Chapter Text
“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
—Franz Kafka
Regulus woke up one day at the beginning of summer and wasn’t at all surprised that nothing had changed overnight. Every day, he wished for something to happen, to break the monotony of his life, and every day, the world stayed the exact same.
Though it was still early, the sun was already out, and Regulus could feel the stickiness of sweat on his skin. He hated when it was too warm. He hated when it was too cold as well, but it was the summer, so he felt like he had the right to complain about it being too hot. In the winter, he’d complain again. Sometimes, it felt like he was stuck in a constant cycle of complaining for no reason because nothing ever got better.
With a sigh, he got out of bed and shuffled into the kitchen. Let something be different, he thought.
Nothing ever was.
As usual, his mother was already there, preparing breakfast for herself. She looked immaculate, not a single hair out of place. Regulus had always, though secretly, thought she was a control freak but lately, he had begun to think that it ran way deeper. Their family was plagued with secrets and things out of anyone’s control, and everybody chose different ways to deal with that. That was something Regulus could understand; but he could never understand the way his mother dealt with anything. He had known her for fifteen years and still, it felt like meeting a complete stranger every time—and not in a good, something-is-finally-different way. No, dealing with his mother made him anxious, always scared he’d say the wrong thing, always saying the wrong thing.
“You slept in,” she said coldly. “What are you wearing?”
It was an old band T-shirt, and it wasn’t his, of course, because even if he tried, he could never truly understand music. “It’s just pajamas,” he mumbled. She must have known that it wasn’t his but surprisingly, she didn’t say anything, only sighed dramatically. But Regulus would take a dramatic sigh over yelling any day.
“What are you doing today?”
That was always a dangerous question; he usually wasn’t allowed to make his own plans. His mother overlooked every aspect of his pathetic life, and his life was not his. Yet she still asked him that question and Regulus wondered if perhaps she thought that she was giving him more freedom than she actually was.
Regulus really wanted something to be different that day.
Aware that he was most likely making a huge mistake and it would result in being punished, the way of which was still to be determined, but suddenly desperate, he said, “I thought I would go to the pool today.”
The public pool. Oh, the shame on his mother’s face, he didn’t even have to look. “You can’t swim.”
“Thought I might finally learn.”
Although it came out of nowhere, it did suddenly seem like a very good idea. He had never learned—had never been taught because his mother was busy and his father might as well have not been there at all—and although he had never felt the need to swim before, it seemed like a good enough way to make the day different. To make his life different. Well, that was probably too ambitious.
And then he realized what his mother was saying. “That seems like a sensible idea.” Was the world about to implode? He hid his utter shock behind the carefully neutral mask he wore every day and nodded. “But do not take anything valuable with you. And shower when you leave and then again right when you come home. Perhaps a private pool would be—”
“I think it’ll be fine,” Regulus said quickly, still completely astounded. “I’ll go change and head out.”
“Regulus?”
Oh, the world wouldn’t be imploding after all—it had just been some elaborate prank. “Yeah?”
“Don’t drown.” It seemed more like a direct order rather than a good-natured request from a concerned mother, but Regulus didn’t mind whatsoever. He left without eating breakfast, still wondering what had just happened. But it seemed like nothing better would happen for the rest of summer, or maybe his entire life, so he decided to go along with it anyway. He gathered his things, not taking anything valuable, but only because he wasn’t stupid and not because his mother said so, and set out. The sun was already too bright for his liking, but he made his way to the public pool nonetheless.
There, he found a shade and watched the few people who were already there. He didn’t know how to teach himself to swim and so he settled for just people-watching for the time being. It seemed so easy when other people did it; just move your arms and legs and you just go, but when Regulus tried it a while later, he was sure he’d drown. Perhaps his body was broken; his limbs too heavy or his blood too tainted for the public pool, weighing him down. He sighed. The day was starting to look very bleak again.
“I can teach you to swim.”
Regulus turned around sharply, expecting to be made fun of. Indeed, the boy was smiling—but as Regulus studied him, it didn’t seem malicious. He just seemed to—be smiling. That was a strange concept to Regulus, smiling just because you could.
