Silence and Smoke
The house was still. A thing that I haven't gotten used to ever since the summer started and James Potter arrived.
It was not the kind of stillness that felt peaceful, but the kind that stretched too wide, pressed too close. A silence that should have belonged to sleep, to rest, to ease but I had none of those things.
I turned onto my side. Then onto my back, and then onto my other side. The sheets felt too heavy, the air too thick.
At some point, I gave up.
I slipped from my bed and out of my room, my feet soundless against the old wooden floor. The house was dark, the corridors yawning ahead of me in quiet shadows, the only light spilling in from the wide-open veranda doors. I didn’t know where I was going until I was already there, drawn by the air, the night, the need to escape the restless knot in my chest.
I stepped outside.
The night had cooled, the summer warmth folding into something gentler. The moon hung low, half-obscured by drifting clouds, and the lake in the distance reflected its dim glow in scattered silver fragments. The air smelled of damp grass, of something faintly burnt.
And then I saw him.
James was leaning against the railing, arms folded, his posture loose but his head tilted as though caught in thought. He didn’t turn when I stepped closer, but I knew he had heard me. The quiet had been too thick for my presence to go unnoticed.
I moved beside him, resting my hands on the railing, though I left space between us.
For a while, we said nothing.
I breathed in, and there it was again. The faint, lingering scent of smoke. Not the heavy, stale kind that clung to rooms and fabric, but something more fleeting. A trace of something recent, something almost gone.
“You smoke?” I asked, my voice lower in the hush of the night as if afraid to be heard.
James exhaled through his nose, a half-smile playing at his lips. “Not really.”
I glanced at him. “But you did tonight.”
He didn’t confirm it, but he didn’t deny it either. His fingers tapped idly against the wood of the railing, like there was something still restless in him.
“I was out,” he said after a moment.
I already knew that. Everyone had known that. James Potter had been missing from the house all day, gone to Merlin-knows-where, and Sirius hadn’t cared to explain. I hadn’t cared to ask. I'm sure he would not tell me anyways.
But now, standing beside him in the quiet, I found myself wanting to know.
“Where?”
James tilted his head back, looking up at the sky as if the answer might be written there. “Just…out.”
It wasn’t an answer. Not really.
But it was something. Something that means he doesn't want to talk about it. I didn't press farther.
We didn't say anything after that, the air still laced with that faint, smoky scent, and I found myself searching for it again, lingering on it like it meant something.
He was the one to break the deafening silence first. “You couldn’t sleep?” He muttered.
I shook my head.
He hummed, the sound rumbling low in his throat, and turned his head toward me. “What keeps you up at night, Regulus?”
The way he said my name sent something through me. It must have been the cold night breeze against my skin. I didn't dare find out.
I didn’t look at him. “Nothing.”
A quiet scoff. “Liar.”
That pulled my gaze to his. His eyes were unreadable in the dim light, but there was something in them. Something that definitely mirrors mine. Something searching, something knowing.
“I don’t lie,” I said, measured.
James tilted his head slightly, considering. He then let out what seems like a hollow laugh, devoid of its usual light. “No,” he murmured. “You just don’t say anything at all.”
Something gnawed in my chest.
The air between us felt thinner now, stretched taut in a way I couldn’t name. James was close, not close enough to touch, but close enough that I was aware of him, of the steady way he breathed, of the way the night’s quiet made everything feel sharper, heavier. It seems as if we both wanted to say anything, something, but no one have the courage to do it.
His fingers tapped against the railing again, and I realized—without meaning to, without thinking—mine had moved just slightly closer. Just enough. A slow shift. A near touch.
He must have noticed, yet he didn’t pull away.
“Do you always sneak out in the middle of the night?” James asked, his voice quieter now.
“I didn’t sneak out,” I said. “I just...”
“Needed air,” he finished for me, like he already knew the answer. Like he had felt the same thing. I didn’t confirm it. But I didn’t deny it either.
The wind moved through the trees, rustling the leaves, and sending some of them through the lake’s surface. James watched it for a moment before turning his gaze back to me, unreadable in the dark.
Then, just as I thought he might say something else, he reached into his pocket, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. He didn’t light one. Just held it between his fingers, turning it over like a thought half-formed.
“You want one?” he asked, half-smirking, half-serious.
I glanced at him. “You just said you don’t smoke.”
“I don’t.” He twirled the cigarette between his fingers. “But sometimes I do.”
I didn’t take one.
But I didn’t tell him no, either.
James exhaled a quiet laugh, tucking the pack away again. The air between us still carried the faintest trace of smoke, lingering.
He leaned back against the railing, looking up at the sky again. “You ever think about disappearing?”
I frowned slightly. “What?”
“Not forever,” he clarified immediately. “Just…for a little while. Just long enough to be somewhere else. Someone else.”
I didn’t answer him immediately.
I wasn’t really sure how.
James didn’t press. He only kept looking up, his expression unreadable, his fingers still tapping absently against the wood. And then, softer, almost to himself, he mumbled, “Maybe that’s why I went out.”
I didn’t know what made me say it, but before I could stop myself, the words were there, quiet but real.
“You don’t have to leave to disappear.”
James turned to me, something flickering in his gaze. “No?”
I shook my head. “No.”
The night pressed in around us, the stillness heavy, the tension thick in the space we left between us. I wasn’t sure what had shifted, if it had shifted at all, but I felt it. Something unsaid. Something lingering.
James looked at me like he could see it too.
The door creaked somewhere behind us and whatever spell broke. James exhaled, turning away first as he cleared his throat. “It’s late.”
I nodded. “It is.”
Neither of us moved.
Then, finally, James pushed off the railing. He didn’t look at me as he passed, but I felt him there, the smell of smoke lingering as he disappeared back into the house. I stayed on the veranda a while longer, staring out at the lake.
The air still smelled of cigarettes.
I wasn’t sure if it would let me sleep.