it's distracting and it isn't fair... he's just so beautiful
Terrible sleep is not a great way to start a day. Especially when James has to ask Regulus to go to a party in less than 7 hours. To say he was dreading it would be an understatement. Damn it! James thinks, if he’d only have not looked so cute and if he hadn’t said my name and destroyed my ability to think straight then this would already be over.
He was desperate to talk to Lily before potions with Regulus and he’d figured that his only shot was either before or after breakfast but apparently he was wrong. James gets down to his normal jogging route right outside the forest, it’s just past 5:00 in the morning and the sun isn’t even up but Lily Evans is. She’s standing by a tree holding two mugs and wearing a sweater that James thinks is Remus’, but they get passed around so much that it’s hard to keep track.
“Lily!” James says, running up to her as she looks quickly over to him. “What are you doing out here?”
“Finally,” she says in response. “You’re never that slow to get down here in the morning, what took so long?”
“Slept terribly last night,” he says, and she hands him one of the mugs. “What about you? You’re never here at all, I’ve been trying to get you to go running with me for years.”
“And I’m not doing it now,” she says. “Wanna take a walk?”
“Sure,” James says, he’s not usually one to make changes to his training schedule but the desperate need to talk with Lily about Regulus was a lot stronger than his schedule. “What’s wrong?”
“Does something need to be wrong?” she asks, as they start walking down the dirt path. The sun is still not completely awake and the fact that it was still autumn meant that the colder air is still circling up in the wind and blowing around crunchy crinkly leaves on the ground.
“For you to be up at 5 jogging with me?” James questions back, he knows why he needs to talk with her but her reasons are still a mystery, one that he wants to figure out.
“Walking,” she corrects, looking down into the dark water and tapping her finger on the side of her mug.“I don’t think Pandora and Regulus heard us in the library.”
“Neither do I,” he says. “Wait, how do you know?”
“I may have run into Pandora on the way to Professor Sprout’s last night,” Lily says. She continues talking, almost like she needed to say it but was scared to continue, before James could say anything. “And she didn’t say anything so… Wait, how do you know?”
“I ran into Regulus on the way to the dining hall,” James practically blurts out, feeling anxious to tell her the rest but holding it together for her to continue with the rest of her story. “He didn’t say anything either.”
“Well, what else happened?” Lily asks, stopping and turning to James.
“What happened with Pandora?” James asks, mirroring her and stopping his movements. “You know what, let’s both say it on three.”
“Okay,” Lily says, the look on her face tells James that she must not have gotten much more sleep than he did, he could tell that they both desperately needed to talk about their crushes, he’d seen that look on her face many times over the months since May. “One…”
“Two…” James says.
“Three–” Lily barely gets out before they both start talking.
“Regulus used my first name,” James says.
“I almost kissed Pandora,” Lily says.
“What?!” they both practically yell out at the same time.
“You almost kissed Pandora?” James repeats.
“Regulus never uses your first name,” Lily states. “Okay, one thing at a time, you first. What was preceding that?”
“Okay,” James says. “But we’re circling back to your thing because–”
“James!” Lily says, trying to keep him on track.
“Right,” he says. “Well, I was taking the back way to the dining hall and I saw him so I said hi and I figured that I would ask him about the party, rip off the band-aid you know? But then I noticed that he was just staring at me, he hadn’t even tried to just ignore me, and so I asked him if he was okay and then he said he was fine. Then he told me ‘fuck off, James’ then he walked away and I went back to the dorm.”
He finishes the recant of his interaction last night with Regulus and the second the last words are out of his mouth Lily starts laughing.
“Wait,” she says through her laughter. “Did you even go to the dining hall?”
“Nope, walked right past it,” James says, sending her into more laughter. “You can stop now.”
“I just find it hilarious that the first time Regulus ever says your first name it was preceded by fuck off, it’s very on brand for him,” Lily says still laughing.
“Yeah, yeah, but he still said it,” James says, nudging her out of her giggles and starting back up their walk. “How do you think he said it?”
“What do you mean?” Lily asks, catching back up to his walk.
“I mean do you think he just slipped up and used my name or do you think it was deliberate?” James asks, needing that perspective from a sane person to combat his crazy brain.
“Well, either he’s decided that he really wants to stop hating you so much and using your first name is just his first step but the fuck off seems to knock off that theory,” Lily says. “So, he probably just slipped up.”
“Right,” James says, taking in what she’d said.
“You know,” Lily continues. “If he did slip up that would mean that he says your first name a lot and that would mean he talks about you with other people…”
“No, Lily,” James says. “Don’t reassure my delusions it’s not healthy.”
“Oh come on,” Lily says. “Sometimes the conclusions your brain comes to aren’t wrong, James. Or there’s always the option that he just thinks about you so much that he used your first name because of that.”