The boy was taller than him, defined where Regulus was scrawny, his skin tanned in the way only gods’ is supposed to be, complementing his warm eyes gently. His hair was wet and messy and for some reason, he was wearing glasses in the pool. Was that a thing people did? And then there was that weird smile, weird by being wide and not at all mocking. Regulus’s smiles were always practiced and chiseled; but not this boy’s.
“Okay,” Regulus said. He had wanted something different after all, hadn’t he?
Impossibly, the smile widened. “Cool! What’s your name?”
“Regulus.”
The smile became infected with something taunting but this time, Regulus didn’t mind. “Go on, you can laugh. It’s a stupid name.”
“No, it’s nice,” the boy declared. “I always wanted to have a cool name like that.” Regulus raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh. It’s just James.”
Yes, James perhaps wasn’t the coolest of names, but it strangely suited this boy. “Do you know what it means?”
He shrugged. “Something biblical, I’m sure. I hope it’s something good but I’m too scared of looking it up.”
“You’re scared of looking up the meaning of a name?”
The smile again. “Well, it’s one thing having a boring name but what if it just means like… shepherd or something? That would be tragic.” Regulus wouldn’t define that as tragic by any means, but he found his mouth quirking up, which made him think that this whole thing must be a comedy. Was this guy serious? Regulus had never met anyone who talked like this. “What’s yours mean, anyway?”
“It’s a star,” Regulus said and only after finishing the sentence did he realize he did that thing he hated; had said it as if it were a fact everybody was supposed to know and if you didn’t, you were completely stupid. He looked at the boy—James—worriedly. But he was only nodding.
“Right, of course.” Regulus searched his face for a sign of feeling too stupid now but there was nothing there. “What does it mean, though? The name, I mean?”
“Prince,” Regulus said. “Like I said—it’s stupid.” He sometimes wondered what on Earth made his mother pick such a stupid name and if she had thought it was hilarious. Only the fact that he had never once seen his mother smile, let alone find something hilarious, disputed that theory.
“Well, it’s better than shepherd,” James said with a smile. “So, swimming! It’s easy, really. Well—I suppose it only seems easy to me because I know how to do it. And not everybody finds the same things easy, so forget I said that. It’s okay if you don’t get it right away.” He was talking so fast that Regulus almost forgot that he was actually supposed to be listening. His voice was nice, smooth like caramel, and very pleasant to listen to. And the things he was saying—oh, Regulus had never heard somebody teach something in this way. His education had been all “if you make a mistake, you are to be punished” and he was fairly certain that if his mother would ever abase herself to teach him how to swim, the appropriate punishment for not getting it right away, which was bound to happen, would be drowning.
He didn’t learn how to swim that day, but James told him several different times that they had done immense progress and it was only a matter of time, no, seriously, stop looking so skeptical. Regulus reluctantly agreed to meet him there the next day as well to continue his lessons.
What a strange day that had been. It had begun with Regulus wishing for the tiniest change, knowing it would never happen, and ended with the world having turned upside down.
//
On the way back home, Regulus caught himself smiling and quickly forced his face to stop. He had practice in it, but it did nothing to stop the day replaying in his head over and over, and the strange way his heart was beating now. He desperately wanted to tell somebody about the boy he had met but his mother wasn’t home—not that he would tell her anyway. His father was closed in his study and Regulus was very careful when walking past it, though his father rarely left it. It was a relief and it wasn’t; he used to think that his treatment was worse than his mother’s, that being ignored was much worse than being punished.
He’d changed his mind since then.
Once he was in his room, behind double-checked closed doors, and only in the safety of his own mind, he thought about his brother. Sirius would have loved to hear about his day, even if nothing exciting had happened. And he would have loved to hear about this boy. With a strange sharp pain in his chest, Regulus thought that they would have surely been friends, and for a second, he was selfishly glad that Sirius wasn’t here, and he got to keep James a secret.
It was only for a second, though.
Things had never been perfect in this house, but everything was so much worse now that Sirius was gone. Every and any mention of him had been scrubbed from the place, it was almost as if he was dead. No, it was worse—you get to remember people when they die, they get a photo on the wall, and you think about them. It was as if Sirius had never existed, as if Regulus had made him up because he had always been such a lonely child. Maybe it was true.
