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By the middle of November, James Potter had been politely asked out four times through poetry.
Not ordinary poetry either. Not the sort that rhymed his name with games and flames and Quidditch aims, which had been tried before, tragically, by a Ravenclaw second-year who had then burst into tears so hard Professor Flitwick had given her a sherbet lemon and sent her to the hospital wing as if heartbreak were a mild concussion.
No.
These poems were different.
The first arrived folded into a perfect square, tucked beneath James’s goblet at breakfast, the parchment pale cream and faintly scented with something floral. Lily Evans had spotted it first, because Lily had a talent for noticing anything that might become a problem before it fully became one.
“James,” she said, looking down at the parchment. “Why is there a love note under your pumpkin juice?”
James, who had been in the middle of explaining to Sirius why it was absolutely possible to charm a Quaffle to scream whenever it was dropped, stopped with his mouth open.
Sirius Black leaned across the table at once, all sharp grin and brighter eyes.
“Oh, this is excellent.”
“It could be homework,” Peter Pettigrew said hopefully, though even he did not sound convinced.
“Homework doesn’t usually smell like a florist died on it,” Mary Macdonald said, wrinkling her nose.
Marlene McKinnon snatched the folded parchment before James could touch it.
“Oi—” James protested.
Marlene slapped his hand away. “Evidence first. Feelings later.”
Fabian Prewett turned around from where he and Gideon had been arguing over sausages. “Someone’s finally done it?”
“Done what?” Frank Longbottom asked, looking up from his toast.
“Attempted to woo Potter in writing,” Gideon said solemnly.
Alice Fortescue smiled into her tea. “I think that’s actually quite sweet.”
“It depends,” Remus Lupin said, not looking up from his book. “If it uses the phrase ‘hazel orbs,’ we stage an intervention.”
James sat taller immediately, dragging a hand through his already catastrophic hair. “My eyes are rather nice.”
“They’re brown,” Lily said.
“They are not just brown, Evans.”
“They are brown.”
“They’re warm brown.”
“They’re brown.”
Sirius plucked the parchment out of Marlene’s hands and cleared his throat dramatically.
James tried to look unconcerned. He leaned back, arms spread over the bench like he was posing for a portrait titled Boy Awaiting Adoration. His confidence, as always, entered the room before him and kicked its muddy boots onto the furniture.
Sirius began to read.
“Potter, bright as morning caught in flight,
you laugh as if the world was made to hear it.
Gold bends jealous where you pass,
and even victory seems to trail behind you,
less a thing you win
than something running gladly to your hand.”
The Gryffindor table went quiet.
Only for a second.
Then Fabian made a noise like he had swallowed his own tongue.
Gideon leaned over Sirius’s shoulder. “Bloody hell.”
Mary blinked. “That’s actually…”
“Good,” Alice finished softly.
James’s grin had frozen.
Sirius looked disturbed. “Why is that good?”
Marlene’s eyebrows had shot upward. “Because someone with taste wrote it.”
“Read the rest,” Peter urged.
Sirius looked as if he did not want to, which meant he absolutely had to.
“Your hands are restless things,
built for catching stars and throwing them back laughing.
You are loud the way storms are loud,
not careless,
only too full of weather to remain still.”
James went red.
Not a lot. Not enough for anyone who did not know him to notice. But Sirius knew him, and Remus knew him, and Lily absolutely knew him because Lily had watched James Potter make an entire personality out of being impossible to embarrass.
Sirius’s grin widened.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, Jamie.”
“Shut up.”
“He’s blushing,” Peter announced.
“I’m not.”
“You’re a little blushing,” Frank said, trying to be helpful.
“Thank you, Longbottom, that was devastating.”
Lily took the parchment from Sirius and read the final lines.
“If you are the sun, James Potter,
then may I be brave enough
to stand beneath all that burning
and ask not to be spared,
but seen.”
This time nobody laughed.
James stared at the poem.
His throat worked once.
Then, because he was James Potter and feelings were things to be wrestled into jokes before they could bite him, he grabbed the parchment, flipped it over, and checked for a name.
There was one.
Imogen Fawley.
A fifth-year Ravenclaw. Pretty, clever, quiet. James knew her vaguely because she had once beaten him in Charms, and James respected anyone who could best him academically without looking smug about it. He found her after lunch in the corridor outside the library, because Sirius had insisted that if a girl wrote him something like that, he could not simply “leave her emotionally bleeding in the hallway like some handsome criminal.”
James rejected her kindly.
He was good at that, when he remembered to stop performing for long enough to be a person.
Imogen looked disappointed, but not destroyed. She held her books against her chest and smiled tightly.
“That’s all right,” she said. “I thought it was worth a try.”
“It was,” James said quickly. “Really. It was… it was a lovely poem. I mean, genuinely. You’re very talented.”
Imogen’s mouth twitched.
“Thank you.”
And that was that.
Or at least, it should have been.
The second poem arrived three days later.
This one came wrapped around the handle of James’s broom, tied in place with red ribbon. He found it after Quidditch practice, with rain dripping from his hair and mud streaked across his cheek, Marlene beside him threatening to hex Fabian for sending a Bludger at her head during warm-up.
James noticed the ribbon first.
Then the parchment.
Then Sirius noticed James noticing it.
“Another one,” Sirius sang from behind him.
“Another what?” Lily asked. She had come to watch the end of practice with Mary and Alice, mostly because Frank was there and Alice had recently entered the stage of liking him where she pretended not to, badly.
James untied the ribbon with wet fingers.
“Read it,” Fabian called.
“No,” James said.
Gideon appeared behind him like a spirit of chaos. “Read it.”
“No.”
“Coward.”
“I’m not a coward, Prewett.”
“Then read it.”
James narrowed his eyes, then unfolded the parchment.
He meant to read it silently.
He really did.
But Sirius, naturally, climbed onto the bench beside him, hooked his chin over James’s shoulder, and read aloud.
“Potter,
there is a violence to joy
when you carry it so carelessly.
You make it look easy,
this business of being loved by the air,
of running headfirst through the world
as though the world has promised to catch you.”
Marlene stopped wringing out her hair.
Mary blinked.
Remus, who had been leaning against the stands, closed his book around one finger.
Sirius slowed down.
“You laugh,
and every serious thing in me
forgets its shape.
You grin,
and suddenly I understand why flowers split stone,
why foolish things grow toward impossible light.”
James felt heat creep up his neck.
“Oh, this one’s better,” Gideon said.
“It is not better,” Sirius said defensively, as if personally offended by romantic improvement.
“It is,” Remus said.
James glanced at him sharply. “You’re meant to be on my side.”
“I am. That’s why I’m being honest.”
Sirius finished the last lines with enormous flair.
“So if I ask for your hand,
know I do not ask for a trophy,
nor a hero,
nor the boy everyone watches.
I ask for the boy who looks at the sky
like it is a dare
and smiles back.”
Silence again.
This silence lasted longer.
James looked down at the name signed at the bottom.
Clara Finch. Hufflepuff. Fourth-year.
“Someone is absolutely in demand,” Mary said.
James tried to grin.
It came out slightly crooked.
“Can’t blame them, really.”
Lily gave him a look. “You’re touched.”
“I’m wet and cold.”
“You’re touched.”
“I’m many things, Evans.”
“You liked it.”
James folded the parchment carefully, more carefully than he had meant to, and tucked it inside his robes.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He found Clara Finch near the greenhouses the next morning and rejected her gently too. She went pink, looked at her shoes, and said it was fine, really, she understood, she only hoped he liked the poem.
James told her he did.
He meant it.
The third poem came a week later, delivered by owl during dinner, which was dramatic and therefore immediately set the entire Gryffindor table vibrating with interest.
The owl dropped the parchment directly into James’s mashed potatoes.
Peter gasped.
“Love has entered through starch.”
“Shut up,” James said, rescuing the parchment before gravy could ruin it.
Sirius sat forward at once. “I’ll read it.”
“No, you won’t.”
“James, don’t be selfish.”
“It’s addressed to me.”
“It’s addressed to us emotionally.”
Lily leaned over. “Is it another poem?”
“No,” James lied, looking at the first line and feeling something strange happen behind his ribs.
Remus raised an eyebrow. “You’re holding it like it might explode.”
“It might.”
“Read it, then,” Marlene said. “Before it does.”
James read this one himself.
Quietly, at first.
Then not so quietly, because Sirius kicked him under the table.
“James Potter,
you are not subtle.
You enter rooms like thrown doors,
like laughter with elbows,
like trouble wearing school robes.
Everyone knows where you are
because the world gets brighter
or louder
or both.”
Fabian nodded appreciatively. “Accurate.”
“Deeply,” Frank said.
James ignored them.
“You wear courage badly,
as if it is too big for you
and you had to grow into it early.
