For Him a Thousand Times Over
James is eating breakfast when Peter plops down beside him, his hair is oddly messed up and James pretends not to see the purple mark showing itself from beneath his collar.
Peter slaps the top of his head so, James takes his eyes off Regulus to scowl at him who is now more interested in the pastry in front of him, so as any sane person would, James picks the pastry up and shoves it in Peter’s mouth or tries to at least because his mouth was closed so he has just made a mess on Peter’s lips.
“I fucking hate you” hisses Peter.
James laughs, “no you don’t” he says passing Peter a tissue paper.
Peter clicks his tongue as he wipes his mouth and then drops the tissue in James’ plate, right above the pudding to like the audacity??
“So, what happened with Regulus?” asks Peter and James has to physically stop his heart from violently beating out of his heart.
“Where are Pads and Moony?” asks James trying to ignore Peter (and his cheeks which feel so hot that he’s pretty sure you could fry eggs on them).
“You know where they are,” says Peter, squinting his eyes at him.
Yes, James knows where they are, they’re fucking.
“I’ll tell you later, while you dye my hair” says James.
While people thought that the marauders would not be dying their hair, they would actually be doing it but of their own choice for example Sirius went with the coloirs of the bi flag in their hair, “a gigantic fuck you to my family” in the philosophical words of Sirius Orion Black The Third.
Remus went with hues of green and blue “to embrace my gay-ness” in the bold words of Remus John Lupin The First
Sirius and Remus aka The Betrayers did theirs first and then decided the other looked too hot so they ushered the others out to do things which James would prefer not to think about.
Then Peter wandered off to god knows where, doing James knows what.
Yes he knew that Peter goes to meet his partners once a day but he acts blissfully unaware because Peter is yet to come out and James isn’t someone who would force anyone to come out.
How James found out towards the end of last year is quite a hilarious story.
James was making his way to the library to push in some extra Potions research to help with his essay, the fact that it was twelve am didn’t matter? Time is just stupid numbers.
Whenever James walks around at night whether it be on his patrolling days or otherwise, he would still always keep his ear out for unwanted nighttime strollers, was he one? Yes. but he was also a Prefect so it didn’t matter.
When James heard noises he decided to follow them, like any normal seventeen year old would, and the sight that he was blessed with the sight of one person attached to Peter’s neck and the other on his mouth.
Normal people would be disgusted by seeing this kind of stuff but (even though James mildly was) he was actually happy to know that after hearing James go on and on about Regulus, Peter had his own people to think about and be happy with, it filled James up with a warm sensation.
To this day Peter doesn’t know.
★☆★
“Okay spill” said – demanded – Peter as he started to work on James’ hair, making it bright pink, yellow and cyan or at least that's what James hopes because he can’t fucking see the damn colors.
“Okay so– He hugged me first!!” squeals James as that's one of the first things that comes to his mind which is quite predictable seeing as that surprised James greatly.
Peter’s hand in James’ hair stills as his eyes blow wide and his mouth hangs open, “you’re fucking with me!” exclaims Peter lightly swatting James’ shoulder, before starting on his hair again.
“I’m not i swear, i was so fucking surprised myself and then you know what i did?”
“Something stupid definitely”
“I SPINNED HIM!!”
“Noooooo” breathed out Peter, “I’m so fucking proud of you” he says tapping James’ cheeks and James feels himself grin.
“Pete?”
“Yea?”
“Put eyeliner on my eyes. Please” he adds as an afterthought.
Lightly cupping James’ jaw, Peter delicately applies eyeliner on his eyes. Just as James is about to open his eyes Peter tsks, “keep them close for a while” and then James feels him put something on the corner of his eyes.
When he feels the sensation of Peter’s fingers leave his face, he turns around to look at himself in the mirror.
On the inner corner of both his eyes is a small golden-ish jewel and there's another where the wing of the eyeliner ends.
James looks good.
James turns towards Peter and smacks a kiss on his cheek eliciting a groan out of him. Looking at himself in the mirror he suddenly gets an idea.
