Chapter Text
Regulus Black - Hogwarts University, Sophomore Year (Fall)
James Potter looks how he always looked. Golden. His very presence warms up a room, like sunlight slipping in through cracks in the blinds. He carries his shoulders the same way, a balanced posture that comes from all his years of sports training, and the secret semester of ballet he took freshman year of high school. He’s got the same kind eyes, ones that don’t shy away from looking where they please, which in Regulus’ experience seems to be right at him. He remembers that from back then, the way James would instinctively look at him whenever someone said anything funny, like the two of them understood the joke in a way that was different from everyone else. He still doesn’t understand why he looked at him instead of Sirius, with the way they always seemed to be two halves of one whole. James’ smile seems to be the one difference. When he was fifteen, he never smiled with his teeth, always pressing his lips together in a way that looked like he was holding in a laugh. Now, he smiles with his whole face, his teeth somehow both endearing and startling, his lack of braces making him even more charming. His teeth aren’t straight, but they’re perfect for his face.
James smiles like that now, like a crescent moon, and Regulus considers the possibility that it’s not because he saw him, but because one of his friends is behind him, just off his left shoulder. It wouldn’t be the first time he thought someone was waving at him only to be humiliated and left hanging, so he says still, not letting it show that he sees him. He wonders if it’s naive to think he wouldn’t recognize him. He feels so different now to when he knew him.
James slides up next to him. “Do my eyes deceive me, or is it little Reggie Black?’
Regulus flinches at the nickname. He forgot he used to call him that. “Hi, yeah.” He slides the book he was fake examining off the shelf, clutching it to give his hands something to do. “James.”
“This is so crazy, Sirius was just texting me about you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Regulus cringes inside. There’s no way James doesn’t report this entire interaction right back to his brother.
“Says you haven’t seen each other yet.” James explains. “Have you been avoiding him?”
“Straight to the point, huh?” Regulus scoffs, doing his best to feign annoyance when he actually just wants to melt into the ground. “Not even gonna fake the small talk?” How long would it take for someone to clean up the puddle his body becomes?
“Ok, fine.” James smirks, unbothered. “So, napkin folding?”
“What?”
“Your book.” James motions to his decoy book.
Regulus pulls the book away from his chest, studying the cover. The Art Of Napkin Folding: Etiquette from the Civil War Era.
James raises his eyebrows in a mocking gesture, ecstatic at catching him in a lie.
“Yes, actually.” Regulus decides to commit to the bit, because it feels worse to admit that he just grabbed a random book as a cover for spying on him. “I’m writing a paper.”
“About napkins?”
“About customs in the civil war era, obviously.” Regulus snaps, adding fuel to his fire of lies. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. It’s for my English class.”
James just laughs. “And here I thought you were looking for a new hobby. Something to decorate your table for your American Girl doll tea parties.”
Regulus feels his face get hot at that, because of course James remembers that he still played with dolls until he was thirteen. “James.” He says, in lieu of goodbye, shooting him a mock salute then cringing at himself when he turns around, forced to now check out a book about napkins to save face.
“Hold up!” James trails after him.
“I really don’t want to talk about my brother right now.” Regulus sets the napkin book down at his table, moving to pack up the rest of the things he left spread out. Study notes, flashcards, his laptop.
“We’ll work up to it.” James shrugs, pulling each item out of his bag after he puts it away, trapping them in a cycle. “Come on, fake small talk goes both ways. It’s incredibly fake-rude to not ask me anything back.”
“You didn’t even ask me anything.”
“I asked about your napkins.” James corrects. “Go on, I know you can at least be fake-polite. I’ve seen you have dinner with your parents.”
Regulus is caught off guard by the mention of his parents, forgetting that James knows them. Well, knows as much as one can through a handful of meals with the Black family, Christmases or Thanksgivings Sirius saw fit to drag him to. Or maybe that’s why he thinks he knows them, stories from Sirius over the years, no doubt painting himself as the victim, their parents the slashers. Although, it’s possible that James has gotten to know them more over recent years. After Regulus went to live with Uncle Alphard.
He decides to let the comment go, because answering it could circle the conversation back to his brother, and that feels like rising to his bait. “What are you doing in the library?”
James blinks, clearly surprised he didn’t fall into his trap. It’s clear he’s not fourteen anymore. Regulus takes his moment of pause to stuff his items into his bag, closing the zipper before James has time to pull anything out again.
