want to stop thinking about your crush? go to the library
Regulus loves the library. It’s calm and quiet and no one bothers him there. Really nobody bothers him at all if his death stare is withering enough that day.
Nobody bothers him, except for fucking James Potter with his stupid hair and his dumb glasses and his dopey, adorable, infuriating, angering, beautiful, punchable smile.
Unfortunately, Regulus’ stare didn't have an effect on Potter but the best part about the library was that James Fleamont Potter was never in it.
Per usual Regulus had no homework left so he now has three hours of free reading time before dinner. Barty and Evan had decided that they needed to sneak away to Hogsmeade today and for whatever reason they thought this was the day that they wouldn’t be caught, Regulus knew for a fact it was not as it never was, that was the main reason he’d opted out of their plans.
Normally he’d take Remus with him to the library but his friend was off on a date with Sirius, finally after suffering months of watching his idiot brother and friend be completely oblivious to their feelings Regulus almost didn’t mind losing a little time with his friend.
That may be the only feeling of pity Regulus has ever felt for James, having to live in the same room as those two for years. But right now he didn’t want to think about James, he wanted to stare into the pages of a book until his eyes burned and no thoughts of one beautiful quidditch player could grace his mind.
He decided on an astrology book, he’s read it before but no harm in rereading if it helps stop his thought process which he was greatly cursing for bringing up James Potter and quidditch in the same sentence.
Even if the book might have done the trick of destroying his thoughts of James, he was still grateful for the long blonde haired girl who came dancing into the library about 20 minutes later.
Pandora looked smiley and happy which was very welcome as his thoughts of stupid fucking James Potter were turning from attraction to the repetitive realization it always landed on: the non existent hope for any reciprocation.
“Hi Reggie,” Pandora calls when she sees him sitting in the window sill at the end of an aisle of books. She’s the only person he lets call him “Reggie” though James tries. “What ya up to?”
“Just reading,” he says, smiling when she sits down next to him, pressing her hands over her skirt. She's looking at him like she can read his mind, maybe she can, he thinks.
“Thinking about James?” she asks, knowing that she already knows the answer. If it were anyone else he would have bitten their head off and thrown it out the window but Pandora was Pandora, lovely, sweet, Pandora and the only friend he would dare talk to about anything as terrifying as his feelings.
“No,” he lies, he might trust her but lying was a simple reflex when it came to his feelings. “Thinking about Lily?” he asks kindly, she knows he’s thinking about James and he knows she’s thinking about Lily.
“Yes,” she replies, taking him by surprise for a second. “Unlike you I don’t lie about my crush.” she jokes.
“Except to your crush,” he retorts, getting a laugh and smile out of her.
“What is wrong with us?” Pandora asks through her laughing. “How did we fall in love with two people that are in love with each other?”
“Shh,” Regulus shushes her exclamation. “Because we’re idiots but we don’t really need to broadcast that fact to everyone.”
“Oh don’t be so paranoid,” Pandora says. “No one’s here or at least within earshot.” The faint sound of voices was present but it was far enough away that Regulus couldn’t recognize anyone which hopefully meant they couldn’t recognize them. Okay, maybe I might be a little paranoid, he thinks. “Did I tell you Lily transferred into my Transfiguration class? Now I see her every morning, she’s somehow even more gorgeous when the sunlight is on her perfect hair at 7 in the morning.” She throws her head in her hands with despair.
“Welcome to my hell, James has been in my potions class since the beginning of the year,” Regulus says, looking at his friend with a face of remorse. He could concur that the whole sunlight thing was present in afternoons as well. “It gets better, you learn to ignore it.”
“Really?” she asks hopefully, looking up at him but still leaning forward.
“No,” he states. “They just get prettier.”
“I don’t know whether to be happy or sad about that,” Pandora says, laughing and raising her head up before jumping down from the window sill. “Come on, let go! I told Barty we’d help him and Ev back in the school.”