Running down the stairs of the girls’ dormitories he calls out for Marlene.
“Jaaaaaaames” she calls back and James follows the random direction of her voice.
Three minutes of searching later he finds her sprawled on the ground drawing Dorcas’ hands.
“I need your elastic bands”
“c’mon”
★☆★
“Pandora” said James in a sweet voice, drawing out the vowel sounds as he walked into the classroom.
“Don’t you look pretty?” she says, whistling.
James does a little twirl and then remembers something, “you know those little ring thingies you put in my hair?” he says, glad when Pandora nods because he doesn't know how to describe them, “i wanna put them in my hair”
“Yea okay, Dorcas has them, you have your cloak right?” when James nods she claps her hands, “perfect lets go.”
While she knew about the cloak, he hadn’t told her about the map even in the one year they had known each other for that belonged to all of them and was a collective effort, whilst the cloak was just an heirloom.
“So… had fun yesterday?” Pandora asks, wiggling her eyebrows and James feels the back of his neck heat up and a groan falls from his lips.
“How much do you know?” he asks cautiously.
“Enough.” she answers and James wants to hide his face somewhere because with the way it’s burning he’s definitely blushing hard enough for it to show.
“Are you planning on asking him out?”
Her words catch James off guard and he stumbles trying to get the following words out, “What??! No!”
“So if he had feelings for you, you’d be leading him on?” and no- James doesn’t even want to entertain that thought.
That would mean that if- no, when Regulus found out, he’d probably leave him for something that wasn’t even in his control and James wouldn’t even be able to blame him because truly who would want to be with him.
“That’s the thing, Dora, he doesn’t and if he ever did, i’d somehow put him out of the misery of dating me”
Pandora abruptly stopped to look at him, “Misery? James?? I swear to god you would be the best boyfriend to ever exist, what fucking misery are you talking about?”
James is so tired of getting the ‘best boyfriend’ lecture from Peter, like why does no one fucking understand the no one least of all Regulus would want him and even if he did, James would not pursue it because why would he date someone knowing that he can’t give everything in the relationship.
“Look, there’s some shit you don’t know about me okay? And if you did, you’d want your best friend away from me. So please just let me have this- whatever this friendship is okay? And if I find out he does like me back – which is impossible – I'll tell him and you’ll know. And then there’s also my whole issue of colour blindness, i can’t subject him to take care of me and limit himself either, so just please let me have this”
Pandora just leaps forward and wraps her arms around James, he in turn does the same.
“I doubt that anyone who truly likes you would care about whatever secrets you may have” she says softly as she pulls away from the hug.
James just shaked his head, tears arising in his eyes. He wraps the Invisibility cloak around himself and starts walking with Pandora towards the entrance.
As they move towards the stairs he wonders if they're going to some other dorm because he distinctly remembers the stairs to Pandora’s dorm being on the other side of the common room.
And he is proven right when they enter a door (before taking off his cloak outside as Pandora instructed) and he finds four heads looking at him.
James’ eyes instantly latch upon Regulus and he feels a soft smile making its way on his face, and he’s pleased to see him return the smile, though quite small but a smile nonetheless.
Pandora pokes his arms with her pinky and he is suddenly slammed back into himself, “why are we here?” he asks Pandora.
“Because the ‘ring thingies’ are with Dorcas, remember? And she is here.”
“Ring thingies” asks Dorcas, amusedly
“I don’t know what they’re called,” says James.
“Hair rings”
“Oh.” well now he feels like an idiot but if you ask him and if he were to reply honestly ‘hair ring thingies’ is such a better name. And he tells Pandora that which draws a laugh out of everyone.
Pandora sits down on the floor, dragging James with her who just plops down.
Looking around the room, James now realises that he doesn’t like it. There’s way too much green (he’s pretty sure its green since it's highly unlikely for Slytherins to have red in their dorms) and it hurts his eyes because apart from the usual same tone of colour he sees, he’s seeing it way too much.
Looking down he starts fiddling with one of his many bracelets, his mind drifting from one thing to another until it finally lands on the fact that Evan is in his bed with a very concerned Barty at his feet.
