James’s mouth closes, opens again, and then closes. The silence sits heavy, feels like the pressure against Regulus’s ears when he rises up on a broom too fast. He remembers the slippery wards around Sirius’s room, the ones the house would devour in half the time it took for Sirius to set them up. He always went a step too far with them—unsatisfied with the milder spells for silence or privacy, determined to exact punishment on anyone who entered his space without his permission—and the house made sure to punish him for it. Regulus remembers this same feeling in his ears when he placed a hand on Sirius’s door and realized that the wards made no exception for him. He'd considered asking Sirius about it, at the time. But the next day the wards collapsed and all the furniture in Sirius’s room mysteriously disappeared and Regulus understood that none of it mattered. Nothing they did to each other had ever mattered.
i'll tag: @foursaints @sixlane @grossdyke and @fairiehill
James says nothing in reply. He has his back pressed against the door, and Regulus is close enough that he can see the movement of his throat. Regulus stares, struck. Only six hours ago, he’d thought it would be months before he could catch a glimpse of James again. He had some vague hopes of schoolyard pushing and shoving, a fight he’d start on the Quidditch Pitch, some broom closet encounter where James acted self-righteous and Regulus met him with contempt. Even that was wishful thinking. He’d never had the courage to muster up any real contempt towards James.
“Let go,” Regulus says, and he twists his arm out of James’s grip. James lets him go easily enough, doesn’t unstick himself from the door when Regulus takes a wide step back.
He asks, “How long are they going to keep you here?”
“Until they get bored with me, I suppose.”
“I’m really not in the mood, Regulus.”
“It wasn’t a joke,” Regulus says. He tilts his head to the side, smiles without humor, “Don’t tell me you’re so eager to have me home.”
But James doesn’t balk. He doesn’t even blink. “Of course I want you home. Why would I want you to stay here?”
tsym to @foursaints @itsjaywalkers and @lilysrosier for tagging me <3
from ibhfts ch 15:
Professor McGonagall had told James that, although his official career advice meeting was not until next term, she felt certain that he had the makings of a promising Healer. It was more effusive praise than was her habit, and it took James by such surprise that he looked up from the snuffbox he was about to transfigure back into a mouse. McGonagall’s detentions always involved clean-up of her first-year lessons. The snuffbox in James’s hand had a tail.
James’s mouth had twitched in time with the snuffbox’s tail. I plan on playing Quidditch after school, he’d said.
McGonagall looked at him over the lid of her biscuit tin. James made sure not to let his stare linger on the tin. It didn’t seem like there was a danger of her offering, but one could never be too careful.
It’s a long life ahead, Potter. I see no reason why you can’t do both.
i'll tag: @sugarsnappeases @sixlane @static-radio-ao3 and @jewishregulus
hi dil beloved <3 i'm here to get a tiny bite out of ur brain <3 and be insane over ur writing once again <333
idk how vague u want the concepts to be so . jegulus sick fic??? or drunk shenanigans?? i'll take literally anything
laurieee laurie my love!! okay this ask made me remember something: when i was first drafting ibhfts, i had this vague idea that james would get sick at one point during the fic? it was going to be towards the end but i ended up scrapping this idea because it wouldn't really fit with how the plot has developed so far. but really the MAIN reason i wanted to include it so badly is bc i loveeee sickfics (like. i love them so much) so i decided to use this opportunity to write out a little scene that could've been in that version of ibhfts
just fyi this scene will NOT be in ibhfts but it does contain mild spoilers for ch 13 and potentially events that will happen in future chapters. this one is also completely unedited btw !!
It really does serve James right for laughing at him. He hadn’t even cast an Impervious before trekking about in the rain without a care, and then he’d had the gall to laugh in Regulus’s face, to clutch at Regulus’s hands as they toweled off his hair, say What are you so worried about? I don’t get sick! Regulus tries not to feel smug about it as James sniffles and shivers under the covers—and then, perhaps deservedly, James’s bleary, pitiful expression every time he opens his eyes makes it difficult to feel smug about anything.
“You’re such a baby,” he murmurs, practically croons as he strokes the back of his finger against James’s feverish face. “Seriously, who gets sick from being out in the rain? You’re supposed to be a Quidditch player.”