But I have seen it fit,
seen it settle over your shoulders
when someone smaller needed defending,
when someone quieter needed room,
when the joke had to stop
because kindness mattered more.”
This time James did not blush.
He went still.
Sirius noticed first. Sirius always did, even when he pretended not to notice anything that required sincerity.
“What?” Sirius asked, quieter.
James swallowed.
“Nothing.”
But it was not nothing.
The poem continued.
“If I liked only your brightness,
that would be simple.
But I like the shadow beneath it,
the boy who worries no one sees,
the boy who covers fear in noise
and calls it charm.”
Peter’s mouth parted.
Lily’s expression softened.
Remus looked at James for a long moment and said nothing.
James read the final lines.
“So let me ask you plainly,
though my hands may shake:
would you let me know you
when the applause is gone,
and the evening has stopped pretending
you are made only of gold?”
The table was quiet.
Even Sirius did not make a joke.
James looked at the signature.
Helena Greengrass.
Slytherin. Fifth-year.
That complicated things, mostly because Sirius immediately made a noise of disgust.
“Absolutely not.”
James frowned. “Padfoot.”
“She’s a Slytherin.”
“And?”
“And you’re not saying yes to a Slytherin.”
“I wasn’t saying yes to anyone.”
“Good.”
Lily’s eyes sharpened. “That’s a bit much, isn’t it?”
Sirius’s jaw tightened. “No.”
James looked at him. “She wrote a poem, Sirius. She didn’t poison my potatoes.”
“Slytherins don’t write poems like that.”
“Clearly one does.”
Sirius looked away.
Across the Great Hall, Regulus Black sat alone at the Slytherin table.
He was small for a third-year, slight and pale, with dark hair falling neatly around a face that always seemed arranged into absence. He did not laugh with the others. He did not lean into conversation. He ate with careful little motions, one hand curled around his fork like he had to remind himself where his fingers were.
James only noticed him because Sirius’s gaze cut there and then cut away.
Regulus did not look up.
He was reading.
Of course he was reading.
James had seen him in the library dozens of times, always alone, always tucked in a corner or pressed against the end of a table with books stacked around him like walls. He had seen him in corridors too, moving quickly, shoulders slightly raised, eyes fixed ahead. Sometimes Sirius passed him and said something sharp under his breath. Sometimes he said nothing at all, which somehow seemed worse.
Regulus never reacted much.
A blink, maybe. A slight tightening around the mouth.
Then he was gone.
James had never known what to make of him.
Sirius had escaped his family and come to Gryffindor like a match struck in a dark room. Regulus had stayed behind, or been left behind, or perhaps simply chosen differently. James did not know. He only knew Sirius’s face changed whenever his brother appeared. Went colder. Flatter. Meaner.
And Regulus, blank-eyed and still, looked as if he had been born expecting that.
James looked back down at the poem.
When someone quieter needed room.
His fingers tightened on the parchment.
“Whoever wrote this,” Mary said carefully, “knows you.”
James looked up.
Helena Greengrass was laughing delicately with two girls near the end of the Slytherin table.
“No,” he said slowly.
Marlene frowned. “No?”
“She doesn’t.”
Gideon leaned forward. “What, you think she’s stalking you?”
James shook his head, still staring across the Hall.
“I think someone else wrote this.”
That was the beginning.
The fourth poem confirmed it.
It arrived tucked into his Transfiguration textbook, which meant somebody had either broken into his bag or bribed Peter, who was notoriously weak under pressure and biscuits.
Peter denied everything.
“I would never betray you.”
“You ate my last Cauldron Cake yesterday.”
“That was different. That was survival.”
James opened the parchment in the Gryffindor common room by the fire. It was late. Rain hit the windows in silver streaks, and the room smelled of smoke, damp wool, and someone’s abandoned cocoa.
Sirius was stretched across the rug, throwing a balled-up sock at the ceiling and catching it again. Remus had taken the armchair nearest the fire with a book. Lily, Mary, Marlene, Alice, Frank, Fabian, and Gideon were scattered around, supposedly doing homework, though very little homework had been achieved since James announced he had found another poem.
This one was signed by a Gryffindor sixth-year named Cecilia Rowle, which made Sirius choke because “Rowle?” and then “Gryffindor?” and then “What kind of cosmic clerical error was that?”
James ignored him and read aloud.
“Potter,
you are all motion,
but there is precision in it.
A feint is still a confession
when watched closely enough.
Your left shoulder drops
before you dive.
Your grin sharpens
before you lie.
You look at your friends first
after every victory,
as if winning matters less
than making sure they are laughing with you.”
Marlene sat up.
Remus’s eyes lifted from his page.
James stopped reading.
“Keep going,” Lily said.
His voice was quieter when he did.
“You think no one notices
the way your bravado frays
when they are hurt,
how quickly you become hands,
bandages,
anger,
noise thrown up like a shield.
But I notice.
I notice the boy beneath the spectacle,
still bright,
still foolish,
still beloved,
but softer than he knows how to survive.”
James’s heart was doing something deeply inconvenient.
It felt like being seen through a window he had not realised he had left uncovered.
He read the last lines under his breath, but everyone heard.
“If you would let me,
I would not ask you to be smaller.
Only still enough, sometimes,
to rest.
Only certain enough, sometimes,
to believe
you do not have to dazzle
to be wanted.”
Sirius sat up slowly.
Fabian stared.
Gideon whispered, “Merlin.”
Frank looked genuinely moved. “That’s beautiful.”
James folded the parchment and unfolded it again.
Lily watched him.
“They all sound like the same person,” she said.
James nodded.
“I know.”
Mary leaned forward. “So who?”
“That,” James said, standing abruptly, “is exactly what I’m going to find out.”
Sirius groaned. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes.”
Remus closed his book. “You’re about to be insufferable, aren’t you?”
“I am about to be romantic.”
“You are about to become a menace.”
“Same thing.”
Lily sighed. “James.”
“No, listen. Someone is out there writing poems about me. Proper poems. The sort that make me sound—”
“Better than you are?” Marlene suggested.
“Complicated,” James said grandly, ignoring her. “Seen. Understood. Possibly adored.”
“Possibly paid,” Remus said.
James stopped.
Everyone looked at him.
Remus shrugged. “It’s a thought.”
James frowned. “Paid?”
“Well,” Remus said, “four different girls. Same style. Same level of observation. Same subject. Either someone is writing them and handing them out, or the school has developed an underground society devoted to describing you as weather.”
Peter gasped softly. “A secret society.”
“Not the point,” Lily said.
James’s eyes brightened.
Sirius saw that brightness and immediately looked horrified.
“No.”
James turned slowly toward him.
“No what?”
“No to whatever that face is.”
“This is destiny.”
“No, it’s a pattern.”
“Destiny is a pattern with better lighting.”
“Prongs.”
“Someone is writing love poems about me, Sirius.”
“For money, maybe.”
“Even better. A tortured artist.”
“A hired quill.”
“A genius hiding in the shadows.”
“A person trying to afford sweets.”
James clutched the parchment to his chest. “You have no poetry in your soul.”
“I have survival instincts.”
Remus smiled faintly. “Not many.”
Sirius threw the sock at him.
From that night onward, James Potter became unbearable.
More unbearable than usual, which everyone agreed was an achievement of some distinction.
He began keeping the poems in a hidden pocket inside his robes. He studied them between classes, at meals, before practice, during History of Magic, during which Professor Binns did not notice and James would not have cared if he had. He underlined phrases. He compared handwriting. He made lists of possible writers and crossed them out with increasing violence.
“It’s not Helena Greengrass,” James announced at breakfast two days later.
Sirius pushed eggs around his plate. “Congratulations.”
“She didn’t know I dropped my left shoulder before I dive.”
“Maybe she watches Quidditch.”
James leaned in. “She doesn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I asked.”
Sirius stared at him. “You what?”
“Politely.”
Lily shut her eyes. “James.”
“She said she paid someone.”
That got everyone’s attention.
Mary turned. “She admitted it?”
“Not directly.” James sat taller. “But when I complimented the poem again, she said, and I quote, ‘Yes, well, I knew what sort of thing you’d like.’”
Marlene blinked. “That is not an admission.”
“It is an admission-shaped hole.”
Remus rubbed at his temple. “That means nothing.”
“It means everything.”
Peter nodded loyally. “Everything.”
“Thank you, Wormtail.”
Peter beamed.
Fabian leaned over from nearby. “Ask her who wrote it, then.”
“I did.”
“And?”
“She told me that if I didn’t say yes to her, I had no right to the supplier.”
Gideon whistled. “Fair.”
James looked offended. “Fair?”
“You rejected the customer. You don’t get trade secrets.”
James stabbed his toast. “This is bigger than commerce.”
“This is entirely commerce,” Remus said.
“It is love.”
“It is poems.”
“It is fate.”
“It is ink.”
“It is my future.”
