Echoes - Jegulus - @taylorswiftmicrofic - 471 words - AO3
Regulus won’t admit he’s disappointed. He’s been begging for weeks for the Head Boy—how he managed to achieve that, he still doesn’t know—to leave him alone, to let him complete his rounds in silence. No matter how much he threatened to hex him, James just wouldn’t shut up, talking endlessly about how much he loves his friends and family, a rather irritating (and totally not endearing) trait of his, and about Quidditch and pranks and his hatred of potions. He got used to the constant chatter, but now the hallways are quiet. Too quiet. Unsettling so. The only sound being the echoes of his footsteps.
Regulus is not disappointed the Gryffindor didn’t show. Not at all. He couldn’t care less about him. In fact, he’s glad for a calm, peaceful night. Besides, he should have known James would get bored of him soon enough. Who wouldn’t?
Turning the corner, he jumps as he walks directly into someone and is instantly filled with infuriation when he recognises the figure in the dim light of his wand. “Potter!” he whisper-yells. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for you,” James replies, his easy smile making his stomach swoop.
Ignoring the unpleasant sensation this man is eliciting from him, Regulus rolls his eyes. “You found me. Now go away and let me complete my rounds in peace.”
“I thought you could use the company.”
“You thought wrong.”
James sighs. “Look, Reg. I can take a hint. If you truly don’t like me and don’t want me around, I’ll leave you alone. But please know that I really, really like you, and would love to take you to Hogsmeade sometime. On a date, not as friends or my best friend’s little brother.”
“You like me?” he asks, unsure of whether he can trust that statement. What would the personification of the sun ever like about the coldness and darkness that is Regulus?
“I do. I promise, I really do like you.”
Looking at the sincerity in his hazel eyes, Regulus feels something he hasn’t in a long time—hope. Hope for happiness. Hope for love. Hope for a good future, one with this man by his side.
“I’m not going to go to Hogsmeade with you, James,” he declares, quickly adding as the he visibly deflates, “I have a better idea. Meet me on the seventh floor by the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy at 11 pm on Saturday.”
The shout of pure joy and excitement and utter disbelief he hears behind him as he continues his prefect duties makes him smile involuntarily. Regulus is too far gone, isn’t he? He just knows his heart is going to get broken one way or another, yet he can’t bring himself to care. It’ll be worth it for the chance to get even one moment with James.
I tend to forget this because most of his backstories filled with his brother and rollins, but he was sick, he had the blistering sores, he very well could have been the one to die had situations been much different.
kaz brekker sat on the brink of death, witnessed it, spat in its face, and lived to see another day.
defining lesbianism as “women who love women” really leaves us nonbinary dykes out in the cold in a really shitty fucking way actually like i get where that post is coming from but i am not a woman but i am a fucking lesbian
Gen AI is nothing special I can also draw / write badly, help you with math inconsistently, answer you dubiously, and consume amounts of water you would think are physically impossible
the part that really pisses me off about all of this is that it’s creepy on multiple levels.
first, these people have to be deep-diving night after night after night to drag this stuff back up. then they get on twitter and go “good, finally, hope this ends him,” which is such a bizarre level of investment in a stranger’s life. these aren’t things he ever shared publicly. they’re photos pulled from other people’s posts, loosely connected to him, from more than a decade ago
but what actually gets under my skin is that he’s a man of color. frankly, that’s half the reason this witch hunt exists in the first place. the internet will bend over backwards for white actors and then suddenly discover a passion for accountability when it’s a man of color people have gotten too attached to
but also he isn't just a man of color now—he was a man of color growing up in a small town full of WHITE white people. everybody always thinks “oh, polite little canada." no. it is not like that. genuinely bigoted people. anyone who grew up as the minority kid in a town like that knows exactly what i’m talking about.
people don’t understand what it’s like when you’re surrounded by people who constantly do weird, degrading, or outright awful things to you and around you, and your survival strategy becomes rolling with it because fitting in is already hard enough. you don’t necessarily participate, but you don’t always push back either, because you’re already the one on unstable ground. you cannot afford to be the person who rocks the boat!!
and what’s striking to me is that in every single one of these dipshit posts, the constant isn’t him. it’s the people around him. every photo has the same dynamic: a crowd of people turning him into the class clown at the center of the joke while they laugh. and sometimes when you’re fifteen and outnumbered, you just take it, what a fucking crime
i know we’ve already talked about how wylan and kaz are character foils for a multitude of reasons, but have we considered: kaz and wylan both mimicking human behaviors and coming off as unsettling because they’re able to pull it off really well.
both of them have an otherworldly kind of presence that’s just off enough to feel but not enough to really pin down. kaz appears in rooms without warning. wylan stares at people for too long. both of them remember details about others that they shouldn’t. for different reasons, but the underlying discomfort remains the same. give me unsettling wylan to go with unsettling kaz. let them be creepy together. i beg you.