“Lily…” James says, getting a small feeling of hope from her words and that terrifies him, especially when he has to talk to Regulus in less than 6 hours now.
“Wait!” Lily says, looking slightly panicked all of the sudden. “Did you ask him about the party?”
“No, not yet,” James reassures her. “I’ll do it in potions today.”
“Oh,” she breathes a sigh of relief. “Good, I didn’t need to be more stressed for Transfiguration today.”
“Speaking of,” James says, wanting to change the subject away from Regulus before he gets more anxious about asking him and also desperately needing to know about Lily. “What do you mean, you almost kissed Pandora last night?”
“Oh, right, that,” Lily evades, very unsuccessfully because there is no way James is letting her not tell him everything.
“What happened?” James asks, having a feeling that Lily was enjoying keeping him on edge about this but she very clearly is dying to tell him anyway.
“Okay, so, I was taking Sirius’ homework down to Sprout's classroom,” she starts and they keep walking though neither is really paying attention to their surroundings and their tea is pretty much forgotten and cold at this point. “And Pandora had been in her classroom, so we saw each other in the hall, she said she’d needed something for a potion and then she asked why I was there and when she was about to leave, I don’t know. I guess I just ended up staring at her and she was looking back and I really thought for a second that she was going to kiss me or that I could have kissed her but I just said goodnight and then she left.”
“Wow,” James says, his friend truly looks like a wreck about this girl. There was no mistaking the fact that Lily was completely in love with Pandora and James wishes that he could tell her that she loved her too but even if he had very strong suspicions he really didn’t know for sure. He’d been through this whole ranting about crushes thing with both Sirius and Remus but the difference there was that he knew both of them really well and as much as he likes Pandora he really can’t say he knows her well enough to guess how she feels. No matter how seemingly obvious it is that she has some kind of feelings for Lily but before he could talk again Lily starts.
“I got scared again,” she says. “I can’t believe that I can memorize pages of books and pass hundreds of tests and I still can’t just ask out a girl. I’m completely pathetic.”
“Hey!” James says, stopping and turning to face his friend, grabbing her shoulder so she’ll look at him, he's not one to let anyone make fun of his friends, especially themselves. “You’re not pathetic. You like her, that’s not pathetic, you’re scared that she won’t like you back, it's a normal fear. Everyone is afraid that people won’t like them but you’re one of the bravest– No you are the bravest person I’ve ever met, if anyone can get over this universal fear it’s you.”
“How? Every time I try to, I just run away,” Lily says.
“So, take it one step at a time,” James says. “First step is to put yourself in a place where you can’t run away.”
“Maybe I need to try that,” Lily says and they start walking again. “But even then I don’t think she likes me, at least not like that.”
“Oh come on,” James says. “I’ve seen how she looks at you, she has some kind of feelings for you, I can tell you with absolute certainty that I’ve never looked at you like that.”
“Right,” Lily says. “She didn’t want to tell me.”
“Tell you what?” James asks, as they near the end of the trail.
“Her potion,” Lily explains. “The ingredient she needed from Sprout, she didn’t want to tell me about it, we used to talk about potions a lot.”
“Maybe she just wants to surprise you,” James says, knowing how happy Lily is when she talks about potions he couldn’t imagine that Pandora would just not want to talk with her anymore.
“Maybe,” Lily says, taking the half drunk mug of tea from James. “See you at breakfast.”
“See ya,” James says, Lily always meets Marlene after her run in the mornings so they’d split up before going back to Gryffindor Tower.
“And just in case I don’t get the chance to talk to you before your potions class, good luck with Regulus,” she says.
“Thanks, Lils,” he yells back before heading back to his dorm.
________
Breakfast was quiet, it was a Monday so everyone was still a bit groggy from the weekend. James had decided on eating his anxiety, especially since he hadn’t eaten dinner last night. But all the food in the world didn’t have the power to stop his eyes from drifting up to the Slytherin table where Regulus sat, scowling at a laughing Barty. James would have been lying if he said that he hadn’t felt a twinge of jealousy.
Luckily he’d found out just before summer that Regulus and Barty’s alleged dating had just been an out of hand rumor but still the unlikable feeling of jealousy would be present whenever he saw them together, knowing that Barty had gotten to kiss Regulus and that he hadn’t.
He could remember that party, it was in Hufflepuff and Marlene had insisted on going and dragging all the rest of them. Sirius decided to skip, which ended up being a good thing because James had no idea what Sirius would have done to Barty if he had come, probably something along the lines of punching, though James wouldn’t necessarily have minded seeing that. Yet another reason to be scared of dating Regulus, he has a scary protective big brother. But Lily and Remus had made said brother promise to study so they stayed to hold him to that, so Mary, Peter, Marlene, and James were the ones that made it.
