’t devolve into some base screaming match to care; they’d kept it civilised, mature, grown-up. What diplomatic adults they were.
Lily scratches their cat – it was hard to not default to Ujalp in her mind sometimes – behind the ears and frowns at the clock; if she doesn’t get dinner on soon they would all become too cross to manage anything but the chippy down the street and she doesn’t want to get takeaways not tonight, she sort of wants to take out her anger-frustration-fizzing-cooped-up-ness on an onion by chopping it to bits. Sirius and Peter are still outside, and she cracks open the door. She has it on the tip of her tongue to say something jokingly cross and lecture-y about smoking and the baby, when she hears the dregs of their conversation.
“-but I suppose,” and Peter’s voice sounds almost like he’s sneering even though Lily can’t see his expression, face turned away. Sirius is stood in the shadow of their stairwell, and she can just make out the burning embers of his cigarette, the sort of slack-jawedness of his face. “It’s a new feeling for you, isn’t it. Being left out I mean. Don’t worry. It gets better after a few years, you might even get used to it. Or not.”
“I–"
Lily feels like a creep for having listened quietly for even this long, can’t stand loitering in the doorway– bloody Gryffindor! says a voice in her head – so she steps back and then forward again, making a clattering noise at the lock and pulling the door open with a smile.
“Right then! Who’s staying for dinner? I’ll get the stove on and don’t worry, it will definitely be edible.”
Peter turns to her beaming.
“Me, please! Oh, you’re brilliant Lil, really.” He squeezes her arm as he hops past her back into the house. She can hear him calling out into the house, something that makes James laugh and then the high pitched giggles of Harry joining in.
Lily hesitates for a moment longer. Sirius is still frozen in place, looking at nothing.
“Sirius–? Are you– do you want to stay?” She feels a stabbing pang of sympathy. She wouldn’t want to stay, if she were him. She still doesn’t get it– thinks that James has been thoughtlessly, carelessly cruel. Sirius blinks, and seems to shake himself back into his body.
“No,” he says, glancing up at her and giving her a quick, small smile. “No I’d– better be off. Thanks, Lily. Say uh– say bye to James for me would you? Yeah. Um. Yeah– I’ll– sorry. Bye.”
He walks quickly to the gate, too fast for Lily to really say anything else, her hand half outstretched and words on the tip of her tongue to stay, to eat dinner, that’s she’s sorry. Most of all that she’s sorry, even though she couldn’t say what for. She watches him, and takes a breath to call out anyway when—
“Li-ly!” Peter sings out behind her. Harry is babbling happily away. “You alright out there? Need any help with dinner? I’m starved !”
Lily takes a breath, another one, turns, and smiles. She is happy that Peter at least is staying over.
“I’ll be right there! And yes, some help cooking would be great, thank you.”
She shuts the door, and promises herself to write Sirius a letter, sometime she has a spare moment.
James grins as he looks around the table, but something in his smile feels fragile, close to breaking. He is here, with all the people he loves, his wife and his kid and his closest friends, but there’s still a sob bubbling against his ribs. He pushes it down, layers his happiness over it. Wills it to warm. All the people he loves, in one room. The dinner party was a good idea. It had been a hard week, three funerals in a row. They needed this.
Lily is making faces as she feeds Harry, who has just started on solids, pumpkin smeared all around his face, the high chair spelled spotless so many times that it’s beginning to wear. James’ smile grows as he watches them, Lily’s mouth opening and shutting like a fish, Harry’s fat fists grabbing at the orange goo. This is his family. The thing in his chest flutters and inflates, filling with light.
Peter is watching Harry eat, a small smile playing on his face. His hands are shaking slightly around his cutlery, the remnants of a curse he took earlier still working their way out, but he is taking it in stride. Harry beams up at him, showing off the four teeth that had erupted out of his weird gums over the past few weeks. He’d always liked Peter the best. This choice had never made sense to James, but he supposes there is something babies like about the steadfastness of good old Wormy. Never bending, never breaking. Solid. Dependable. Peter’s face splits into a surprised grin as Harry lets loose a war cry and launches the bowl of pumpkin onto the floor.
A snort from the side of the table. Remus. It’s the first sound he’s made since they sat down, apart from a murmured thanks when James passed him the salt. These days, Remus is folding in on himself, a shade in every room he walks into. He looks shattered, exhaustion flowing through him quicker than hot blood. Hardly able to sit upright, but still he laughs. James feels the warmth radiating out of him now, and he turns his head–
He turns his head, and there’s Sirius— James feels a stab of guilt, sharp and clanging. He can’t tell him. He can hardly look at him without the planes of his face shifting into his brother’s. How has he never seen the resemblance before? His smile falters as Sirius meets his eyes. The warm bubble that’s been pressing against the back of his ribs tightens, bursting into a sickly cold trickle seeping down his ribs, in between the vertebrae of his spine. He sees the hurt behind his friend’s grey eyes, grey eyes he can’t meet anymore, and he knows that Sirius knows he’s keeping something from him, something big. The distrust between them is foreign, ugly, a mean thing that settles atop his chest. He can’t breathe with it.
James dreams, that night. He is trying to untangle a necklace, fingers fumbling on the impossibly delicate chain. The gold links curve, knot, snarl against each other. Every time he relieves one knot, another takes its place. His hands are growing larger– no, the chain tinier, until it is just a speck of gold on his thumb.
The voice from the darkness is speaking to him– whispering wild things, weird things. He hears his father’s name, his words– our bloodline, safe and secure. James inhales, and there’s water in his lungs. Water out of his lungs, spilling out of him, he tries to speak around it but he’s choking, his eyes filling with tears, the tears spilling out of him, salt water spilling out in great heaving sobs. He can feel the darkness closing in on him, the whispers getting louder, hissing into his ear, terrible things now– they’re liars, liars and you believed them– you’re pathetic, you’re alone in this world– all alone.
A bottle uncorking, just that before the darkness envelops him.
And then, a ray of light. Not cold, not clinical, but warm, friendly. A cloth of gold, coming in through the gloom, wrapping him up tight. Tight like his mother’s arms around him, tight like his chest, seeing Harry for the first time. Tight like home. Safe. There’s a scent in the air– lavender, vetiver, and parchment. A flash of blue-white skin– freckles on his shoulders, winking. No, not freckles– it’s the stars, winking down, watching him with a detached amusement. He feels warm, and quiet, and his heart is beating slow.
Harry’s cry brings him out of the dream.
Lily groans next to him. It’s March, and it’s cold, the last gasps of winter icing the morning air. They both roll over at the same time, bumping heads.
“I did it last time,” Lily mumbles, and she did. But James has had an idea.
“Lil, will you come with me? I want to try something,” and she looks at him, and he sees her catch the glimmer of something– something fun in his eyes. It’s rare, this glimmer. Since they went into hiding, there isn’t much fun to go around.
They pad, together, into the nursery, hands brushing. Harry looks up at them from the crib, and his eyes are wet, little bright shimmers in the soft light of morning. Lily picks him up, and together they walk outside, onto the veranda. The grass of the back garden glimmers, coated with frost. Mist rolls out of the trees that back their house, the forest calling.
James walks down the steps, bare feet crunching, and beckons Lily and Harry over. It’s quiet, the still morning air making a sacred cocoon around them.
He takes a deep breath, stands back, and transforms.
It feels odd, to be in this form after years without it. They’d stopped transforming with Moony after school ended, caught up in their lives, the war. James feels a stab of guilt. He stretches his neck, his legs, pawing at the ground.
Harry’s shocked laugh breaks the quiet, sweet and warm and loud. James wants to hear nothing else, ever. He noses up to Harry, careful, so careful of his antlers.
He prances, hooves up and down, frost cracking under his feet, shakes his head, licks a stripe down Lily’s hot face. He chuffs, steam rising from his animal nose as he shakes his great antlers, revels in Harry’s delighted shrieking. He wants to bottle this feeling, that laughter, mass produce it and never run out. He wonders why then, it feels a bit like his heart is breaking.
Sirius comes around for a drink, officially to celebrate Harry’s first birthday, but James knows it’s because another full moon is rising, and Remus is away, again, and he doesn’t like to be at the flat by himself. Lily starts out with them, a stemless glass of pink wine cradled in her hands, before Harry starts to cry upstairs. They look at each other, and Lily sighs, gets up, leaves her wine. James catches her hand, squeezing it gratefully as she goes past. For once, he doesn’t feel like escaping the room, and Sirius seems so– he seems like he needs to talk.
He’s staring into his hands now, sweating glass of Firewhiskey discarded in front of him on the table. James shifts in his seat.
“He’s just so–” Sirius trails off, pauses, finds his way back again. “I just feel like I don’t even– know him anymore.”
“Who?”
Sirius looks back up at him, bloodshot eyes; James wonders when he started looking so tired all the time, skin hanging off his cheekbones– and Merlin, maybe he should invite him over more for dinner. There, the fissure of panic; he doesn’t know if that would be safe. There’s a lump in James’ throat he can’t seem to swallow.
“You know. Him .” His voice cracks and he looks away, grabs his glass to take another swig.
“Oh,” James says, lamely, “him.”
The last few times he’s seen Remus, they’d barely spoken enough to have it pass the threshold of ‘conversation’. He’d seen him and Lily together far more often, Lily with a hand on his arm looking up at him with pitying soft eyes, voices lowered to just barely murmuring.
A long silence. James watches as Sirius sways back and forth, pours himself another drink, five for James’ two, knocks it back like its water, knows for a fact that he’s dying for a cigarette, knows it like he knows the beat of his heart pumping in his chest. He watches Sirius’ hands shake.
