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The death of Regulus Black is announced on a Thursday.
The crisp, freshly folded lines of the paper fit neatly in her hand, while the other holds a steaming mug of tea. Earl Gray, with just a dash of milk and honey. Soft, early morning light steams gently through the little window above the sink, its stained glass left open for their owl to roost upon the sill while she reads. It's mornings like these that she can pretend all is right with the world, and that the only thing she needs to worry about is washing up the dishes in the sink.
Those pale, gentle hues starkly contrast the bold, black ink so clinically slashed across the headline: REGULUS BLACK DEAD AT 19 – BLACK FAMILY HEARTBROKEN.
The words, large and violent, feel far too big for the small, quiet boy she remembers. They feel out of place here, in the silent morning air. With just a handful of words, her pretend-peace is crumbled, that familiar dread of war, war, war , a thrum under her skin.
Her first thought goes to Sirius, of course. She strokes her hand down her swollen belly, and worries. She’s always been quite good at worrying. Worries if Sirius has seen the paper yet. Worries if he hasn’t. Will he have found it sitting upon his own sill, waiting to be read over his own tea? Or will Remus have found it, wincing under the task of delivering such news? Last she heard, neither of them had any assignments from Moody this week, so they should be home. She isn’t sure if this is better or worse. Will Sirius cry? Will he scream and sob and throw his fist through a wall? He’d done just as much when his younger brother had taken the Mark, back in their seventh year.
Or, perhaps more likely, will he go silent? Silent as the ink proclaiming his only brother’s death? Will his jaw lock and his eyes go dull, turning away when Remus tries to speak to him? Will he draw the curtains on this beautiful morning light, curl up behind locked doors to lick old wounds? That, she’s seen all too often. Sirius Black is a dramatic, broody bastard, but he wears his heartbreak quietly.
There’s only one person who can pull Sirius away from himself. If he doesn’t let Remus help, there will be only one soul who can get past that lock and climb those crumbling walls.
As if he’d heard her thoughts, the stairs creak under the weight of footsteps. Her husband shuffles into the kitchen, his shirtless chest flushed with sleep and his baggy pajama pants pooling at his feet. But even bleary eyed and yawning, he finds her. The solid heat of his arms envelops her from behind, hands wandering down over her belly and hips. “Good morning, Lils.”
She leans back into him with a hum, trying for just a moment to forget about the paper in her hands. Here, too, is one of the last few places she can pretend that the war is nothing but a bad thought, leagues away. How could she feel anything but protected, with such a shield around her, murmuring sweet nothings into her hair? Such a devoted person to cradle her and their child?
It takes effort to remind herself that something important has happened, that she very much does not want Sirius to wallow or Remus to fret all by themselves. That James should probably know sooner than later.
“James,” she murmurs, and he must hear something in her voice, because he pulls back. Before he can ask, she shifts the paper so that he can read the headline. He freezes against her.
“Oh,” it comes out like a punch.
Absent-mindedly, she strokes a thumb over his hand, the one overtop her belly. “We should go check on Sirius and Remus. I don’t know if they’ve seen this yet.”
James stays silent. Quiet long enough that she turns to look at him. Her gaze seems to shake him from his thoughts, and he pulls away. “Yes. Yes, I’ll go get dressed.”
And just like that, he is out of the kitchen in the quick padding of feet. The kitchen is left silent once again, but it's not the same. Like a hand that's drawn itself through a pond, throwing its natural ripples off course.
It’s just a normal Thursday morning like any other. But in only a handful of words, the world has been tilted just slightly off course. A handful of words, and they are reminded of how the war looms.
James is quiet all the way to Remus and Sirius’ apartment. Lily sends a patronus to Remus per James’ request, her first sign that something is wrong. More wrong than it already is. James is almost always the one to message Sirius and Remus. But a patronus requires a happy memory, that spark of joy. She will not realize until later it is because James could not conjure the feeling, even for a moment.
They Floo over shortly after, stepping out into the cozy apartment’s living room to find Remus pacing, biting at his thumb. He looks up as the flames flash green, laying his distress at their feet as soon as they are within arms length.
“James, please. He locked himself in our room as soon as he saw. I can’t get him to open the door, or talk to me, or-”
“How long?”