Raising his head to look at Evan he asks, “What’s wrong?”
Just as Evan opens his mouth to answer, Barty’s rambling cuts him off, “well we would know had his majesty wanted to actually go to Ms. Pomfrey but nooo why go and ease the pain of his friends? Isn’t it so much better when they’re all worried. Who the fuck knows maybe he’ll be dead tomorro- please don’t be dead tomorrow.” Barty looks at Evan worried.
James feels a fond smile fall on his face, Barty and Evan are so much like Sirius and Remus, as he draws that relation he feels sorry for Regulus, Pandora and Dorcas.
“Which ones do you want?” they ask.
James wants the blue ones, but maybe they’re purple or maybe they’re both? He can't go with any other colour because he needs blue to match his outfit and if he chooses another he would have no idea whether it's red or green, pink or grey.
He glances at Pandora trying to communicate best with his eyes but she’s on the bed with Evan who has started coughing.
James seriously doesn’t know which one to go for when he feels a sight tapping on his shoulder, “i think he should choose the second to last ones on the bottom, they’re blue and the design is quite nice don’t you think?” asks Regulus looking at James.
And James just nods.
His brain can’t even process the fact that Regulus helped him as much as he was happy to be out of the situation. He goes and sits between Dorcas' legs as they loop the rings in the tiny braids in his curls.
Once they’re done James gets up, he just wants to leave, he can look at himself later.
“Thankyou” he says to Dorcas before going over to Pandora and whispering “I'm leaving” and before she has a chance to respond Barty asks, “are you really her secret lover?”
“I- what?” James looks over at Pandora who is busy laughing. “Pandora said that she was going to meet her secret lover and then she brought you here” explains Evan and
“Oh- of course i am, we meet daily for cheeky snogs!” James went on easily, winking seductively at Pandora who in turn fluttered her eyelashes and twirled a lock of her hair around her index finger before they both burst into giggles.
“I– I’m confused,” said Evan, his eyes flicking between the two.
“The amount of times I’ve been asked that” wheezed out James before looking at Pandora and starting to laugh again.
“We’re not,'' says Pandora after seeming to have calmed down.
It’s insanely stupid how they’re often thought of as partners though to be fair they do do their fair share of sneaking around.
“I really need to ask this ‘cause I have a very important point to prove,” Dorcas said determinedly.
James turned towards her and raised his eyebrows as a gesture for her to go on.
“You’re straight?”
Never has James ever in his life been more horrified by two words, not that he had anything against straight people mind you.
“I– no-”
“HA! I was right!” they exclaimed, pointing towards Regulus.
James eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets
“You thought I was straight?!” his focus now 100% directed at Regulus
“How was I to know that you weren’t?” he asked indignant.
James gestures wildly to his hair with both hands, “This maybe?”
“Your…. hair? What do they– Ohhhh Je suis tellement imbecile (i’m so stupid)” he said dropping his head into his hands.
“Non, ne dis pas ça (no don’t say that) Reggie”
“He can call you Reggie?” splutters out Barty, “it took us two years to get you to be fine with us saying that.”
“What can I say? I’m persistent” said James, smirking, trying to desperately calm down his racing heart, which could certainly run and win a marathon at this moment.
James really does hope Regulus hasn’t yet nor would he now tell them about him calling James ‘Jamie’ because it felt like ‘they’re’ thing which was stupid because its just James’ brain making up things so that his heart would feel less loney but that’s how James has lived all these years and that’s how James wishes to continue living.
Hope… it’s a weird thing, although it is the singular thing which drives you through some tough times, the heartbreak that follows when one learns that the hope was false, made upon no sound structure, that it only existed to make one feel slightly less hopeless is hard as fuck.
Even knowing this shit James’ brain lets him build fantasies on those false hopes and then when they all come crashing down James has to pretend that he isn’t absolutely wrecked, that it wasn’t as though every single one of James’ dreams hadn’t deteriorated, and that it didn’t hurt but James would endure it, for him a thousand times over.