“I just–” the words burst out of Sirius, harsh, almost painful, “I– this is awful James, and I don’t– you can’t– I don’t know who else to– I don’t trust him. I don’t trust him anymore. And– Merlin’s sake, I hate it! I wish I didn’t– I wish I–” his voice drops to a whisper, words coming together, a life-ruining secret slipping past his teeth. “I think he’s the one. I think he’s selling us out. And I just– I can’t figure out why he would– doesn’t he–”
His voice is a mess of half-sentences and slurred words and the sound of tears swelling and blocking his throat. James wants to believe him. He does.
It’s a cruel trick, he thinks, dully. Sirius had clearly caught on to James’ suspicions after the change in Secret Keeper, so he’d started casting about for his alibi, and who else is more convenient than Moony. The perfect candidate for any suspicions, already a monster, already on the outskirts, sent away on endless secret missions and toting the type of loyalty that kept his mouth securely shut. He didn’t blab like the rest of them did, never had even when he was a prefect. He was well-versed in keeping secrets.
“Come on mate, I think it’s time for bed.” James says, rising from his seat and putting his hand on Sirius’ shoulder, tugging him gently up. The guest bed was already made up, he’d seen Lily come down quietly to get the sheets, a spare towel.
“No, you– James–!” Sirius’ hand, scrabbling at his forearm, a wild look in his eyes. James feels for a moment a dizzying sense of deja-vu, truths spilling out of grey lips, thin hands grasping at him and black curls drenched with water. “You have to believe me, James because if he– I don’t want him to be the spy, Merlin, of course I don’t, but if he is he must– he must need help, we have to–”
“I believe you mate, I believe you.” James says it softly, soothingly; he doesn’t think about how easy it is to lie to Sirius, who is looking up at him as if searching for his salvation. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. It’s late, come on, you must be tired.”
Sirius nods slowly, a crease in his brow but his mouth is slack and soft as he lets James tug him to his feet. As James gets him into bed and closes the door quietly behind him, he lets out a deep, long breath and rests his head on the back of the door. He feels a burning behind his eyes.
“I believe you,” he says, quietly, tries with all his might to mean it, thinks of Sirius that first day on the train, haughty and smug and pulling him along, Sirius’ grin when the hat had yelled Gryffindor, and the way they’d kicked each other under the table that whole dinner. The words fall out of his mouth like ash, like charred and blackened wood, like dust. He doesn’t even have it in him to cry.
It’s easy to lose track of time while they’re locked-down, locked-indoors. Each day takes on a monotonous sort of grind, and it’s strange, how time seems to all at once fight back its passage and slip right through the door; each second a rock pushing its way up the hill, each day a handful of sand blowing right out of James’ palm. Even the papers start to blur together, each day the same horrible headline about another murder, another raid, another family line obliterated from the historical records. He doesn’t even know why they bother to get them anymore, he’s certainly stopped reading them; Lily pores over them with her morning coffee, eyes scanning the pages frantically– James tries talking to her about it once, gently suggesting that it might be a good idea to stop, that she’s just working herself up, that there’s nothing to be done–
She doesn’t even reply, just turns the page and stares down at it, eyes unmoving. He takes the hint and goes upstairs.
Peter’s a constant, of course, dropping off bags of groceries every Saturday and filling the space with endless chatter. He leans against the counter as James packs the vegetables into the fridge, looks over the puzzle taken over the table and puts a few pieces here and there, fills out a bit of Lily’s crossword that she abandoned on the couch. Sirius pops by every now and then, increasingly haggard and bitter; James has started quietly dreading his visits and feels horrible about it, has let the Floo ring out a few times and pretends he hadn’t heard it when Lily ends up answering and calls up to him. Remus– he– James would be lying if he said he wasn’t disappointed, but he tries to swallow it. He knows it’s taking a lot out of him, whatever he’s doing. He just feels like– out of all of them, Remus had always been the stable one, the one James felt like he could always lean out, reach out and Remus would be there. That’s all gone now, just like everything else from school. That’s how their days, weeks, months pass. One long, grey, spinning blur.
James is in the kitchen, listening to the sounds of Harry, squealing in the bath, Lily’s soft, amused voice.
A crack of apparition, a commotion on the porch. Lily appears at the top of the landing, Harry in her arms, wrapped up in a soft, white towel. She has water all down her front.
“It’ll be Pete,” he says, laughing a little at her worried face. “You know he always leaves the groceries til the last minute.” He’s cheerful. It’s Halloween.
Harry brightens when James says Peter’s name. His little mouth forms a P, soft, cupid’s bow puckered, brow furrowed in concentration. He’s just begun on words that aren’t Mama or (James’ favourite), Dada. Wormy will be so excited when he hears Harry saying his name, the first of the Marauders to receive the honour. James grins, swings the door open.
“Pete, mate, you’ll never guess–”
It isn’t Peter.
The smile freezes on his face. There isn’t time to shift his expression, he’s turning, shouting up to Lily, the macabre grin still stretching–
“Lily, it’s him! Take Harry and go– run! I’ll hold him off!”
The words feel old, worn through, familiar, though he has never said them before.
He knows his wand is where he left it, on the kitchen table.
James has time for one single wish, and he spends it hoping that Lily is safe, that Harry is safe– that if he is to die, let it not be for nothing–
A flash of green light.
Darkness.
Darkness.
Darkness.
Darkness.
And then—
Notes:
:)
Chapter 10: the hanged man
Notes:
hi team. there are a couple of vague references to/implied instances of suicide in this chapter. neither are graphic, but i'll still pop the specifics in the end notes so you know when to stop/start reading if you'd prefer to avoid them altogether. please look after yourselves!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
James jerks awake, gasping, his heart thundering in his chest. He has pins and needles prickling in his hands, and the sheets are sweat-damp and cold, twisted around his legs. Beside him, Lily stirs, the round of her belly tenting the blankets.
“Mmm. Okay?” She murmurs, her voice low and sleep-sweet.
He’s still trying to get his breath under control.
“Yeah. Yes. Weird fuckin’ dream.”
“Need anything?” She’s sweet to ask. She reaches out to put a clumsy hand on his head, patting it.
It’s too much, the bubbling anxiety under his skin spiking at her touch. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed. He needs to move. He needs space. He needs to feel like he’s not fucking suffocating in this bed. He needs to scream, maybe, that he could’ve sworn he’d just died seconds ago and– .
“I’ll do coffee,” he says, instead, and she hums gratefully, already stretching over to the bedside table to cast a Tempus charm. It’s still early.
When James reaches the kitchen, he hasn’t shaken off the dream yet. It roils in his gut, all the emotions of it tumbling together until he can’t tell where one ends and the others begin. The heart-clenching terror before the flash of green light; the earth-shattering love he’d felt for the baby— the baby; the grief, and the guilt, and the shame as he’d watched, an ineffectual bystander, his friends toppling one by one, gravestone after gravestone stretching through his mind. Regulus’ visit, everything going wrong in its aftermath. James wonders for a brief moment if he’s going to vomit.
Ziggy starts winding around his legs, snuffling for food, and he snaps back to the present. No time for all that. Bad dream– really bad dream.Waving his wand at the kettle, he leans down, picking up the cat. He buries his face in it, inhaling the soft-warm-animal scent. It scrabbles, yowling to be put down.
The kettle announces itself with a soft click, and James lets the cat free. As he opens the cabinets to find their coffee cups, he takes a deep breath, notices the press of his feet into the cool tiled floor, and tries to claw his way back to normalcy, swiping for it blindly in the darkness. Mugs on the counter. It was only a dream. Coffee in the pot, cast the brewing spell to help it along. A weird, long, nasty dream. Pour the coffee. Yes, it felt real, and yes, it was scary. Two sugars in one cup, spoon them in. Still just a dream, though. Splash of milk. It was just a dream. He is alive. James pinches himself and immediately feels a bit silly; feels sillier that a wash of relief came over him that he could feel the pain of it. Dead people couldn’t feel that, could they?
He clatters up the stairs, coffees in hand– Lily’s black, half full, his own almost spilling over with milk and sugar– and finds her sitting up in bed, the Prophet spread across her knees.
“Anyone we know?” He says it like a joke, but they both know it isn’t. The Prophet delivery is the worst part of most people’s mornings these days.
Lily heaves a sigh and doesn’t look up at him. She shakes her head.
“Did you feed Ziggy while you were down there? I heard him making a racket.”
“Blast, no, but I’ll do it when we’re finished here.” He hops back onto the bed, tucking his feet under the sheets.
It’s quiet. Lily blows on her coffee to cool it.
“Dreadfully common habit, Lil.”
“You say that every morning,” she snaps, her eyes sharp. “Don’t you think if I thought it was funny, I would have laughed sometime in the last six months?”
James widens his eyes in mock-surprise. This is another of their rituals– the coffee fight. It was a little different, though, more fun, because he could never tell when it would begin. Every morning something new would set them off.
Just as he’s winding up to give her a retort worthy of a shouting match, Lily huffs a breath, staring incredulously at the newspaper in her hand.
“Oh my god, James,” she’s giggling now, little exhalations escaping her. “They’ve hired a new Divination teacher at Hogwarts. You will never guess who it is.”
“Who?” She shakes her head, presses her fingertips to her mouth as if to shove the secret back inside. “Who, Lil?” Her mood has always been infectious, and James feels some of the heaviness of his dream leaving him as his mouth begins to stretch into a smile.
“No, no, you have to guess.” Great hearty chuckles are shaking the coffee balanced on her belly. James picks up the mug before it spills and swipes at the newspaper, snatching it out of her loose grip.
“Sybill Trelawney? That mental Ravenclaw?”