It was easy to fall asleep because he was so exhausted, and when he woke up in the morning, the world didn’t seem any different, but it must have been because Regulus didn’t even think about it. He told his mother he was going to the pool and, unsurprisingly, she didn’t like it whatsoever, but he said he was almost able to swim now and for some reason, she let him go. She was frowning about something before he even spoke, and he didn’t pay much attention to it because wasn’t she always frowning?
By the time Regulus got back to the pool, he was about ninety-nine percent sure that he had made James up. Lonely child and all that. Not even the fact that he wasn’t the most creative person at all didn’t stop his mind from mocking him.
Except James was already there and when he saw him, he smiled as brightly as he had the previous day. And that was that.
Somehow, James turned out to be an incredible teacher or perhaps Regulus had been overthinking swimming like he overthought everything, but by the end of the third day, he was able to swim—somewhat. He wasn’t going to become a champion just yet, but he could swim now, move through the water like he belonged in it. He had never belonged anywhere.
More importantly, he felt that he and James had become friends. Regulus had friends—school friends, sure, but the word friend was there anyway, wasn’t it? He never hung out with anyone outside of school, but his mother wouldn’t let him anyway. He had cousins but they were all older than him and most of them were absolutely insufferable. He had had a brother once and even if it was embarrassing, he had considered Sirius to be his best friend. Now, he had nobody.
But James was very easy to talk to because he could talk for hours about the most mundane things and somehow manage to make them sound interesting. For a while, Regulus wasn’t sure if the boy wasn’t making fun of him, but James was different from other people Regulus knew—from his family, his schoolmates, everybody. He was earnest and he talked about things he liked, even if they were just small and kind of stupid, but the way he talked about them made Regulus appreciate them all the same.
He loved to read and loved to talk about his favorite books; he had been delighted when he discovered Regulus had read some of them and then mortified when Regulus declared he didn’t like reading. “Why have you read the books then?” he demanded to know, not forceful, but genuinely wondering, as if he could never understand such a thing.
“I had to, for school. And I’ve had tutors since I was a little kid. And there’s not much to do in my house.”
“What do you like to do, then?”
And Regulus answered truthfully, “Nothing.”
James laughed at that, not because he was trying to be mean, but because he thought it was a joke. But it wasn’t; there was nothing Regulus truly liked. His life had been outlined for him a long time ago and there was no such thing as hobbies. Anything that Regulus used to like to do was only because Sirius had done it first and when he was no longer there, there was no reason to keep doing it. He didn’t say any of that, though, of course. He just repeated, “Nothing.”
For some reason, James wasn’t deterred by that. He kept talking about his books and new words he had learned not because he had to but because he thought they were interesting, and he talked about his family a lot. “It’s mostly just me and my parents, but I think that’s even better. I love my parents.” He looked at Regulus, then, with a slight blush. “That’s probably not what many teenagers say but it’s true.” It was a strange concept to Regulus, but he couldn’t imagine a world where James didn’t love everything and everyone, so he thought he understood.
He even got to meet his parents after a while, which was very strange but very nice. The house was huge, way too big for three people, but Regulus had already deduced that James had to be well-off, even if he was completely different from Regulus. He was very loud, as if he always was, when he greeted his parents, and kissed them both on their cheeks. He always did that, and they always hugged him, as if that was all completely normal.
Regulus couldn’t imagine kissing his mother or father on the cheek. It was like a completely different world in that house, and he liked coming back there. James only asked once if he could see where Regulus lived.
So, they spent the majority of the summer in James’s room, which was very like him; cluttered and bold and loud, but not overwhelming, just… fitting. He had a lot of books and a lot of poetry books, and when Regulus asked, James showed him all of favorite ones and gave him a whole lecture on poetry, gesturing crazily and reading the poems out loud as if he was reciting in front of an entire audience.
Regulus liked being his audience, though. He liked being the only one there, too.
