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It starts off sweet.
James Potter, with warm, chocolate-coloured eyes and tousling, deep, dark hair, walks into the Great Hall and all eyes turn to him. This isn't new. James Potter is the personification of sunshine and silliness. He’s kind, he’s good, and he’s so very warm it radiates off him like rays. The way the planets circle the sun, people circle James, drift towards him, want to get to know him and learn to love him, desperate to know what it means to be loved by him. He's the bright days of summer, and the cosiness of fall—a charming, handsome boy who people gravitate to.
Regulus Black, with eyes of daggers, a sharp, piercing silver, and hair the colour of a raven’s feathers and the darkest parts of the ocean, walks into the Great Hall and all eyes turn to him. This isn’t new. Regulus Black steps into the room and with him comes the harsh winds of a blizzard. He’s cruel, Draconian, and cold—so cold his veins are blue paint streaks that wrap around his skin like tendrils. Winter is as beautiful as it was daunting, and Regulus Black is the very season personified. People marvel at snowflake patterns like students marvel at Regulus Black, too mesmerised to look away, but too afraid of freezing to reach out and touch.
James Potter and Regulus Black walk into the Great Hall, and all eyes turn to them.
Except, today, it was not solely for seeking out James' warmth or feeling hypnotised by Regulus’ allure.
This time, these eyes were drawn to their hands, fingers intertwined, shoulders brushing against one another. James is wearing his usual, sparkly smile and Regulus' expression is as brutal as a blizzard, yet they walk together like they're meant to be.
The silence stretches seconds too long before the room breaks into an uproar, disbelief and shock dressing the faces of all of Hogwarts students'.
Per Regulus' insistence, James is walked to the Gryffindor table, and only then do they let go of each other. James leans up, pressing a soft kiss to the sharp cut of Regulus' jaw, and Regulus' delicate, demure smile has James ears burning red.
“I’ll see you after dinner, then, Jamie,” Regulus whispers for only James’ to hear waiting for James to nod before walking off with his head held high. James’ eyes do not leave him until he is sitting in between Barty Crouch Jr. and Pandora LeStrange, the latter hugging him tightly with a wide smile, the former ruffling his hair with a good-natured smirk.
“What the fuck?” Sirius breaks the silence. "What the fuck, what the fuck?"
James cannot wipe the dopey look off his face.
“Well…”
Yes, it starts off so very sweet.
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Three months pass weathered with a love so overwhelmingly absolute it rattles the very definitions of James Potter and Regulus Black.
Rumours circle them, louder and more outrageous by the passing day, but neither party care to give it any attention, cut up in one another's hurricanes.
It's undeniable that something raw and emphatic about the love shared between the two young boys. James Potter would paint himself on the canvases of Regulus Black, oil paint that would melt off the cotton and down the walls. Regulus' perfect portraits of poise and pose with backgrounds riddled with eyes and eyes—ice-blue, scrutinising, patronising eyes—would wash with paint spill in red and green, become abstract beauty with gold and silver threads.
A massacre for a painting, details in the thin brush strokes that would spell out the love they held for one another.
A gruesome, violent love.
Regulus loved like a man who drowned. He loved like tomorrow would never come, and would treat seconds between them like they could stretch for hours, days and years if pulled taut enough—forgetting string snapped. He loved desperately, outrageously—loved until it reached into him and ripped him to pieces. He believed that someone as lovely as James could mend him together—again, and again, and again—just to hold him for those few seconds longer, and so he did not care to come undone a thousand times over.
And James Potter did.
He did not care that Regulus' edges were sharp enough to slice down to his seventh layer of skin, willingly bled out to meet his razor-edged glare. Regulus' touch was cold enough to turn James' fingers blue, his tongue hot enough to burn his gums. James did not care that Regulus' scars would double themselves onto his own skin, or how his palms would turn pink in his effort to scrub those scars off Regulus' body knowing it was a fruitless effort.
So James Potter would paint himself into Regulus' perfect portraits of poise and pose with backgrounds riddled with eyes and eyes—ice-blue, scrutinising, patronising—and lap at the colours that bled the walls—gruesome, too.