“Yes, yes, oh Jesus, I can’t breathe– did you ever take Divination with her? She always used to wind Firenze up, predicting how everyone would die in horrible ways– oh my god, what is Dumbledore thinking?” A cackle spills out of her lips, and now James is laughing too, the bed shaking with their shared mirth.
“Imagine,” James gasps, falling back on the pillows, stomach aching. “Imagine those poor kids, sitting in her classroom.” He puts on a silly, low-pitched voice, droning ominously. “By Easter, one of our number will leave us forever…” Privately, he congratulates himself on his likeness of Sybill.
“Stop, stop, I’ll wet myself!” Lily howls. She takes a moment to collect herself, little giggles still shooting through her voice as she takes her turn with the exaggerated impression. “My dears, I have cleared my Inner Eye, and foretell that the Fates have determined that your exam will be on the mysteries of the Orb!” She breaks, lets the laughter take her once again. “As if she doesn’t set the bloody exams. Jesus, I can’t wait to hear about it. I hope she’s still teaching by the time–” she breaks off, waving at her stomach. James feels an odd clench in his chest, sees a little boy, green eyes and black hair. He dismisses the image. Just a dream.
But the moment is deflated, just slightly. He gets up, heading for the bathroom.
“Oh, are you showering? Mind if I wee?”
“Not at all, Lil. You can keep me company.”
“You know she and Severus had a thing going?” Lily says conversationally as she sits on the toilet, James in the shower, the spray muffling her words. He sticks his head out of the gap in the curtain.
“What, Sybill and Sniv? You’re making that up.”
“No, truly! He was all sappy about her for weeks in fourth year, it was weird.”
“Did she return his affections?” James snorts, rinsing. “Imagine the hair on those poor kids.”
Lily laughs, bright.
“Well,” she drawls, raking out the tension. James lets her take her moment. He knows that Lily has always been a sucker for gossip. “He said they kissed once, but then she told him– oh no.”
“No, what?”
“I’ve just realised that if Sev wants to be a Potions Master–”
James gasps, the realisation hitting him.
“He’ll have to do at least a year’s teaching experience at Hogwarts, won’t he?”
Lily shrieks again with laughter.
It is a determinedly normal Tuesday; or it would be if it weren’t for James’ persistent sense of deja vu. It’s clinging onto him like a blood-fattened tick, and he catches himself shaking his head, shivering down his spine from the back of his neck trying to get rid of it. He immerses himself in the usual motions– busy-work, come home, argument with Lily, storm out, et cetera.
He tries to convince himself it’s just the rote clockwork of his life making him feel this way. Merlin, his days are dull.
Just after he’s started to heat up a tin of beans for his meagre dinner, there is a knock at the door– a dull, thudding knock.
A pit opens in James’ stomach, gaping wide, ready and waiting for something to fall in. The tick swells, sodden and blood-drunk.
It’s definitely just Lily.
She’s forgotten something.
It’s not–
It can’t be–
And as he opens the door– it is.
“Regulus,” he breathes. James reaches his hand out, touches him, and he’s wet, he’s soaked through, just like the dream. But he is real– clammy skin and thready heartbeat and fucking Mark, all right there under James’ palm.
Regulus bends neatly at the waist, a perfectly executed bow, and vomit splatters across James’ socks. He doesn’t even have it in him to be disgusted.
James brings him inside, and he’s muttering, words flying out of his mouth uncontrollably, but they fall on deaf ears. James’ heart is racing, his mind going a million miles an hour, he feels like every cell in his body is expanding, filling, bright. Why– why is Regulus here?
And how– a small voice, insidious and accusatory and very frightened– how did James know he would be on the other side of the door?
Regulus is shouting in the living room, about his brother, about a spy in the Order, and James has heard it all before. He knows, he knows all of it, he’s catching Regulus before he falls, and all the while the pit in his stomach is gaping, gaping, gaping.
Then Regulus is in bed, clear grey eyes looking at James.
He tells James he’s dying, and asks for a kiss; if it were any other time, James would have made fun of him for being terribly Gothic and dramatic.
James doesn’t want to kiss him– for goodness sake, Regulus is on Lily’s side of the bed– but then he remembers the dream, or the premonition, the something– and the regret he’d felt, every night, until he’d–
He leans down. Brushes his lips against Regulus’. It’s little more than a peck, chaste and obligatory. Still, James feels a little prickle of desire, running up his fingertips. After all this time, he thinks, distantly. Regulus’ lips are very chapped, and James can taste blood. Regulus sighs into the kiss, and when James pulls away, his eyes are open, staring blankly upwards.
He’s dead, and James’ mouth falls open in horror, and–
Gulls wheel overhead, squalling loudly as Regulus picks his way down the beach. It’s hardly a beach at all, a cragged outcropping full of rocks with hard edges, piled up haphazardly as if thrown by absent-minded giants. The wind buffets at his face, scraping sharp fingers across his cheeks to bring up lines of red and white. He breathes it in, slow, intentional. He lets the crisp salty air settle in his chest, chill his lungs and reach into the warm cavities of his heart.
A crackling pop as Kreacher appears next to him. His big ears wobble, and Regulus can feel him look up, away, back up, his hands worrying themselves into knots.
“Do you have it, Kreacher?” He sounds cold. Like his mother; like his Master, a voice whispers, and he shudders, all the way down his spine. The gravity of what he is about to do settles in slowly, like a shroud.
There’s a slight hesitation before Kreacher answers, which for the house elf might as well have been hours.
“Yes, Master Regulus.” His back is hunched over, long fingers worrying at a chain that Regulus can just see peeking out of the collar of his pillowcase, “but— but Kreacher is wondering—“
“It isn’t your job to wonder.” He says it softly, but it cracks through the air like a whip. Kreacher jolts up and begins tugging at one of his ears, a nervous, soothing movement.
They continue on, an odd pair clambering down the steep cliff face, one short and one tall; they would look almost comical from a distance. Regulus’ palms are scraped raw from gripping onto the rough surfaces, dirt caught under his nails in black crescent moons. The last bit down to the entrance to the cave is an undignified scramble, at the bottom of which Regulus coughs, readjusting his coat, his shirt, as if someone is watching. He’d taken a flask of Calming Draught before he left, to settle his nerves. He looks down to see his hands still trembling, wonders if it was a faulty batch.
He stares out at the grey, foaming ocean. A gull cries out, forlorn, wheels across the beach, long wings skating across the mist.
A deep breath. They continue on.
Regulus pulls himself across the lake, the silvery line of the boat cutting through the inky blackness. The water ripples away from the smooth helm as if repelled, as if to say they do not belong here. Kreacher is almost silent beside him, the only noise the occasional whimper, the chain rattling as he readjusts his rags. Regulus has his eyes fixed on the point ahead of them, the tiny island. It is a mass of stone wrenched upwards, a tumour fixed to the bottom of the lake.
The prickling down his spine has turned into a rush, a waterfall, a dam breaking. He can feel its cracks spreading across his skin, something inside his skull furiously trying to get out, get out, get out.
The first sip of the potion feels like death.
From here, his memory passes in flashes of images, long blinking darknesses stretching into his hippocampus.
The oyster-like shell in a pale trembling hand. An alien pearlescent shine, even in the pitch black darkness of the cave, winking in time with the cold silver boat.
The cold-fire-pain-smooth liquid sliding across his tongue, down his throat, rushing into his empty stomach.
Suddenly he is a bird flying overhead, watching as a young man buckles over a fountain of silver liquid, a small figure beside him with cold grasping hands, saying something that he can’t understand, he needs to understand— he cocks his head, avian curiosity. Of course he can’t understand. He stretches his wings, rising on a puff of air as he continues to circle, watching with a predator’s unfeeling eye. Far too big for dinner.
Sharp, a pain in his stomach. He is forced back into his broken, breaking body. Kreacher beside him and he is shouting, he is yelling at him to give him the potion, to force it down his throat.
He is sobbing.
He wants water.
He wants to die.
He wants his mother.
Sirius. James. Sirius. Sirius. Sirius.
There is so much he regrets. There is so much he wants. Faces swim in the air in front of him, grotesque, hideous, mouths opening too wide, eyes bulging. The faces of people he loves, he hates, dead, dying, alive, cruel.
A locket in his hands; he pushes it out, into a bushel of twigs, grasping like tiny fingers, leave, leave now, my last command to you, and large yellowed eyes vanish from sight.
Screaming, and he can’t tell if it’s his own throat burning and raw or ricocheting around his head. Monstrous white hands, puffy and filled with water reaching for him, hungry, so hungry. He is so hungry.
The bird circles closer and closer. There’s blood in the water.
A sharp crack and he stumbles. He can’t see, blind from tears, blind from the acid melting away at his cheeks, at the tender flesh of his eyelids. A hand touches his face and it feels so kind. It grasps at his hair, his face, pulls and tugs until he is being dragged across the sharp rocks but it doesn’t matter because he’s— because he is looking down at himself, dispassionate, another victim joining the bodies lying prone, water bloated at the bottom of this deep, still, lake.
His ears pop. A crack rips through the air. He is taken away from the kind-cruel hands and he yells as the air whips past him and is stolen out of his lungs, and he lands on sand, rain fierce, harsh droplets like knives slashing down his face, and another crack, and–
And then he is stumbling on a front door, staring at a welcome mat. Wet leather shoes are dripping onto the carpet, and a young man in soaking robes is staring at the door. He urges him to knock, to speak, to do something.
The door opens.
James.
He’d almost forgotten what he looked like. He looks surprised to see the young man on his doorstep and the young man has no expression at all.
He is drawn to him like a moth to a flame, a lone ship to a gleaming lighthouse, bright white light cast across black water.
He opens his mouth. Salt water and the burn of lavender bursts over his tongue, the acid-bile-slime pooling in wet strings as he hacks, back rigid and stomach undulating. He snaps forward and stares at James’ feet, soft white cotton socks.