Once, James read him a poem about love at first sight, somehow reading it both dramatically and completely seriously, and Regulus remarked that it was stupid. James gasped theatrically, which made Regulus laugh. “It’s not stupid!” he demanded.
Regulus just rolled his eyes. “Come on, James, love at first sight doesn’t exist. It doesn’t even make any sense.”
“What do you mean, it doesn’t make sense? It makes perfect sense! And it’s so romantic, imagine just meeting someone and immediately knowing that they’re the one!”
“But how can you love someone when you don’t know anything about them? It’s ridiculous, you can’t fall in love with someone just because you saw them, you have to get to know them.” Even that felt like a stretch in his own mind, but he didn’t dare say that—he often wondered if his mother and father truly loved each other. And if it made everything better or worse if they truly did. Because if they didn’t, it would explain some things, but it would also make it somehow more tragic; but if they did, wouldn’t that just mean that you hurt the people you love anyway? He was sure they didn’t love him. And he was sure he was never going to love anyone. But he couldn’t say any of that out loud, not to a hopeless romantic that he was learning James absolutely was.
“So you don’t believe in love at first sight?” James asked, his voice strangely quiet.
“No.”
“Right.”
And Regulus knew he had said something wrong, but he had no idea what it could have been. He had refrained from saying all of the weird things because he knew they were weird and because he so desperately wanted James to like him. But it was still not enough.
//
James seemed to develop new passions very quickly and get very excited about them, and for some reason, he decided one day that he had to find out everything he could about the stars. Well, for some reason—because of Regulus. He had learned that James’s middle name was Fleamont, like his dad, and so Regulus said that his was Arcturus, and they continued the whole conversation from the first day they met. Except this time, James decided it was to be his newfound passion.
So, naturally, they had to go stargazing.
For once, Regulus was the more knowledgeable about a topic, although he found that he preferred listening to James rather than doing all of the talking himself. He was not a very natural teacher, like James seemed to be. It was probably a family thing, because his parents were both professors. Could such a thing be a family thing? Regulus always secretly hoped that genes were actually fake and he wouldn’t end up like them.
“I don’t see anything,” James declared.
“What do you mean? How can you see nothing?”
“Well, it doesn’t make any sense, does it? The stars are completely random and yet they are supposed to look like animals or something and to be honest, I can’t see anything at all. I looked it up in a book—” Of course he did, Regulus thought. “—and there were these little pictures and like, okay, if you squint and imagine a kid painted them, I guess you can kind of see it, but who the hell saw it in the first place?”
“People who were more artistic than you, apparently.”
“Hey!”
Regulus smiled. “Don’t you think it would be really boring if there were literal pictures in the sky?”
“Well… yeah, I guess. But don’t you think that they’re just completely arbitrary? Like if we looked at them, do you think we would come up with the same pictures as we’re supposed to?”
“I would.”
James frowned and that’s when Regulus realized he wasn’t just saying all that because he needed to say something. It genuinely bothered him for some reason. Regulus had no idea why, but it was—well, he had never thought about it like that. James made him think about things in a different way and it was… nice. Strange and not something Regulus ever did, but nice.
“I’m gonna find a new one. And it’s gonna be so important that they’ll put it in textbooks,” James declared importantly and then squinted up at the sky. “Probably not right away but I’ll find a new constellation and you get to keep the boring old ones.”
Indeed, in the following hours, he proceeded to point out several potential ones, mostly just small clusters of stars—that one was a bow you’d see on a dog, and there was one in the shape of a star, wasn’t that ironic, and then he started to tell made-up stories about them. He asked Regulus about his two stars, though, and Regulus dutifully searched for them, not being able to see anything other than what he had already been taught.
“Did I ruin the stars for you?” James asked quietly when it got so late that the stars provided the only light, and Regulus closed his eyes because he didn’t want to look at them anymore.
Regulus shook his head. James could never ruin anything for him; Regulus always managed to do all of that on his own. “I hope you find your constellation, James,” he replied softly.
//
The heatwave was broken with a heavy rain, but Regulus went over to James’s anyway. His mother was strangely busy lately—the busyness wasn’t that strange, but she had always found time to reprimand him, and there had been nothing of that all summer. But Regulus was happy or if not happy, he was feeling something, so he didn’t dare question it and just went.