Regulus loved like a man who drowned, so James loved like a man who set forests on fire. He loved like he could—and he would—destroy the world for them. He loved until the walls between them turned to ash, away with the winds—loved until it cleaved his soul in two. If it meant staining his fingertips red with blood, James Potter would rip out his heart. Madness would promise to be his ruining, and James succumbed, subordinate to Regulus Black, a deer with his neck bared for the hunter's bullet on the fragile chance it meant having them reach in to pull it out
Yes, three months of love so abhorrently wretched it rattles the very definitions of Regulus Black and James Potter.
Three months.
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Along the rumours lies a question that never goes unasked whenever the relationship between Regulus Black and James Potter is discussed.
‘How?’
'How do two people who mix like oil and water love?’
‘Can the good and untainted purify the rotten and sinful?’
‘Can the calm and shrewd temper the sporadic and wild?’
‘Will the too sweet and kind fester further rot in the ruined?’
‘Will the too smart and powerful wither the bones of the soft?
‘How do two people who mix like oil and water love, and how do they love so impossibly and dangerously and intimately?’
‘How?’
It is a question that never goes unasked and yet is never answered.
It simply was that James Potter and Regulus Black love.
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Sirius Black is a sceptic.
He asks James, a week after he and Regulus walk into the Great Hall hand in hand, why.
“Why him, James?”
James Potter is not surprised. He knows Sirius is angry because he has raised him since Sirius was 11 years old. James is the boy who taught him how to feel when Sirius was led to believe that feeling made him vulnerable and vulnerability made him weak. He taught him to wear a heart on his sleeve along with the one beating in his chest, to prove to the world that tears were not made of acid, and love did not have to poison you. He drew the wrinkles on Sirius' face, and so he is the most intimate with Sirius' expressions.
He knows Sirius is angry, knows he’s been stewing in it.
But when Sirius asks why, James, for the first time since they were 11 years old, does not let him feel the anger and sit in it until it seeps out of him in vulgarity and screams. The heart on Sirius' sleeve still beats, but James' eyes bore into the heart caged in Sirius’ chest, instead.
“Because I love him.”
Sirius is a sceptic. Sirius is James' brother.
“He’ll ruin you. We are not good people. We were not made by good people, and Regulus only knows them. He didn’t have you, he didn’t have others.”
James closes his eyes and smiles.
Oh.
“He did. He had others.” James’ face is a warm shade of russet. “And now he has me, and I love him. What more is there?”
Sirius remains a sceptic.
Sirius is James’ brother.
(He was Regulus’ once too.)
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Evan Rosier and Barty Crouch Jr are approached by Sirius Black one morning.
“Is Regulus in love with James?”
Barty blinks up at him.
“Yes.”
Evan, in the same breath, says, “They ruin each other.”
Sirius’ eyes blow wide.
“Then why are they together?”
“Because they love each other,” Evan answers simply.
Barty raises their intertwined hands and kisses Evan’s knuckles.
“Like we are.”
“And you ruin each other?”
Evan laughs. He cannot help it. Barty looks at him like he’s the only person to exist, and Sirius feels something harden in his stomach. Evan laughs and laughs, lowers their hands, leaning into Barty’s side so they fit together—puzzle pieces. (Regulus and James fit each other too. Love each other too.)
“Yes.”
Evan smiles.
“Every night, every day. And yet, we love each other.”
(Sirius' thoughts drift to Remus, and it makes sense, but he does not want it to. James and Regulus were different; loved differently.)
Sirius Black does not approach them again after that.
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It isn’t much of a secret that the children of the Black family are mad. The monikers, reputations and nicknames that follow them are rather elaborate and especially cruel. They called Bella ‘Bitch Killer’ and Narcissa ‘The Puritan Whore’ for a scandal that followed shortly after her betrothal to Lucius in their fifth year when a rumour went around that she never let him touch her because she was having rendezvous with Alice Fortescue, whom Frank Longbottom was courting. (Regulus remembers the tears she shed when she’d broken things off with the Fortescue. Narcissa rarely cried. It was a sight that reminded Regulus that those of the Black family would only ever fall in love once, and love forever after.)