His world is one long blur, a wash of tears, tears and salt in his eyes, seawater. He’s saying something, can feel his mouth moving, but the words are running out of him faster than he can stop them, his hands desperately trying to press themselves against a leaking tap, a pipe with a hole through it, and the water is gushing through his fingers, the sand is running out of his hands. James’ face, horrified and wondering and his lips are moving, saying something at him, but Regulus’ ears are filled with fluff and chalk and water, water, so all he can do is try to smile and nod but that’s not right either because now James is just looking at him sad, sad, so sad.
His thoughts are starting to blend into one another now too, faint watercolour pigments washing into each other on a page soaked through with damp; his stomach is rotting inside of him. He thinks that there was something important he had to say to James but it’s all gone now, all leaking out of him and he’s so sorry, he’s really trying, but he can’t– can’t–
And James is so beautiful, he’d forgotten that, and he doesn’t know how he’d forgotten that, the brown of his eyes like sunlight dappled on dark oak, and did he love him that summer? No– don’t answer, but Regulus had, he thought, he thinks he did, and he does– and that was probably the best part of his life, and that’s going to be forever because he’s dying now, yes, he is, that’s right, this is dying. He is dying.
He only realises that he’s been saying all of this when James has laid him down in a bed, so comfortable, it’s been so long since he’s been comfortable. He’s looking down at him, big doleful eyes, sad downturned mouth– and all Regulus has ever done is make him sad, or angry, or upset.
“No, Regulus.” James sits on the bed, his hand resting on his cheek, his hand, back onto James’ lap; Regulus’ world has started moving in flashing pictures, each blink sending him seconds forward in time.
“I’m sorry,” he thinks he manages to gurgle out between purpling bloated puffy drowning-man’s lips. “I’m sorry.”
James is trying to shush him when he dies; when his eyes roll back in his head and the burning in his stomach has travelled all through his chest and his blood is slowly freezing through his veins. He lets go.
James wakes up, gasping, tears in his eyes. He’s shuddering so badly that his teeth are chattering; the chill all through his body is incongruent to the soft comfort of their bed. The air smells of sleep and warmth. Lily rolls over, making a drowsy curious noise and pats his arm, asks if he’s okay.
“No– no, I had this crazy dream–” deep breath. He rubs his chest, feels the bones of it, the comfort of his sternum, his heartbeat slowing. “Just a dream. I’ll do coffee?”
Lily nods sleepily, agreeing with a jaw-cracking yawn, and stretches to cast a Tempus charm. Still early. It usually is.
When James comes back in with the coffee, he tries for a joke.
“So, Lily, my darling wife,” he says, smiling as he hands her coffee over. “What does your Wednesday have in store?”
“James, you numpty, it’s Tuesday today!” She grins, rolling her eyes fondly at him.
The pit is back.
“No, it isn’t. Yesterday was Tuesday,” James’ smile is already dropping; the thin stretched veneer of joviality is already cracking. He wants it to be true so badly. The desperation peeks through the crack in his voice.
“James,” and she’s laughing, but there’s an edge of unease to it. “Yesterday was Monday. You went out to dinner with Peter, and I stayed in, remember?”
Bile crawls up the back of James’ throat. The pit is opening, wider, wider.
“No, yesterday was Tuesday, and we sat in bed and nearly had a fight about the coffee, and Sybil Trelawney was in the paper—“ He’s raising his voice but he can’t help it, and it’s so easy to let the fear in his stomach curdle into indignant anger at the condescending pity in her eyes.
“James!” Lily frowns at him, and grabs at the Prophet, sitting discarded by her knees. She snaps it open and shoves it toward him, pointing her finger down at the date.
Tuesday, 6th May. There it is, black and white. He gapes. Lily sits back when she sees he’s done, taking the paper with her and opening it back in her lap.
“Honestly,” she says quietly. The annoyance in her voice is quickly fading but when she glances up at James he can still see the traces of wary apprehension in her gaze. She flicks through the pages giving each one a cursory glance, before she stops suddenly with a gasp.
“Did you–” she looks up at him; he’s still stood by the bed feeling struck dumb. “Did you already read this, James? Are– is this some kind of prank? It’s not funny.”
“What are you talking about?” His mouth is very dry and he takes a quick gulp from his mug; the coffee scalds his tongue.
“How did you–” She turns the paper toward him. “You must have seen this already. Trelawney, in the paper. How did you know that?”
“I–” He doesn’t really have an answer. You told me yesterday, we laughed about it, I did a cracking impression of her, and now it’s all happening again. Yeah. That would go over well. Lily is still looking up at him, suspicious and worried, a mirror of the expression he knows is on his own face. He has no good answer; he’d failed every Divination class he’d ever taken, even the tea-leaf readings which everyone knew you could fake at a drop of the hat, even the bloody dream journals. But this didn’t feel like that, like some airy-fairy crap laced with smoke and incense. He wasn’t seeing, he was remembering. This is much worse.
He wants to tell her, he really does. She’s still looking at him, with her sleep-soft eyes and chewing on her bottom lip; he wants to believe that she would believe him.
“Lil, I–” at the last second, he loses his nerve. Better not to worry her. She’s a good sport, but she’s always been a skeptic at heart; she’d be more inclined to think of him as completely mad rather than some sort of prophet. Besides, she already thinks that it’s some sort of terrible joke; she’d be annoyed, sure, but annoyed was better than looking at him with the face that people gave to those muttering, shaking old bats on the street. Regulus’ water sodden eyes flash in front of him, trembling hands, stream of inarticulate words. He swallows, swallows again. “Sorry. No you’re right I must’ve seen it already. Me and my memory– we’d better invest in a Pensieve before long!”
Lily rolls her eyes, but she seems relieved.
“No way,” she says, already looking back down at the paper and frowning as her eyes skim back and forth. “Who’d want to spend all their time looking at memories?”
He calls out of work, bothering Lily as she bumbles around the house. When she announces that she’s leaving for her parents, he can’t muster up the energy for an argument.
“Okay, honey,” he says neutrally, revelling a little in her shocked face. “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”
He kisses her on the cheek, helps her with her bags, and then he waits.
If– if he comes, then–
Then what– a nasty little voice in his head whispers. Then you’ll have the pleasure of watching him die, again?
The sky gets darker, darker. The clock on the oven ticks over to seven, and James begins to relax. Half past, and James thinks he might be safe, that the curse, or dream, whatever-the-fuck is going on might be over. Last time, he had been making dinner, and on Lily-less nights, he’s usually in bed by eight.
A knock, just before quarter-to. Dull thuds, in time with James’ heart, pumping cold dread through his veins.
Fuck.
James opens the door, touches Regulus (still real, and still quite wet).
“You’d better come in, then,” after he vanishes the puke, then shoots a slew of Drying-Cleaning-Comforting Charms at him. May as well be efficient.
Regulus’ hair frizzes in the drying charm. He looks soft, and young, and quite confused. The muttering starts up again. James is hoping to get a Calming Draught into him, before he starts shouting.
Regulus doesn’t quite manage the Calming Draught, and James decides to Stun him instead. He has a headache building. Once Regulus is tucked into Lily’s side of the bed, James starts casting, running through the limited (very limited) list of diagnostic spells they’d taught him in Basic Training.
But it isn’t a curse– at least, not one that’s showing up.
“Oh, Reg, what did you do?”
Regulus doesn’t stir. It’s possible that that Stunner had a little too much power behind it. James feels guilty, but he has a problem, and he’s determined to solve it.
Potion, then? James gets up, rummages through the shelf where Lily keeps her potions books. Most of them have ‘Please Return to the Library of Severus Snape’ written on the front page. James sneers. Not even a bookplate.
One of them– Identifying Potion-Usage for the Modern Medi-Wix, Merlin, what was Lily doing borrowing that? – looks promising. James shoots a glance at Regulus, who is still sleeping on the bed, and nips into the bathroom to start a Generalised Detection Draught.
It’s calming work, preparing for the potion. James enjoys it, the chopping, shredding, slicing. He loses track of time, dropping the mouse-ears in, then the doxie feet– oh, blast, doxies before mice.
He starts again. Doxie feet, then mouse ears. Stir six times, counter-clockwise. Which way– and the potion gives a harsh bang, and removes itself from the cauldron. Bugger. James’ hands are starting to tingle from chopping all these doxies.
Again. Doxie feet, mouse ears. Six times, the other way from before. Then the Nimbus Grass, and then–
And then James wakes up with a gasp. For goodness sake.
He gets out of bed, heading right away to Lily’s shelf. He finds the book, again, and locks himself in the bathroom.
“Coffee?” Lily calls to him, hopeful and sleepy and, by the sounds, not a little pissed off.
“Got to do this,” he says back. “Sorry!”
“Can I come in?” She’s at the bathroom door, now, and James shudders, tries to think of an excuse.
“D’you mind going downstairs? It’s a– er– a thing for Moody,” never mind that he’s so completely pants at Potions, Moody would never assign him that, and Lily knows it, so she knows he’s lying, so, so, so–
“Alright, honey,” she says, agreeable and confused. “Let me know when you’re ready to tell me.”
He pops his head out when she tells him she’s leaving, gives her a peck on the cheek, and she’s worried, he can tell, but she won’t push, and he loves her for that.
When Regulus picks up the shell – hand trembling – and takes the first sip – cold-fire-pain-smooth – it tastes almost familiar. A shiver down his spine. Fishing twine in the water, snapping, gleeful. Back for more, again and again, here he is! Presenting, the youngest Baby Black!
Screaming. Pain. Drowning. Darkness.