Sirius groaned and dropped his forehead onto the table.
James did not care.
The mystery became his chosen battlefield.
He asked questions.
Too many questions.
He asked Imogen Fawley whether she often used enjambment. She stared at him for ten seconds and said, “I don’t know what that is.”
He asked Clara Finch whether she had any strong opinions about metaphors involving storms. Clara said, “I like clouds?” and then fled.
He asked Cecilia Rowle if she thought his left shoulder dropped before he dived because of instinct or form, and Cecilia said, “I’ve never watched Quidditch in my life.”
James returned to Gryffindor Tower with the air of a detective who had seen the bones of the universe and found them suspicious.
“It’s not any of them,” he declared.
“Shocking,” Lily said dryly.
“Which means the writer is someone else.”
“That is usually what ‘not any of them’ means,” Remus said.
James ignored him and slapped his notebook onto the table.
He had labelled it The Poet.
Sirius took one look and stood up. “I’m leaving.”
“No, you’re not. You’re my best mate. You’re morally required to assist.”
“I am morally required to stop you.”
James opened the notebook. “Suspect list.”
Lily leaned over despite herself.
Mary came to look too.
Marlene snorted. “You put half the school on here.”
“Genius can hide anywhere.”
“You put Filch.”
“He sees everything.”
“You put McGonagall.”
“Have you read her feedback comments? Elegant. Brutal.”
Alice covered a laugh with her hand.
Frank pointed at one name. “Why is Remus on the list?”
Remus looked offended without moving his face much. “Yes, why am I on the list?”
“You know my left shoulder drops before I dive.”
“I also know you chew sugar quills until they look murdered. That doesn’t mean I’m writing love poems about you.”
James narrowed his eyes. “That sounds like something the poet would say.”
Sirius threw a cushion at him.
The trouble was, James was not only loud and confident and ridiculous. He was also clever when something caught his interest. Beneath the spectacle, beneath the ruffled hair and the shouted jokes and the way he filled rooms like he had been born with a spotlight stitched beneath his skin, James Potter had a sharp mind and a dangerous ability to focus.
And now all that focus had turned toward a nameless writer who apparently understood him better than most people who saw him every day.
The idea should have frightened him.
Instead it made him restless.
He began noticing writing.
Everywhere.
The slant of essays passed across desks. The shape of notes tucked between friends. The elegant loops of signatures on library cards. The scratchy, hurried scrawls of Quidditch tactics. He watched hands now. Fingers stained with ink. Nails bitten or clean. Quills held too tightly or too loosely.
“You’re being creepy,” Lily told him after he spent an entire Charms lesson squinting at a Ravenclaw’s paragraph on Summoning Charms.
“I’m being thorough.”
“You’re going to get hexed.”
“For love, Evans.”
“For being weird.”
“That too.”
The fifth poem arrived near Christmas.
By then, James had started receiving fewer confessions. Perhaps word had spread that he rejected gently but firmly. Perhaps the girls had grown tired of paying for heartbreak. Perhaps the hidden poet had stopped taking commissions.
But then one appeared on a snowy morning, slipped into his copy of Advanced Quidditch Tactics despite the fact that James was still technically a fourth-year and had stolen the book from a seventh-year shelf in the library because “ambition shouldn’t be limited by age, Remus.”
This poem was shorter.
He found it alone.
For once, there was no audience. No Sirius reading over his shoulder. No Lily’s knowing eyes, no Remus’s careful silence, no Peter bouncing beside him, no Prewetts ready to make everything ten times worse.
Just James, in a quiet corner of the library, with snow tapping at the tall windows and the world hushed in white.
The parchment fell from the pages and landed in his lap.
He opened it.
“James,
you are most yourself
when you forget to be impressive.
When you are tired after flying,
hair damp,
hands shaking slightly from cold,
laugh softened down to breath.
When you are listening
and do not yet know anyone has noticed.
When your mouth opens
before your thoughts arrange themselves
because honesty outruns pride in you,
always.
You are not beautiful because you shine.
You shine because you are alive so loudly
that even quiet things turn toward you.”
James stared at it.
There was no signature this time.
No girl’s name. No request. No confession borrowed and repackaged.
Only the poem.
Only his name at the top.
His thumb brushed the final line.
Even quiet things turn toward you.
Something turned in him too.
Softly. Terribly.
He sat there for so long that Madam Pince walked past twice and glared at him for breathing near old paper.
When Sirius found him twenty minutes later, James was still staring.
“There you are,” Sirius said. “We’ve been looking everywhere. Peter thought you got trapped in a tapestry again.”
“That happened once.”
“Twice.”
“The second one was research.”
Sirius dropped into the chair opposite him, then noticed the parchment.
His expression shifted.
“Another?”
James nodded.
Sirius reached for it.
James pulled it back.
Sirius stopped.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Sirius leaned back, forcing a smirk that did not quite sit right.
“Secret admirer getting possessive?”
“There’s no signature.”
“Spooky.”
James looked at him.
Sirius glanced away first.
That was rare.
James folded the poem carefully.
“I need to know who wrote it.”
“You’ve said.”
“No,” James said. “I mean I need to know.”
Sirius tapped his fingers against the table. “Why?”
James did not answer immediately.
Because how did he explain that these poems had begun as flattering little performances, little bursts of attention he could laugh off and blush through and make part of the grand ridiculous theatre of being James Potter?
How did he explain that somewhere along the way, they had become something else?
A mirror.
A hand through fog.
A quiet voice saying, I noticed.
Not the applause. Not the charm. Not the winning. Not the loud, polished, reckless version of himself he knew how to offer up because it kept things easy and bright.
Him.
The rest of him.
The parts he did not show unless something cracked.
James swallowed.
“Because I think,” he said slowly, “they see me.”
Sirius went very still.
His face did something complicated. Something closed.
“People see you.”
“Not like this.”
Sirius looked down at the table.
For one brief moment, James thought his best friend might say something real. Something honest. Something about being seen and not seen and what it cost to grow up in a house where love had rules sharp enough to draw blood.
Instead, Sirius said, “Don’t be dramatic.”
James smiled faintly.
“I’m always dramatic.”
“Unfortunately.”
Sirius stood. “Come on. Lunch.”
James looked back toward the rows of shelves.
A flicker of movement caught his eye.
Small. Dark-haired. Pale hand gripping a stack of books too high for his arms.
Regulus Black moved between the aisles, eyes down, steps careful and soundless.
His shoulder clipped the edge of a table.
He flinched so hard the top two books slid.
James was halfway out of his chair before he realised he had moved, but Regulus caught them himself, clutching them against his chest. His breathing looked wrong for a second, too quick, mouth parted slightly, fingers twitching against the leather spines.
Then he shut down again.
Blank face.
Empty eyes.
Gone behind the shelves.
Sirius had seen him too.
His jaw tightened.
“Come on,” he said again, harder this time.
James looked at Sirius.
Then at the place Regulus had disappeared.
Then, because he did not yet understand the shape of destiny but could feel it starting to breathe nearby, he followed his best friend out.
The answer came because of Slughorn.
This was, everyone later agreed, deeply annoying.
Professor Slughorn loved talent the way dragons loved gold. He hoarded bright students, polished them, displayed them, mentioned them over candied pineapple, and took personal credit whenever they achieved anything at all, even if his contribution had been standing nearby and saying, “Excellent, excellent.”
Regulus Black was one of his favourites.
Not publicly, perhaps. Regulus was not the kind of student Slughorn paraded too loudly, mostly because Regulus looked as if being perceived caused him physical discomfort. But everyone knew.
Highest grades in his year.
Brilliant at Potions.
Even better at essays.
A Slytherin Seeker already spoken about in low, irritated voices by older players because he flew like he had been built out of nerve endings and moonlight.
And, apparently, an exceptional writer.
James learned that part because Mary Macdonald came sprinting into the Gryffindor common room one evening with ink on her sleeve and triumph in her eyes.
“I know something,” she announced.
Sirius looked up from a game of Exploding Snap. “If it’s about James’s mystery poet, throw yourself from the tower now and spare us.”
James stood so fast Peter yelped.
“What do you know?”
Mary grinned. “Slughorn commended a creative writing piece last month.”
James blinked.
“Creative writing?”
“Yes. It was apparently brilliant. Professor Kettleburn was talking to Professor Slughorn outside the staff room, and Slughorn said he hadn’t seen student prose that precise in years.”
Lily frowned. “How does that help?”
Mary’s grin widened.
“Because he said the student’s name.”
James’s heart kicked.
Sirius went rigid.
Mary said, “Regulus Black.”
The room changed.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
But the air altered, as if someone had opened a window in winter.
Sirius’s expression went flat. “No.”
Mary looked at him. “What?”
“No.”
James turned to him. “Sirius.”
“He didn’t write them.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“How?”