Remus swallows. “A couple hours now. He got up before me, he was—” shame flashes in his eyes. “He slept on the couch. He got the paper before I even got out of bed. I found him in the kitchen but-”
“S’okay, mate,” James says as he moves past Remus, disappearing down the hall. There is the muffled sound of James’ voice, murmuring, then the tell-tale creak and click of a door opening and closing.
Remus looks stricken, skin shallow and eyes dark with sleeplessness. The full moon is in less than a week.
There is nothing to do but wait, now. The wolf makes him restless, she has learned. Sirius will not accept his fretting, so Lily does, if only so he does not lose his mind while they wait and hope for James to get through to Sirius. He makes tea and toasties and pushes jars upon jars of salve upon her. The jars are, admittedly, appreciated. Remus’ knows intimately how to brew a pain potion for aching bones and stretching skin. He cleans everything in the sink the muggle way, wipes the counters, hides every liquor bottle in their kitchen, then asks her inane questions on color versus alphabetically ordering books and records as he tears apart the living room bookshelf.
When there is nothing left for Remus to do, he sits beside her at the tiny kitchen table, staring into his own cup of tea. Green, with far too much honey.
“He barely said a thing,” Remus whispers, when she eventually gathers the courage to ask how Sirius had been when Remus found him. “Just… sighed. Said it was just one less Death Eater to worry about. Something about his parents eating their words. And nothing.” He looks up at Lily, eyes a bit wild. “He’s not- I don’t know how to help him. We aren’t…”
Talking. Communicating. Doing well . It all goes unsaid. Remus is being sent on solo missions. Moody has forbidden him to speak of them. Sirius has grown bitter of it. The Marauders miss more and more moons. It’s something her and James have spent countless nights pouring over, trying to figure out how to just get them to just talk about their feelings. But no matter what either of them says, Remus won’t be convinced to say where he goes, and Sirius can’t be convinced to accept it.
But there are two facts in this life that Lily Evans is absolutely sure of; James Potter is madly in love with her, and Remus Lupin and Sirius Black are madly in love with each other. No amount of fights behind closed doors or nights spent in separate rooms will change that.
Lily nods toward the hallway, towards the door that has remained locked for nearly three hours now. “This is how. James is with him. Then you will be with him. I will be here. Peter will be here. Then we will all be here again, and again, and again until he’s raving mad with how much we’ve smothered him.”
Dogs may growl and bite—crawl into hidden corners when in pain—but they can’t survive alone. She knows Sirius, and knows he will howl and cry and try to stand alone against the storm of his brother’s death. His teeth may scrape the hand that dares reach out to comfort him, but only to clamp down and hold them there. And Remus, covered in scars, is no stranger to a gaping maw.
“I don’t want…” Remus shudders. “I don’t like leaving. I want to tell him everything. I do. I promise I do. God, it's all such a mess .” He buries his face in his hands, shaking. And here is where Lily falls short, guilt and that horrible, overwhelming feeling of helplessness washing over her like a wave. Because this is something that she can’t fix, something only Remus and Sirius must figure out alone. Just another thing that the war has tainted. He trembles underneath her palm, the only comfort she can offer.
Eventually, James emerges. He looks haggard, mouth downturned and eyes hazy. If one were to pry open his chest and look inside, Lily is certain they would see where the teeth and claws of Sirius’ grief have gnawed on his heart. The man himself follows her husband, looking worse by nearly tenfold. Alabaster skin normally smooth as porcelain is now dull and blotchy from tears. When Sirius’ eyes meet her’s, she nearly flinches at how the ice-grey irises stand stark against the irritated red of his sclera. If she had thought James’ heart to be bruised, Sirius’ was shredded.
But still, he smiles when he sees her, overly fake and welcoming. “Heya, Lils. How’s Prongslet this morning?”
“Not sure, how about you come say hello?” Lily opens her arms, and does her best not to look at the way that Sirius crumples nearly immediately, quickly hiding his face in her shoulder.
Because she’s looking away, she catches something flit across James’ face—a devastating shadow that quickly passes. Remus simply looks heartbroken, hands twitching like he wants to whisk Sirius into his own arms.
When they eventually leave, after more tea and embraces and smeared tears, it is to the sound of James whispering, “Do you want me to stay, Pads? Are you sure? Are you sure?”