Open door, Vanish puke, Drying-Cleaning-Comforting Charms. Apparate with Regulus upstairs– he can’t really handle the stairs, not like this, and James’ magic is fizzing inside him, excitement and nerves all twisted together. It feels good to have an outlet.
He pricks Regulus’ finger, ignoring the murmurs, and they wait, together. The potion turns black, then purple. James hurries, looking for the book, the colour-key.
Black, for Miscellaneous Dark Poison, and before the poison, Purple, for Calming Draught.
That doesn’t tell him much of anything, except that Regulus was nervous before he ingested this Miscellaneous Dark Poison, so James gets the book back out, and flips through the dust-filled pages– Regulus lets out a dainty sneeze, amongst his mutterings– and begins again.
There’s a whole chapter full of Dark Poison identifiers, all diagnosis potions that take less than a day to brew. James thanks Merlin, and gets to work.
He doesn’t quite manage it that round, or the next, or the next one after that. He’s got it down to quite an art he thinks though, waking up with a grin that keeps veering onto the side of manic; cat; coffee; Trelawney; Lily out the door; he’s become a master of efficiency. He thinks his diagnostic potions are getting better too, bubbling happily away in the bathroom. All of this is part of the tight-fisted grip that James is trying to maintain on any semblance of hope or sanity.
“I know it’s a malevolent potion,” he says cheerily, rapping his wand on the side of the portable cauldron that he’d gotten Lily for her birthday one year, “but you know what, I could stand to have just a little more information! Probably too much to ask isn’t it– if i say please? How about please?” The potion stirs slightly, rippling towards the left in a perturbed manner. At least, he thinks. James is well aware that he’s talking to the potion. It makes him feel better; another thing he is determined not to think too long and hard about.
When Regulus arrives, James sits him down at the kitchen table, like he’s an odd, frail dinner party guest. James wonders hysterically whether he should dress up the next time, get out his set of tails, a deranged maitre d’. First course pea soup straight from the can with an accompanying drinks match, a nicely aged diagnostic potion. It would be just like Regulus to turn his nose up at it, too, sniffily saying that the potion was quite obviously the wrong pairing, far too rich and didn’t James know a thing, obviously canned soup needed a dry and herbal accompaniment, and they’d both burst into teenaged giggles, except neither of them are teenagers, and Regulus is Marked, and James– well. He rather wishes Regulus would say anything at all, even something rude, even something horrible, instead of sitting there soppily like a poorly reanimated corpse.
He coaxes Regulus into taking in a tablespoon’s worth of the potion – he makes a sympathetic face at the odd jelly-liquid-solid texture, even if Regulus doesn’t seem to mind – before then getting him to spit into another glass. There are more fluids than he’d really like to be dealing with but he remembers well enough the endless days of nappies and baby food and liquids flung around the room that it doesn’t really bother him. He smiles again, involuntarily; Regulus would probably frown about being compared to a baby but really, he doesn’t have a leg to stand on until he demonstrates the ability to at least put a spoon in his mouth.
James raps his knuckles against the kitchen table as he stares at the spit slowly congealing at the bottom of the flask; it’s meant to be a more accurate assessment, at least if he’s brewed it correctly. Merlin’s beard, he hopes he’s brewed it correctly; he even followed all the scribbled in notes and crossings out in Lily’s potions booklet where it seemed like she’d gone rogue. James had never done anything like that, following instructions to a tee, which was probably why he’d just scraped a pass in his potions exams.
He keeps an eye on the clock at the same time, nervously. The minutes are counting down to when Regulus usually– when the day starts back over again. A horrible small thought. If this doesn’t work he doesn’t know how much longer he can do this. He doesn’t want to do all of this, any of this, over and over again with no end in sight. He’s been trying not to think too existentially about all this – philosophy has never been James’ strong suit – but he does think, in the back of his head, that all of this has to be happening for a reason. It can’t just be– this can’t just be it. He got to live a life at least the one time didn’t he– the deaths, the paranoia, the baby; he’d take it all right now if he was given the chance. Dead at twenty one, he’d take it over this, grab that hand and pump it up and down.
Regulus begins to slowly slump sideways in the chair, his eyes clearing, and widening in shock and pain, blood trickling out of his nose.
“No, no, no, come on–” James lunges forward to keep him upright, as if that would help, is still glancing back at the flask and is it turning green? Or is that a greeny-yellow? Oh, why didn’t he bring the book down with him from the bathroom–
Regulus’ eyes begin to roll back in his head, and there’s spit foaming in the corners of his mouth and James is shaking him and begging him to come-on-hold-on-just-a-bit-longer, and the flask has just turned an unmistakable fuschia pink and James’ mouth is falling open and then his stomach is being tugged inwards and he blinks once– twice– and–
This time, James wakes up armed with information. It’s only a meagre scrap, but it’s more than he had before. Pink, pink, pink, he has never loved that colour more.
He bounces out of bed, heading straight into the bathroom and grabbing the book on his way in.
He flicks through the pages and feels almost like whistling, like jumping in the air and clicking his heels. He’s already fantasising about what it will all mean, fuschia-pink, cure: wave your wand and say please! The end is in sight and he’ll kiss the ground when he gets to see Wednesday dawn, he swears–
Fuschia pink, the book says in pleasant well-printed ink, indicates an illegal malevolent potion. Please report to Aurors, and take no further action. The potions, elixirs and magical liquids department at St Mungo’s can be dialled by Floo at–
He stops reading. The inflating balloon of hope in his chest is well and truly popped, now flaccid and pathetic somewhere in his torso, probably on the edge of that pit of dread. He resists the urge to scream; he really can’t go through another awkward conversation with Lily.
James very maturely and sensibly, finds the next diagnostic recipe and moves on. Try, try again, Rome wasn’t built in a day, all that matters is just one success, and all the other things his father used to say to him when he was small.
He kisses Lily on the cheek when she leaves, tells her not to miss him too much.
And then he sits, and he waits.
And he waits.
And he waits.
At around half six, he’s stirring the fourth diagnosis potion, the one for just-in-case, and he starts feeling very strange– a twisting in his stomach, his hands going dead, then pricking back to life, pins and needles pricking up and down. He comes over all light-headed, has to sit down heavily on the loo. He frowns, blinks, once, twice– it’s only afternoon, Regulus is still hours away, but–
James wakes, blinking this time with confusion instead of the usual dread. What happened? That was hours before the usual end to the day, and Regulus didn’t even make it to puking all over him. He gets out of bed and walks into the bathroom saying something vaguely about needing to piss before frowning at himself in the mirror. He doesn’t feel any different. He looks down at himself, pats at his arms, his chest; limbs all attached. What happened? He runs mentally through the day; the somewhat failed potion, Lily leaving– had he gone down the stairs differently? Brewed a potion terribly wrong? Had all the clocks in the house stopped working?
He’s puzzling it through, trying to think of what was different, when he gets the idea that it wasn’t about him at all, because– because, well, the only thing that has been consistent about the loops so far is how they end. And how they end, apart from that first one, which doesn’t count anyway, in James’ estimation, is always the same. With Regulus’ death. And if he had no reason to believe that this loop finished any differently, then it only made sense to think– well it only made sense that– James’ mind latches onto the thought with a ferocity he thought he’d lost since all this had started. Maybe he got caught– wherever he was whatever he was doing; Bellatrix’s high-pitched cackling, Malfoy sneering, Voldemort’s pale white face; torture and a flash of green light. Maybe he got caught; maybe he tripped and fell; maybe he choked on a bit of food going down the wrong way; maybe he– Well. There’s always that. James’ mind stutters, a little, over the possibility that it was on purpose.
James looks at himself in the mirror. He is looking a bit pale, now. That isn’t– surely he wouldn’t. Or perhaps he would. Regulus certainly hadn’t seemed well each time he’d been coming around for their evening visit. Maybe he did– well, and maybe he didn’t but maybe– he swallows, pivots. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe, its finishing. Maybe this curse, or poison, or purgatory, is reaching its end. Falling apart before Regulus even arrives, he wants to laugh, wants to laugh right up until he realises that he might have– and what if he–
Well. That decides it. Tonight, James will test the boundaries of the illusion. Tonight, he’ll change the routine.
He bounces into the bedroom, finding Lily– round, beautiful, et cetera– packing her things.
“Oh good, you’re here,” he says brightly. He has an idea. Take the train off course, rails clicking. “You heading to your parents tonight?”
“Ye-es,” Lily says slowly, suspiciously. She knows how this conversation usually goes. James suppresses a grin. Not today, she doesn’t. His stomach is full of a childish fizzing glee; he imagines that the expression on his face might resemble Peeves.
“Great! I thought I might tag along for dinner, if that’s alright?” He can’t miss the surprise on Lily’s face. They’ve been together for years, and never, not once, has James willingly spent time with his in-laws. That’s a fight they don’t even bother to have any more.
“Um—“
“I just don’t want to rattle around all night by myself. It gets awful lonely, you know?” He’s full-steam ahead, pulling on her heartstrings, and it works.
“I don’t see why not,” she’s still suspicious, but there’s an opening, and James is barging through. “I think Vernon— you know, Tuney’s husband— is going to be there too. And their new baby.”
James makes a face. Should he rethink his plan? Regulus’ swollen, drowned face swims up from where he’s pushed it down, in the edges of his mind.
Dinner with Vernon, Petunia, and their sprog sounds great, actually.
He says as much, and Lily’s face is still suspicious, but she gamely goes along with it, bundling him up and out the door with her.
With Lily being so pregnant, they can’t apparate, and her family home still isn’t hooked up to the Floo– Lily says it’s been a losing battle since she was fifteen, and she would know– so they take a Taxi.
