Chapter 12
October 11, 1975
James
James is lying in bed with a wand and the map (which he took from under Sirius’ pillow just before Sirius went to sleep) in his hands, waiting for Regulus to show up at once. Ever since their encounter at the Astronomy Tower he’s been wondering whether it could become some kind of tradition: Regulus talking about the stuff he likes and James listening to him attentively. Wouldn’t it be nice? After all, James enjoyed it the last time Regulus gave him an Astronomy lesson.
But Regulus hasn’t left the dungeons for over a week, so James has little hope. What if James made him feel uncomfortable? What if he crossed a line and Regulus will never talk to him again? Well, it’s not as if they were close anyway, but James wouldn’t mind getting to know Regulus better. If he goes to the Astronomy Tower tonight, James thinks, I will talk to him properly.
It hasn’t crossed James’ mind that talking to Regulus could only make him more uncomfortable. A Gryffindor showing up to the Astronomy Tower in the middle of the night and trying to talk to you - again – who wouldn’t freak out at least a bit?
But today is James’ lucky day. He notices Regulus’ name moving on the map, and seconds later he grabs his cloak and rushes to the Tower, not even double-checking whether Regulus is heading to the same place. He just knows he does.
When James reaches the Tower, Regulus is already there. The door is slightly open, as if inviting James to come in, so he does. It’s only past 9pm, so they have lots of time to talk, and James smiles to himself. He’s even come up with several topics to start the conversation with: he’s read some articles on the latest news about astronomy, and he asked his mum to send him a few books on Greek mythology which he has been reading with much enjoyment. James thinks he’s more than prepared for talking to Regulus and maybe even surprising him with something he might not know himself.
James tries to be as discreet as possible, assessing Regulus’ mood and contemplating whether to reveal himself just now or wait for a couple of minutes first. Regulus isn’t wearing his usual robes but instead a black sweater and velvet pants, also black, and James silently admires the way his body looks in more casual clothes. Regulus always looks good.
James holds his breath, not daring to break the silence. Regulus looks so unnaturally relaxed when he’s not trying to fit in, when he’s just being himself, not fearing that someone might see him without his armor.
‘Where are you?’ Regulus says looking directly at James.
James starts panicking. Can Regulus see him? Has he forgotten to put on his cloak? Has the cloak lost its invisibility charms?
But Regulus turns around and sits on the floor, leaning on the stone wall and not paying any attention to James and his freaking out.
‘Why did I even think you’d be here,’ James hears him muttering under his breath.
Wait. Wait. Has Regulus expected someone?
‘I really wish you were fucking here.’
James furrows his eyebrows. Who is he talking about?
‘Fuck, why am I even here,’ Regulus sighs and runs his hand through his hair while James watches him closely.
Regulus hides his face in his hands and breathes heavily, muttering ‘fuck’ over and over. James sits on the ground opposite to Regulus, afraid to move any closer to him. They stay in these positions for what feels like hours but it’s barely been twenty minutes. Regulus raises up his head from time to time throwing quick glances at the door but no one shows up. James wonders if Regulus is afraid that someone will catch him here or he’s still waiting for someone.
Eventually Regulus stands up and comes up closer to the telescope, looking at the sky.
‘Hi, Sirius. I’ve missed you lots,’ he says. ‘I’ve been having a really shitty time and I fucking wish I could talk to you.’
James’ eyes widen. He has never heard Regulus say anything about Sirius. He thought they fell out years ago as Sirius hasn’t talked much about Regulus, either. Not since their second year, at least.
Regulus doesn’t say anything else, and James keeps waiting. He no longer wants to talk to Regulus; he selfishly hopes that he says something else, something that he would never tell James himself. Maybe it’s not right. Maybe James shouldn’t spy on Regulus like that, betraying his trust. But he just can’t help it.
James has never had a brother. Well, Sirius is like a brother to him but he knows it’s not the same and it will never be. James has heard many stories about Regulus as a child and he’s always failed to connect the version of him Sirius presented and the version Regulus himself tried to be. Sweet, kind, shy, and stubborn – out of this list the only word James would use to describe Regulus would be the last one.
