try planning a party when all your friends are in love
James Potter is an idiot. Not only had he managed to forget that he’d promised Sirius he’d be back at the dorm by 4 for party planning, he doesn’t even have a good excuse, as he could hardly tell Sirius that he’d forgotten because Sirius’ own brother has such a mind boggling effect on James that he’d managed to forget. He can’t tell him that, at least not without risking death. Therefore James Potter is an idiot.
Luckily, Remus unintentionally came to his rescue. Sirius had been so busy being happily in love with Remus that even he had forgotten about the party planning too. That was until James and Lily nearly fell through the dorm door thinking they’d been late just to find Remus and Sirius cuddling on Remus’ bed.
“Merlin!” Remus exclaims, nearly jumping up, much to the disappointment of Sirius who proceeds to make a face at him. “Are you guys okay?”
“We’re fine,” Lily breathes out, catching her breath after all they’d just run up multiple staircases. “Party planning, remember lovebirds?”
“Right,” Sirius stretches out the word, clearly James and Lily weren’t the only ones that forgot. “We just–”
“Spare us,” Lily cuts in. “We all forgot and we just ran from the library for nothing.” Lily then proceeds to fall down on James’ bed.
“Well, at least we got our exercise in,” James says and Lily throws a pillow at him. “Hey! Where’s everyone else?”
As if on queue Peter and Mary mimic James and Lily nearly falling through the door.
“Not late,” Pete says, holding up his finger as if stating a fact in an argument.
“Relax, Pete,” James says. “We all forgot.”
“Good, because you would not believe how much we ran after we realized,” Mary says, flopping down next to Lily on the bed. “Nice to know we weren’t the only track stars today.”
“Left a good chess match too,” Pete says, sitting down on his own bed.
“Wait,” Sirius chimes in. “Were you two playing chess all afternoon?”
“It’s a good game,” Mary says, laughing at Sirius’ shock.
“How can you possibly play one game for nearly 4 hours?” he asks.
“Sirius, you’ve never played chess a day in your life,” Remus says.
“So, I still find it crazy,” Sirius retorts.
“Why don’t we talk about your afternoon events?” Mary asks, and immediately both Sirius and Remus’ cheeks turn pink.
“Yes,” Lily chimes in, immediately ready to tease both the boys for their adorable embarrassment. “What did you two get up to this afternoon?”
“Yeah, how was the famous date?” James says, and suddenly the whole dorm was just focusing on their two friends.
“James, you too?” Sirius says, sounding betrayed and looking at his friend in shock.
“Famous?” Remus questions quietly, they were both blushing and trying to avoid looking at one another much to the amusement of everyone else in the room. After suffering for years at the longing looks and blatantly obvious flirting they took any chance they could to tease the lovebirds once they finally got together.
Just before James thought someone was about to press for details Marlene came rushing in the door.
“Marls!” Mary exclaims, sitting up dramatically and letting her jaw drop in feigned astonishment. “How dare you be late? We’ve been waiting forever!”
James held back a smile and he saw Lily nearly cover her mouth to keep from laughing.
“Sorry, sorry,” Marlene repeats, not noticing their hidden laughter and tugging off the last of her quidditch gear before rushing to sit down next to Pete. “I got distracted, lost track of time-”
“Marls,” Pete says, deciding to put his friend out of her misery. “We were all late, Mary and I just got here too.”
“Pete, you traitor!” Mary calls, sad he broke her joke but James figured he wouldn’t have kept it up for long. Him, Peter, and Marlene have been best friends since childhood and were all at the point where they’ve known each other for too long and are now incapable of lying to each other.
“Mary!” Marlene gasped, shocked by the trick her friend, who was currently holding back her laughter, had played on her.
“Alright,” Sirius says, clearly trying to get onto a new subject before someone brings back up him and Remus. “Let’s talk party!”
_______
Party planning lasted nearly 3 hours, mostly because every time they tried to circle back to actually planning the party they ended up at either Marlene’s “not-date” with Dorcas or Sirius and Remus’ date.
The only things they’d managed to completely get sorted was who was getting what in terms of drinks and food and who was coming. Lily was hopefully the only one that saw how momentarily nervous James got when Sirius said they should invite Regulus. He’d gotten it together enough to stupidly tell Sirius that that was a great idea, once again James Potter was an idiot.
Though he had to say he’d felt particularly betrayed when Lily suggested that James deliver the invite since he has potions with Regulus tomorrow. Sirius of course agreed, clueless to his friend’s feelings for his brother. But James got his revenge when he said that he would invite them tomorrow, to which of course everyone questioned who “them” was and James said that he doubted that Regulus would come without his friends. Which was true and everyone accepted that easily, except Lily who shot him a dirty look, knowing that he meant specifically inviting Pandora.