Regulus himself was labelled ‘The Snake’s Ice Prince’: a boy who could speak in parseltongue and whose gaze was often compared to the eyes of Medusa, able to turn bystanders to stone. By Hogwarts' 'Golden Boy' Potter, it was comical. How someone as wicked as Regulus stood by someone as brilliant as James was a mystery. How someone as frivolous as James stood by someone as sharp as Regulus was senile. It was audacious, like provoking a higher power.
Preposterous, preposterous.
The Black children were mad.
No matter how in love they were. No matter how so in love they were.
(And so in love they are.)
Come the day the moniker no longer follows Regulus Black, come the day he is no longer deemed ‘mad’, they will find peace. Otherwise, it is impossible.
Not The Snake’s Ice Prince and Hogwarts’ Golden Boy.
Impossible.
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Sirius remains a sceptic.
For James is his brother.
And Regulus was once too.
But it is not their love he questions.
It is not the depths of it.
It is not their sincerity.
Sirius remains a sceptic because he knows how difficult it is to love someone who burns to hold, how difficult it is to kiss someone who took away all your oxygen. If James is the sun, Regulus is the moon. If Regulus is a star, James is the night sky.
But if James is the sun and Regulus is a star, then Regulus is destined to burn out should they ever find each other among such a sea of moons and the night-sky.
He knows they will love each other to death.
(Because James is his brother.
And Regulus is too.)
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Regulus is made up of broken memories.
Unlike Sirius, who had found love outside the walls of their home, Regulus only knew of his parents’ approval and his brother’s rebellion. Love, for Regulus, came in the harsh words of his mother and the lashes on the back of his legs and down his spine. His mother gave him a guidebook with rules to follow down to the cross of its Ts and dots of its Is. She told him that he’d find the love he desperately craved from her in between the lines of the final page, but to read between the lines he'd have to carve that doctrine on the flesh of his organs.
To groom the perfect spare.
They forgot that Regulus was his brother’s first, a rebel in his heart even if he did not wear it on his skin as Sirius did. So, at one point, he found himself illiterate to the rules she wrote, her approval but a daydream that left him in tears on odd days. Never did his eyes swell, never did he sniffle, nor did he brood. Regulus became a person outside his mother’s wishes, and coped by pretending those parts of him that adhered to her did not exist.
—broken memories.
Sometimes he fears that those gaping wounds he’d cut into himself will forever remain void. Sometimes he fears he’ll stitch them up with love until they burst, leaving Regulus but an explosion of blood, guts and tears.
Sometimes he fears he’ll forever be nothing but broken memories that he'll never unlearn how to damn them all even if he so desperately wanted to remember them whole.
(Sometimes he’s afraid they’ll piece themselves together again.
And he’ll remember exactly why he broke them, first.)
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Magnets attract and repel.
Sometimes Regulus wonders if he and James will ever meet.
Oil and water will never mix.
So why is it that opposites attract?
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Brave.
James is brave.
Gryffindor brave.
Brave enough to love Regulus to ruins for three months.
Brave enough to ask Regulus, one morning, to meet his friends. He asks Regulus, one morning, three months in, if Regulus is willing to climb the branches of James that extend past him. If he’s willing to learn the parts of him he bears to the world that Regulus once upon a time shunned.
“I’m not sure.”
James gently reaches for Regulus’ face, fingers caressing his cheek, slotting their bodies together so all he feels is the ice-cold touch of Regulus' skin, a sear against his own. He leans forward, pressing his lips to the dark freckle beneath Regulus' right eye, the one at the underside of his jaw, and the centre of his Adam's apple on his neck.
Regulus sighs in contentment.
“Por favor, Mi Estrella,” James pleads. “I want them to get to know the man I'm in love with.”
“How unfair of you, Soleil,” Regulus huffs, though his lips twitch into a smile. “How am I supposed to say no to that?”
“Don’t,” James replies with a cheeky grin, pressing another kiss to Regulus’ collarbone. Regulus reaches for his hair and raises his head again, pulling him in for a long, languid kiss that leaves them both slightly breathless as they pull away. James stares at Regulus—silver eyes, pale skin, pink lips, beauty marks and slight freckles—and thinks ‘beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.’ “Come on, come with me.”
