Archive of Our Own

Dear James,

James Fleamont Potter. I knew your name before I ever saw your face. That was entirely your fault, by the way. Entirely. Because my brother couldn't shut up about you. James this, James that—you'd love him, Reg, he's so funny, he pulled the most insane prank last week, James thinks, James said—James, James, James. I heard your name more than my own.

I remember sitting at the breakfast table when I was ten, listening to Sirius say your name over and over again, and thinking—does he even remember he has a brother? It's a horrible thing to think. I know. But I was ten, and I didn't know how to say that I was scared Sirius loved you more than he loved me without it sounding bitter. So instead, I just decided I hated you.

But then I actually met you.

At King's Cross. Sirius had run ahead to find your family. I was standing by the barrier with my trolley. Mum was saying something behind me, but I wasn't really listening.

Because I saw you.

You were laughing at something your dad said, and your dad was laughing too. Your mum had her hand on your shoulder. I never thought I'd see the sun up close. I still remember your messy hair and those stupid glasses that didn't fit your face properly. You were just… so much, all at once. That was the moment I finally understood what Sirius had been going on about.

Sirius crashed into me, nearly knocking me over, grabbed my arm and said, Reg, come on, come meet James.

And you looked at me.

You smiled at me—and it was the same smile you'd been giving your dad thirty seconds ago. We introduced ourselves, and then you were already digging around in your pocket before you'd even finished talking. You pulled out a Chocolate Frog and handed it to me.

And that was it. I was completely, catastrophically gone for you.

From that day on, you became the sun in my life.

I finally understood why Sirius loved you so much. I watched you and thought, oh. Oh, I see.

At Hogwarts, in my first year, I used to look for you in the Great Hall. I'd sit there and think you were the most wonderful thing I'd ever seen, and I didn't know how to make it stop. But you were always busy—always talking to your red-haired friend. I didn't even know her name at the time.

I thought maybe we could be friends, at least. You were Sirius' best friend. I'm his brother. It didn't feel impossible.

But then Sirius left me. And every single one of my worst thoughts came true.

He walked out of the front door and didn’t come back. And he went to you. Of course he went to you. Where else would he go? He had a whole life with you that I didn't know anything about.

He went to you and not to me. I know I'm much younger than you, but I could help him too, you know? There's nothing in this world that I wouldn't do for him.

I had to find out he left from my mother's fury and the empty room down the hall.

I needed someone to be angry at. I couldn't be angry at Sirius. I've never been able to stay angry at him. Even now. It's one of the most inconvenient things about loving him. So all of it went to you instead.

You took my brother. You gave him somewhere better to go, and now I’m stuck in that house alone. It's your fault. Never mind that the house was awful. Never mind that maybe he needed to leave. Never mind that you probably saved him from something I don't even want to think about too hard.

It's still your fault. That's what I told myself. It was so much easier to hate you than to blame Sirius.

And then, after everything, when Sirius and I finally started talking again, you offered to let me stay with you too. I said yes immediately. There's nowhere I wouldn't go if Sirius is there.

But I was still angry. I think that's why I keep raising my voice every time you try to talk to me. I know you're trying to be kind, there’s just too much in me I don’t know what to do with. I swear I'm not trying to be violent.

I guess what I’m trying to say is… I’m really sorry, James. You’ve always been kind to me (when you’re not teasing me!). But I can’t help feeling angry at you all the time.

But sometimes, I still think of you as the sun to my star. You’ll always be my sun.

—R.A.B

Dear Barty,

This is very awkward to write, especially with you lying three feet away from me right now. You fell asleep on the floor an hour ago with your cheek pressed against the carpet and your mouth slightly open. I still remember how your lips tasted, by the way.

You were the first person at Hogwarts who actually wanted to know me. You sat down next to me at the Slytherin table on the very first night. You told me jokes. Bad ones, mostly. But it made me laugh. I don't laugh easily—you know that, probably better than anyone—but you got me on the first night, which is honestly a little embarrassing.

From that point on, it was just us. You and me, and eventually Evan, then Pandora, then Dorcas. But even now, even with all of them, it still feels like you and me first. You and me against the world. Like we’ve always said to each other.

After Sirius left, I used to go to the library alone. I liked it that way. One night, you showed up and sat beside me. We were supposed to be studying for a Charms exam neither of us cared about. You had your feet up on the table the entire time. You would've given Madam Pince a heart attack if she'd seen.

I don't remember exactly how it came up. I think I was procrastinating, which means I was asking you random questions instead of reading, and at some point, I asked what does it feel like to kiss someone. Because I've never done it. I was curious, and it felt like a safe question to ask you.

You put your book down. You leaned closer to me. And then you kissed me.

It lasted maybe four seconds. When you pulled back, you said, Like that. I think I got addicted to your lips immediately. So I kissed you again.

I don't know which one of us kept going after that. Both of us, I think. We couldn't seem to stop, and neither of us tried very hard to. At some point, Madam Pince kicked us out. We walked back to the dormitory and kept kissing.