Sirius’s mouth twisted. “Because he wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t what? Write?”
“Write that.”
James stared at him.
Remus, who had been quiet in the corner, looked between them.
Lily’s face softened with something that was not pity but came close enough to make Sirius bristle.
James spoke carefully.
“You said Slytherins don’t write poems like that.”
Sirius stood. “Don’t.”
“I’m not attacking you.”
“I said don’t.”
James shut his mouth.
Sirius looked furious. Not at James exactly. Not at Mary. Not even at Regulus, who was not there to receive it. The anger seemed older than the room. Older than Hogwarts.
“I know my brother,” Sirius said.
James had never heard him say the word brother like that. Like it was something sour.
“Do you?” Remus asked quietly.
Sirius whipped toward him. “Excuse me?”
Remus did not flinch. “Do you know him?”
Sirius’s eyes flashed. “You don’t get to—”
“I’m only asking.”
“Well, don’t.”
Nobody moved.
Then Sirius grabbed his robes and stormed toward the portrait hole.
Peter half-rose. “Sirius?”
“Leave it,” James said softly.
The portrait slammed shut behind him.
The common room stayed silent.
Then Fabian, from the sofa, said carefully, “So… Regulus Black writes love poems?”
Gideon muttered, “Possibly.”
James was still staring at the portrait hole.
His mind, however, had already turned elsewhere.
Regulus Black.
Small, quiet Regulus Black, with blank eyes and twitchy hands.
Regulus Black in the library, alone with stacks of books.
Regulus Black catching falling volumes against his chest as if mistakes were dangerous.
Regulus Black, who watched Quidditch from the Slytherin stands with a Seeker’s precision.
Your left shoulder drops before you dive.
James sat down slowly.
Lily watched him.
“You’re going to find him,” she said.
It was not a question.
James nodded.
“Yes.”
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
“No, James.” Lily’s voice sharpened. “Careful. Not charming. Not loud. Not whatever performance you use when you want something.”
James looked up.
Lily’s expression was serious.
“He’s not like the girls who asked you out. And he’s not Sirius.”
James swallowed.
“I know.”
Remus closed his book.
“Do you?”
James looked toward the window, where snow had begun to fall again, soft and silent against the glass.
“No,” he admitted. “But I want to.”
Regulus Black did not know he had become the centre of a storm.
This was because Regulus Black did not often notice storms unless they changed the pressure in the room too quickly and made his skin feel wrong.
He noticed other things.
He noticed the scrape of chair legs against stone and which professors wore strong cologne and how many people lied by laughing first. He noticed the exact rhythm of footsteps in hallways. He noticed that James Potter always tapped his quill twice before answering a question he already knew. He noticed that Sirius’s voice got louder when he was uncomfortable and crueler when Regulus was nearby, though Regulus did not know why.
He noticed everything and understood very little of it.
That was the exhausting part.
The world was full of signals everyone else seemed to read automatically. Faces shifted, voices bent, silences meant different things depending on invisible rules Regulus had never been given. He spent most days trying not to be wrong. Trying not to move too sharply or speak too bluntly or stare too long. Trying not to ask questions that made people laugh.
He failed often.
So he stopped asking.
The library was easier.
Books said what they meant, most of the time. Ink stayed still. Words could be rearranged until they became exact. If a sentence did not work, Regulus could cut it open and fix the bones. People could not be revised. People got angry when he did not know why. People said things like never mind and obviously and you know what I mean, and Regulus usually did not.
Poems were easier too.
Not because feelings made sense. They did not.
But observations did.
A girl could come to him with three Sickles and a crush on a boy from Hufflepuff, and Regulus could ask questions until he understood the shape she wanted.
Does he smile often?
What does he do with his hands?
Does he listen when you speak?
Does he look at people or through them?
Why him?
The girls did not always answer well, but Regulus could work with fragments. He could make something pretty out of almost anything if the money was good enough and the room was quiet enough.
He did not care about the boys he wrote for.
That was not the point.
He cared about accuracy.
The first poem about James Potter had been easy because James was impossible not to observe.
Everyone observed him.
He was loud. Bright. Reckless. Annoying, sometimes. Kind, often. More careful than he pretended. Regulus knew that because Regulus noticed patterns, and James Potter’s pattern was this: he joked until someone was hurt, then the joke vanished.
He remembered people’s injuries. He stepped between younger students and older ones. He made himself the centre of attention when someone else looked uncomfortable. He lied badly when asked if he was worried. He flew like joy was a dare and he meant to win it.
Regulus did not have feelings about him.
He had notes.
That was all.
Which was why, when James Potter appeared at the end of his library table two evenings after Mary Macdonald overheard Slughorn, Regulus did not understand what was happening.
He looked up slowly.
James stood there with his schoolbag over one shoulder, hair in chaos, glasses slightly crooked, expression unusually quiet.
Regulus stared.
James did not speak immediately.
That made Regulus nervous.
People usually filled silence around him quickly, either because they disliked it or because they thought Regulus was being rude by leaving it empty. James did neither. He stood still, which seemed difficult for him, and waited.
Regulus’s fingers twitched around his quill.
“You are blocking the light,” he said.
James blinked.
Then stepped aside at once.
“Sorry.”
Regulus looked back down at his parchment.
The sentence he had been writing no longer made sense.
He crossed it out.
James remained beside the table.
Regulus waited for him to say something mean. Not because James usually did. James mostly did not speak to him at all. But he was Sirius’s friend, and Sirius’s friends laughed when Sirius was mean. Sometimes they looked uncomfortable, but they still stood there. Regulus had never known what that counted as.
James cleared his throat softly.
“Can I sit?”
Regulus looked at the empty chair across from him.
Then at James.
Then at the chair.
“It is not mine.”
James smiled faintly. “Right.”
He sat.
Regulus’s shoulders tensed.
James noticed.
Of course James noticed. James had started noticing everything about him and it was already ruining him.
Up close, Regulus looked smaller than he did across rooms. Not fragile exactly. James did not like that word. It made people sound like objects waiting to break. Regulus looked tightly held. Like every part of him had been folded too carefully and put away in the wrong drawer.
His face was blank, but not empty. Never empty.
His eyes moved constantly. Tiny flickers. James’s hands. The aisle. The book spine beside him. James’s mouth. The ink bottle. The door.
“Regulus,” James said.
Regulus’s quill stopped.
Most people called him Black if they called him anything. Sirius called him things James did not like thinking about.
Regulus looked wary.
“Yes.”
James reached into his bag slowly. “I wanted to ask you something.”
“If it is about Potions, I do not tutor fourth-years.”
“It’s not about Potions.”
“I also do not do Transfiguration essays.”
James’s mouth twitched. “Do people ask you that often?”
“Yes.”
“Do you say yes?”
“No.”
“Fair enough.”
Regulus stared at him.
James softened his voice further.
“It’s about poems.”
There.
A change.
Tiny, but there.
Regulus’s fingers tightened around the quill until the knuckles paled.
“I write many poems.”
“I know.”
“For money,” Regulus added.
James felt something warm and awful open in his chest. Not disappointment. Not even surprise.
Something like tenderness.
He nodded.
“Right.”
Regulus’s eyes narrowed slightly, suspicious now. “That is allowed.”
“I’m not here to get you in trouble.”
“Then why are you here?”
James pulled the folded parchments from his bag.
Regulus looked at them.
His face did not change.
But his breathing did.
James placed them carefully on the table between them, not pushing them too close.
“I think you wrote these.”
Regulus did not answer.
The library made small sounds around them. Pages turning. Distant whispers. Madam Pince’s shoes clicking somewhere between shelves.
James waited.
Regulus looked at the poems for a long time.
Then he said, “The clients should not have told you.”
“They didn’t.”
Regulus’s gaze snapped up.
James smiled slightly. “I’m very clever.”
“No, you are very persistent.”
James’s smile widened before he could stop it. “That too.”
Regulus looked annoyed by this, but only faintly, as if emotions had to travel a long distance to reach his face.
“I did not write them because I like you,” he said bluntly.
James’s heart knocked once, hard.
He leaned back a little, giving the words room instead of reacting too quickly.
“All right.”
“I was paid.”
“I know.”
“They asked me to write about you.”
“I know.”
“I used observational details because vague poems are bad.”
James pressed his lips together.
Regulus continued, faster now, not looking at him.
“I did not mean to imply personal attachment. I do not know you properly. I know your public behaviours and some private ones that are visible if a person pays attention. That is not the same as intimacy. I understand that people get confused about poems, but they are constructed things and not always confessions. I wrote what was requested. The unsigned one was not requested, but that is because the previous paid pieces had inefficient phrasing and I wanted to correct the structure.”
James stared at him.
Regulus’s mouth shut.
His shoulders rose slightly, defensive.
“That was too much talking,” he said flatly.
“No,” James said at once.
Regulus blinked.
