You walk into the crowded dorm room, and notice, immediately, Regulus. He’s sat on a red plush sofa, everyone forming a circle around the coffee table in front of him on the floor. He doesn’t speak, not while you can see him, but he smiles softly. You’d like to nuzzle into his neck and feel the lack of tension in his body; he looks at ease.
You make your way over rather quickly, despite being stopped and greeted twice.
“Hey everyone!”
“Oh, James! We were just talking about who the worst roommate is-” starts Sirius, with an excitability not unusual for him.
“-you're actually winning right now.” interjects Marlene, prompting everyone to begin laughing. Even Regulus is laughing at you!
“Trust you guys to be talking shit about me!” You say this as you settle next to Regulus, who takes your hand and hooks it over his shoulders. And you whisper to him, “I’m great to live with, don’t listen to them.”
Regulus only smiles, the whole world quiets, and he says very quietly to you, “The things they were saying weren’t anything that I would find bad, don’t worry.”
“No, no, no I’m worried now. What did they say?”
“Walking around the dorm in only your underwear, not locking the bathroom, leaving early in the morning to play quidditch, all that lovely stuff.” He’s grinning, almost manically, now, and playing with your hand. He was counting off the list on your fingers, but now it feels a little like he’s trying to crack your knuckles. You feel your cheeks heating up at both the insinuation of your boyfriend’s words and his presence. You like him here, like this, soft and warm and pushed close against you.
The fact that he elbows you manages to break the trance though, and you look at him with a mixture of confusion and irritation. Regulus only cocks his head in his best friend’s direction. When you look over, Dorcas has raised her head off Marlene’s lap to look up at you expectantly.
“Uh, sorry, what was that?”
“As I thought! You care more about Regulus than us now.” Sirius announces this loudly and is met with a roll of your eyes.
“No, I wasn’t going to say that,” Dorcas placates, looking at Regulus in half-assurance, half-fear before looking back at you, “I was going to ask what your thoughts were on the ethics of the study of magical creatures. Pandora is always saying it’s evil but all you Gryffindors somehow love it.”
“How on earth did you get here in the conversation?” you say, breathing a laugh.
“Unimportant. Answer the question.”
Marlene raises her eyebrows at Dorcas in an expression that looks a little like admiration. Remus pushes off where he was leaning on Sirius, and has his elbows on his knees- all his attention on your answer.
“I think they’d get hurt more if they got found by people who didn’t get to understand them.”
Regulus squeezes your hand in silent agreement and you shift a little closer to him. The day has been too long for ethical dilemmas.
“I agree.” says Remus, and that basically means James got it right.
Mary perks up and says, “Me too, actually!”
“Earlier you said that it was good because the lessons were fun!” Lily argues this, pulling back from where she was sat against her girlfriend.
“The two are in no way mutually exclusive, I can think two things you know!”
Lily hums suspiciously and settles back against Mary, Mary who holds both of her arms around Lily and interlocks the fingers of each of their pairs of hands. Now that Lily can’t see her lips, she mouths to no one in particular, ‘I never thought of that.’, and when everyone laughs, Lily whips her head around and looks at Mary very, very suspiciously. Mary only smiles softly back at her, feigning innocence.
Surprisingly, Regulus begins to laugh at the situation, turning into your chest to hide it. Inevitably, you smile, unable to stop for a long moment. Regulus shakes with laughter in his chest, and through to his back, where your hand rests- jostling at the movement. You kiss his forehead with a reverence that matches the deity he seems to be, especially when a ray of the red and orange setting sun pours onto him through a window.
After he’s stopped laughing, he keeps his head rested on your chest for a beat before pulling up to sit as he was before. You use your hand, still on the end of an arm looped around his neck, to guide his head up to face yours. Your eyes flicker between his grey ones, that look up at you, and his lips for a second before you bend your head down to give him a quick kiss. A peck that leaves Regulus blushing a little and smiling brightly.
Everyone laughs at Sirius’ heckling of their apparent ‘disgusting PDA’, and despite it being at your and Regulus’ expense, you both grin wildly. Regulus rests his head on your shoulder and says to his brother, “You’re lucky I'm not pinning him to this sofa right now, with how good he looks.”. All the blood in your body rushes to your cheeks as you blush red.
Sirius’ jaw drops and he covers his eyes and ears as best he can while folding over to lay face down in Remus’ lap. Remus only smiles sweetly at his boyfriend saying a sarcastic, “There, there, dear.”
You take another look at Regulus, hearing the laughter of all the people you love, and you decide that this moment will last forever. It’s much too wonderful of a second for it to stretch on for anything less than eternity. And so, in your memory, it will. You promise yourself it will.