‘I think of you a lot,’ Regulus breaks the silence something half an hour later. ‘I wonder if you’d like the person I’ve become. I don’t think you would, honestly, but maybe you’d be proud of me for not acting selfishly for once. I hope you can forgive me one day,’ he whispers.
James feels his eyes welling up. It breaks his heart to see Regulus in this state but he knows he can’t expose himself right now, so he helplessly sits at the door and looks at Regulus talking to the sky. He knows that if he doesn’t go now, he’ll start crying, and the last thing James needs is Regulus exposing him. With that in mind, James gets up and leaves, knowing that this night he will probably get 0 hours of sleep.
The next time James catches Regulus sneak out is October, 16. It’s 9:30 pm, James is getting back from the practice with Sirius and Marlene and while they’re engaged in a heated discussion over the best drink at the Thee Broomsticks (Sirius says it’s firewhiskey; Marlene says he’s delusional and the best drink is actually gillywater), he checks Regulus’ location and sees him approaching the stairs of the Astronomy Tower.
Quidditch practices have been rather exhausting lately. With Sirius and Mary barely interacting, James has to maneuver between the two of them, at the same time paying attention to the rest of the team. Keeping in mind his determination to excel at his studies and his recent revelations about Regulus only add stress to his daily routine, and the amounts of coffee (thank you, Euphemia) he drinks every day start slowly exceeding the norm.
When they come to the dorm, Peter is already asleep. Sirius is the first to occupy shower, so James lies that he’s going to bed and instead heads to the Astronomy Tower, not even caring to take off his Quidditch form.
Does James feel bad about lying to Sirius? Yes. Is he going to tell him the truth? Definitely no. And what exactly would he say? ‘Hey, Sirius! I’m kind of spying on your little brother because he makes me feel something and I want to get to know him better by hiding under my invisibility cloak and listening to him talking to the sky at the Astronomy Tower at night’? James doesn’t have a death wish.
When James enters the Tower, he can’t spot Regulus at first, but once his eyes adjust to the darkness, he notices a black ball of fur and bright yellow eyes. James smiles, makes himself comfortable on the floor and waits, watching the cat breathing.
He doesn’t notice it when he starts drifting off. He's dreaming: he is at the beach, lying peacefully on a green blanket, under the warmth of the last rays of sunshine. The sky is pinkish and not a single cloud shields the sunlight lighting up James’ brown skin. He looks at the sea and sees a bunch of teens play-fighting in the water. There’s a red-head girl splashing water on her girlfriend with black braided hair, a tall guy slightly reminding James of someone he knows, throwing a rubber ball at his shorter friend, and another girl blowing her whistle when the ball splashes far behind the short boy’s back.
There’s also another boy sitting right next to James. Despite it being warm, he’s wearing a grey long-sleeved shirt, his elbows resting on the blanket behind his back, his eyes closed and squinting because of the sun. Before he can stop himself, James runs his fingers through the boy’s curled hair. It’s soft and silky, he notices, and James wants to touch it forever.
‘I love when you do it.’
‘What?’
‘Play with my hair.’
‘I love it, too.’
The boy smiles softly, dimples showing on his cheeks. James leans in and kisses him, his hand still in the boy's hair.
‘I wish we could stay here forever,’ the boy says.
‘Why can’t we?’ James wonders.
‘You know why,’ he smiles sadly. ‘You have to leave me.’
‘No, I don’t, and I won’t,’ James states.
‘It’s okay, love, I will see you in another lifetime.’
Before James manages to convince the boy that he isn’t going away, a quiet voice wakes him up. He rubs his eyes and looks around, forgetting that he’s still at the Astronomy Tower. Regulus is sitting right opposite James and is looking directly at him, talking.
‘…not sure I would be able to go on but for you. You know, you bring some sense of stability in my life. I tell you to fuck off and you never do because you love me. I tell you I don’t care and you know I lie. Or maybe you’ve already started believing it that I don’t. I hope you still have some faith in me, big brother,’ Regulus smirks.
‘I know how much this love hurts you but it’s the only reason I am still alive, and I’m not sure I wouldn’t have ended it if you hadn’t shown up at my door that night’, he adds quietly. ‘When I can’t sleep at night, I hear your lullabies, the ones you were singing to me when I was nine and had nightmares. Sometimes I would lie to you about having a bad dream just so that I could crawl into your bedroom and ask you to sing me to sleep.’