After that, we didn’t stop kissing. Because I love the taste of your lips, but I would never admit that out loud. I still think your lips are the sweetest thing I've ever tasted.

I don't know what we had, exactly. What we were, for those few months after, with those constant kisses and make-outs. We never talked about it, which is very us, actually. We are both so bad at talking about things directly, which is probably why we work as friends and probably why whatever that was eventually just sort of… dissolved. Without either of us ever talking about it. We went back to normal, and I told myself that was fine. I was fine.

I am. Mostly. It's just that I still think about that night in the library more than I probably should. Not because I'm still in love with you—I don't think I am, or at least it doesn't feel the same way it used to—but because it was the first time I had something with someone. I've never told you that. Obviously. You'd make it weird, then I'd make it weird, we'd both pretend we hadn't made it weird, and we'd be fine, but still.

I love you so much, I don't know what to do with it sometimes. I love you, Barty. I think I've loved you in every way it's possible to love another person at some point or another. I think I'll never stop loving you. Maybe it's not romantically anymore, but as a friend, as family, and as something more. Right now, I love you like you're the safest place I know. I just can't say it directly to you.

—R.A.B.

Dear Evan,

I don't know when this happened. I think it wasn't just one thing. That's the problem. It was a hundred small things. One day, I looked at you and realised I was completely done for, and by then it was way too late to do anything about it.

You’re actually quite annoying. You don't care about being on time, or about keeping your side of the room clean. You argue about everything. You are also, and I say this with full awareness of how irritating it is to admit, one of the kindest people I've ever met.

You noticed I wasn't eating much during exam week and you just started putting extra food on my plate without saying a word about it. You stayed up with me the night before my OWLs, even though yours were done. When I'm in a bad mood, you don't ask me about it, you just stay nearby.

You know this about me, but I don't get a lot of that, especially at home. Easy kindness. Kindness with no expectation of something in return. At home, it always came with something. I was always told, don't forget what I did for you. Yours doesn't have any of that. You do it because you're kind and caring.

I had nightmares a lot. I don't know if you remember. You probably do—you were there for most of them—I'd wake up and you'd already be awake, or you'd wake up when I did, and you never made it into a thing. You'd just move over, and make room for me. I'd lie there with my head on your chest, listening to your heartbeat as a lullaby, and it was the only thing that made my nightmares go away. The only thing that made my brain quiet down enough to sleep again.

When Barty got his first girlfriend, we were always left alone. Just the two of us.

Then there was the Yule Ball. Barty was obviously going with his girlfriend. I told myself I wouldn't go. I'd just sit in my dorm, looking miserable. Even though my deepest fantasy was to dance with someone at a ball.

And then you asked me, last minute, if I wanted to go with you. I said yes immediately. We danced together that night. You said I was a good dancer. And for a moment, it felt like I was exactly where I was meant to be. It was the happiest night of my life.

I know now that it was just friendship. I've made my peace with that. I think I confused the closeness for something it wasn't, because I'm apparently the kind of person who falls in love with anyone who's consistently gentle with me, which is its own embarrassing problem I'm working on.

But I want you to know that you are very hard to be in a room with sometimes. It's difficult not to look at you. You are an angel, Evan. With how kind you are, and how beautiful you look.

—R.A.B.

Dear Severus,

I'm going to be honest with you, this one is the hardest to write. Not that the feeling was the biggest, but because I still don't entirely understand what happened between us. I don't have a clean ending to put on it. I just have the before, then the after, and this gap in the middle where something went wrong between us, which left me deeply confused.

I was terrible at Potions.

I'd follow the instructions exactly and still end up with something slightly wrong—the wrong colour, the wrong consistency, something just a little off. I hated it. I hate being bad at things.

You must've noticed, because one evening you just sat down next to me in the common room and looked at what I was doing and said, You're adding the sopophorous bean too early.

That was how it started.

I never asked for your help. You never really offered it either. You just corrected me, and then when I tried it the right way, it actually worked. You stayed a bit longer to make sure I didn’t immediately mess it up again. And then the next evening, you were there again. And the one after that. At some point it became a thing we just did.

You're a good teacher. That surprised me, a little. You have a lot of patience explaining things without making me feel slow for not getting it the first time. You'd show me something once and then make me do it myself, and if I got it wrong you'd tell me exactly where and why.

We weren't very good at conversation, either of us. I think anyone watching us from across the room would have thought it was strange—two people sitting in silence for hours, barely talking, and yet somehow not uncomfortable. It was never uncomfortable with you. We'd go twenty minutes without saying anything and it didn't feel like anything was missing. I don't know what we talked about most of the time. Nothing important. But our conversation always flowed somehow.

I got better at Potions. Professor Slughorn noticed, and everyone else eventually noticed too. I remember being embarrassed by the attention but also pleased. Because I'd actually done it. Because you'd helped me do it and I hadn't been too proud to let you.

After that, it wasn't just Potions. We'd study other subjects too, sometimes, or not study at all, just sit. You'd read to me when we didn't have anything to study. I didn't need more than that. I didn't think I needed more than that, until I started realising that I was looking forward to it every day, that I was looking for you when I walked into the common room, that I noticed when you weren't there.