Everyone left for the last few minutes of dinner, except for Sirius and Remus who said they’d eaten earlier. Sirius somehow convinced Lily to take his homework down to Professor Sprout’s classroom for him. James thinks she only agreed because Sirius had made his puppy dog eyes while lying next to Remus, who’d given her an almost pleading look to let his boyfriend stay, and not even Lily could say no to the happy couple.
James decides that even if he missed all of dinner he would still try and grab an apple before going to bed. Everyone else was already ahead of him and Lily was going the opposite way to Sprout’s classroom, no one was in the hallway which wasn’t surprising the main hallways were on the other side of the dining hall and James only knew the shortcut because of the map. So he didn’t expect to see anyone else until he reached the hall but it turned out he was delightfully wrong.
Regulus Black was walking right towards him and James knew he must have been smiling like an idiot but he couldn’t help it. He decided to ignore the slight fear he had for if Regulus had heard his conversation with Lily in the library because he had a new Regulus thing to worry about, they seemed to come up fast, and that was asking him to go to the party.
Might as well do it now, James thinks, Merlin, he’s so pretty.
“Hi, Reg!” he says, stopping in front of the Regulus, smiling because he was just so damn beautiful, how is it possible for him to look so perfect? James was about to ask him about the party seeing as he hasn’t been immediately cut off by Regulus but then he realizes that he hasn’t been immediately cut off by Regulus. This was strange and James notices that Regulus’ face looks like he is deep in thought but he’s looking right at James, immediate worry comes over James. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Regulus says quickly, removing whatever look was once over his face but James could tell that his regular frown and annoyed look still wasn’t present, and it was still worrying him. “Fuck off, James.”
James thinks that he didn’t hear him for a second and confusion floods his mind. It was just enough time for Regulus to decide that he was done talking to James and start walking away. James’ mind told his feet to turn and move on towards the dining hall but the sound was still present in his mind.
James, it was his own name but he’d never heard Regulus use it before. James. It sounded so much better coming from Regulus than it ever had coming from anyone else. James. He said my name, he used my name, James thinks in mild shock. He managed to walk right past the dining hall and up to the dorm.
“Hey, Prongs,” Sirius calls, when he walks in, Sirius was still lying with Remus who looked on the verge of sleep. “Where’s your apple?”
“Uh,” James stutters, Pads, I didn’t get my apple because I saw your brother and went into a daze when I heard him say my name, yeah he couldn’t say that. “Ate it, hungry.”
“Right,” Sirius says. “Night, Prongs.”
“Night,” he says, and he gets into bed still thinking. Has Regulus ever used his name before? No, not even when they first met, it was always “Potter” or just nothing at all . If I’ve never heard Regulus use my name, why did he say it tonight? It wasn’t like they’d even been talking for long or about anything that would warrant him to use a name he’s never used before.
Maybe he’s overthinking this? Regulus may have just slipped up. If he did James was extremely grateful, getting to hear Regulus say his name sounded like a gift. How could Regulus slip up and use my name if he never calls me my name? James thinks and that was the thought that would start a train that would end with James getting zero sleep that night.
The only way Regulus would slip up and say my name was if he’d used my name before. Did Regulus use my name with other people? Did Regulus talk about me? Think about me? Did he think about kis- No! James stops his thoughts because Regulus didn’t talk about him with anyone else, he couldn’t, and even if he had it was probably just insulting him, not that James particularly minds Regulus insulting him but he wishes that he would do it to his face if nothing else so that he would get to hear Regulus say his name again. But Regulus Black did not love him, it was impossible and James felt stupid for letting his brain run so amuck that he would even begin to think that.
No, Regulus Black did not love James Potter and that was that. Unfortunately James’ mind decided that that wasn’t that and that it needed to replay that moment over and over again.
James, Regulus’ voice said in James’ mind and the fact that it had been preceded by fuck off wasn’t even a bother to James, he’d heard that many times from Regulus but his name that was new. James. Ugh, he’s definitely overthinking this. He’s crazy, why did he have to fall in love with a guy who hates him? But despite all of that Regulus’ voice was playing over and over in his mind and James really needed to talk to a sane person right now.
But he was stuck, he couldn’t exactly sneak past Sirius without having to explain why he needed to talk to Lily and Regulus’ voice was making it very hard to come up with a good excuse, it would have to wait for the morning.
I really need to talk to Lily.