James shook his head. “No, it wasn’t.”
“It was.”
“It really wasn’t.”
Regulus looked at him like James had said something obviously false.
James took a breath.
The old James, the easy James, the one who knew how to turn everything into theatre, would have grinned here. Would have leaned forward and made some grand declaration. Would have said something ridiculous about destiny and tortured artists and how Regulus Black had been hiding in plain sight like a tragic moonlit genius.
He wanted to.
Merlin, he wanted to.
But Lily’s voice echoed in his head.
Careful.
Not charming. Not loud.
So James folded his hands in his lap and spoke quietly.
“I like them.”
Regulus looked down. “They are technically sound.”
James huffed a soft laugh. “They’re more than that.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No, they are poems. They are supposed to create the illusion of more.”
James tilted his head. “Is that what you think writing is?”
Regulus went still.
For the first time, something like feeling broke through the blankness. Not much. A hairline crack of frustration.
“Writing is controlled,” he said. “People are not. Writing lets me make things exact.”
James listened.
Regulus’s fingers tapped the table. Once. Twice. Then he pressed them flat as if stopping himself.
“Spoken words move too quickly. Faces change too quickly. People ask things and then get upset when I answer the question instead of the other question they meant but did not say. Poems are better. They can be precise.”
James nodded slowly.
“That makes sense.”
Regulus stared at him again.
“It does?”
“Yeah.”
“You are not saying that to be kind?”
“I am being kind,” James said. “But I’m not lying.”
Regulus looked away.
James glanced at the poems.
“You said you don’t know me properly.”
“I do not.”
“But you noticed things other people don’t.”
“Because other people are bad at looking.”
James laughed.
Not loudly. Not the bark of amusement everyone expected from him. Something softer, surprised out of him.
Regulus flinched anyway.
James stopped immediately.
“Sorry.”
Regulus’s gaze flicked back.
“You do not have to apologise for laughing.”
“You startled.”
“That is not always because of you.”
James absorbed that.
“All right.”
Something shifted then. Not fixed. Not healed. James did not know enough to heal anything, and Regulus did not look like someone who would appreciate being treated as a project anyway.
But the air between them changed.
James reached for the unsigned poem, then paused before touching it.
“May I?”
Regulus gave a small nod.
James unfolded it.
“This one,” he said. “You wrote because you wanted to correct the structure?”
“Yes.”
“You put my name at the top.”
“That is standard.”
“You didn’t sign it.”
“I did not want credit.”
“Why?”
Regulus looked genuinely confused. “Because I was not paid.”
James stared at him.
Then he smiled.
He could not help it. It spread slowly and helplessly across his face, not his public grin, not his Quidditch smile, but something caught and quiet.
Regulus frowned.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“It is not nothing.”
“No,” James admitted. “It’s not nothing.”
Regulus waited, visibly bracing.
James leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, voice hushed.
“I’m glad it was you.”
Regulus went completely still.
James watched the words land badly, not because they were cruel but because they did not have anywhere familiar to go.
Regulus blinked once.
Then again.
“Why?”
James felt his chest ache.
“Because you saw me.”
Regulus frowned harder. “Everyone sees you.”
“No, everyone looks at me.”
“That is the same thing.”
“It isn’t.”
Regulus looked down at the poem. “I do not understand.”
James nodded. “That’s okay.”
Regulus’s fingers twitched again. “People say that when it is not.”
“I mean it.”
“How?”
James went quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “Because I don’t need you to understand everything right now. I just wanted to know who wrote them. And now I know. And I’m glad.”
Regulus’s mouth parted slightly.
No words came out.
James sat back, giving him space again.
Across the library, Madam Pince hissed at two second-years for breathing too enthusiastically near a restricted text.
Regulus looked toward the noise, shoulders tensing, then back at James.
“You are being different,” he said.
James blinked. “Different?”
“Quieter.”
“Oh.”
“You are not usually quiet.”
James rubbed the back of his neck. “No. Not usually.”
“Why?”
Because I think if I’m loud, you’ll disappear.
Because I think people have been loud at you your whole life.
Because I want to get this right.
Because you’re Sirius’s brother and somehow that matters and doesn’t matter at all.
Because you wrote me into a poem like I was worth studying.
Because I have been chasing the idea of you for weeks and now you’re here, real and nervous, and I want to be careful with the real thing.
James swallowed all of that down and chose the simplest truth.
“Because you seem to prefer quiet.”
Regulus stared.
James smiled faintly.
“I can do quiet.”
“You are bad at it.”
“I can try.”
Regulus looked at him for a very long time.
Then, barely audibly, he said, “Trying is acceptable.”
James felt like he had just won a Quidditch final.
He did not shout.
He did not punch the air.
He did not announce to the library that destiny had unfolded her glittering banners and chosen him specifically.
He only smiled down at the poem and said, “Good.”
That should have been private.
Unfortunately, James Potter’s life had never respected privacy.
Sirius found out first.
Not because James told him. James, for once in his life, held his tongue. He returned to Gryffindor Tower that night with the poems tucked safely in his robes and something luminous caught beneath his skin.
Sirius took one look at him and narrowed his eyes.
“No.”
James froze halfway through removing his scarf. “No what?”
“No whatever that is.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“You look like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’ve discovered a new religion and it has cheekbones.”
Remus choked on his tea.
Peter looked between them. “Did you find the poet?”
James tried to school his face.
He was not successful.
Marlene gasped from the sofa. “You did.”
Lily sat forward. “James?”
Mary’s eyes widened. “Was I right?”
Sirius went sharp.
James looked at him.
Then he looked at everyone else.
Fabian and Gideon had appeared from nowhere, because Prewetts had an instinct for drama that bordered on supernatural. Frank and Alice were near the fire, both suddenly paying intense attention.
James sighed.
“Yes,” he said.
The common room erupted.
“I knew it!”
“Who?”
“Tell us!”
“Was it Greengrass?”
“Was it Remus?”
“It was not me,” Remus said.
James held up both hands. “Calm down.”
“Never,” Fabian said.
James looked at Sirius again.
Sirius’s face had gone pale beneath the firelight.
James said, carefully, “It was Regulus.”
Silence.
Then Peter whispered, “Your brother?”
Sirius stood so abruptly his chair scraped back.
James’s jaw tightened. “Sirius.”
“No.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it’s still no.”
Marlene glanced between them. “Black—”
Sirius ignored her. “He told you that?”
“Yes.”
“And you believed him?”
James’s expression changed.
The room felt it.
James Potter was not often cold. He was warm by nature, reckless with it, warmth spilling from him in noise and laughter and easy touch. But now something cooled in his face.
“Yes,” he said.
Sirius stared at him.
James stepped closer, voice still level.
“I believed him.”
Sirius looked betrayed.
That hurt.
James did not let it move him.
“He wrote them for money,” Sirius said, like it was an accusation.
“I know.”
“He doesn’t care about you.”
“I know what he said.”
“He’s weird.”
Lily’s face snapped up.
Remus’s eyes hardened.
James went very still.
“Don’t.”
Sirius laughed harshly. “Oh, come off it.”
“I said don’t.”
“He is, James. He’s always been like that. Blank little shadow following people around and staring. He doesn’t talk right. He doesn’t act right. He doesn’t—”
“Enough.”
James had not shouted.
That made it worse.
Sirius stopped as if the word had hit him.
James’s hands curled at his sides.
Across the room, Lily stood, expression quietly furious. Mary looked upset. Alice had a hand over her mouth. Frank looked deeply uncomfortable. Fabian and Gideon had lost their usual mischief. Peter looked frightened.
Remus watched Sirius with a sadness that seemed older than any of them.
James spoke softly.
“You don’t get to talk about him like that in front of me.”
Sirius’s mouth opened.
Then closed.
Something flickered across his face. Anger first. Then hurt. Then something like shame, buried so quickly James almost missed it.
“He’s my brother,” Sirius said.
“I know.”
“You don’t know anything.”
James’s voice softened, but did not bend.
“Maybe not. But I know he flinches when people laugh too suddenly. I know he expects questions to be traps. I know he thought I came to punish him for writing poems other people paid him to write. I know when I said I liked them, he looked like he didn’t know what to do with that. And I know you’re cruel to him.”
Sirius looked as if James had slapped him.
James hated it.
He did not take it back.
The common room was painfully quiet.
Then Sirius grabbed his cloak.
“Fine.”
“Sirius—”
“No. It’s fine.”
He shoved through the portrait hole and vanished.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Then Peter said weakly, “That went badly.”
Marlene elbowed him.
James rubbed both hands over his face.
Remus stood.
“I’ll go after him.”
James nodded.
“Moony.”
Remus paused.
James’s voice was hoarse. “Don’t let him be alone too long.”
Remus’s expression softened.
“I won’t.”
He left.
James sank into the nearest chair.
