7
Lily’s flat– what used to be Arya and Lily’s– coincidentally, is right by the Puddlemere stadium. This is to say that sometimes, after practice, James stops in for tea at his ex girlfriend’s house.
He hasn’t seen her since the party– if what happened that day at his house, that revisitation of Sirius and Regulus’ past, could be called that– so he figures he might pay her a visit, check in on how she’s handling things, possibly help her clean or box Arya’s things.
This is good, he thinks, knocking on the door; I’m getting back out there. I am rejoining the world, resisting the urge to grieve. There is still life to be lived.
For the first time, James Potter is at someone’s door for purely selfish reasons. He’s going crazy in that house, crying like a madman up and down the halls as his son toddles behind him.
Lily opens the door with a smile, wine glass in hand, “James!”
“Lily,” he says fondly, “I hope I’m not imposing.”
“Never, never,” she says, opening the door wider and inviting him inside. She leads him to the kitchen, where she pours a generous glass and pushes it his way. “What brings you my way, practice?”
He nods, taking a sip. It’s sweet.
“And how is the house, how are my darling boys?” She sounds almost like Effie, referring, of course, to Harry and Regulus.
Regulus woke up this morning coughing. James is trying not to think about it, “it’s good, yeah.”
He takes a moment to look around her kitchen. It’s clear she hasn’t cooked in days; takeout boxes litter the counter, and the dishes have piled up. The urge to clean it all and paint a smile on her face rises in him. He suppresses it. Ted would be proud.
He is here to be her friend, not her savior.
“What were you doing before I got here?” he asks, curious. The sound of Regulus’ coughs, deep and racking his body, echo in his mind. There had been nothing to do but get him water and sit with him, waiting for the attack to subside. James had been ten minutes late to practice, refusing to leave.
“Mary,” Lily admits with the conspiratorial tone typical of a girl who’s had a bit too much to drink, ““I kissed her.”
James knows about this already, Regulus told him. He won’t be telling Lily that anytime soon, though.
“Why?”
–
“I moved to London for Lily,” Mary tells Regulus. They’re laying, backs flat, on the floor of his living room. After James disapparated, he sent a patronus– only in part for the speed of it; the fact he could cast it brought him supreme satisfaction– to Mary, asking if she’d like to come over.
She was in a somber mood, dragging her feet, sighing intermittently, and generally looking a bit glum. The hours passed; they talked. Harry came; they talked to him. When it was time for his afternoon nap, they put him up together.
It was then they came to be there, lying on their backs
“We– she called me from a pub one night,” Mary says, “completely out of the blue. I’d heard from her, of course, but connection, you remember– Merlin, how long was the war? – three years, maybe? So much of what I received from her those years was cryptic and utterly useless. The fear being Death Eater,” the label sticks in the air, “interception, you remember.”
Actually, Regulus does not. He says as such.
“No, you don’t,” Mary agrees, remembering, “playing dead as you were. Anyway she called me, two in the morning, saying we should talk. She missed everything, all of it. We could build it back up in London, though. I thought she was drunk and stupid, but she called again the next day. And the next. We called every day, actually. I bought the flat two weeks later, got my things all ready to go.”
He’s trying to remember the era. Who had Lily been at the time? Who had Mary been? “Was this before I came back?”
“The war had ended about a week prior. I still had some slices of a pie in my fridge, I remember, the one my aunt baked when she heard the news. You were likely still hiding away with Sirius and James.”
Regulus recoils a little at the memories, so scattered as his brain was on the comedown of having gotten his vengeance, so violent. Nightmares, so blurred with reality, had held him captive. James held him then, as if he were ocean.
“Back to the story,” Mary asserts, moving her shoulders as if to stretch them, “I got an owl three days before I was set to move to the city. Lily had gone out for coffee with this girl, someone she’d gone on a mission,” Regulus hates the word, “with in Romania. I recognized the language, the way she talked about her. They already had plans to meet up again the following week.” Mary stops for a moment, breathing, staring at the ceiling, “I could practically see the blush on her cheeks as she wrote it out to me. Arya, this girl was. I wrote back in one sentence, asking Am I still moving to London for you?