“I’ll think about it,” Regulus rolls his eyes. “Now kiss me.”
Naturally, James does.
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“S'il te plaît, ne lâche pas ma main,” Regulus whispers quietly.
James shoots him a look.
“What was that love?”
“No, nothing,” Regulus dismisses, “let’s head off then.”
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They have a conversation the day before their official entrance at the Great Hall.
Regulus tells James that eyes—ice-blue, scrutinising, patronising—follow him everywhere, even when they do not, and that it makes him want to shed his skin. He feels ill in his clothes; feels like ripping his hair out of his skull. He tells James that it’s hard, so very hard, to just…let go and be.
He reminds James that they are not alike, never have been. Regulus does not like crowds and does not like to be watched because he’s spent his entire life being criticised for every breath he takes that's a second too short. He reminds James that Regulus' friends are not his as James' friends are not Regulus', and that James shouldn't forget that goodness runs in the blood of Gryffindors that does not run in the blood of others.
James tells them they’ll take it slowly. James tells him he’ll love him hard enough to make him forget everyone else’s eyes and remember only the warmth of James’ stare.
They have this conversation the day before their official entrance at the Great Hall.
Regulus Black marks the day in his calendar:
James' Promise.
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“Are you sure you’ll be alright, Reg?” Pandora asks Regulus as they lounge on his bed. Barty and Evan are with them, Dorcas having run off on a date with her girlfriend.
Pandora is a little worried, truthfully.
James and Regulus love each other so much and so differently.
Regulus is happy, but she knows happiness this intense will only snuff out just as brutally.
“James knows about how…how I get,” he explains vaguely. Pandora understands. Regulus talks about gazes that follow him, talks about memories that come in broken puzzle pieces, always incomplete, eyes drawn into the spaces of each picture—ice-blue, scrutinising, patronising. “He loves me. I love him. We’ll be fine.”
Yes.
They love each other to ruin.
But her friends have never known any other kind of love.
“Alright, but don’t be afraid to leave the moment it gets too much.”
“I'll be alright, James will be there.”
Can Pandora trust that?
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Regulus is made up of broken memories.
In these memories, he is always being watched. (Eyes: ice-blue, scrutinising, patronising)
James knows this.
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Dim lighting and loud music that Regulus feels run up his toes to match the beat of his heart. The atmosphere is friendly. (Everyone in the room is a Gryffindor. They are all James’ friends and his only.) This was no celebration, merely a fun get-together.
Regulus presses closer to James.
“Nice to meet you properly, Baby Black.”
He tries not to startle as a girl with brown skin and a short stature springs up behind him, full lips pulled in a smile, cheeks red with blush. His fingers gripping the ends of James’ shirt tighten, knuckles going white.
Regulus nods and quietly mumbles, “Likewise.”
“It’s Mary Macdonald, by the way.”
“Regulus.”
Macdonald. He knows the name, a muggle-born Avery hexed brutally after he asked her out and got turned down ruthlessly—a brave lass.
No wonder she’s a Gryffindor.
James turns around.
“Mary,” he greets with a grin, “nice of you to introduce yourself.”
Regulus rears back slightly to wrap an arm around James’ waist, feeling on edge in the crowded room. It’s not a rave, not too large of a party. Regulus has been to plenty worse, and recognises that all things considered it was rather tame. But then, he was surrounded by Slytherins and always within eye-shot of his friends, near enough to grab onto them when the room felt too loud. He knew where he was, knew who he was with.
He’s an outcast here.
“Well, I thought I’d first introduce your little lover to the best at the party,” Macdonald jokes with a smile, playfully poking James’ shoulder. “Now I’m off to snog Lily, see you in a bit James. Later, Baby Black.”
“C’mon, love,” James gently guides Regulus around the room as Macdonald wanders off. “Let’s say hi to everyone else.”
“Hello.”
Regulus finds James' hand and intertwines their fingers. James squeezes his hand.
“Hi.”