Lily came over and sat beside him.
“You did the right thing,” she said quietly.
James stared at the fire.
“Didn’t feel like it.”
“It rarely does.”
Mary sat on his other side. “So Regulus wrote them.”
James nodded.
Alice smiled faintly. “That’s… actually lovely.”
James looked down at his hands.
“He’s not like I expected.”
Frank asked gently, “What is he like?”
James thought about Regulus in the library. The exactness of him. The nervous hands. The blunt words. The way he said trying is acceptable like he was granting James permission to enter a country with strict border laws.
James smiled despite himself.
“Perfect,” he said.
Marlene groaned. “Oh no.”
Fabian pointed at him. “There it is.”
Gideon nodded solemnly. “He’s gone.”
Mary laughed. “Completely.”
James looked up. “What?”
Lily’s mouth twitched. “You have that face.”
“I do not have a face.”
“You have several,” she said. “That one means you’ve decided something dramatic.”
James sat taller.
“I have.”
Peter looked afraid. “Is it safe?”
“No,” said everyone.
James ignored them.
“It’s destiny.”
Marlene threw a cushion at him.
The next morning, James went to the library before breakfast.
This alone caused concern.
Peter had to sit down when he heard.
“Before breakfast?”
“Before breakfast,” Remus confirmed, looking tired because Sirius had returned late and neither of them had slept much.
Fabian looked grave. “Love has made him unnatural.”
“Love has made him punctual,” Gideon corrected. “More alarming.”
James did not hear any of this because James was already in the library, moving quietly between tables with two wrapped pastries in his pocket and a determination so tender it would have embarrassed him if he had stopped long enough to examine it.
Regulus was in the same corner.
Of course he was.
He had three books open, a parchment half-filled, and one hand pressed against his temple. His quill lay abandoned beside an inkpot. He looked tense, mouth flattened, eyes fixed on a paragraph without moving.
James approached slowly.
Regulus looked up before he reached the table.
“Hello,” James said softly.
Regulus stared at him.
“You are early.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I brought you breakfast.”
Regulus’s eyes dropped to the wrapped pastry James placed on the table.
Then back up.
“Why?”
James sat across from him only after Regulus gave a small nod toward the chair.
“You spend most mornings here, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you eat?”
Regulus frowned. “Sometimes.”
“That’s not a yes.”
“It is also not a no.”
James smiled. “Fair.”
Regulus looked at the pastry as if it were a puzzle with teeth.
James unwrapped his own and took a bite first.
Regulus watched.
Then, very carefully, he pulled the second pastry closer.
James tried not to look too pleased.
He failed slightly.
Regulus noticed.
“Do not make that face.”
“What face?”
“The pleased one.”
James attempted to rearrange himself.
Regulus stared. “Now you look ill.”
James laughed under his breath. “Sorry.”
Regulus broke off a tiny piece of pastry and ate it.
James felt something inside him melt into absolute ruin.
He had no idea how he was supposed to survive this.
Regulus chewed, swallowed, and said, “You are staring.”
James looked away immediately.
“Sorry.”
“You apologise frequently.”
“I’m trying not to be a prat.”
Regulus considered that.
“You are often a prat?”
James grinned. “According to Evans, yes.”
“Evans is usually correct.”
James gasped quietly. “You wound me.”
Regulus tilted his head. “No, I did not.”
“It’s a figure of speech.”
“I know. I do not like that one.”
“Noted.”
Regulus looked suspiciously at him again. “You are humouring me.”
“No.”
“You are.”
“I’m listening,” James said.
Regulus went quiet.
James let the quiet stay.
A few minutes passed like that. Regulus ate small pieces of pastry. James ate his own. Snowlight filled the tall windows, turning the library silver and blue.
Finally, Regulus said, “Sirius knows.”
James’s breath caught.
“Yes.”
Regulus nodded as if this confirmed something expected and unpleasant.
“Is he angry?”
James chose his words carefully.
“He was upset.”
“That means angry.”
“Sometimes.”
“At me?”
James’s chest hurt.
“No.”
Regulus’s mouth tightened. “That is not true.”
“I think he’s angry at lots of things,” James said softly. “I don’t think all of them are you.”
Regulus looked down.
His fingers tapped. Once. Twice. Three times.
“He does not like me.”
James said nothing.
Regulus continued, voice flat in a way that made it worse.
“He has not liked me for a long time. I do not know when it started. I used to think I had done a specific thing, but I could not identify what it was. Then I thought it was because I was sorted into Slytherin, but he was like that before. Then I thought it was because I am strange.”
James inhaled.
Regulus looked up sharply.
“You are going to say I am not.”
James shut his mouth.
Regulus’s eyes were very grey in the morning light.
“I know I am different,” he said. “I am not stupid. People dislike when I say that, but it is observable. I do not understand things properly. I get overwhelmed by sound and touching and changes. I answer incorrectly even when the answer is factually correct. My face does not do what people expect. My voice does not do what people expect. I am too much or not enough and I cannot tell which until someone is already angry.”
James did not move.
He wanted to reach across the table.
He did not.
Regulus’s hands had curled into fists on the tabletop.
“I am only being myself,” he said, quieter. “But apparently that is not correct.”
James felt furious.
Not loudly. Not in the hot, easy way he was used to. This was deeper, steadier. A vow forming teeth.
He spoke carefully.
“I don’t think you’re incorrect.”
Regulus looked away.
James leaned forward a fraction.
“I think people have been cruel because they didn’t understand you.”
“That is not better.”
“No,” James said. “It isn’t.”
Regulus blinked at him.
James swallowed.
“I’m sorry.”
“You did not do it.”
“I still hate it.”
Regulus stared at him for a long time.
Then he looked down at the pastry.
“It is good,” he said.
James blinked.
Then understood, perhaps, that the conversation had moved because Regulus needed it moved.
He smiled softly.
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll bring another tomorrow.”
Regulus looked up quickly. “Why?”
James’s smile warmed.
“Because I want to.”
Regulus frowned. “That is not a reason.”
“It is for me.”
Regulus considered this with the grave suspicion of someone reviewing a legally dubious contract.
Then he said, “Tomorrow is acceptable.”
James Potter walked into breakfast twenty minutes later looking like he had personally shaken hands with fate.
Sirius was at the table, dark circles under his eyes, pushing food around his plate. Remus sat beside him, close but not touching. Lily looked between James and Sirius with the expression of someone prepared to referee disaster before coffee.
James sat down quietly.
This, somehow, was more alarming than if he had burst into song.
Peter stared. “Are you all right?”
“Brilliant.”
“You’re quiet.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
James smiled into his pumpkin juice.
Marlene narrowed her eyes. “He’s been with Regulus.”
Sirius’s fork stopped.
James looked up.
The table went still.
Sirius did not speak.
James did not either.
Then Lily, bless her sharp and merciful heart, said, “Pass the jam.”
Life resumed, but only barely.
Over the next weeks, the school witnessed something it was wholly unprepared for.
James Potter became gentle.
Not universally. That would have been absurd. He still shouted across corridors. Still laughed too loudly with Sirius when things between them slowly, awkwardly began to mend. Still argued with Lily for sport and stole toast off Peter’s plate and challenged Fabian and Gideon to increasingly stupid dares. Still flew like the sky had personally insulted him.
But with Regulus, he changed.
Not dramatically.
Not falsely.
He did not become a different person so much as uncover some quiet room inside himself nobody else had been invited into before.
He lowered his voice.
He slowed his hands.
He asked before sitting too close.
He learned not to touch without warning.
He watched Regulus’s fingers for signs of distress. He noticed when the Great Hall became too loud and shifted conversation away from him. He brought breakfast to the library and never made a ceremony of it. He accepted blunt answers without flinching. He stopped expecting Regulus’s face to perform gratitude, amusement, interest, or anything else on command.
And the strangest thing was, he did it naturally.
No one had to teach him.
No one had to remind him.
James looked at Regulus and simply adjusted, as if devotion had always been a language in him and Regulus had finally given it someone to speak to.
Everyone noticed.
Everyone.
The first time Lily saw it properly, she nearly dropped her books.
It was a Thursday afternoon, and the corridor outside Charms was packed with students pouring from classes. Someone jostled Regulus hard enough that his shoulder slammed into the wall. He froze instantly, eyes wide but unfocused, one hand twitching at his side.
Sirius, standing nearby with James and Remus, saw it happen.
His face flickered.
He did not move.
James did.
He stepped toward Regulus, but not too close. He angled his body between Regulus and the moving crowd without crowding him in.
“Regulus,” he said softly.
Regulus’s eyes snapped to him.
James held up one hand, palm visible.
“Too loud?”
Regulus swallowed.
A tiny nod.
James turned his head. “Moony, can you get the left side?”
