lunatic thirteens

The next night, James found him at the astronomy tower again. This time, Regulus resolved to be more direct. 

“What do you want, Potter?”

“Do you own the astronomy tower?” He sat down close to Regulus. “Do you have some authority over who can be here?”

“I’ve been coming up here several times a week for ages,” he clarified. “You never used to come here.”

“Well, I’m allowed to talk to you, aren’t I?”

“No, that was strictly forbidden in a 14th century ordinance. Don’t you pay any attention in History of Magic?”

“Is that true?”

“Merlin, you actually are daft, Potter.”

“I still don’t know if you’re having me on.”

“I still don’t know why you want to talk to me.”

“I guess I don’t either.” James’ eyes were big and earnest, and Regulus could have sworn he had glanced at his lips. 

Regulus had to clear his throat. This wasn’t a good idea; he needed to end it. There was one excuse James could have for speaking with him, even if Regulus knew that Pettigrew had already taken care of it. But he took off his cloak and rolled up his right sleeve. “See? I’m not Marked. You can go back to Sirius and tell him. You all don’t need to report me to Dumbledore for being on the other side of the war.”

He tried to sound as vindictive as possible, but James caught his right hand and looked down at his arm, even though he surely knew that even in the dim lighting of the half moon, the Dark Mark would be visible at first glance. Regulus hoped that James wouldn’t feel how quick his pulse was in his wrist. “Calm down, I just wanted to talk with you,” James said, but he kept his hand there and stroked Regulus’s arm. And Regulus knew it was dumb, but it was probably the closest he would ever get to James Potter, and so Regulus stood there and let him touch him. It was just his arm, and it was James who had started it. If anyone saw them, Regulus could blame James and say he was deciding how to hex him. 

“I can see your veins,” James said softly.

Regulus didn’t reply. How would anyone reply to that? What was there to say? 

“You showed me your right hand,” James noted. “Don’t they normally Mark left arms?”

“Whichever is non-dominant,” Regulus explained. Merlin, why was he telling him this? Regulus had always known it would be his right arm that would be Marked, and he had known for a few months that it would be Marked at Oestara. 

“Oh! I knew you were left-handed from how you fly!” James seemed unperturbed, and Regulus had no idea how. He was still ghosting his hand over Regulus’s forearm. Regulus was holding his breath until James backed away. “I’m sorry. What am I doing?”

“I’ve been trying to ask you that.”

“You’re engaged.” James said it as if it were out of the blue, as though it had just struck him. And yet—didn’t he sound disappointed? Regulus wished he knew how to tell whether he was reading into this. He knew how he wanted to perceive reality; he might be completely delusional. Madness ran in the family, after all; his obsession with James was nothing compared to Bella’s with the Dark Lord.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Regulus asked. But then James looked at him and James was so earnest, so tender. “Dora and I are good friends.”

“You’re engaged. It was in the papers.” Everyone in the school knew they were engaged.

“Good friends who are engaged,” Regulus insisted. Hopefully the statement wasn’t incriminating but could still get the point across? Everyone knew Purebloods didn’t usually marry for love. He and Dora faked it well enough, he thought, but that even counted as an anomaly, an anomaly they needed to ensure that their families wouldn’t change the arrangement if something else struck them as advantageous. 

James looked like he was going to object; going to say something that might finally explain what he meant—

But then Regulus heard footsteps. James might not have known they shouldn’t have been discovered together, but he did.

Yet again, Regulus was the one to leave. 

“Tom was top of his year in Potions, right?” Regulus asked as he walked with Pandora to double Potions Friday morning.

Pandora nodded.

“I wonder how well Slughorn knew him. I can’t even tell how he feels about him today.”

“In all your years of brown-nosing him, I can’t believe you’ve only once tried legilimency on him, and that was just to see if he noticed ingredients we’d taken.”

“I didn’t know until then how easy it would be,” Regulus insisted.

“He’s going to talk with me about my marks… I’ve been avoiding him for weeks. I can see how he reacts if I tell him a bit of the truth… I’ve been practising memory charms, so I can always undo it.”

“Merlin's beard, Dora! On whom did you practise?!”

“Only Erimentha. I swear, it was totally benign. She spent about an hour going on about whether she thinks Barty or Mulciber is more fit, and I just altered her memory so she’d think she read her herbology textbook.”

“That’s so mean. She’ll think she knows it better than she does.”

“It was not mean! I read the textbook for her, and gave her a memory of complex understanding of the textbook material. I saw she got an E on the assignment on that chapter, anyway. Haven’t seen her get a mark like that in years.”

Regulus laughed softly.

“Regulus, you know she’s only in two subjects for NEWTs! I did her a favour, at any rate.”

Sure as clockwork, after a session brewing a draught for dreamless sleep, Slughorn approached Pandora. Regulus looked over to her,  and she nodded. He stayed toward the door. “Miss Lestrange, I must congratulate you both on your engagement and on your superlative exam results.”