There are too many people, good kind people who are a year or two older, and Regulus suddenly feels so very young.
“Hey! Regulus, right?”
He is no more than 4’ 0 tall by them, a mouse. His eyes wander to the ceilings, and he schools his expression, trying to keep the rest of them from seeing the very soft parts of him he’d only reserved for James.
“Oh, nice to finally meet James’ little lover.”
He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to come. He wasn’t ready. They still loved a little too much and a little too selfishly. There are too many people.
“He’s a cute one, Potter.”
He feels scrutinised. He knows he’s being scrutinised. He knows they’re glaring down at him, staring down at him. He shouldn’t be there. He shouldn’t be there. But James is smiling at them, and he’s very happy, and Regulus loves James.
“Never thought I’d see the day, if I’m being honest.”
James hasn’t let go of his hand, and Regulus decides that he’ll be fine if so long as he doesn’t let go. James promised to love him hard enough to make him forget the brush of his clothes against his skin.
“Hi there!”
James’ grip loosens and Regulus’ tightens in response. He sees his boyfriend cast him a curious look, but Regulus does not care. He swore. He promised.
“Well, he is pretty.”
He promised.
They approach Sirius next. He’s chatting with a blonde that James greeted briefly who left at their notice, offering Regulus a nod. Remus is right by him, one arm around his waist and the other nursing a red cup.
“Hello there Regulus, Prongs. Remus presses a kiss to Sirius’ cheek briefly, telling him, “I’m going to get a refill and have a chat with Peter, you lot can catch up.”
He quickly bids them farewell and is off.
Sirius greets Regulus with a smile that sits on his features so tightly wrinkles form on the bridge of his nose as if he’s breathing in an unpleasant smell. He stares at their hands, intertwined, and the wrinkles deepen. Regulus knows his brother well, far better than Sirius could ever think.
He must think Regulus is too fragile to love James as he is. (Perhaps he is right, but they love like infernos and tsunamis. They love like they are stars destined to burn out for one another. Regulus is fine burning out first, a star in a constellation that’s as blue as their mother’s eyes, destined to die out and die young. The sun may be a star but, James is the sun—will burn for millenniums. Regulus is fine with that if it means being with James.)
“Hello, Reg.”
'Cordial.'
“Sirius.”
Still, his heart in his throat.
This is hard, this is too much, Regulus is choking on the air. He needs to get out. He needs to leave. He wants James to hold up the broken parts of him again.
If they repel, let James force them to not let go. If there is a distance, let them destroy it until it leaves them for dead.
To go. To go. To go.
Sirius’ brow furrows.
“Reg are—”
“Oh, James!”
Regulus hiccups.
James turns his head, a smile breaking out on his face. His eyes meet those of a redhead with a hooked, Greek nose and freckled cheeks. For a moment, his eyes drift to Regulus. (He's staring at Regulus.)
“Fabian!”
James looks at Regulus, a casual smile sitting on his features.
Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go.
“I’ll be right back, love, go around and make friends.”
He drops his hand.
Regulus goes ice-cold, feels his skin, his clothes. He can taste colours, his brain is melting out of his ears, he's shrinking, he's in pain—he's being watched. The music is loud. It's too loud. It’s too much.
(He promised.)
Eyes—ice-blue, scrutinising, patronising—everywhere. All on him. All at once. James left. James let go.
(He promised.)
Was this his mistake? Falling in love with someone so out of reach? Opposites. Oil and water. Magnets that will always repel, and never attract.
(He promised.)
“Oi, Regulus are you—”
Regulus shoves past his brother. He reaches the table, grabs a solo cup, and pours himself a cup of the pungent-smelling punch. He kicks it back in one swig.
(He promised.)
And again.
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“You’re being ridiculous, Regulus Black.
“No one’s watching you.
“So stop making a scene before I give you a reason too.”
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And she did.
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Regulus finds James five cups in, swaying on his feet.
How long has it been?
An hour? Two?
He walks up to him and pulls him away from the people he is chattering with rudely, cutting off their conversation.
"Hey that was r—"
“I’m leaving,” Regulus says, “don’t fucking come with me.”