Remus moved immediately, redirecting foot traffic with nothing more than his prefect voice and a look that could sour milk. Lily, Mary, and Alice stepped in without needing to be asked. Marlene barked at two second-years to move before she moved them herself. Frank stood broad and steady near the wall, making a small pocket of space.
James kept his gaze on Regulus.
“Library?” he asked.
Regulus’s breathing was too fast.
He nodded once.
James did not touch him.
He walked beside him, slow enough for Regulus to match, close enough to shield, far enough not to press.
The corridor watched.
Sirius watched too.
His face was unreadable.
Fabian leaned toward Gideon and whispered, “Have you ever seen him like that?”
Gideon shook his head.
“No.”
Peter looked baffled. “He didn’t even make a joke.”
Lily watched James disappear down the hall beside Regulus Black.
“No,” she said softly. “He didn’t.”
In the library, Regulus sat in his usual chair and pressed his hands flat against the table.
James sat across from him.
Quiet.
Waiting.
After a while, Regulus said, “That was embarrassing.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No one worth listening to thought so.”
Regulus’s mouth tightened. “That is a meaningless phrase.”
James nodded. “Probably.”
Regulus looked at him.
James smiled faintly. “I mean, I meant it. But yes, technically, very vague.”
Regulus blinked.
Then, to James’s astonishment, he made a sound.
Small. Barely there.
Almost a laugh.
James went very still.
Regulus narrowed his eyes. “Do not make the pleased face.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
James covered his mouth with one hand.
Regulus looked down at his book.
After a moment, he said, “Thank you.”
James’s hand lowered.
“You’re welcome.”
Regulus traced the edge of a page.
“People usually grab me.”
James’s chest tightened.
“I won’t.”
“Sometimes I cannot speak quickly.”
“That’s all right.”
“It is frustrating.”
“I can wait.”
Regulus looked up at him.
James held his gaze.
Regulus looked away first, but this time it did not feel like retreat.
It felt like something being carefully placed down.
The poems stopped being a mystery after that, but they did not stop mattering.
Girls still came to Regulus sometimes, though less often now that the James Potter market had been thoroughly exhausted. He wrote for them when they paid, because money was money and writing was easier than conversation. James found this both hysterical and agonising.
“You wrote a poem for Matilda Vane to give Edgar Bones?” James asked one afternoon, dropping into the chair across from him.
Regulus did not look up. “Yes.”
“Was it good?”
“Yes.”
“Was it better than mine?”
Regulus paused.
James leaned forward, deeply invested.
Regulus said, “Technically, no.”
James beamed.
Regulus added, “Emotionally, also no.”
James put both hands over his heart.
“I’m your favourite commission.”
“You were not my commission. You were the subject.”
“Even better.”
Regulus looked unimpressed.
James rested his chin in his hand. “Will you write me another?”
Regulus frowned. “For what purpose?”
“Because I want one.”
“That is not how commissions work.”
“I’ll pay.”
Regulus’s eyes sharpened. “How much?”
James laughed, delighted. “Mercenary.”
“I like sugar quills.”
“I’ll get you sugar quills.”
“Three packets.”
“Done.”
“Not from the old barrel in Honeydukes. Those taste like dust.”
James stared at him in open adoration.
Regulus squinted. “What?”
“You’re incredible.”
“I am specific.”
“Yes.”
“That is different.”
“Not to me.”
Regulus looked down quickly, ears faintly pink.
James noticed.
James treasured it.
He became, in the words of Marlene McKinnon, “absolutely insufferable in a new and frankly more nauseating direction.”
“He talks about him constantly,” she complained one evening in the common room.
James looked offended. “I do not.”
Lily raised an eyebrow. “You spent twenty minutes yesterday explaining that Regulus annotates books in straight lines.”
“Because he does. Without a ruler.”
Mary pressed a hand to her chest. “Romance is alive.”
Peter nodded solemnly. “Straight lines.”
Fabian leaned over the back of the sofa. “What’s the future plan, Potter?”
James brightened.
Sirius, who had been brooding near the fire, muttered, “Don’t ask him that.”
Gideon grinned. “No, go on. I want to hear.”
James sat up. “Well—”
“No,” Sirius said.
James ignored him. “First, I continue bringing him breakfast.”
“That’s courtship?” Marlene asked.
“That’s devotion,” James corrected.
Lily smiled despite herself.
“Then,” James continued, “I get him to let me sit with him at lunch occasionally.”
Mary laughed. “Ambitious.”
“It’s a long campaign.”
“War imagery,” Remus said mildly. “Romantic.”
James pointed at him. “You’re banned from my wedding.”
Sirius choked.
The room went silent for half a beat.
Then Fabian howled.
“Wedding?”
Gideon nearly fell off the armchair. “He’s planned the wedding!”
“I said future,” James protested.
“You said wedding,” Lily replied, delighted.
Peter looked confused. “Are you engaged?”
“No, Wormtail.”
“Does Regulus know about the wedding?”
James paused.
Sirius dragged both hands down his face. “Merlin save us.”
James leaned back with a dreamy expression. “He’ll like the idea eventually.”
Marlene threw another cushion at him.
Sirius did not laugh.
James noticed.
Later, when the common room emptied and the fire burned low, Sirius came to sit beside him.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Then Sirius said, “You really like him.”
James looked into the flames.
“Yes.”
“He’s thirteen.”
“And I’m fourteen.”
“You’re acting like you’ve found your soulmate.”
James smiled faintly. “Maybe I have.”
Sirius groaned. “You are impossible.”
“I know.”
Silence again.
Then Sirius said, quieter, “He’s not easy.”
James turned to him.
Sirius kept looking at the fire.
“I don’t mean—” He stopped, jaw tight. “I don’t know what I mean.”
James waited.
Sirius swallowed.
“He was always like that. Quiet. Strange. Looking at everything. Asking questions at the wrong time. Not reacting when he was supposed to. Reacting too much when he wasn’t. Mother hated it. Father hated weakness. I hated…” He stopped again.
James’s voice was soft. “What?”
Sirius’s face twisted.
“I hated that he didn’t fight back.”
James said nothing.
Sirius laughed once, bitterly. “That’s ugly, isn’t it?”
“It’s honest.”
“He just stood there. Took it. From them. From me. Like he didn’t even care.”
James’s heart hurt for both of them then, though in different ways.
“Maybe he cared too much.”
Sirius shut his eyes.
“I was awful to him.”
James did not argue.
Sirius opened his eyes again, shining in the firelight though he would rather have died than admit it.
“I don’t know how to fix that.”
James leaned back beside him.
“Maybe you don’t start by fixing it.”
Sirius frowned. “What, then?”
“Start by stopping.”
Sirius looked at him.
James shrugged slightly.
“Stop being cruel. Stop assuming. Stop making him pay for things he didn’t choose. Then maybe one day you apologise. Properly.”
Sirius looked away.
“He won’t care.”
James thought of Regulus’s flat little voice saying, He does not like me.
“Yes,” James said. “He will.”
The next day, Sirius did not say anything when they passed Regulus in the corridor.
That was all.
It did not look like much.
But Regulus noticed.
His step faltered, just slightly, as if he had braced for impact and found only air.
James, walking beside Sirius, noticed too.
He did not comment.
That evening, he found Regulus in the library and placed three packets of sugar quills beside his parchment.
Regulus looked at them.
Then at James.
“You remembered.”
James sat down.
“Of course.”
Regulus opened one packet and took a sugar quill with the solemn air of a king accepting tribute.
James watched, smiling.
Regulus noticed.
“You are doing it again.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Try.”
James pressed his lips together, visibly fighting joy.
Regulus sighed.
Then he slid a folded parchment across the table.
James froze.
“What’s this?”
“You paid.”
James’s fingers closed around it carefully.
“A poem?”
“Yes.”
“For me?”
“That was the requested service.”
James stared at him.
Regulus looked away. “Do not be weird.”
“I’m going to be very weird.”
“Please do not.”
“I can’t promise that.”
Regulus looked pained.
James unfolded the parchment with reverence.
Regulus’s handwriting was neat and narrow, each line deliberate.
“James,
there is no quiet way to write you.
I have tried.
You interrupt metre.
You ruin restraint.
You make metaphor excessive
because ordinary description fails
and then looks embarrassed about it.
You are not simple light.
You are motion through it.
Dust caught gold in your wake,
voices turning,
doors opening,
winter briefly convinced
it has misunderstood warmth.
You are loud.
This is not an insult.
Some things are loud
because they are trying to be noticed.
Some things are loud
because they are alive
and cannot apologise for it.
I think you are the second kind.”
James stopped breathing somewhere around the middle.
Regulus stared very hard at his book.
James read the rest.
“You asked for a poem.
This is a poem.
It is not a confession
unless you make it one.
It is not a promise
unless you keep it.
It is not love
unless it becomes that later
and we notice too late
to pretend otherwise.”
James looked up slowly.