Sirius nods, his hand finding Remus’. Runs his thumb over scarred knuckles. She sees Remus melt just a bit with relief. “I’ll be okay. Come back ‘round soon?”
Lily squeezes Sirius’ arm one last time. “We’ll owl tomorrow.”
When they emerge back into their own living room, it's to a scene that is hauntingly normal. Late afternoon has faded into evening, the watercolor washes of sunset deepening into purple and cobalt. The same charms that shimmer in the air as they move into the room, the same fireplace enchanted to keep itself burning for hours. The same pillows and old knitted blankets, thrown over plush couch cushions. Together, they all sit waiting, welcoming as ever, as if there was not a war whispering its threats just beyond the cottage walls. As if it had not just claimed another soul.
Before she can say a word, James is moving, hands on her shoulders steering her to sit on the couch, frantically fluffing cushions and mumbling about starting the kettle, seeming to forget that they just had tea. He disappears into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with two cups. In the cup he hands her, she smells the prenatal herbal blend she’d been given on her last trip to St. Mungo’s.
Hands now empty, he still seems restless, so she leans over to grab her bag from where she’d dropped it on the floor, retrieving one of Remus’ salves. She holds it out. “Love, my ankles are swelling a bit. Would you mind?”
James has never minded doing something for her, not once in his life. “Of course, Lily. You should have said something earlier, if you were hurting.”
The same could be said for you , she thinks but does not say. His hands are at work once again, and she hopes it will help the restless energy he seems to have. In all the years they’ve known each other, and especially in the last few since they’ve moved in together, Lily has noticed that her husband is much, much more anxious than most give him credit for. She’d been a bit baffled at how quickly he turned to fretting at the slightest inconvenience, until she realized it soothed him. Sometimes it worried her, that need to give and give and give without just taking care of himself. Now, especially, when he is so clearly agitated. She hopes he will tell her what it is, or at least take comfort in a distraction.
Even if, a bit selfishly, she is very glad that distraction is a massage. Pregnancy became more tiresome by the day, and her ankles really were beginning to hurt.
Letting herself melt back into the couch, she appreciates the sight of James working down her calf and back up, concentrated. But minutes pass. He switches to her other leg. The sadness does not go away. Again, she thinks it empathy. The shared pain of soulmates, of taking on his best friend's grief. But his mouth is still slightly screwed, his brow pinched, and she wonders if the scrapes on his heart are all Sirius, or something else.
He presses hard to the meat of her calf, unexpectedly digging into a knot so hard that she flinches. Normally, he would chastise her about relaxing more, and she would sigh as his thumbs smoothed the knots back into her muscles like melting butter. But tonight, his hands fly away, and she knows any attempts at distraction are through.
“Fuck, love, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
James falls back upon the couch, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes, knocking his glasses out of place. He breathes deep, heavily, that same shadow settling back over his face even as he tries to scrub it away.
“James, hey,” she sits up. “You didn’t hurt me, it's okay. I was just startled.”
“I know. I know. I’m sorry, I’m just… worried about Sirius. I’m sorry.”
He grabs his tea cup, blowing on the steam and sipping, before ripping it away with a hiss. “Damn, fucking heating charm…”
Carefully, she sits up, righting her skirt and trying to wake herself up from the sleepy fog that had drawn over her.
She looks at the over-bright shine in his eyes, the tremble of his throat as he breathes. His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows, gaze flicking away to stare out the window and tears balancing precariously on his waterline. She looks, and tries, and tries, to figure out what is going on.
And as she tries and tries, a thought comes to her. A memory. Something inconsequential, she’d never thought twice about.
James did not know Regulus Black. At least, she had not thought he had. She can only remember them interacting once; James with that secretive, mischievous smile, half hidden as he leaned against a stairwell. Regulus, naught but a dark shadow, unreadable with his back turned to her, body shrouded in billowing school robes. A twitch of his hand, brushing against the younger Black’s arm, and then she lost sight of them.
It was before the fracture lines between the two brothers turned to canyons. It was before any of the adults whispered of tragedies orchestrated in the night—of dark marks and darker magic coming to claim them all. Regulus hung at the edges, like a shadow, never really part of them. She hardly knew his name, back then. James had been across the room, causing a ruckus not ten minutes later. She never thought of it again.
