Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Regulus Black did not do group projects.

He did not tolerate uncoordinated schedules, uneven workloads, or the infuriating tendency of classmates to talk over him and contribute very little in return. He preferred solitude. Quiet, clean, predictable. It was why he always sat alone in the library. Why he timed his patrols as a prefect when he knew the other Slytherins would be elsewhere. Why he had spent the last two years keeping a precise distance between himself and Sirius Black’s chaotic world.

And now, Professor Flitwick was ruining everything.

“For your term project,” the tiny man said brightly, “we’ll be exploring charmcraft through collaboration. Creativity thrives in partnership!”

Regulus watched, stiff and unimpressed, as Flitwick waved his wand and a parchment unrolled, names pairing themselves off like it was some kind of game.

When the final list settled, Regulus felt it. A punch to the gut.

Partnered: James Potter. Gryffindor.

He did not react. He did not curse or groan or sigh like others were doing around him. He simply folded his arms and stared at the board like it had personally insulted him.

Across the room, James Potter let out a very loud, very theatrical groan.

“You’ve got to be joking,” James muttered. “Flitwick, you’re putting me with Regulus Black? That’s cruel and unusual punishment.”

A few Gryffindors laughed. Sirius howled with delight.

Flitwick, ever unbothered, clapped his hands together. “Perfectly balanced pairings, Mr. Potter. Mr. Black’s precision will temper your recklessness, and your creativity might inspire some spontaneity in him.”

Regulus’s stomach turned.

The first meeting was the following evening in the library.

Regulus was already seated, books arranged in a neat row, quill hovering just above the page. He heard James before he saw him— a careless shuffle, a snort of laughter, the scrape of a chair dragged far too loudly across the floor.

“Evening, Reg,” James said with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Regulus did not look up. “Let’s be clear. We are not friends. We are not going to be friends. This is a project. Nothing more.”

“Right,” James said, dropping into the chair across from him. “Charmed, as always.”

They worked in silence for several long minutes. Regulus wrote in quick, precise script while James skimmed a textbook and muttered under his breath.

“You do realise we have to present this together?” James said eventually. “You’re going to have to speak. Out loud.”

Regulus looked at him then. “Just because you never stop talking doesn’t mean the rest of us lack communication skills.”

James rolled his eyes and flipped a page with unnecessary force. “This is going to be a long month.”

⸻

They met again. And again.

And every time, something shifted, just slightly. Regulus would arrive early, as always, and find James slumped in the chair with his head back, humming some tune he never seemed to finish. He never stopped moving. Fidgeting with a quill, tapping his foot, spinning his wand between his fingers. It grated on Regulus’s nerves. It also, inexplicably, made it harder to breathe.

James, for his part, seemed perpetually torn between amusement and frustration. Regulus was sharp, that much was clear. Brilliant with theory, methodical with practice. But he was also colder than James expected. Not cruel, not really. Just… unreachable.

One night, it finally broke.

They were practicing a minor linking charm, attempting to weave their magic in sync. Regulus’s spellwork was perfect. James’s was too loud, too fast, too imprecise. The charm backfired with a crack, a flash of light, and a strange wave of warmth that pulsed through the room before fizzling out.

James staggered back, blinking. “What the hell was that?”

Regulus was pale. His wand trembled slightly in his hand.

“You saw that, right?” James asked. “Like a... like a memory? A feeling?”

Regulus didn’t answer.

“Was that… you?”

Regulus snapped his notebook shut. “We’re done for tonight.”

James stood. “Wait, don’t! Regulus, just talk to me—”

But he was already gone, black robes whipping behind him, silence swallowing the room whole.

⸻

Regulus couldn’t sleep.

He sat on his bed in the Slytherin dormitory, fingers curled around the edge of his blanket, replaying it over and over. The warmth. The image. The sound of James laughing, not the way he laughed at school, but something softer. Quieter. Like it belonged to a different life.

The spell had been simple. A standard synchronisation charm, meant to attune magical frequencies. But in the moment their magic tangled, something else had surfaced. Something beneath the surface of thought. A thread between them, knotted with something terrifying and intimate.

He should have pulled away. He should have.

Instead, he sat in the dark, remembering the way James had looked at him. Not with mockery. Not with pity. Just surprise. And maybe... God help him... curiosity.

⸻

The next day, James found him at the edge of the courtyard.

Regulus tensed but didn’t walk away. James didn’t say anything at first. He just stood beside him, arms crossed, face unreadable.

Finally, he said, “What was that, last night?”

Regulus didn’t look at him. “Nothing.”

James laughed once, low and bitter. “No. It wasn’t nothing. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

Regulus’s voice came flat and hard. “I don’t have the luxury of being reckless with my magic. Or my emotions.”

James stared at him. “Is that what you think this is? Recklessness?”

Regulus turned now, eyes cold. “What would you know about restraint, Potter? You live in a world that was made for you.”

James’s mouth opened, then closed again. Something flickered behind his eyes.

“I didn’t ask for any of this, you know,” he said, quieter. “Not the project. Not this… whatever this is between us.”

