Chapter Text
“Reg?” James throws over their shoulder to where their boyfriend is sitting on their bed just behind them. When they hear the younger boy hum, they continue, “I’m running low on some of my herbs, would you want to run down to the greenhouses with me to collect some more? I might also need your help drying some of them.”
Regulus is silent for a moment before he hums once again, “Sure. Are we going right now?”
“Let me just gather up all of the bottles that I’m running low on then I’ll be good to go.” Regulus nods, despite knowing that James can’t see it, and starts to rise from the bed while James puts some of their glass vials holding their ingredients into their shoulder bag. When they’re done, they turn to Regulus and nod, “Alright, I’m ready.” And with that, the two of them head out of the dorm room, say hello to Marlene and Pete -- who are in a very intense game of wizard chess -- before heading out of the common room and down the stairs.
Eventually, they make it to the greenhouses and James tells Regulus what all herbs they’re needing to refill, figuring that Regulus knows enough about botany and plants to know the best way to harvest the plants -- considering he tends to just know what flowers James is picking, they figure that he has spent a lot of time researching plants, not to mention his love for potions probably makes him want to harvest his ingredients right -- before they split off and start collecting their own bundles of herbs.
When they’re done, the two of them haul all of their harvest back up to James’ dorm to start the drying and preparing process for each herb. James tells him what they’re wanting to do with each one after they’re dried so Regulus can have a headstart and getting it taken care of -- James loves that they can use their wand to automatically dry herbs now, even if it does make the a bit more brittle than drying herbs the muggle way -- and the two of them get to work.
After about an hour and a half, all of James’ new herbs have been prepped and the two of them are putting them in their respective vials before James puts the vials back in their boxes and vanishes them. When that’s all said and done, and the room smells very strongly of oregano, James walks up to their boyfriend and pulls him into their arms, resting their head on his shoulder, “Thank you, my love. It would’ve taken me forever to do that by myself.”
“Wouldn’t your roommates have helped you?”
“Pete probably would’ve, but he won’t be coming up for a while since he’s playing chess. Usually when he gets playing, half of the Gryffindors in our year and the year below try to go against him just to win, but he’s too good.” James hums, “Remus usually offers to help but his senses are stronger so he doesn’t like certain herbs, like oregano, that we collected, and I don’t trust Sirius to not fuck around with that stuff. He knows how to do it, but he just… doesn’t.”
“That’s fair.” Regulus hums, pulling James’ head from his shoulder to pull them into a soft, slow kiss, “I enjoyed helping you.”
“I’m glad. Because now, not only that you’re my boyfriend but also that you enjoy doing things like this and you’re good at flower arrangements, you’re stuck doing my witchy chores with me.”
Regulus smiles, a small thing that James can only see because of their proximity, “I don’t find anything wrong about that.”