Regulus’s face was blank.
His ears were red.
James’s voice came out hushed.
“Regulus.”
Regulus did not look at him.
“It says it is not a confession.”
“I read that.”
“Then do not look like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like it is.”
James smiled helplessly.
Regulus shut his book with slightly too much force.
“I wrote it accurately.”
“Yes,” James said.
“That is all.”
“All right.”
“You are smiling.”
“I know.”
“Stop.”
“I’m trying.”
“You are not.”
“No.”
Regulus looked at him then, frustrated and nervous and pink-eared and blank-faced and beautiful in a way James had no language for except every poem Regulus had already written.
James folded the parchment slowly.
“Can I keep it?”
Regulus frowned. “You paid for it.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
The frown shifted.
A pause.
Then Regulus said, “Yes.”
James held the poem to his chest.
Regulus groaned quietly. “That is excessive.”
“I’m going to frame it.”
“No.”
“I’m going to sleep with it under my pillow.”
“No.”
“I’m going to show our grandchildren.”
Regulus stared at him.
James froze.
Regulus’s eyes narrowed.
“Our what?”
James cleared his throat.
“Hypothetical.”
“Why are there hypothetical grandchildren?”
“Because I’m a forward thinker.”
“You are fourteen.”
“And ambitious.”
Regulus stared another moment.
Then he looked back down at his book and muttered, “You are ridiculous.”
James grinned.
Regulus did not smile.
But his hand, resting near the sugar quills, relaxed.
It was enough.
By spring, people had stopped being shocked every time James Potter softened around Regulus Black, though they had not stopped staring.
It remained strange, after all.
James, who was bright and brash and brimming over with too much life, lowering himself into quiet corners of the library like sunlight choosing not to blind.
Regulus, who had spent years moving through school like a ghost nobody knew how to speak to, allowing James to sit near him. Sometimes even beside him. Sometimes, on rare and earth-shattering occasions, letting James walk with him after class.
The first time Regulus sat at the Gryffindor table, the room nearly collapsed from the effort of pretending not to notice.
He did not sit during a meal. That would have been too much.
He came at the end of dinner, when the Hall was loud but thinning, and stood behind James with a piece of parchment in his hand.
James turned and lit up so obviously that Fabian whispered, “There’s the sun metaphor again.”
Gideon shushed him.
James’s voice dropped at once. “Hi.”
Regulus looked uncomfortable.
“I corrected your essay.”
James blinked.
“My— oh. Charms?”
“Yes. Your conclusion was weak.”
Lily snorted into her pumpkin juice.
James took the parchment reverently. “You corrected my essay?”
“Yes.”
“You read my essay?”
“You asked me to.”
“I asked if you would.”
“That is functionally similar.”
James smiled. “You remembered.”
Regulus’s eyes narrowed. “I am leaving.”
“No, wait.” James shifted along the bench. “Sit for a minute?”
Regulus looked at the table.
At Sirius.
At Lily.
At Mary, Marlene, Alice, Frank, Peter, Fabian, Gideon, and Remus, all of whom suddenly became extremely invested in looking anywhere else.
Sirius went very still.
Regulus’s expression closed further.
James did not push.
He only said, “You don’t have to.”
Regulus glanced at him.
Then, after a long pause, sat on the very edge of the bench beside him.
The entire Gryffindor table held its breath.
James did not grin triumphantly.
He did not announce anything.
He simply shifted his goblet a little farther away so Regulus had more space, then angled his body subtly to shield him from the worst of the noise.
Lily watched this happen.
So did Sirius.
Regulus placed the essay in front of James and pointed to a line.
“This is imprecise.”
James leaned in. “Which part?”
“All of it.”
Marlene coughed.
James looked delighted. “Brutal.”
“Accurate.”
“My favourite kind of brutal.”
Regulus looked at him with mild confusion. “That is a strange preference.”
“You’ll get used to me.”
“I already am. That is the problem.”
Mary pressed both hands over her mouth.
Alice’s eyes went wide.
Frank stared down at his plate, smiling.
Peter whispered, “Was that flirting?”
Remus murmured, “For Regulus, possibly.”
James looked as if someone had handed him the moon.
Sirius looked at his brother.
Really looked.
Regulus did not notice at first. He was correcting James’s conclusion with crisp, merciless precision while James nodded along like every criticism was a love letter.
Then Regulus glanced up.
He met Sirius’s gaze.
The table went silent in a way that was not subtle at all.
Sirius’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Regulus’s face went blanker.
James, beside him, did not move. Did not rescue too quickly. Did not speak over either of them.
Sirius swallowed.
Then said, stiffly, “Your handwriting’s still tiny.”
Regulus blinked.
James tensed.
Regulus looked down at the parchment.
“Yes.”
Sirius’s fingers curled around his fork.
“It’s… neat.”
Regulus looked back up.
A long pause.
“Thank you,” he said, as if unsure whether that was the correct response.
Sirius nodded once.
It was nothing.
It was everything.
Regulus stood soon after.
“I have to go.”
James stood too. “I’ll walk you.”
“You do not have to.”
“I know.”
Regulus considered him.
Then gave one small nod.
As they left, Fabian leaned across the table and whispered, “Potter is gone beyond rescue.”
Gideon nodded. “We should send flowers.”
Marlene watched James walk beside Regulus, careful as a prayer, and shook her head.
“I have never seen him like that.”
Lily smiled softly.
“No,” she said. “Neither have I.”
Outside the Great Hall, the corridor was cooler and quieter.
Regulus walked with his books clutched to his chest and James beside him, hands shoved into his pockets to stop himself from doing something foolish like reaching out without asking.
Halfway to the library, Regulus said, “You are happy.”
James glanced down at him.
“Yes.”
“Because I sat at your table?”
“Yes.”
“That is a small thing.”
“Not to me.”
Regulus looked ahead.
Their footsteps echoed softly.
Then he said, “It was loud.”
“I know.”
“But not unbearable.”
James smiled.
Regulus added quickly, “Do not make the pleased face.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m looking straight ahead.”
“I can hear it.”
James laughed softly.
Regulus did not flinch this time.
That was new too.
At the library doors, Regulus stopped.
James stopped with him.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Regulus reached into his book and pulled out a folded scrap of parchment.
James’s heart leapt so hard it was embarrassing.
Regulus held it out.
“I wrote this earlier.”
James took it carefully.
“A poem?”
“No.”
James opened it.
It was a list.
Things James Potter Does That Are Confusing But Not Bad
-
Smiles when criticised.
-
Apologises when not at fault.
-
Says dramatic things and seems to mean them.
-
Brings breakfast without being asked.
-
Notices when noise is bad.
-
Does not grab.
-
Waits.
-
Looks at me like I am not incorrect.
James’s throat tightened.
He read the list twice.
Then a third time.
Regulus watched him with growing anxiety.
“It is not a poem,” he said.
James looked up.
His voice was very quiet.
“It’s my favourite thing you’ve written.”
Regulus’s face went still.
Then pink touched his ears again.
“That is irrational.”
“Yes.”
“You have many poems.”
“I know.”
“This is a list.”
“I know.”
Regulus stared at him.
James folded the parchment and tucked it into his robe pocket, over his heart.
Regulus looked at the pocket.
Then at James.
“I do not understand you,” he said softly.
James smiled.
“That’s okay.”
Regulus’s brows drew together, not upset exactly. Thinking.
“I might,” he said. “Eventually.”
James’s smile changed.
Softened.
Stayed.
“I can wait.”
Regulus looked down.
His fingers twitched once at his side.
Then, very carefully, he held out his hand.
James forgot how to breathe.
Regulus did not look at him.
“You can hold it,” he said, voice flat and fast. “If you want. For a short time. Not tightly.”
James moved slowly.
So slowly.
He placed his hand beneath Regulus’s first, giving him control, letting Regulus decide the weight.
Regulus’s fingers settled over his palm.
Cold. Tense. There.
James closed his fingers lightly around them.
Not tightly.
Never tightly.
Regulus exhaled.
James looked down at their hands and felt every grand, ridiculous future he had imagined collapse into something smaller and more real.
This.
A quiet corridor.
A cold hand.
A boy who had written him like weather and then handed him a list like trust.
James did not say destiny.
He wanted to.
He really, desperately wanted to.
But Regulus had given him something fragile and exact, and James, for once, knew better than to decorate it too heavily.
So he only said, “Thank you.”
Regulus glanced up.
“For what?”
James squeezed his hand barely at all.
“For letting me know you.”
Regulus stared at him.
Blank-faced. Pink-eared. Still nervous. Still twitchy. Still himself in every way the world had failed to understand.
Then his fingers shifted, just slightly, holding on.
“You are welcome,” he said.
And James Potter, loudest boy in the castle, stood in the quiet with Regulus Black’s hand in his and did not need anyone else to see.