But now her husband sits here, hands trembling, and she wonders how many stairways the two boys shared when no one was looking. Gently, she strokes along his wrist down to his fingers, prying the tea cup from him before he can spill and scald himself. His palms burn from where he’d held them to the heated glass.
“James,” she says as softly as she can. He’s normally so loud, so full of energy, that people forget to be soft with him. “You knew Regulus, didn’t you?”
It’s not a question, as much as it is an acknowledgement of fact. A heavy, sopping, sad thing. James bows his head and closes his eyes. He nods, and it knocks loose the tears, and they fall against their joined hands.
She waits for him to tell her. For one so full of wit and clever quips, it is sadness that steals his words. Rips them from his throat and leaves him choking, like he can’t decide what he can say to make it all hurt less. He’d done the same at Effie and Fleamont’s funeral—jaw clenched like a holding cell for his grief.
It doesn’t make sense, but an inkling comes to her. A gut feeling, a hunch. James Potter spreads love like he is rich with it, like his family vault at Gringotts is pocket change in comparison to what lays in his heart. He leaves it out, open for the taking. He gives so much to Lily, to his friends, to acquaintances he passes on the street. Smiles and joy and warmth like a furnace, even in this frigid war. She knows what it looks like, washing over his face and filling his eyes, overflowing until his mouth twitched and his hands fumbled. She’s been a devout student of his tells since she was eleven, and he first declared they’d one day marry.
She wonders how many other smiles Regulus Black received, how many staircases the two shared when Lily wasn’t looking.
“Did you love him?”
James reacts like he’s been smacked, head snapping up to look with pleading, panicked eyes. “No, Lils, I love you-”
“I know,” she says because she does know. She's known since they were eleven, twelve, thirteen, even when she was in denial that he could be doing anything but teasing her, she knew. In this horribly dark war, where everyday grows more and more uncertain, James’ love is the one thing she is really, truly sure of. “I know, love. But did you love him too?”
She remembers sixth year. Afternoons spent holed up in hidden corners of the library with Remus as he avoided the Marauders. Those last months of the year when she didn’t see much of Gryfindor tower, didn’t see much of anything that wasn’t the way Remus folded into himself. It was the longest James had gone without flirting or seeking her out since first year.
“I-” his voice cracks, shaking in time with his hands. “I don’t…”
Lily cups his hand and kisses his knuckles, tasting the salt from his tears. Folds his hand against her chest and leans against him to stare into the fire. And she waits for him to find his voice.
Several minutes pass. The fire glows warm, crackling and sparking in that familiar symphony she watches every night. That same practiced routine, if not for the way James trembled against her.
“I think I could have loved him. If given the time.”
His jumper is soft against her cheek when she tilts her head up to see his face. She thinks he might have stolen it from Remus. Or Peter. “Time?”
An arm comes up around her. “Everything was such a mess. Sixth year. Sirius had mucked everything up with Remus, I thought I’d mucked everything up with you. Everyone was—was upset, and hurt, or avoiding each other and I just—” his heart pounds. She can hear it, thudding against her. “Reg was there. And he was hurting too. And for a while, we just hurt together.”
Regulus Black was, to the few people aware of his existence outside of Slytherin, notoriously known as the darker, meaner version of Sirius. The second-hand herald of his family’s legacy. The coward who would not come away, according to Sirius. The coward who stayed behind.
But she knows a thing or two of being the smaller sibling. The one trailing behind her big sister for a gleam of praise. Aching for just a word of kindness. Having to turn away when those words turned bitter.
She kisses where she can reach from this angle. His cheek, his shoulder. Mind wondering and wandering. “Were you two together?”
“No. But I think I wanted to be, at one point,” his breath catches, like he’s startled himself with the admission.
“We, we never did anything. I’d never wanted anyone but you up until that point. I didn’t even know I liked— but uhm, I thought he was beautiful. I didn’t know what it meant. But there were times, when it was just us, and—I mean, we didn’t—”
It's heartrending to listen to him struggle to speak, like the words are jagged in his mouth. Like watching the sun flicker, wavering like a candle.