He liked rain but he had always been scared of thunder. It felt like the sky was punishing them and just like it was in his life, he couldn’t always figure out the reason for the punishment. But rain itself was nice and there was no thunder that time.
James, because he was James, insisted on going out without an umbrella, despite his mother’s protests. In the last few weeks of summer, it was constantly raining, and they went outside a lot, because James declared that such a thing as rain couldn’t stop them. And always, there was no umbrella, though Regulus refused to do the same.
There wasn’t much to do around, especially not when it was pouring, but the time spent with James was never boring. They sat on the ground and watched people running around. “They all have umbrellas,” Regulus pointed out. “Or a hoodie. Or—see that one, they have newspapers over their head. What is it with the umbrella thing, James?”
“I like water,” James replied in typical James-fashion.
“I like water too but that doesn’t mean I have to feel it for two weeks straight. It has to be so uncomfortable in your wet clothes.”
“Your clothes are wet too.”
“Because you made me sit on the ground!”
James smiled his bright smile. “The only dry part of you is your head.”
“That’s still better than nothing, though,” Regulus argued. “Can you even see?”
And James looked at the sky, his eyes drowning behind his glasses, and laughed with his mouth open. “Not at all!” Regulus laughed at him except you can’t laugh at someone when they’re laughing too, and after a while, he set the umbrella aside, and James let out an excited scream. He reached out to ruffle Regulus’s hair except it was already completely stuck to his head, but it just made them laugh harder. “See, it’s better, isn’t it?” he beamed. “It’s like swimming.”
And only because Regulus liked it when James talked did he ask, “How is it like swimming in any way?”
“You become one with the water,” he said. “You become the water and the water becomes you and together, you become something completely new.”
Regulus liked that thought. It would be so much better to become something completely new—not even someone, just something. Just a thing. Just water. He nodded and they sat in the rain until Regulus was shivering. James wasn’t because he had the sun living inside of him, but he noticed, so they went to James’s house anyway, and changed into dry clothes. James read more poetry to him. It was about love again, but he didn’t say anything about it, just read it.
Still, Regulus couldn’t help thinking about love. What a strange concept that was.
“Have you ever been in love?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why do you believe in love then?”
That made James smile. “Because it’s everywhere around us.” Well, growing up with his parents, Regulus supposed James had to believe love existed. “It’s in the rain, too.”
“The rain’s wet. Why would love be wet?”
“Love is everything.”
“You don’t make any sense.” But he wondered, still, because it was everywhere—not love but the assumption of it. It’s the one thing to long for, to work towards, to truly desire, isn’t it? It’s eternal. And you can love your brother and your friend, or your family if you get really lucky, but it’s always just going to be platonic and not real. Not like the love between—between a boy and a girl. That was what everybody wanted in life and Regulus couldn’t imagine it ever happening for him.
“Come outside.”
Regulus groaned. “James, we just came back!”
“It’s not raining anymore! I wanna see if there’s a rainbow.”
They went outside again in search of a rainbow, Regulus wearing James’s comfortable and too-big clothes. There was no rainbow and James looked genuinely sad, which was kind of funny but also kind of heartbreaking. He seemed determined to look for one until he found it, physics be damned, but instead, they ran into a group of boys yelling at something.
Regulus immediately grabbed James’s hand. “Come on, let’s go,” he told him. He wasn’t scared; he knew how to fight, had been taught by his brother. Sometimes, it felt so good to just be able to punch something or someone. But Regulus didn’t want to fight anyone, and he certainly didn’t want to see James fight anyone. He seemed too fragile for the sort of confrontation that was surely to come out of this group of teenage boys.
“Regulus, they’re hurting it!” James said, pain in his voice, and Regulus snapped his head around to see what he was talking about.
There was a bird on the ground, and it seemed that the boys had been throwing rocks at it. “James, let’s go,” he said softly.
“We can’t just let them!” he said.