“What?!” Regulus exclaims, looking down at his friend with confusion. “Why would you do that?”
“They’re our friends, Reggie,” she pleads, pulling on his arm like a playful child.
“Yeah, our friends who are doing something very stupid,” he retorts, climbing down and shoving his book back on the shelf as Pandora walks back out of the aisle.
“But our friends nonetheless,” she grabs his hands and pulls him back to the main hall of the library, Regulus is facing the door and Pandora would be looking down the hall towards the rest of the library if her eyes weren’t looking down at Regulus. “Besides they’ll sneak back in by the kitchens so we can get ice cream on the wa-y ba-...” Her sentence stops as her eyes trail upwards into the library.
“What?” Regulus asks, looking concerned at his friend’s sudden stop of speech. “Dora, what is it?” He moves to turn his head to see just what the hell she was looking at but suddening her hands grasped onto his and she was back to looking right at him. His eyes fixated on her expression, somewhere between worried and hurt.
“Wait!” she moves to grasp his shoulders now as if scared that he might move. “Don’t turn around!”
“What?” Regulus asks, more confused than ever. “Why?”
“Regulus, do you trust me?” she says, and she used his name which was never a good sign. He did trust her but what he didn’t trust was that if there was something behind him that she was scared of or hurt by that she would tell him. Her serious expression makes him think she won’t let him see what it is voluntarily. He loves her and would literally kill someone for her, so anything that caused that look on her face wouldn’t be tolerated by him.
“Of course I trust you,” Regulus answers her.
“Then don’t turn around,” Pandora says, hands still in place on his shoulders.
“Okay, if you say not to I won’t,” he says, trying to keep his face calm to ease whatever she was feeling. “Let’s go.”
She removes her hands from their tight grasp on his shoulders and steps away, turning to leave, he follows her for a second then says, “Oh wait! I forgot, I’m still me.”
He whips his head around before she can stop him and he can feel the same look that was just on her face emerging on his. There at the end of the hall, in the middle of a table sat James Potter and Lily Evans.
Regulus’ gaze set on James, he was holding a book but was doing more smiling at Lily than reading. They were both smiling and looking at each other and probably even thinking about every single move the other was making. He could tell from as far away as he was that James’ hair was messy and he was wearing a bright red Gryffindor sweater with golden strips. He looked perfect, he was smiling of course, that stupidly gorgeous smile. The one that refused to leave Regulus’ mind was currently beautiful and on display for Lily Evans.
Regulus knew why Pandora had looked so worried and hurt, which he now realized was a look of heartbreak. He was staring at James and she was staring at Lily but neither of them were staring at them too.
Regulus was immediately grateful for Pandora’s attempt at shielding this disgusting feeling from him.
James was staring at Lily, talking to Lily, thinking about Lily and Lily was staring back at James, talking right with him, and probably thinking about him as well.
The sad thing was Regulus loved Lily, she was one of the nicest people he knew, he understood why Pandora loved her, he understood why James felt the same but whatever amount of respect and kindness he had for her as a person couldn’t stop him from loving James no matter how much he truly hoped it would. And the last thing he would ever do was hurt Lily.
He turned back to Pandora who was staring at him, probably trying to avoid the sight down the hall. She still has the look of heartbreak covering her face, which Regulus was sure was displayed on his own as well.
“Are you gonna cry?” he asks, not a strange question they’d cried before over their unrequited feelings, he wished he could say with honesty that he didn’t want to cry right there but he couldn’t.
“No,” she answers, still her voice quaked and she knew he could hear it, his was a little shaky too. “Are you gonna cry?”
He didn’t want to lie even if she would be able to tell as easily as he could, so he says, “Not if we get ice cream.”
He gets a little laugh out of her and a small chuckle out of himself and then they walk out of the library both making sure the other doesn’t look back at the happy couple at the end of the hall and they leave to go pick up their stupid friends.