The Day it Began
Chapter One: The day it began.
The day had started out the same as the rest, James rolled out of bed, yawned, scrubbed a calloused hand down his face and swung himself out of bed. It began the way it always did with him immediately waking the rest of the doom room with a silly little muggle CD player blasting ABBA at full volume while he showered. It began with his three best friends. The three people he loved most in the world. After the shower came the getting dressed, the spraying of muggle cologne that Sirius had talked him into, in London a few years ago. The lacing of his signature red converse, again that Sirius had talked him into buying, and strutting around the dorm room with his tie untied and swung across his shoulders, and a joint sticking out from behind his ear.
A perfectly average day, first day of first term at Hogwarts in the marauder's 6th year. It all went according to plan. Or atleast they thought it did.
"Well that was a waste of time and energy" Sirius began, the elder Black brother was lay with his head in Remuses lap, a lit cigarette between his teeth while Remus played idly with his black curls. Sirius's eyes were closed, his hands resting on the ground around Remus. "I mean where was the fucking point in trying to divine tea leaves. As if we have nothing better to do than drink tea for an hour?"
They had been in Divination where the new professor had taken a immediate dislike of the group. Ordering them all to pair up with someone else in the room rather than with each other, which had only lead to them shouting across the room to each other, and causing overall chaos in their bid to he reunited. This did little to aid them and eventually ended in all three of them being dismissed from the room. The only one to avoid the lesson was Pete who'd been swiftly shuffled away by professor Grubblyplank in favour of herbology.
"Yeah well you never did like divination Sirius" James joked, he was sat by Sirius's feet, the joint from this morning hanging unlit out of the side of his mouth. Repeatedly rolling his wand through his fingers with increasing pace. Something that had begun last year when he had noticed a drummer from a muggle band doing it with the sticks from his instrument. Since then it had become sort of a tick for James, something that his hands did when they were idle to quite the roaring inside of his head.
ADHD the muggle doctor had called it, Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Sirius thought it was bullshit and they shouldn't of seen the muggle doctor even if the magical ones couldn't explain the way his brain worked. It had infact been Sirius's idea in the first place not that it had made any difference other than some medication that James hated. Spouting once that it "dulled his sparkle" whatever that meant.
"Where was even the point in forcing us to work with other people rather than each other" Sirius was still ranting but James attention wasn't on him, Sitting quietly with a book resting on his knees and a cigarette in his hand on the other side of the green was the younger Black brother. James had seen him around, he was only a year younger than Sirius and the resemblance wasn't something you could miss. But he had never really looked at the younger of the two, always taking Sirius's word that he was just like the rest of Slytherin house. Just like the rest of his family, horrible, untrustworthy even going as far as to deem him evil. From where James was sitting though Regulus Black didn't look evil. He looked young, tired and haunted. His skin was pale, so very pale the same shade of pale as Sirius has been the night he had banged so loudly on the door of potter manor he had woken the whole street. He looked thin, fragile and thin like a single gust of wind could send him spiralling away like a flower petal caught in a wind trap. Actually he looked like he hadn't seen a decent meal in months, never mind anything else.
James was so caught up in staring at the younger boys features from across the green that he hadn't noticed that Pete and Lily had joined them. He didnt notice the conversation which they hadn't bothered to include him in, he was too busy watching the black curls bounce in the wind and wondering absently if they would feel like silk, should he run his fingers through them.
As James's eyes made their way back to focussing on Regulus's face something he wasn't expecting happened. He placed the cigarette in his mouth, lit it with a tiny flame from his wand and his grey eyes met James's brown ones.
Like planets colliding is the only thought James had, as a feeling so intense it burned away the outside world spread through him. Silver grey eyes, cold and hard met his, the absolute unmistakable trait of the Boys lineage. Eyes that so perfectly matched those of his best friend staring at him, Cigarette smoke spiralling around his head getting absorbed by the curls. James thinks he stopped breathing, he tries to remember how to think but for once the inside of his brain has been scraped clean. It was quiet.
It was at this moment, as the world stopped on its axis. As everything else around him slipped away that James Fleamont Potter knew.
He knew without a shadow of a doubt, without the quietest of whispers; that not only was he attracted to the other boy but he was done for.
The area around him could of become a burning inferno and James wouldn't of, couldn't of looked away. It would have to be Regulus that looked away first, and slowly he did, going back reluctantly it looked like to the book in his lap the ash from his cigarette coating the pages. Just like that James was thrust back into the noise and chaos of the courtyard. Back into the conversations of his friends chattering around him, preparing for the final lessons of the day. James added quietly to the conversation, pausing to light the joint that had been hanging from the corner of his mouth and pass it between his friends. But sitting there, on the green courtyard of Hogwarts surrounded by his friends, James knew, knew that there would be nothing that could compare; to the undiluted starlight of Regulus Black.