It’s all a bit of an adventure to James, who, at twenty, truly believes that he had experienced all the world had to offer. But this Taxi! It’s a sleek, shiny thing, looking kind of like an engorged beetle on the side of the road– and the inside has seats, and little belts to put on. When they start moving, James wants to stick his head out the window, but Lily pulls him back in, muttering about crazies and traffic.
They arrive, and Lily pays the driver with that strange Muggle paper, apologising for her husband’s antics and heaving herself out of the door. James leans over and gives him a jaunty little wave through the window before practically skipping up the steps.
James knocks, thrice, in a nifty rhythm, and Mrs Evans opens the door.
She is blatantly shocked to see him standing there, doesn’t even try to hide it. Her eyebrows twist upwards, her mouth forming a little ‘o’, as if she’d forgotten what he looked like. He gives her his most winning smile, and lays the charm on thick. He should have bought flowers, but it’s too late now.
He gathers her in his arms, instead, kissing her on both cheeks, and cheerily saying how long it’s been– although they both know that this is his doing. He’s hoping that everyone will remain polite enough not to mention it.
Lily’s step-dad, ‘Steve, mate, please,’ appears, and James bounds over to shake his hand. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Lily, still standing in the doorway, exchanging a look with her mother.
Out of the other corner of his eye, he sees Petunia, blonde-haired and pinch-faced, holding a lump of blankets, with a much larger lump beside her.
“You must be Vernon!” James’ voice is a little too loud, and even he can hear the falsity of its cheeriness, but he can’t bring himself to care. “A pleasure to meet you, chap!” He holds out his hand, and waits.
Vernon stares at him, slack jawed. James’ hand is still wavering in the air, and he’s just deciding whether it would be ruder to leave it there or to drop it when he feels a massive, sweaty palm enclosing his own. Their handshake is limp, bored. A dead fish of a shake.
No matter!
“And who might this be?” James coos into the bundle. He hasn’t greeted Petunia yet, but after her refusal to attend her own sister’s wedding, he thinks that the Quaffle is in her court. So to speak.
“This is Dudley. Dudley, meet–” Petunia’s face is sourer than he’s ever seen it, crumpled with disdain. “Meet your aunt and uncle.”
“Wow, Uncle James! I’ve never been an uncle before!” Steve laughs at that, and he’s about the only person that does, Mrs Evans sort-of making a strained amused noise and Lily frowning at him with her arms crossed. She is looking less and less amused by the second.
The baby in Petunia’s arms can’t be more than a few weeks old, and is asleep, besides, but still. James wants to make a good impression. It’s good practice after all, for– a flash of black-hair-green-eyes, a flash of green light, a number of flashes of Regulus Black, propped up against the pillows, bloodied mouth and emptied eyes.
James pushes down the sob in his throat, pushes it right down, and he moves into the kitchen, still talking a mile a minute.
All through dinner, James’ mind keeps returning to Regulus, circling back and back, a gull in the wind, a tongue, probing at the space where a tooth used to be. He sits at Mr and Mrs Evans’ dining table and picks at Regulus like a scab.
Has he arrived yet?
The sky outside the windows is darkening, a fresh breeze picking up, and storm clouds gathering– although James knows they won’t break.
Will he be alright?
It’s dark, and cold, tonight, and Regulus will be standing, wet, on the front porch, fist poised to knock.
What will happen if James isn’t there?
Will he–
Will he still–
Alone?
A sick feeling is curling up through James’ stomach, dark tendrils of guilt creeping, strangling.
“James?” Lily’s voice cuts through, an edge of exasperation. “Are you listening?”
“Sorry– no. Away with the fairies,” he huffs a laugh, and Lily looks at him, frowns. She knows him too well for him to get away with something like that but she won’t push it here.
“Vernon asked you a question.”
“My apologies, Vernon mate. Say again?”
Vernon, a great pink mass at the other end of the table to James, looks out of his piggy eyes and, with some effort, arranges his face into a sneer.
“I asked,” he says, and the guilt is rotting James, suffocating him. “I asked if you– your kind– drive? I myself have just purchased a wonderful new Austin Maxi, top of the line…”
He drones on, and James flicks his eyes over to Lily. You could have just left me to my thoughts, he says with them, he clearly just wants to talk about himself.
Lily shoots a glare at him, and she doesn’t need to speak for him to hear her voice in his head. Be nice!
They’re sitting in the living room, cups of tea in hand, making polite chatter when it happens. James has been on edge all night, thinking of Regulus, and Lily has been on edge because James is, and Petunia seems to live on the knife’s point, taking any opportunity to tip herself over into hysterics.
Vernon says something– James isn’t listening, and it makes Petunia laugh, a mean cackle, and whack him lightly on the arm. James’ gaze alights on Lily, and her eyes are shining, teary.
“What did you just say?” James hears his voice, and it’s low, dangerous.
“No, I didn’t mean it like that, I– well, I was just making an observation!” Vernon blusters, and it’s pathetic, he’s a pathetic little man, and James can hear Remus’ voice in the back of his head, leave it, he’s not worth it, mate– but Lily’s bottom lip is trembling.
“Say it again, Vernon.” James spits his name. The air is thick, Petunia looking frightened, stiff.
“I said–” he takes a deep breath, and James thinks Vernon might be scared. He goes through with it anyway, stupid man. “I said that it’s lucky we’re here, to give Mr and Mrs Evans at least one normal grandchild.” He gestures to Lily’s pregnant belly. “Because this one will certainly be a freak.”
James leaps off the couch, spilling his tea, towering over Vernon Dursley, his wand out of his pocket, jabbing into Vernon’s flabby chin.
“You are a vile, small man. How dare you say that– how– how could you even think– that’s a baby! A tiny child– he won’t be a– fuck! The two of you deserve each other, you really do. I’m disgusted at your behaviour this evening. And you!” He whirls around to face Petunia, rage infusing every nerve ending, his fingers prickling. “The way you treat– have always treated Lily! She’s your sister, and you didn’t even come to her wedding– I know she asked you to be her Maid of Honor– sweet Merlin, how can you even–”
He wakes up on Tuesday, gasping.
It starts on the tenth loop, and, when he looks back, James will be quite proud of himself for holding out this long before he goes mad.
James has never outwardly, or really inwardly, or really at all, felt like there was anything terribly wrong with him. Certainly there is no reason for anything to be wrong with him at all. He is generally happy, he leads a generally happy life, and he is surrounded, for the most part, by generally happy people.
The thing is, in quiet moments, or the occasional low moments, or when he is lying in bed with nothing better to occupy himself with, James’ mind inevitably turns to the Flaw. The Flaw, which is what he named the unhappy, unreasonable fracture, when he first noticed it, a few years into his adolescence. It is impossible to ignore, and he would know, having been trying for years. The Flaw is like running your fingers across a smooth piece of ceramic only to catch on a faultline through the glazing, a whisper thin crack running across the surface; a miniscule prickle stuck in your palm; a hair out of place; a papercut. Never enough to be a real issue, but just enough to be irritating, to nag at the brain, to pull at your attention in still moments.
James has always felt he’s been rather good about the Flaw. He plasters over it diligently, pulling the tablecloth over warped wood, does everything in his power to ignore and redirect and not think about it. He has been doing this for a very long time. He has never had an issue with the Flaw, not for a very long time.
Only now, something is changing. Only now, there is a persistent, industrious, insidious chipping away at the Flaw. Only now it is becoming wider and wider, and in the time that he has looked away, it has become a crack, a rupture, and what was once smooth and undisturbed is now swelling and expanding, a bulging of a painted ceiling, liquid in the foundations. There is something rotting inside of him, a decay producing gas, a trembling soft membrane. The plaster has melted away, and the parts of himself pressed and tamped into the shadow are puncturing their way up and out of him.
It terrifies him. He can’t look away and it terrifies him, and it’s inside of him, and he can’t–
So he runs away. He smiles and smiles as Lily packs her things and Lily looks at him suspiciously and Lily leaves and as he hears the car putter away down the road, he grabs his wand and leaves and apparates, and apparates, and apparates.
He manages to get to about Siberia before keeling over and vomiting on the ground. Nothing comes up but spit and bile even though he knows– even though he knows what’s inside of him, a rotting corpse, crawling maggots, fruit going soft and mouldy on ripened earth. His hands are freezing and numb in the snow. There is a prickling in his fingers, up the back of his neck. There is snot dribbling from the end of his nose and his vision is blurred, and he can’t tell if it’s from the heaving vomiting or if he’s sobbing or if it’s both and he is blinking and there’s a black, horrible, pungent mess on the ground in front of him and he blinks and there’s only his spit translucent on the snow and he blinks and–
James wakes, for the eleventh time, on Tuesday, and his hysteria, if anything, grows.
“I’m in hell! I’m in hell– this is actual, real hell.”
“Mm, you okay?” Lily is just stirring.
“No, Lily, I’m very much not,” and it’s so matter-of-fact, the candid tones biting at his lips. “I truly believe that I have died, that I was wrong about religion, and I’m in my own personal hell.”
“If you wanted a divorce, you could have just asked,” Lily mumbles, sulky from being woken up so harshly.
“Actually, Lil, what a great idea!” James springs up, bouncing the bed. Lily groans, burying her head in the pillows.
“Let’s get a divorce! Let’s get a divorce, and throw a big party, but it’ll have to be tonight, because–” and the mania in him is beginning to fade into something that feels disturbingly like a sob. “Because I can’t get past today! And then– this is the best part, Lil, you’re going to love it–”
Lily, who has sat up at some point, is staring at him as he races around the room, panting. She has an awful look in her eyes.