Regulus aches. The pain in Mary’s voice is raw, unmistakable.
“She responded that I should be in control of my own life.”
–
“We almost got back together, Mary and I, at the end of the war,” Lily explains, coming to sit down in the seat next to James. They’re at her kitchen counter, perched on barstools. “There was one night we all went to the pub– me, Marlene, Pete, Remus, Sirius even came from yours.”
“You lot were partying a lot those days,” James recalls, remembering nights spent with Regulus, helping him to do tasks as simple as eating while the rest of them got sloshed and tore up the town.
“We were young and hurting,” she says, “we all needed a party.”
And he understands. Of course he does. “That night I stole away and called her. Just poured my heart out, James, confessed everything. It really seemed, after that, that we were going to get back together. I think that’s why she bought that flat she’s in now anyway, the one she and Emmeline live in.” There’s a rough quality to her voice, “She was coming to be with me.”
Even still, the morning’s coughing episode has shaken James up. He had been late to practice, terrified to leave his dying husband alone with their young child. What if Harry needed something and Regulus was too sick to help? What if Regulus–
He clears his throat, sweeping the thought away. It comes back insistently, the image of Regulus immobile on the floor. Dead.
James redirects his thoughts. The coughing stopped and James went on his way. Regulus was likely at home with Mary or Pandora right now, spending time with Harry. “And then?”
“And then Arya sent an owl. She’d had a dream about me, a dream where I died. She comes from a long line of seers– though she’s got no gift for it, honestly– and wanted to check up on me. I suggested coffee. We went, and Merlin,” she pauses for a moment, collecting herself, “it was just… I remember what magic first felt like, when I was eleven. That’s what it was like, talking to Arya then.”
“Hence you and Mary never getting back together.”
“Hence,” she nods almost wistfully. “She didn’t have to marry Emmeline, though; really, I think I would have been alright with anyone else.”
–
“I already bought the place, Reggie, what was I meant to do? I moved to London that Spring, and Lily was off with Arya. And Merlin,” Mary scoffs, “where did that even come from?”
“The war,” Regulus answers with a blank face, watching the sun stream in through the windows, “that love came from the war. Some people held onto it in unexpected ways.”
“Well I was never interested in holding the war and Emmeline offered to help me unpack my things. Simple.”
“Except you married her.”
“I loved her, back in school. I did. And I do,” Mary makes a point of turning her head, meeting his eye so he can see she is being genuine, “I love Emmeline. With all of me, with my ring finger, I do.”
“But she was your rebound, back in school,” And then, when you moved here, he thinks but doesn’t dare say.
“I married her,” she says firmly, knowing Regulus sees it all, perhaps more clearly even than she does, “and not a single day has passed where I regret that decision.”
“But Lily kissed you, after Arya left.”
“She came by my flat in tears, distraught. I let her in, made some tea. We were talking and I just– I look at her and see the years, you know? Such a long history we have of hurting each other. We both wanted it to stop. All I had ever wanted, since the moment I saw her on the train, was to be with her. That was it, Reggie. Just her.”
Regulus inhales, thinking of James. He will be home later. Regulus awaits it.
“And she kissed me. There in my kitchen, Emmeline in the other room, she kissed me.”
“Did you say something?”
“I told her to go,” Mary says, pulling her gaze from the ceiling, turning her head to look at Regulus.
“And since then?”
“We haven’t talked.”
“And Emmeline, does she know?”
“Of course.”
“Good, then. So what now?”
“I don’t know. I wait, I feel. I wonder what might have been.”
“I’m sorry,” Regulus says, ignoring the way his shoulder is acting up. The hardwood floors have become uncomfortable.
“Don’t be,” she says before abruptly changing the subject. Regulus knows Mary; she’s hit her limit, and can be vulnerable no longer. He’s the same way.
“Are you in the wedding?”
“In September?”
She nods.
“Yeah,” he says, “Barty’s best man.”
She thinks about that. “It’s hard to watch, love. I think the wedding will be hard for me.”
“I’ll be there,” he says, “you come find me.”
“Oh Reggie boy,” she says, “I won’t be leaving your side in the first place.”