Regulus looked away again. “Then walk away.”

“I could,” James said. “But I won’t.”

The silence between them was unbearable.

Regulus didn’t speak. James didn’t move.

But for a long moment, neither of them walked away

Chapter Text

They didn’t speak for two days.

James didn’t show up at the next study session. Regulus pretended not to care. He told himself the absence was a relief. That the silence was familiar, easy, expected. But his notes were messier than usual. His concentration fractured.

On the third day, James walked into the library like nothing had happened.

“Miss me?” he said as he dropped into the seat across from Regulus.

Regulus didn’t answer. He didn’t even look up.

James watched him for a while.

“You know, I used to think you were terrifying,” he said. “Like, dark lord in training level terrifying.”

Regulus’s quill froze mid-word.

James continued. “But now I think you’re just really, really good at pretending nothing gets to you.”

Regulus’s voice was clipped. “I don’t pretend. I contain.”

James smiled at that. “Same thing, really.”

They worked in near silence for nearly an hour. And then, quietly, James said, “That spell… it wasn’t all me, was it?”

Regulus glanced at him. His voice was low. “No.”

James nodded slowly. “Thought so.”

They fell into something fragile after that.

Not friends. Not quite.

James started arriving earlier. Regulus stopped pretending not to wait for him.

Their project turned into something elegant. Layers of woven charms and magical feedback that responded to emotional proximity. They built it carefully, never quite touching, but always circling each other like magnets just shy of connection.

Once, during a late night session, their hands brushed reaching for the same wand.

Neither of them moved for a second.

Regulus pulled away first.

James watched him with quiet eyes. “Why are you so afraid of being seen?”

Regulus didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The question was too close to the truth.

It happened during a test run.

They were finalizing the charm, syncing their spells, when the magic surged again.. this time stronger. A sudden pull, deep and strange and loud with emotion. The room warped slightly, the candlelight flickering. And then James felt it.

Not just magic.

A memory.

A vision of Regulus, standing in the middle of a dark corridor, blood on his hands, eyes wild with fear. A voice shouting in the distance. A flash of silver light. Then nothing.

James staggered back, breath caught.

Regulus looked like he was about to be sick.

“What was that?” James whispered.

Regulus didn’t speak.

James took a step toward him. “Reg, what was that?”

Regulus’s voice cracked. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

James moved closer. “You were in danger. You were—”

“It’s none of your business,” Regulus snapped.

“The hell it isn’t,” James shot back. “You’re standing here casting spells with me, bleeding memory into the air, and you think I don’t get to care?”

Regulus flinched. “You don’t. You can’t. You’re not allowed to.”

“I’m not allowed to care?”

Regulus’s voice dropped. “You’re not allowed to feel anything for me.”

James froze.

The silence cracked between them.

Regulus’s breath hitched. “Because if you do… I’ll start feeling it back.”

James didn’t kiss him that night.

He wanted to.

Instead, he left the room before he could do something irreversible.

Regulus stood in the quiet, alone with the echo of magic still buzzing under his skin.

He didn’t go back to the dormitory.

He found an empty classroom and sat on the floor until sunrise, thinking about James’s face when the spell surged. Thinking about how scared he had looked.

Thinking about what it might mean to be loved by someone who didn’t want to own you or save you or fix you, but simply see you.

And it hurt.

God, it hurt.

Chapter Text

The next morning came cold and gray.

Regulus didn’t go to class. He watched the lake from the library window instead, fingers curled tightly around a mug of tea gone cold. He couldn’t stop replaying James’s face—how open it had been. How angry. How desperate. He’d let something slip. Something raw. And James had left before it could be answered.

Good.

That was good.

Regulus had spent seventeen years making himself untouchable. Nothing stuck to him. Nothing broke through. It was the only way to survive. But James Potter had seen him. Really seen him. And it felt like standing too close to the sun.

James avoided him for two days.

No study sessions. No hallway glances. No excuses from Sirius or Remus or anyone else. Just absence. A strange, yawning silence that followed Regulus everywhere.

It shouldn’t have mattered. The project was finished. The presentation already scheduled. They had done what they needed to do.

But it did matter. More than Regulus wanted to admit.

By the third day, he cracked.

The Gryffindor common room was loud, warm, and entirely the wrong place to be on a Thursday night, but Regulus stepped through the portrait hole anyway.

Heads turned.

It wasn’t common to see a Slytherin in lion territory, and certainly not this Slytherin. Sirius sat on the couch, sprawled across Remus’s lap like it was his second home. He blinked when he saw his brother.

“Regulus?”

“I’m not here for you,” Regulus said.

Sirius raised an eyebrow. “You’re not about to duel James in the common room, are you?”

“No.”

“Then by all means.”

Regulus walked past them and found James alone by the fireplace, bent over a parchment that looked like it had been rewritten twelve times. He didn’t look up.

Regulus cleared his throat. “We need to talk.”

James kept writing. “I don’t think we do.”

“I do.”