“No, you really will, Lily, listen, because just as our divorce party is in full swing–” the sob is growing in his chest now, filling it, a wave rolling up, collecting water, and building. “At seven forty-three, Regulus Black will show up at our door, and then– he dies! It usually takes him an hour, and one time, I got him to hold on for nearly three– but he dies! He always dies, he–” and here it comes, the wave cresting, finding him no matter how far he runs– ten times, and nothing he can do is working.
“He–” and he’s gasping, blood rushing in his ears. “He dies– every time– and I– I can’t take this– it’s too–”
Lily takes her wand out, surreptitiously, keeping her eyes on James the whole time, cornered in a cage with a rabid animal.
“Let me leave!” He’s shouting at the ceiling now, he looks crazy, he knows, and there are tears and snot streaming down his face, chest jumping, but the sob is here, the great wave has crested, crashing over him, saturating him in the knowledge that he can’t escape, he’s trapped, and this is forever.
Lily casts a Patronus, muttering to it quietly, and it leaves, but James doesn’t even notice, his head in his hands, sobs racking through his body.
Men in white crash through the bedroom door. A Stunning spell, to the chest. James doesn’t even fight it.
When James wakes up, he is restrained, sickly yellow walls surrounding him, windowless. He doesn’t struggle, just takes a deep breath, asks a passing nurse for the time. Seven thirty-five. Eight minutes, then. He wonders if Regulus will still show up to his house, if Lily will help him. If Lily will believe him, now.
He looks at the ceiling.
At one point, doctor comes in, checks his vital signs, shines his wand in James’ eyes. Neither of them speaks.
The ceiling looks back, blank, unpitying. You did this to yourself, it says.
It’s just past nine when the prickles begin in James’ fingers. He blinks, once, and then–
The twelfth time James wakes up on a Tuesday, he has an idea.
It is a horrible one.
He’s in the bathroom, mid-afternoon light brushing the cool tiles.
And he–
He–
And then it’s dark.
James wakes with a start, same as always. Lily asks if he’s okay, same as always. He grunts, mechanically going downstairs to make the coffee. He isn’t sure what else he can do. He feeds the cat. He pours the coffee. He goes back upstairs.
“Oh my god, James,” Lily says as he comes in, laughter sparkling in her eyes. “You’ll never guess who the new Divination teacher is at Hogwarts.”
James is so tired.
“Sybill Trelawney.” His voice comes out flat. He can’t bring himself to care about the inflection.
“It’s– wait, yes, how did you know?”
“Lucky guess.”
James gives Lily her cup of coffee, black, filled to the brim, and gets back into bed. He pulls the covers up to his chin, closes his eyes, and tries not to think of anything at all.
James seems to at least have found out how to keep Regulus out of pain, even if he hasn’t managed to keep him alive. Small victories. He’s keeping a bedside vigil now, has a sort of thrumming level of anxiety any moment that he’s not looking directly at him, as if at any moment Regulus could die and between one blink and the next he’d be waking up in bed again and–
Regulus shifts in the bed where he’s maybe-sleeping, maybe passed-out, and makes a tired little noise. James holds his breath; the air is horribly still. He waits for the pins-and-needles in his hands, a drop in his stomach–
Regulus turns his head, his brow furrowing as he pushes his face further into the pillow. James breathes.
He ends up managing to step away from Regulus, if only to bring him more of the calming draughts and pain-relief tonics. He seems more lucid now, although lucid, James has learned, does not mean anything closer to better or alive. He’s starting to think it might be more of a final hurrah of the body, to give it everything it's got in the final moments, because if everything is falling apart anyway, why not go out with a bang instead of an incoherent whimper? Frankly, at the end of this he reckons Dumbledore should put him on Mediwizard duties for the Order; James Potter, specialising in malignant potion pain relief and bedside manners.
In his clearer moments, between the haze of pain and the aching visions that keep him chained to the bed, Regulus finds himself watching James.
There's something odd about him, the way that he moves through the world. It's something that didn’t exist in him, before, when they were teenagers. When his eyes dart towards something just before it happens, when his reflexes are on the edge of inhuman, grasping at a glass too quickly before it shatters on the ground.
Sometimes James is watching him, and there's something in his eyes that frightens Regulus— frightens him like he's a wild animal in the woods, frightens him like a sixth sense and the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. It's like he moves with pure muscle memory, unconsciously wading through the motions, a miscast actor in a terrible play who would rather be somewhere else, anywhere else.
Sometimes he speaks to Regulus, and his words make sense but his eyes are somewhere far away, and his voice is empty, clinically distanced as if he's reading from a script. It begins to needle at Regulus, as the hours pass, until he can't ignore it, tiny pinpricks turning into stabs of frustration. He starts sniping at him, trying to say something, anything, to make James react. He feels a sharp sense of glee when he succeeds, James looking up at him, his mouth twisted with surprise, shock, or, best of all, anger. He wants to catch him off balance, a cat batting at a cup on the edge of the counter top until it wobbles, spills, shatters.
He starts unintentionally cataloguing, his brain hungry for the data. He acts out of character, acts out, acts inwards, feels the tension building and knows— knows that this isn't what he wants to do, he doesn't want to make James angry, doesn't want to bother him but— can't stop. James has never been nonchalant, not even once in his life, has never been able to let anything lie. There’s something inside of Regulus, something small left-over from the clearing that is terrified by, hates, James' placidity.
Then, he has an idea. Something that will really rile James up, make him really look, make him startle to attention, eyes wide, life sparking behind them.
Regulus wets his lips and asks for a kiss.
But whatever reaction he was hoping for, it wasn't this. James looks at him, unimaginably sad, his posture filled with regret and loss and exhaustion, and heaves a sigh.
He leans down, brushing their lips together. Soft against chapped. It's barely a kiss, tiny, sad, dead. Still, Regulus thinks distantly– he is very far away, now– that he's glad to have this. One for the road, the voice in his head whispers, and he is confused.
Regulus hears a crack, and he isn't sure if it's his heart or James splitting in two between fragmented ribs. He inhales, but the air is thick and full of iron, inhales again, tasting copper-salt-lavender. There’s blood in his mouth, trickling out of the corners. He looks up at James, eyes wide, a question on his lips. James has turned away, averted his eyes. Regulus' breath isn't coming anymore, and as feathers burst out of his skin and wings sprout from his back, as he flies away into the welcoming darkness, he feels James' hand in his, hot wet splashes covering his face.
After James watches Regulus die for the thirteenth time, he is fed up with himself. . As soon as he wakes up, he’s moving, shaking the pins-and-needles out of his extremities, and apparating to Grimmauld Place. It’s as good a place to start as any.
He hammers on the door. The house is dark, silent. He casts a Tempus charm. Six in the morning. If Regulus has been out on a raid, there’s a good chance that he isn’t even back yet. Or he’s asleep. Or he’s not even staying at Grimmauld Place, and instead living at the Rosiers, or the Malfoys. James shakes his head at the image of Regulus, fluttering his hands under the breakfast table, as Lucius pours his coffee for him.
Nine in the morning and the sun’s rays find James’ face, his back aching. This isn’t what wakes him, though. No, it’s a house elf, an ugly one, standing in the doorway and poking him with what looks like a hat stand.
“Ow!”
“Ah, the Intruder is awakening! Please be forgiving Kreacher, kind sir, Kreacher was not meaning to interrupt Sir’s naptime,” the house elf sneers. James didn’t know that house elves could be sarcastic.
“Kreacher, is it? Is R– is your master home?” James can’t say the name, not right now, not when he’s just woken up, the sweet rays kissing his face, a little, just lightly, it’s opening the bottle in his chest; and he can’t– he can’t breathe–
James begins to cry, and Kreacher slams the door in his face.
He waits outside Grimmauld Place for the rest of the day, but the house is lifeless. No matter how many times he bangs on the door, Kreacher does not answer. When it hits half past seven, he apparates back home. He doesn’t want to leave Regulus alone, not if he can help it.
“Regulus,” James says, as soon as he’s lucid. “Reg, please, we don’t have much time.”
“I like your house,” Regulus is saying, pointless and vacant and so, so, sad. “It’s pretty.”
“Yes, and the garden’s nice too, I know,” James is almost tripping over his words in his haste. “Look, where did you go?”
“I’m going away soon, I think,” Regulus’ eyes are wistful over James’ face. “Only, well. Before–”
James kisses him, quick, perfunctory.
“Tell me where you were. The apparition coordinates.”
“Oh,” Regulus says, whispers, breathes, really. “I don’t know. A beach, maybe. A cliff. I don’t know.”
“You– you–!” James sputters. “What do you mean, you–!”
“Kreacher does,” he says. “Another, for the road?”
But James’ fingers are already tingling, and he only has time to brush a hand over Regulus’ cheek, before–
The morning is a blur of being normal, having a normal smile and saying normal things; there is a muzzled and chained dog gnashing its wet sharp teeth in James’ chest and he is holding onto its leash very tightly. It takes about everything he has not to just run straight out of the door when he wakes in the morning but he can’t do that, can’t risk Lily being suspicious, can’t risk her changing anything; what if she stays home; what if she calls the Aurors on him again; what if she– what if–! He’s being irrational, he knows, but it’s the sort of paranoia that only comes around when everything’s almost fallen into place, and he can see all the precarious leanings of this house of cards and he doesn’t know what he’ll do if it falls down so he just has to be normal.
By the time Lily is finally putting everything together to leave, he’s filled with so much manic energy that he can’t sit still; he packed her bag in the end because he just kept asking her if she needed any help and she got so frustrated that she snapped and gave him the bag and told him to do it all himself then if he was just going to keep treating her like some sort of invalid because honestly, James I’m just pregnant!
He watches the clock like a hawk, each slow turn of the minute hand; has time always moved so slowly? James hears Lily say goodbye through a wash of sound. His ears are ringing, or maybe that’s his heartbeat pumping through his ears. Then he’s leaving in a blur and all he can think is Grimmauld Place and Regulus, Regulus, Regulus.