Marlene spent the whole night flirting with Dorcas, not that any of them didn’t know why she’d been so adamant to go. Mary danced the whole night, James would never not be amazed by how skillfully she could dance in her heels. And Peter had found plenty of people to talk with and had even given into Mary and danced a little. James, being his talkative extroverted self, found finding people to talk to rather easy.
The party had been going just fine, James would only glance over at Regulus about every few minutes but he would just go get food or a drink or find someone to talk to and try to push Regulus and his absolute beauty out of his mind.
By about two hours into the party James was slightly drunk and just a little wobbly on his feet. He’d just talked to Pete, who said he was heading back to the dorms. He’d told Pete that he’d be back in about an hour and that he didn’t have to wait up, he wasn’t drunk enough that he couldn’t get back alright.
When he’d turned away from Peter, just before he could take another sip from his drink, he’d suddenly felt very sick and not from the alcohol. Regulus Black was kissing Barty Crouch jr., deeply, on a couch, in the middle of a party.
James had felt disgusted by the feeling of jealousy he had been experiencing, Regulus was free to kiss whomever he wanted to. But James couldn’t help but wonder, why didn't he want to kiss me? What’s wrong with me? Why couldn’t he love me?
He’d wandered out of the party and passed a couple of kids kissing in the hallways but the image of Regulus and Barty was still in his mind. What do his lips feel like? What does he taste like? What does the crook of his neck feel like to hold? He wondered, Why does Barty get to know the answers to those questions and I don’t?
Eventually he’d found his way to Gryffindor Tower where in the common room he found Lily, stacking books together while Sirius slept on the couch. She’d asked him about the party and he’d given her a vague response, ‘it was good’ ‘great time’. He went to bed and cried that night.
In the morning, Sirius was not a big help for James’ tired tear ducts, he wouldn’t stop ranting about Regulus and Barty. All of them knew he was just being protective but rumors about the previous night's party were spreading like wildfire.
But James noticed, when he was trying to ignore Sirius, that Lily seemed more down than usual. No one else saw, gossip was piercing the ears of everyone around them so when James suggested that he and Lily go back to the dorms she quickly agreed. They went up to Lily’s room and that was when he learned about Pandora, who apparently had gone on a date with Xenophilius the night before, and he finally told someone about Regulus. They’d cried a lot that day.
Of course jealous memories aren’t what James needs to be thinking about at present time. So he tries to focus his thoughts on how he should ask Regulus about the party all through his first class. But when he thinks too much about something it tends to get really complicated so when he walked into potions he was already overthinking it.
Regulus was already sitting at their shared desk, he looks so perfect, James thinks, why does he have to look so perfect? It’s distracting and it isn’t fair.
James manages to sit down and smile over at Regulus, who returns it with his usual scowl and just looks back down at his book. He’s so beautiful, James thinks right before Slughorn starts teaching.
James hopes that there won’t be a test on this because about the only thing he heard from Professor Slughorn was hello. It isn’t his fault that Regulus looks utterly beautiful when he’s taking notes or listening to class or scowling or– okay, maybe James thinks that Regulus looks utterly beautiful doing anything but that doesn't fix how distracting it is.
By the end of class he had a blank notebook and about 2 minutes to ask Regulus about the party before he was shoved into an uncomfortable explanation to Sirius about why he didn’t.
“Hey,” James says, while Regulus is closing up his notebook and packing up his things.
“Hi,” Regulus says, looking over to James before going back to his bag.
Damn it! James thinks, Why is this so hard? I’m not even really asking him out. It’s just a party and Sirius is the one that asked me too. I wish I could ask him out for real.
“Are you doing anything on Sunday?” The words left his mouth before he had another chance to second guess himself.
Regulus stops moving and looks back over at James. James, James can hear his voice say again, this is not the time to remember that, James tells his brain, it doesn’t listen. Eventually Regulus asks, “What?” He looks slightly shocked but James is too nervous to pick up on it.
“Uh, Sunday. We’re having a party,” James stutters to explain, Merlin! He’s nervous. What if he says no? James irrationally thinks. “Are you doing anything or d-do you want to come? Y-you and your friends?”
“N-no,” Regulus says, sounding surprised by the random invitation, which James was now thinking that the end of class might not be the best time to ask him.
“No you’re not doing anything or no you don’t want to come?” James asks.
“No- I mean yes,” Regulus says, grabbing his bag. “I’ll come- We’ll come.”
“Great!” James says, he said yes! He said yes! James thinks and Regulus starts to walk out just as the bells rang. “I’ll see you then- and you know next class! Bye!”
“Bye,” he hears Regulus say but his back is turned to him.
He did it! He actually did it! And Regulus was coming to the party! James might have started jumping with joy had Professor Slughorn not given him a look to get out of his classroom. He did and he knew that no one in the halls would question what James Potter was grinning like an idiot but he knew he’d never smiled so big.