When he lets go to storm off, James grabs his wrist. Regulus feels the burn sear itself in the shape of James' fingers, and hates how much more aware he is of how cold he'd been. James left him cold. He let go of his hand.
“Regulus what—”
“No!” Regulus yanks his hand back. “No! You don’t get to hold my hand now!”
It's a movie-scene in real life, a theatre performance unfolding without the stage. Regulus' voice carries over the music like he's belting.
“Regulus what are you—”
“You— You let go of my hand!”
James looks flabbergasted, and it crushes Regulus’ bleeding heart. (He's drunk. He isn't thinking straight. But then again, James knows about the eyes that follow him. He made a promise and let Regulus be seen only to let go of his hand. He swore he'd make him forget their gazes and then left him to deal with being so exposed.
He let go of his hand. He dropped his hand.)
“You let go of my hand?! What am I supposed to do with that?!”
“What are you talking about I let go—”
“You let go of my hand, and I don’t know any of these people, and you know how hard it is for me to stand crowds, and y-you let go of my hand and—”
“What are you talking about?!” James interrupts loudly, repeating his words, matching Regulus’ tone.
“You. Dropped. My. Fucking. Hand!”
“I don’t even remember doing that—”
“These people are all strangers, they're all Gryffindors! You’re the only person I could trus—”
James' expression goes stern and Regulus wants to cry because how…how dare he? (He promised.)
“Seriously, what are you even talking about? I was catching up with my friends, and you’re talking about a moment I don’t— I don’t even remember. I just wanted to introduce you to these people, and you want to leave because I dropped your hand?”
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Regulus is made up of broken memories.
Paintings with unfinished brush strokes.
Eyes in the spaces, in the cracks of those memories. So many eyes.
“You’re being ridiculous, Regulus Black.
“No one’s watching you.
“So stop making a scene before I give you a reason too.”
He was given a guidebook, and in the margins, were drawings of his mother’s eyes. They follow him everywhere, so they follow him here, in a room of strangers he does not know who scrutinise his every move like she did. Who makes him feel as though he is no more than 4’ 0 tall. His knees are weak, want to give out and give into their judgment if it means they would turn away.
He says he was looking for his mother’s approval and love in between the lines of the final pages, but he knows he was really looking for a way to shield himself from her eyes. From their eyes. If he wrote the scripture into his flesh, then surely it could never be seen by the naked eye, and so he couldn't either.
He was afraid of filling up those cracks with so much love they’d burst, and so a thousand eyes would stare down at his pitiful self of guts, blood and tears.
Is it their fault for loving so strongly and so brokenly and so differently?
Still, oil and water.
The Snake’s Ice Prince and Hogwarts’ Golden Boy.
Drowning and forest fires.
Regulus Black and James Potter.
He promised.
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Regulus is made of broken memories.
In those memories, he is being watched. (Eyes: ice-blue, scrutinising, patronising.)
James Potter knows this.
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“Alright.” Regulus bows his head. His vision is swimming. “I’m sorry, James.”
And he runs.
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“I’m sorry, James.”
Wait. Wait. Wait.
Right.
He let go of his hand.
He dropped it.
He did. James did.
Right.
Shit, James dropped his hand.
Here, in a crowd of people whom Regulus did not know.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
He dropped his hand.
He wants to reach for it again.
He forgot.
He’s sorry.
He forgot.
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Regulus is made of broken memories.
This is one of them.
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Sirius Black is no longer a sceptic.
He asks James, the day after the party, as he’s wallowing in bed in misery, why?
“Why him, James?”
James is not surprised. Sirius is angry again, and it is for a different reason. He’d overheard the fight, most of the common room did. Regulus left with his head down and James ran after him only to return a minute later with tears in his eyes. James raised Sirius since he was 11 years old so he knows the anger he’s wearing is not one that has been stewing for days. It is louder and harsher. Has to be. (James and Regulus loved each other enough to fight each other, and that was different from pure ruin. Pure ruin was sinking one another into endless pits of nothing but misery disguised as love.)
It is the same answer, but it is said with dread.
“Because I love him.”