“I thought I could help him. I thought if I—” James shudders then, a tremor that wracks his body. “But he took the Mark. And I couldn’t—I couldn’t do—”
James dissolves into sobs, then. Heartbreaking things that fall out of him as he fully turns to her, burying his face in her shoulder. Carding fingers through his hair, making it stick up at wild angles, she lets him heave against her. “He didn’t want it. I know he didn’t want it. He didn’t want any of this.”
Lily can only kiss the side of his head as those words hit her, sinking into the pit of her stomach like a cold stone. She wonders if Remus is in the same position as her right now; holding his grieving lover against him, helplessly watching him fall apart.
When James calms down a bit, sometime later, she pulls her wand from her back pocket and levitates the forgotten tea cup over to them, unwilling to dislodge James fully from her arms. She coaxes him to drink, hoping the charms and honey from earlier will soothe his throat and chest. Selfishly, she can’t help the way her heart soars at the sight of him, curled up soft and tired against her, nursing his tea as if chamomile and her embrace are his entire world. James Potter’s heartbreak is a tragedy to witness and an honor to be a part of.
And even if she never really met Regulus Black, she feels a kinship to him. To be one of the few who have gotten to hold James’ heart.
“I’m sorry I never told you,” he croaks sometime later. “I never told Sirius either.”
She cups his face to make him look in her eyes, thumbs stroking over his cheekbones. “Don’t be sorry. To me or Sirius.”
“But you’re my wife. And he’s my best friend. And I never said a thing,” he whispers.
“Yes. And if you want to tell me more about him, I will listen. But you don’t have to. You can keep him for yourself, I don’t mind sharing your love.”
James' face crumples, turns into her palm. “I don’t deserve you.”
They barely graduated two years ago, so really, she can’t help the way her traitorous heart soars when he says things like that, ricocheting in her chest like a schoolgirl and completely ignoring how horrible the context is. “Of course you don’t. Nobody does.”
A joke, one James has been harping since Hogwarts. She’d always rolled her eyes when he declared her violently out of his league, but it does the trick now, getting a weak, watery laugh out of him.
She lets him change the subject to Sirius and Remus as they finish their tea. His hands still shake and his eyes still go glassy as he speaks and sips, but she just prays that he will tell her more if he needs to.
They end the day as they always do; tiredly stumbling up the creaking steps to their bedroom, dousing candles as they go. Warm, cozy. Domestic. A parody to ward off the ghosts that threaten to follow them beneath the covers, into their dreams. Normally, James wraps himself around her, spooning her from behind and hands cradling her stomach. But tonight, she pulls him down to rest his head on her chest, running her hands through his wild curls and humming. He’s done enough comforting, for the day, and she’s decided it's his turn to be doted on.
Just before his breathes even out, he slurs, “Lily?”
“Yes?”
“I’m scared,” he whispers, like a secret. He looks up at her. “That he didn’t know how much I care. He didn’t have a lot of people who cared.”
“Oh, my love,” Lily swiped the tears beading at the corner of his eye, as if she could wipe away the pain. “He knew.”
Because there is not a soul on earth that could be touched by James Potter and not know they were cared for. Even if Regulus Black did not have the time to feel the full scorch of James’ love, there is not a doubt in her mind that he did not know it was there.
Lily Evans has always loved like a fire—quiet, despite the burning that took up her entire chest, the embers dancing in her bones and blood. It's why her and James work so well—together, they made an inferno. And as James settles back down against her, body finally going slack with the brief respite of sleep, she knows that she knows that whatever love Regulus felt for James has not dwindled, even with his death. Because if Regulus is—was—anything like her, then there was no way he walked away from James Potter with his own heart unscathed, without every other beat being for the boy who held the sun.
And Lily refuses to believe that kind of love just goes away, even if the heart that held it is gone. She simply, stubbornly, refuses to. It must be in the air somewhere, lingering. It must be, it must , because if it were Lily’s heart that stopped, she knows her love would not.
So let the war take their peaceful mornings. The air in their lungs and the tears on their cheeks. But it would never take the fact that now, in the quiet of the witching hour, James’ hand was curled sweetly over her bump, protective even through sleep and heartbreak. It would never, never , change the fact that the sight of it made Lily’s heart soar.
And it would never take the fact that once, Regulus Black had been something that made the sun shine just a bit brighter.