It’s the worst apparition James has ever done as he crashes in a sweating heap onto the steps of Grimmauld Place. He swears, and wonders half-hysterical through the blurring pain if it’s possible to splinch away part of your brain. But this is it, this is the closest he’s ever been, and he can’t stop, can’t even pause for breath. He hammers on the door.
“Kreacher!” And he swears, if he wakes up on a Tuesday because of a fucking house-elf– “Kreacher! I know you can hear me you fucking little– Kreacher! Please!”
He half-sobs, crumples like a paper doll and thumps his forehead into the wood of the door, probably smearing snot and tears and god knows what else. It creaks open and he snaps to attention, jams his foot into the crack at a speed he didn’t know he could reach.
Kreacher takes one look at him, bulging eyes, and tries to shut the door.
“Master Regulus is not at home,” the dour little elf sneers, and James hates him, he hates him more than anything.
“Kreacher, I know.” He takes two deep breaths, tries to pitch his voice to something that isn’t so crazed. “You have to take me to him. I know you’ve just gone somewhere, and you have to take me there, and it has to be now.” Time trickling past in unforgiving grains of sand. He can see Regulus, dead and bloated, an image seared into the backs of his eyelids.
Kreacher sniffs, a disdainful look in his eyes.
“A Blood Traitor Potter, ordering Kreacher around? I do not think Kreacher will be obeying to snivelly heirs.”
A white-hot flash of rage hits James square in the chest, winds him with the force of it. Regulus is somewhere, and he is dying, and this fucking elf–
“Kreacher. I am no longer an Heir,” and he draws himself up to his full height, proud and haughty, and he feels something of Regulus in the movement, in the curve of his spine and proud tilt of his chin. “I am the Lord of House Potter, and the last of my line, and I am invoking the Common Ownership inherent in the Sacred Twenty-Eight. With this power I order you to take me to your master, wherever he may be.” His voice echoes in his ears, the resonance of generations in perfect accord. There is power, in his veins, and for the first time– for the first time he feels it.
Kreacher cowers. James glares down at him, unflinching. The house elf is clearly trying to resist the command, but a direct invocation of Common Ownership by a House’s Lord is a mighty thing. James opens his palm, waits, daring Kreacher to refuse it. He doesn’t.
A pop of apparition, and they are on a rocky outcrop in the middle of the ocean. The sea is wild, wind whipping grey waves into a frenzy, a storm rolling in over the horizon. Gulls are squalling, beating furious wings overhead. A meagre stretch of sand is ahead of them, and at the far end, a cave.
A figure emerges, just barely visible against the cragged grey cliff. The only thing betraying their presence is a flash of pale skin, the rest shrouded in darkness.
James doesn’t hesitate. He runs, feet kicking up wild sprays of sand, and he’s calling a name that he’s been shouting into a yawning canyon since he was sixteen years old.
“Regulus!” Again, despair, “Regulus!”
The wind steals away his voice with cruel hands, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He thinks he might be crying. All he can hear is the blood rushing, thumping in his ears.
Down at the far side of the beach, Regulus collapses, a discarded marionette.
James can’t take it anymore. He apparates the last hundred metres, falling to his knees as soon as he lands.
Regulus has sand in his hair. The sickly pallor of his face betrays that he’s already drunk that stupid, stupid potion, that James is too late, again, and tears are spilling down James’ face now, hot and freeing, a dam finally burst.
Regulus reaches up a hand to James’ face, but before he can, wavering fingertips, he loses his strength. It drops, dead-weight. His eyes are unseeing.
“Regulus? Regulus, can you hear me?”
“Where is he?” His voice is whisper-quiet, almost inaudible amongst the rushing of the wind. The words cut into James’ stomach. It’s already started, then.
“Regulus, please, please, I’m right here, I’m right here with you,” and he knows he isn’t the one that Regulus wants, he knows it should be Sirius next to his brother in his dying moments, and how selfish he is, a cuckoo in the nest. “I– I know I’m not him, but I’m still here, please hang on, please–”
James can’t do anything about the desperate tone in his voice. He wraps his hands around Regulus’ shaking ones, blames his trembling on the cold.
“Regulus. Regulus—“ he’s running out of time, “Regulus do you—“ a memory swooping into his head on silent wings, a summer frozen in time, laughter ringing into the indulgent sky, “—Regulus. Would you like to play Questions with me?”
It’s almost enough to snap him into the present; James feels him flinch under his palms and he looks up at him with those same deep-sea-glassy eyes but there’s something there, a clarity amidst the mud.
“What?” Regulus coughs, splutters, water dribbling out of him and splattering down his chin. There’s sand, and mud on his face. “What? What are you— Questions?”
“Questions,” James continues, doggedly. Regulus almost sounds like himself when he uses so much disdain, “or have you forgotten all about that summer?” About me, he catches and swallows back into his throat.
Regulus scoffs. He reaches up and smears his sleeve in a wet motion across his face, flesh turning white and red. “No. Never. I tried.”
James can feel his heart beating rabbit-fast in his chest. The deep thrumming beats of a grandfather clock echo in his chest. “Ask me a Question. Regulus. Ask me—“ The question.
Regulus turns his head to the side and hawks up saliva and bile into his mouth, tries to spit it out but it falls out of his mouth in a long string of white, and green, splatters into an egg-white puddle on the ground.
Then, he turns back to James and— where his eyes were sea-glass, they are now two black ponds, unreachable depths, staring, straining, reaching into something that James can’t see.
“James Potter,” and there’s an intonation in his voice that James has only heard in his divination classes. The squalling gulls form an eerie chorus, their calls reaching a chilled hand down the back of his neck. “How many times have you lived this life?”
And it’s only a silly game, and James could lie if he wanted to but— something has speared itself in his stomach, sharp twisted spikes, and it is pulling, and it is tearing through his soft vulnerable flesh, and he is letting it, and there is a wound in him that has been stitched, healed, re-opened ten times over.
“Fifteen times,” he whispers it like a confession, like there is a devout being in the room and he is practising reverence, like he is on his knees in the wet sand and begging, begging for forgiveness. “Fifteen times I’ve seen you—“ his throat clicks “—die, Regulus. And— and I need you to believe me, please, please—“
Regulus brings his hand, still trembling, up to James’ face, cups his too-warm palm against his clammy flesh. The wind is whipping his hair, and it flies around them, encircling them. They are the only two in the world. Grains of sand cut into his face and are soothed by the salty sting of the ocean, but it feels like cleansing where James might call it pain.
“I believe you,” he says, and it’s like a weight is falling away from his shoulders, like he is free, like he could fly away in an instant if he so chose. “James?”
“Yes?” He answers desperately. He feels like he’s going to be sick, the adrenaline crashing like a white-foam wave over him.
“Another Question,” and Regulus is flagging but he doesn’t seem so close to death, James’ fingers warm and alive, “will you kiss me?”
And he gasps, and the pike is finally pulling free, and he is falling forwards with it.
Regulus’ mouth tastes like salt water cupped directly from the ocean, like bile and blood and sick and– and a bitter childhood flavour, of fussy sleepless nights and home-remedy potions. Regulus tastes of lavender oil, an unmistakable acrid tang running through this horrid medley of flavours and– He is the best thing that James has tasted in what feels like years, all his home cooked dinners, tables at Hogwarts sinking under the weight, his mothers voice calling him. It is the best thing he has tasted since he was sixteen in Kent, lying in a field with his hands tucked into the warmth between Regulus’ shirt and his skin and kissing him again, and again, and again. And– it’s the same but so different. There are new crevices in the planes of Regulus’ mouth, and James’ hands slip against his face, his fingers reaching for tender skin and flesh where there isn’t any longer. He feels ancient, a fossilised thing trying desperately to swim to new life, to old life, to curl into a patch of grass that has been long since overgrown. It is terrifying, and a fragile egg is cracking open in the hollow of James’ chest, a promise of something new, and beautiful, if he would only have the patience to let it grow.
He’s crying, or maybe both of them are, and his hands are clenched in the soaking wet fabric of Regulus’ robes.
James breaks the kiss, and it hurts him, physically hurts somewhere deep in his stomach, but they’re still running against the clock, and it’s ticking down mercilessly now, Regulus mumbling against his lips.
“Hold on tight,” James whispers into the shell of Regulus’ ear. He cups a shaking hand round the nape of his neck, and his fingers curl into the soft hairs he finds there.
He thinks of home.
Notes:
hi! first of all, spoilers for the implied instances of suicide:
1. Stop reading after:
At around half six, he’s stirring the fourth diagnosis potion, the one for just-in-case, and he starts feeling very strange– a twisting in his stomach, his hands going dead, then pricking back to life, pins and needles pricking up and down.And start again at:
Well. That decides it. Tonight, James will test the boundaries of the illusion. Tonight, he’ll change the routine.2. this one is very small, and very vague, but stop reading after:
It’s just past nine when the prickles begin in James’ fingers. He blinks, once, and then–The twelfth time James wakes up on a Tuesday, he has an idea.
and then start again after the paragraph break.
To summarise, for the first one, the loop ended early, and James wonders if Regulus committed suicide. For the second, it's implied that James tried to end the loop through the same method.
AH. okay. sooooo..... what do we think??
we are really in the meat of it now. FINALLY making good on our time loop tag and it only took us 130k words and almost a calendar year.... a lot of this chapter and the previous one have been written since this fic was just a twinkle in our eyes! and we are so so so pleased that you are all enjoying it! thank you thank you thank you for sticking with us and reading so far. comments make us jump up and down and say YIPPEEEEE a lot. just sayinggggg......
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