Sirius is no longer a sceptic. Sirius is James’ brother.
“You ruined him.” It is cruel. “I said he would ruin you, but you ruined him.”
James hangs his head. Sirius wants to slap him.
“Does he no longer have you?”
“In every universe,” James interjects, offended at the insinuation. “He has me in every universe. He always will.”
Sirius' lips drop into a sad smile.
“Then what more is there?”
Sirius is no longer a sceptic.
Because Sirius is James' brother.
And he is Regulus’, too.
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Evan Rosier and Barty Crouch Jr are approached by James Potter one morning.
“I am still in love with him.”
Their expressions are hostile.
“We may love each other to ruin,” Barty says, reaching over to undo Evan’s collar and show off a gleaming, bright love bite, “but we do not abandon one another.”
“I did not—”
“Why are you talking to us?” Evan interrupts, fixing his shirt, “Why not him?”
“Will he let me?”
Pity does not sit well on their cruel faces.
“Every night, every day, we ruin each other, and still, we love each other.”
Oh.
(The next time James Potter approaches them, it is at Regulus' mercy, and their glee.)
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The rumours start up rather quickly.
“I knew they wouldn’t last.”
“They were too different.”
“No matter how in love they are, people like them do not last.”
“The Snake’s Ice Prince and Hogwarts’ Golden Boy? Please, I’m surprised it lasted more than a week at all.”
“They did seem like they were in love.”
“Well don’t you know, those who love the hardest, fall the hardest too.
“They were impossible.”
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James is still Gryffindor brave three days after his fight with Regulus.
He turns himself into a spectacle.
It is a gesture for the world as the answer to a theatre come to life.
He approaches Regulus at the Slytherin table, a bouquet of black roses in hand, and plants his feet atop the food, kneeing to meet Regulus’ silver eyes.
Regulus looks up at him.
James casts, “Incendio.”
The roses burst into flames, ash on the table.
Regulus must know.
He must know.
James loves like a forest fire. James loves like he could set the world aflame. James’ love is hot. James is searing. James burns. The sun. The sun, a star. It is because Regulus loved like he drowned that James could love him with so much heat. The parts of Regulus left empty James could fill with the parts of him that overflowed. James gave Regulus oxygen, and Regulus put out the worst of the fires threatening to burn him alive.
Regulus reaches for his collar and pulls him in for a searing kiss.
“I’m sorry,” James says as they pull away.
“I know.”
“‘I’m so sorry.”
Regulus reaches for a single, scorched petal.
“You still love me like this, yes?”
“Always.”
Regulus smiles.
"My sweet boy."
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Regulus is made up of broken memories.
In these memories, he’s always being watched. (Eyes: ice-blue, scrutinising, patronising)
This memory remains intact.
For the eyes that watch him are chocolate brown and kind.
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They have a conversation the day after James’ great gesture in the Great Hall.
Regulus tells James that the eyes that follow him everywhere are the eyes of his mother—ice-blue, scrutinising, patronising. He tells him that she’d watch as he tore the skin off his muscles and pulled his hair out of his scalp, watch as he ripped off the clothes that made him feel ill, for they were the clothes tailored to her every liking, made for her eyes.
He reminds James that they are still not alike.
James tells them they’ll take it slowly. James tells him he’ll love him hard enough to make him forget everyone else’s eyes and remember only the warmth of James’ stare.
Regulus remembers the day before, and the first memory where the eyes that bore into him were warm.
They have a conversation the day after James’ great gesture in the Great Hall.
James Potter marks the day on his calendar:
My promise.
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Sirius bellows loudly:
"Welcome, Hogwarts' finest couple, The Snake’s Ice Prince and its very own Golden Boy.
A round of applause!”
Remus rolls his eyes as Sirius plops down next to him, pulling him in for a chaste kiss. (To love one to ruin.)
No longer a sceptic.
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Their love remains so overwhelmingly absolute and sinful and intimate and passionate and…and…and…
Their love remains.
(More than three months.)
Magnets attract and repel.
Regulus no longer wonders if he and James will meet.
They are not oil and water, but flesh and blood.
So opposites attract.
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It starts off sweet.