I think I knew, somewhere around then, that it had become something else for me.

But then one night you came back wrong.

I don't know how else to describe it. You came through the common room door, and the moment I saw you, I knew something bad had happened. There were marks on your hands. I saw them before you could pull your sleeves down. There were long scratches, as though a werewolf, or maybe a lion had clawed you.

I didn't ask you about it, but I wanted to because I was worried. But you left me there alone and went to your room.

After that, you started pulling back. Slowly at first, and I told myself I was imagining it. You were tired, you were busy, you had other things. I told myself it wasn't about me because what reason would you have to pull back from me? I hadn't done anything. I hadn't said anything.

But the evenings got shorter, and then you started sitting somewhere else, and then sometimes you weren't there at all, and I sat in the common room alone, trying to figure out what had changed.

Eventually I stopped pretending I wasn't seeing it, because I think it was Sirius. That's the only thing that makes sense to me, or the closest I've ever got to an explanation. Whatever happened that night, I think Sirius was somewhere in it. Because after that, you hated Sirius and his friends even more. And Sirius hated you even more too. And I was stuck in the middle of that.

I'm not angry at you. I want to be clear about that. I don't know what happened and I never got to ask, so I don't have enough information to be angry. Mostly I just feel like I missed you.

We were almost becoming something, or could have been, if we'd wanted to, but it got taken away from us before it had the chance to be anything, and I never found out why.

I never did, obviously. I think, honestly, it's better that I didn't. Whatever happened between you and Sirius, I was going to end up in the middle of it either way.

—R.A.B.

Dear Remus,

Here's the thing you need to know before anything else. I didn't mean to. I don't want to have a crush on you.

But it crept up on me. One day you were just Sirius' boyfriend, someone I talked to occasionally, someone I was getting used to having around. Then at some point, you weren't just that anymore. I didn’t notice when it changed, and by the time I did notice it, it was already too late to do anything about it.

When Sirius and I started being okay again, it meant inheriting his entire life. Which meant I suddenly had all these people around me who I hadn't chosen and didn't know what to do with. Sirius, being Sirius, was completely unbothered by this and just kept throwing us all together and expecting it to work out through his optimism. He'd just drop me into a room with all of his friends and then look confused when it was awkward, he couldn’t understand why his little brother and his best friends weren’t immediately friends too.

It was awkward, for the record. For a while, it was very awkward.

But you were easy. Out of all of Sirius' other friends, you were the easiest. You didn't try too hard like how James was. You just talked to me with normal conversation, no sense that you were only doing it because Sirius asked you to. You genuinely wanted to be my friend.

We'd end up next to each other at dinner sometimes. You'd say something, and I'd say something back, then twenty minutes would go by, and I'd realise we'd been talking this whole time.

We have a lot in common. That was the first thing I actually noticed about you. We like the same books. We're both quieter than the people we're closest to. We find the same things funny.

And then there was prefect patrol.

I didn't think anything of it at first. It was just patrol. For just an hour, the same corridors, back to the dormitory. But it kept happening, every week, just us, and the conversations got longer without me planning for them to, and I started looking forward to it.

I was in the library when I figured it out. You walked in, looking for something, then you saw me and smiled. I sat with that for a very long time.

And then I thought, very clearly: oh, this is a problem. You're dating my brother.

You're dating Sirius, who I have spent years trying to get back, who I love more than I know how to say, who is finally in my life again. You are his. He's chosen you, and you've chosen him, and both of you are happy.

I want to be clear that I tried to stop. The moment I recognised it for what it was, I decided I was done, I was ending it, I was not going to feel that anymore. Which sounds ridiculous when I write it out, because obviously you can't just decide to stop feeling something, but I genuinely believed I could. I've always been good at controlling things, at being disciplined about what I let myself want. I thought I could just—turn it off. But it won't turn off.

I still have prefect patrol with you every week. You still talk to me. You're still very kind to me. I tell myself it's because I'm Sirius' brother, because of course you'd look out for me, it's just kindness, it doesn't mean anything.

But the deepest part of me keeps thinking about the fact that no one has ever chosen me over Sirius. Not once. Not ever.

Sirius is older and much more than me. He makes people love him without trying. Even when we were children, before everything fell apart, it was always Sirius first and Regulus second. In the worst parts of my brain, I wonder what I'd be like if you chose me over Sirius. But of course you wouldn't.

I think I’ve always wondered what it would be like if anyone chose me over him. But that's okay. I'm used to people choosing Sirius over me since we were little. I told myself I was fine with it. I didn't need to be first, it wasn't a competition.

I want it to be clear that I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm not going to say anything or do anything to make it weird. You're with Sirius and Sirius is my brother and there are some lines I wouldn't cross even in my worst moments. I won't even dare to touch your relationship. You're both so happy together.

I'm going to stop liking you. I've decided. I've been working on it. It's just taking longer than I'd like.

—R.A.B.