James set the quill down with slow precision. “You made it very clear I wasn’t allowed to feel anything. Remember?”

Regulus’s throat felt tight. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

James looked at him then. Really looked.

“Then how did you mean it?”

Regulus stepped closer. “I meant that I don’t know how to do this. That I don’t know what to do with something that feels like—”

He stopped himself. Too close. Too raw.

James’s voice was quiet. “Feels like what?”

“Feels like it matters.”

For a moment, neither of them breathed. Then James stood up. Slowly.

“You don’t have to say anything else,” he said. “Just answer one question.”

Regulus nodded once.

James’s voice was barely a whisper. “Did you feel it too? When the spell hit? Was it real?”

Regulus didn’t hesitate.

“Yes.

They kissed like they’d been waiting for years. No build-up. No grand confessions. Just a slow step forward and James’s hands in his hair and Regulus pulling him closer and the world narrowing into silence.

James’s mouth was warm. Certain. Regulus kissed back like he was trying to unlearn every rule he’d ever followed. Like he wanted, for once, to be known.

And when they pulled apart, they didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.

James pressed his forehead to Regulus’s and whispered, “Funny how time flies.”

Regulus closed his eyes. And for the first time in a very long time, he smiled.

Chapter Text

In the days that followed, nothing changed. And everything did.

They didn’t tell anyone. They didn’t have to. Something about the way they stood next to each other...never quite touching, always within reach, was enough to shift the air around them.

They still bickered. Still fought over ink colors and spell phrasing and how to cite obscure spell theorists. But there was something else now. A quiet recognition. A closeness stitched through silence.

Regulus would glance up from his notes and catch James already watching him. James would mutter some dry comment under his breath, and Regulus’s mouth would twitch with a smile he never used before.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t sudden. It was steady. It was theirs.

⸻

On the morning of their presentation, it snowed. Thin flakes drifted down over the castle grounds, softening the sky into something pale and endless. Regulus stood outside the classroom, heart stuttering behind his ribs. James came up beside him, uncharacteristically quiet.

“You ready?” he asked.

Regulus didn’t answer immediately.

Then he said, “You’re not going to disappear after this, are you?”

James turned to him. His eyes were warm. Honest.

“No,” he said. “Are you?”

Regulus shook his head once. James smiled.

“Good,” he said. “Because I’m sort of getting used to this. You. Us.”

Regulus rolled his eyes. “Don’t say us. It makes you sound sentimental.”

James leaned in. “You like me sentimental.”

“Tragically,” Regulus muttered.

James laughed. And this time, Regulus did too.

⸻

The presentation was perfect.

Their charmcraft hummed with precision and emotion, echoing their connection without exposing it. Professor Flitwick clapped so hard he nearly toppled off his stack of books. When they finished, James bowed with exaggerated flair. Regulus just nodded, cheeks a little too pink. The class erupted into applause.

They slipped out before the end, unnoticed.

⸻

They ended up on the Astronomy Tower. As always.

James leaned on the railing, hair wind-tossed, voice easy. “What happens now?”

Regulus stood beside him, hands in his pockets. “Now?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know.”

James looked at him. “That’s okay. We’ll figure it out.”

Regulus gave him a sideways glance. “You’re very optimistic for someone with absolutely no plan.”

“I’ve got one,” James said. “Step one: don’t let you run away again. Step two: keep you. Somehow.”

Regulus smirked. “I’m not a thing you can keep.”

“No,” James said softly. “You’re not.”

He reached out, fingers brushing Regulus’s knuckles.

Regulus didn’t pull away.

They stood there like that, hand brushing hand, neither making a move to close the gap, but neither moving apart. And for the first time, Regulus didn’t feel like something broken or borrowed.

He just felt like himself. Seen. Held. Home.

⸻

[Epilogue: Years Later]

The war came.

It tore the world apart in ways neither of them could stop. But they found each other again. Somehow.

And when Regulus wrote the letter that would lead to his last, most dangerous choice, he didn’t sign it alone.

Two initials, side by side, marked the end.

R.B. & J.P.

Because even if nothing ever lasted forever, what they had—what they chose—was still theirs.

Even when it hurt.

Even when it healed.

Even when it was over.

Chapter Text

To the one who finds this,

There are things we cannot undo.

There are choices we made too young, too afraid, or too desperate to see clearly. And though we cannot rewrite the past, we can shape how it ends.

This war, this life we were handed before we ever understood what it meant to carry it, has taken more than it ever gave. But somewhere in the chaos, we found something neither of us expected.

We found each other.

And that, more than anything, changed the course of what we were willing to fight for.

You will not know everything. You don’t need to. Just know this: what we are doing now, we do with open eyes and steady hands. We go willingly. Not because we are unafraid, but because we are done being afraid.

The locket—destroy it. Do not hesitate. Do not look back. Let it be one less weight on the world, one less chain around the necks of those who deserve to live freely.

We are not heroes. We are not martyrs.

We are just two boys who fell in love in a world that never made room for it.

But we carved out something true. Something real.

And that will be enough.

R.B. & J.P.