Regulus had to force himself from not snapping at him; had to bite down on his tongue, hard, to not say something stupid. It’s just a bird, you stupid idiot. He could hear his own mother talking and he refused to do that to James. So he shoved James behind him and walked toward the boys, schooling his face into the careful façade once again. “Get out of here. You think it’s funny, throwing rocks at dumb birds?” As expected, the boys just found him funny, so he pushed one of them, hard enough that he stumbled. “Get out!” he yelled. “Get out!” They didn’t seem too inclined to listen until there was a noise behind them and several people came out of a shop. Then they thankfully turned around and ran, though they did spare several insults in Regulus’s way.
James was already kneeling on the ground by the bird and once again, Regulus wanted to shout at him, because what if it was sick or something. Instead, he came over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “James,” he said softly.
“It’s dead.”
“Don’t cry. I’m sorry.”
James looked up at him with his eyes full of tears and Regulus wondered what he was even doing here. “Can we bury it?”
“Hmm.”
And so they did. And as they walked home, they were quiet, but James held his hand.
//
Regulus had nightmares often but that night, they were worse than usual. They were full of monsters wearing human faces, as they always were, except now, they changed into birds as well. When he woke up, he felt like he was going to die. His head was burning, and his throat was so dry he felt like he was going to suffocate.
Then his mother entered the door, looking absolutely furious. “What is the matter with you, Regulus?”
“What?” he croaked, unable to speak because of his throat.
“Why were you calling me like a lunatic?”
Oh, God. “I’m—sorry. I was having bad dreams. I just woke up. I think I’m sick.”
“That’s what you get for strutting around in the rain, haven’t I told you a million times, Regulus?” He nodded, feeling tears well up in his eyes and oh, that was not good at all. Her eyes narrowed. “Stop crying, Regulus, you are not a child.”
“Sorry,” he said quietly.
“I will send someone for medicine. Stay in bed.”
“Yeah.”
And then she was gone, and Regulus let himself cry into the pillow because he just wanted his mother—no, not his mother, a mother, any mother other than his, to hold him and take care of him when he was sick. He was sure James’s mother would be so worried about him and would make him soup and would brush his hair out of his face.
Eventually, when the tears were all gone, a doctor came and declared it to be the flu. He was to stay in bed for several days and was given medicine to take regularly. His mother looked like this was the worst thing he had ever done in his entire life, but she always looked like that when he did something wrong. He had already cried, he wasn’t going to do it again.
The worst thing was that he was not going to be able to spend time with James. He could probably find his number, he was sure, but his mother wouldn’t allow him to get out of bed and she would be absolutely furious if she caught him on the phone with somebody. She would never approve of James. She didn’t approve of anyone; not even her own sons.
Desperately, Regulus wished for Sirius. There was no way to reach him, either; he had completely disappeared. Or perhaps he had tried calling, was trying every day, and their mother didn’t allow it. But Regulus doubted it. Sirius always tended to do things all or nothing, and he had already left Regulus behind. There was no reason for him to be thinking about his little brother now. No reason at all.
Life was extremely boring when you were stuck in bed, so Regulus charted the constellations he knew in a notepad, and then tried to come up with new ones. He couldn’t; they all ended up like connect the dots, which wasn’t right at all. There was nothing creative in taking a picture and reducing lines to dots. There was nothing creative inside of him whatsoever.
He had more of the weird bird dreams, and he wondered what James was doing. If he missed him. If he found a new friend in the meantime. James had never mentioned any other friends, but it was hard to imagine he didn’t have any; everybody must have wanted to be his friend. He knew how to talk to people in a way Regulus could never comprehend, let alone replicate. Perhaps by the time he got better, James would have already moved on, and they would never see each other again.
He tried sketching a new constellation and ended up ripping the paper in so many pieces, they were stars on their own. Still, they were just pieces and never a whole picture.
Time went by, each day the same, and Regulus didn’t know why he had ever gone outside before. He was content to stay in his room and waste away like an oversized cockroach. He read Metamorphosis twice because he had it in his room for some reason and felt just like that; a burden to his family, nothing but a bug to be swept up when finally dead.