“I’m a TA for Professor Bauer, in the English department.” James says, following Regulus through the stacks as he heads for the exit. “He needed a few books for the next lecture, and I missed the first week of his class, so I volunteered to pick them up to kiss ass a little.”
“Wait, you’re a TA for Bauer?”
“Yeah, why?”
“No reason.” It’s another lie, one that he considers could bite him in the ass later if he’s the TA for Regulus’ class, but Bauer has at least four sections, so the odds are in his favor by seventy-five percent. He’ll take those odds.
“Sure, alright.” James says, his skepticism clear in the creases on his forehead.
Regulus decides to misdirect the conversation, painting it as criticism of his personality. “I guess I’m just surprised they let you be a TA. Thought you had to have a high GPA to do that.”
“Ouch.” James clutches his chest, nursing a non-existent wound. “I’ve changed a lot since high school, Reggie.”
“Sure, alright.” He uses his words back at him.
“I have! I now have the standings to assist in creative writing and english.” James explains, leaning against a bookshelf, but standing straight again when it wobbles, ruining his attempt at causal swagger. “I used to be a tutor in the writing center, but Morris, the head of the department, thought for junior year I’d be a better asset in the classroom.”
Regulus fiddles with the book in his hands. “You’re buddies with the head of the English department?”
“Well, yeah.” James says, dropping his gaze to Regulus’ fingers as they flip through the pages of the napkin book. “It’s helpful to make relationships with faculty that can help you. One day, I want it to be me that’s teaching Shakespeare and all the other classics that are the stereotypes of my people.”
Regulus joins the line of students waiting to check out their books. “Your people?”
James steps into line with him and smiles, crescent moon waxing again. “English lit majors.”
“I thought you were majoring in sports management.” Regulus says, remembering his social media post after high school graduation. Regulus wasn’t there, but he saw the staple college announcement, a picture of him wearing a Hogwarts University sweatshirt and detailing his major and academic plans. Sirius had been tagged, the two of them deciding to extend their notorious high school duoship into a college one. They roomed together as freshmen in the dorms and got an apartment with another friend the year after. They’re still there now.
“Like I said, I’ve changed a lot since high school.” James shrugs. “You have too.”
“You didn’t really know me in high school.” Regulus argues. They were only in each other’s orbit during his freshman year, and like two weeks of sophomore year before Regulus left, and they only ever saw each other because of Sirius, anyway.
“I think I did.” James challenges, and that statement alone is enough to make Regulus feel fourteen years old again. He’s curled up on the porch swing, his sweatshirt pulled over his knees as he tries to even out his breathing. His parents are out of town for the weekend, and Sirius snuck his friends into the house for a sleepover. It was bad then, and Regulus still hadn’t told anyone, his strategy being to remove himself from a space to spiral on his own, returning when he could pull off his charade of normalcy. No one had noticed before, let alone followed him outside. Not until James Potter pulled open the sliding door. He didn’t even mention the tear tracks on Regulus’ face or the stuttering breaths he was forcing out. He grabbed the arm of the porch swing, stopping its nauseating movement, and started talking complete nonsense. Party gossip and high school sports statistics. It was so unexpected that Regulus was shocked back to neutral.
James never brought it up again, but Regulus noticed that he seemed to watch him more often after that, and he also cut Sirius off every time he made fun of him, even when it was normal sibling rivalry. Instead of tag-teaming with his best friend to poke fun at his younger brother, James became somewhat of a peacemaker between the pair of Black siblings.
“Well, no one else did.” Regulus decides, remembering how much of himself he kept hidden back then.
“He did.” James says, and he doesn’t have to specify for Regulus to connect the dots. “And yeah, maybe he doesn’t anymore, but he really wants to. He misses you, Reggie, and I think you miss him too. Why else did you transfer?”
That’s enough to make him bolt. If it’s fight or flight, Regulus has always preferred the flight option, so his body acts before his mind can catch up, ejecting himself from an uncomfortable situation as fast as possible. He bursts out the double doors to the library and flies down the cobblestones, glad that James doesn’t seem to be interested in trailing after him. Regulus makes it halfway to his dorm when he realizes that he walked out of the library without checking out his stupid decoy napkin book. He’s a book thief for a book he didn’t even want in the first place.