James feels tears run down his cheeks. He covers his mouth trying not to make any sound. What the fuck did Regulus mean by saying he would have ended it? How can he speak with so much love and admiration about Sirius if in the corridors he doesn’t dare look up at him? If this is how he really feels about Sirius, why won’t he talk to him?
‘I fucking dread coming back home. I know you think I love playing the role of an obedient son but—it’s for the better you don’t know even half of it.
‘I think I’m going fucking mental talking to the walls,’ Regulus laughs. ‘Maybe it’s for the better he never comes. I have no idea what I would say to him in this state.’
James feels sick. He gets up from the cold ground, the map shaking in his trembling hands, and runs as quick as he can down the stairs. His mind is a mess, he can’t focus on any specific thought, he just runs, and runs, and runs, till he finds himself on a bench near the Greenhouses. He lies down and cries till his eyes hurt, till his mind is blank and his body is so exhausted that he feels like an empty sack. All because of the boy he might have fallen for. All because of Regulus.
A day before the Quidditch match James decides that for the sake of his mental health he won’t go to the Astronomy Tower. But he does.
Accepting his possible feelings for Regulus wasn’t hard. Realising that he might’ve fallen for the last person who would ever look in his direction was.
James still doesn’t know who the person Regulus was waiting for last week was. Could it be his secret lover? James doesn’t feed himself delusions about Regulus rushing into his embrace the moment James tells him he likes him. Or even loves him?
He thinks he’s been in denial for too long. He should’ve known he was a fool for Regulus the moment he met him at Hooch’ office, but isn’t it ironic how he completely and utterly accepted his feelings after realising how much pain Regulus was hiding behind the walls he’d built around himself? James knows his friends would probably say he has the savior complex but in fact he was so fucking afraid he could’ve lost Regulus never even having him that he could no longer pretend he didn’t care. Or maybe he has the savior complex. James doesn’t really care.
But his feelings for Regulus aren’t based on Regulus’ sadness or pain. He’s just so much more than that. He’s smart, he’s funny, he has a brilliant mind and James thinks Regulus could be a much better pranker than him, Sirius, and Peter combined. He’s cute, and lovely, and caring, and from now on James will never believe that Regulus is a stone-hearted bastard. Because he’s not. He’s also pretty hot, if you ask James.
He wishes he could know everything about Regulus: whether he sleeps on the right or the left side of the bed, whether he prefers tea or coffee, whether he bites his lip when he thinks too hard or whether he furrows his eyebrows instead, and whether his hair is just as soft as it was in James' dream. James feels so much everything about Regulus that he feels he might explode.
Tonight Regulus doesn’t speak. He lays some cards in front of himself and stares at them long before picking one from the deck. James can’t see the card, but Regulus smiles to himself, and so does James.
He falls asleep and doesn’t wake up till the morning, finding Regulus at the same spot where he was last night. James comes up closer to him and strikes Regulus’ hair slightly, taking a look at the card Regulus is holding. He bends down to take a better look at it. The Lovers. James had no idea Regulus was into tarot cards, so he snorts. His heart skips a beat when he notices the picture on the card. Two men.
James doesn’t allow himself to fully form an opinion on the scene he’s just witnessed, so he leaves the Tower and closes the door behind himself loudly to wake Regulus. He will have all the time in the world to think of it after the match in the afternoon but until that he has to keep a clear mind.
He fails.
James does everything on an autopilot: shower, breakfast, classes, pep-talk. But his mind is occupied with Regulus only. He can’t believe he somehow managed to live 15 years of his life not thinking about someone constantly. Even when he was in love with Lily he was never this in love.
Only when James' in the air can he feel his thoughts finally forming into a single one – Quidditch and nothing else. It the sky, there is no Regulus, no Sirius and his drama, no Remus and the last full moon – nothing at all. James’ focus is on the game only, and he does his best to score goal after goal.
At some point James hears a loud ‘Sirius!’, but he doesn’t turn around because he has to dodge a budger. When he finally looks down to the ground to find Sirius and Marlene standing on the grass, Marlene screaming something at him, James feels a sharp burning pain all over his body, and before he can figure out what happened, everything goes blank.