He’d have to leave and trust her plan. When she met up with him later and they were able to speak in private, she had been successful—even in covering her exam results in his memories and ingratiating him to them by inviting him to their wedding. But what she learned was awful; it confirmed their worst fears. Pandora showed him the memory of sifting through Slughorn’s memories:

Regulus saw Riddle asking Slughorn if the soul could be split seven ways, and a feeling of regret. The memory ended and turned into Slughorn’s emotional assessment of it. This man was now immortal, and he was doing untold damage in the world. He felt a question strongly, a question that must burn at Slughorn’s conscience frequently to be imprinted so strongly on his mind: do I tell anyone what I know? He was overwhelmed by his desire to appear innocent—and to feel himself innocent, which would be aided by others perceiving him as such—and his conflicting desire to tell Dumbledore something which could help him defeat He Who Must Not Be Named.

So that was it. There were six horcruxes. He had hoped it was only two—that Tom Riddle had split the soul three ways. He and Pandora would still have died trying to destroy them, but there was a larger chance they could have done it. With six… well, when they were more involved in this and more likely to die any day, they would have to figure out who they would send information to after their deaths to continue the fight. He imagined the letter he would have to write, probably to Dorcas and Evan, detailing why he and Pandora had married and, likely, how they would die. 

Maybe they could send the letter to Siri—

No. He didn’t need to know. He shouldn’t know. Such a letter was likely to be a death sentence to its recipient. 

He hated the thought that he might send something like that to Dorcas and Evan.

Saturday was the Ravenclaw-Gryffindor match. The Slytherin team watched it together, needing to keep up with Gryffindor’s strategy if they had any hope of beating them for the Cup this year. Regulus’ eyes were glued to James because of everything that had happened over the past few weeks, but everyone else was watching James as well, so it was fine. The boy was flying like he was trying out for a professional league, diving fast and turning agilely, commanding the Quaffle like it was a part of his being.

At one point when James was flying by them in the stands—closer than he needed to be, Regulus couldn’t help but think—the chaser grinned at him, and Dorcas elbowed Regulus hard. She knew, of course. She had known for years. He sat motionless, though, intensely aware that the whole student body could be watching this, and if Dorcas had picked up on it, others could as well. He had to tell himself that others would interpret the grin as competitive and directed to the whole Slytherin team.

After the game—which Gryffindor won in a landslide—all Regulus’s friends were occupied. Dorcas was at the Ravenclaw afterparty, even though they had lost, Barty and Evan were doing something in the Forbidden Forest, and Pandora had found new potions books in the library. James would be busy that night, after the party, he thought, and that made him a bit sad as he climbed to the Astronomy Tower. He had gotten too used to him. It was bad—it would only make it harder when he inevitably learned all his flights of fancy had been based on nothing. 

But still, he could go to the Astronomy Tower, even if he would be alone there—he was entitled to enjoy the sky, even if James Potter would be on the opposite side of a war from him within months.

Regulus was thinking through everything he needed to do over the year and practicing spells when he heard footsteps he would recognise anywhere and grew quiet as his heart rushed. He sat down and waited for the footsteps to grow nearer. They were heavy, sloppy footsteps, though—he could tell before James saw him that he was drunk. 

“Reggie!” James sat close to Regulus on the bench. He pressed his legs against him. 

“Be quiet; it’s night. And no one ever calls me that.”

“Could I?” James looked at him, his big eyes earnest in the starlight.

“Would you stop if I asked you to?”

“No.” James smiled, like they were sharing a joke together.

“I’ll save my breath then.”

James smiled. “Reggie, Reggie, Reggiiiieeee—” and he absentmindedly picked up Regulus’s hand again, like the other night. “Your hands are so pretty. Can I keep them?”

Merlin. Contrary to popular opinion, Regulus was actually an idiot. He might have been one of the dumbest people alive. Pandora’s marks were better than him in most subjects, anyway, even if she’d convinced the professors of the opposite. Regulus was truly stupid. Because he knew it was dangerous; he knew it was stupid; but there was no way he was letting this situation slip out of his hands. But he did it anyway. 

He muttered the protective charms Pandora used when they were speaking in private away from James, letting James keep his hand. At least that way no one would walk in on them. James seemed too drunk to notice anything other than his hand when his face was turned away, anyway.

“I’ll need my hand back eventually,” Regulus said, making no effort to draw away from James.

“Can I keep it for now?”

Regulus moved his hand to James’s thigh and looked at him.

“Your eyes are pretty too,” the drunk boy said, looking at his lips. He was leaning in.

“James, you don’t want this,” Regulus whispered. 

“Reggie, I do.” And James leaned in. 

When their lips touched, Regulus reached around James’s head and let this continue for far too long—several minutes, actually, James’s tongue entering his mouth and  Regulus welcoming it like it had found its home, before he finally collected himself and left James there. 

He walked back to the dorm so happy he could cry, but also profoundly aware that he couldn’t ever do that again.