When the fever finally disappeared and the “several days to spend in bed” went by, he went to beg his mother to be let outside. He found her in the kitchen, staring at a letter. Instantly, she snapped at him, “Why aren’t you in bed?”
“I feel fine,” he said. “Can I please—”
“Go back to bed, now!”
“But—”
“Regulus, I swear to—”
“Oh, Walburga, let the boy be,” his father said, and Regulus instantly froze. How long had it been since he had even talked to his father? He certainly never went out of his way to engage in conversation with him and his father had been shut in his study all summer. “Go on, Reg, go outside. There’s only a week of summer left, what’s he going to do inside?”
His mother threw her hands up. “Go on then!” she told him sharply. “I need to talk to your father in private.”
So Regulus went, not even thinking about where he was going, except he ended up in front of James’s house, of course. Where else? He stood in front of the door, contemplating what he should do, and if it was weird to ring the bell. Had James truly forgotten him?
The door opened suddenly, and it scared him so much, he stumbled back. Euphemia Potter was looking down at him, a wide smile that resembled her son’s on her face. “Regulus! Is everything okay? Come on in, James is in his room.” He knew where it was, of course, but she still led him through the house, asking him where he had been and acting like the picture of the perfect mother when he replied that he had been sick.
James didn’t appear to have forgotten him. “Regulus!” he shouted excitedly when he saw him.
“Hey.”
“Hey! Where have you been?”
For some reason, Regulus was unable to answer this time, instead finding, horrified, that his eyes were filling with tears. And because James was James and his mother was perfect, he was immediately by his side, guiding him to sit down and resting his hand on Regulus’s shoulder to calm him down. “What happened?” he asked gently.
“My father was nice to me.”
And it didn’t even make sense, certainly not to someone like James, but he didn’t say anything, just moved his hand so that he could run it up and down his back. So Regulus cried because James didn’t say that he was a child, and because he had seen James cry, too, and he hadn’t thought that he was a child. He cried and he cried and he cried, until there were no more tears and he was just shriveled up like an old, unwanted bug.
“I had the flu,” he finally said. “I woke up with a fever after the—after we saw each other last.”
“Oh,” James said, deflating a little. “That’s probably my fault. My mom always says I’ll catch something if I don’t use an umbrella. And I never have but…”
“It’s okay. It’s not your fault. I’m okay now.”
He turned his head just a bit, only to see the smile that was sure to appear on James’s face. “Well, I’m glad you’re okay! I was worried we wouldn’t see each other for the rest of summer and my mom says I should already start packing, even though there’s still a week left! Don’t you think a week’s a lot?”
“What do you meant, start packing?”
James looked at him strange. “To go to school?”
“What?”
“I go to a boarding school.”
Regulus couldn’t remember ever talking about school with James but surely they must have; or his mother or father might have mentioned it; it didn’t matter, not really, because the implication was clear. “Oh,” he said.
“Yeah, I know. I mean, I’d rather stay here but it’s closer to my parents when they’re at uni, you know, and…”
“Yeah, no, of course.” Why would his world ever revolve around Regulus? He had his own little one and even if he hadn’t forgotten Regulus, it didn’t mean that he played any important role in his life whatsoever.
“But I’ll write to you!” James said quickly because he was surely realizing the exact same thing. “Yeah, of course I’ll write to you and—”
“My parents won’t let me read it,” Regulus said. And that was such a strange concept to James Potter than he immediately shut his mouth. Except it wasn’t his fault, not understanding bad parents, was it, and Regulus felt so bad about the expression on James’s face now. “It’s fine, it doesn’t—it’s fine. You’ll be here next summer, right?”
“What if I sent the letters somewhere else?” James asked. He was such an optimist and Regulus couldn’t understand that either, like he couldn’t understand anything in life, but it was somewhat endearing anyway. “Like to your school?”
“That would probably be even worse,” he replied but made sure to sound gentle this time. If this boy couldn’t be crushed by this horrible world, Regulus would make sure not to crush him either.
“Okay, well… I could send them to the library? Yeah, okay, that’s stupid. Or—or…” And then his entire face lit up. “I can send them here! We won’t be here, but the house will, and I can give you my copy of the key to the mailbox and you can get the letters!” He was so happy, so proud of this little idea, and Regulus didn’t want to crush the world, so of course he said yes.
//
It was raining on the last day of summer and when they went outside, James took an umbrella. His mother looked shocked and even Regulus couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Euphemia winked at him. “I knew you’d be a good influence!” she said, which made him blush and he hid his face behind his own umbrella. His was black and James’s was colorful, of course. He was complaining about something, as usual; he had wanted to spend the evening stargazing again, still determined to find his own constellation. Regulus never told him about his artistic endeavors to create one on paper. He hadn’t tried since, hiding all of the torn-up pieces of paper in his trash, ever paranoid of his mother snooping.
They sat on a bus stop, looking around. Regulus wasn’t a very nostalgic person, but he still wanted to make this day meaningful, so he was desperately searching for some words inside of him.
For some reason, he said, “I have a brother.”
“You do?” James exclaimed, as if that was the most amazing piece of information he had ever come across. Regulus had gotten used to this by now. “I always wanted a sibling! I don’t know why my parents didn’t have any more kids, it must be so cool! What’s your brother like?”
“He’s—” It was so difficult to describe Sirius Black, he thought. He was indescribable. Where Regulus was nothing special, dull at best, Sirius was the complete opposite of him. “He’s gone.”
“Oh.”
“Not—he’s not dead,” Regulus said quickly. Might as well be, he thought bitterly. “He just left.”
“Like… for uni?”
Regulus laughed bitterly. “No. He’s only two years older than me. He left over a year ago.”
“Why?”
There was a plethora of reasons, but Regulus settled on the one that was the cause of most of them. “Because our parents are not very nice people.”
James nodded carefully, as if afraid he would say something wrong and ruin it. It was already ruined. “Do you miss him?”
He couldn’t do anything else but nod.
“I’m sorry. What’s his name?”
“Guess.”
“What?”
Regulus finally smiled, though only a little. “My name is Regulus Arcturus. Do you honestly think his name is John?”
“Oh, okay. I don’t know the names of many stars, though. Like, where do I even start?” His eyebrows were furrowed together as he was thinking. “See, we should’ve gone stargazing! Let me think, I’m gonna get it.”
“I’m sure you will.”
“Shut up. Okay… Why can’t I think of any stars? Is it similar to yours?”
“Well, it’s a star,” Regulus said sarcastically. “It stars with an ‘S’.”
“Oh! Is it… the sun?”
That made Regulus laugh way too hard. It wasn’t even that funny, but it was the last day of summer. He laughed until James joined him. “No,” he said eventually. “That would be you.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Just tell me then,” he whined. “I seriously can’t think of a single one. Oh, wait! Is it star?”
Regulus laughed again. “No, it’s not, you idiot. It’s Sirius.”
James made a face. “Okay, now I feel kinda stupid. That’s like… a big one, right?”
“That’s the brightest one.”
“Except for the sun.”
A pause. “Yeah. Except for the sun.”
The sky eventually cleared, and James quizzed Regulus on constellations. Regulus was tempted to just make something up because James would never know but he couldn’t make himself do it, so if he didn’t know an answer to something, he just said it, and then James would come up with his own story.
And then he suddenly jumped onto his feet. “Look!” he shouted and pointed somewhere, Regulus had no idea where. He started running away, his umbrella forgotten, and Regulus shouted after him. He thought that maybe James would just run away from him, and Regulus would never see him again, but James stopped by the side of the road and was crouching down by the grass.
Regulus slowly made his way over, both umbrellas in his hand. And there James was, with another damn bird. “What is it with you and birds?” he asked dryly. He was angry with him, for some reason, not for caring but for caring about something else other than Regulus, except that was ridiculous, because there wasn’t a world in which James didn’t care about every single little thing. Maybe that was why he cared about him, too; not because he liked him but because it was against his nature not to.
What was that saying? Out of sight, out of mind. He was going to forget, forget Regulus and the summer and his plans to find a new constellation and Regulus, and he was so tired of being forgotten.
“I’m going home,” he said, not waiting for an answer, instead turning around and running, faster than he ever had in his entire life.