James groans hoarsely, “You’re being mean. Here I am suffering, and you’re being mean to me. What if I died? What then?”
“You just have a cold, for Merlin’s sake,” he replies, grinning, a strange glee rising up in him at James’s prone and vulnerable state. At how pitiful he is.
“How do you know? You’re not a Healer.”
“Your mother’s a Healer, you idiot, and she says you have a cold.”
“I’m dying,” James whines.
“Baby,” says Regulus, and he means it as a taunt, but it comes out strange and tinged with too much affection. James’s eyes open, his gaze heavy-lidded, curious. Regulus feels heat pool in his spine.
He shoots to his feet, cheeks warming. “Are you thirsty? I’ll get you some water.”
Somehow, James’s silence as he leaves makes him feel even more unsteady. He has to force his hands to stop shaking long enough for him to pour the water.
When he returns upstairs, James has fallen asleep. His eyelashes flutter as the door opens, his hand curls gently in the sheets. As quietly as possible, Regulus sets the glass down on his bedside table and leaves.
The day passes like that, strangely quiet without James’s usual energy filling the house. Sirius doesn’t come downstairs, which is simultaneously a blessing and something that sends anxiety skittering across his skin. Regulus keeps searching for him in his periphery. He can’t help it. Back at home, Sirius had the unsettling habit of materializing in doorways, hallways, anywhere to startle Regulus. Sirius’s loud boisterousness was mostly show; he could move as silently as a mouse when he wanted to. As silently as their mother.
It doesn’t matter, though. In the end, it’s Regulus who ends up finding Sirius.
He’s carrying a bowl of soup on a tray when he opens the door to James’s room. Sirius sits at his bedside. He glances over his shoulder at Regulus, surveys him impassively.
“He’s asleep,” Sirius says.
Regulus feels his grip tighten reflexively on the tray. He swallows, forces himself to set it down on the nightstand.
“I’ll leave it here for him.” A pause, then, “He slept the whole day?”
Sirius hums an affirmative, leaning over to rest his chin in the palm of his hand. He stares up at Regulus with a quizzical, probing look in his eyes.
Suddenly, Regulus is tired of it. The way that Sirius has been since he returned, neutral and observant—watchful gaze keeping track of Regulus’s every movement, every expression, as though looking to catch him in something. Silently judging Regulus for the space he takes up in Godric’s Hollow.
If you didn’t want me to live here, Regulus thinks, you shouldn’t have let me.
“You’re worried about him,” Sirius says slowly, with great finality.
“It’s a cold,” says Regulus. “I’d be stupid to be worried.”
Sirius arches a brow. Regulus feels himself flush.
“He was saying your name in his sleep. James,” as though he could’ve been talking about anyone else.
Regulus bites the inside of his cheek. His mind races for a response.
That’s what’s been irritating him. Sirius is too fucking perceptive. He knows Regulus too well. He knows James even better. And there’s nothing he hates more than being kept in the dark.
“He kept asking where you were going. He seemed upset.”
“What’s your point?”
“He dreamt of you, Regulus,” Sirius says, still with that slow and impassive finality, circling around some realization that he wants Regulus to confirm.
Well, bully for him. Regulus makes a show of rolling his eyes: “A fever dream. Again, your point?”
“I was gone for a while,” Sirius muses, almost to himself. But when his eyes flick upwards, they’re needle-sharp. “Not that long, though.”
“Are you enjoying being needlessly cryptic, or are you eventually going to say what you mean?”
“Something happened between you two,” he says. “Didn’t it?”
Another eye-roll. This is a practiced thing, indifference towards Sirius and his endless suspicions. Regulus was twelve years old when he realized that the more he cared what Sirius thought of him, the more Sirius could hurt him. He was twelve years old when he learned that Sirius would hurt him, given the opportunity.
“Lots of things happened. Like you said,” Regulus meets his gaze, “You were gone a long time.”
Sirius grins. It’s not a nice grin. If James were awake to see it, Regulus thinks he’d be shocked at such an expression on his best friend’s face.
Regulus says, eyes narrowed, “Besides, you asked him to take care of me. Didn’t you?”
The grin falls away. “Well, fuck. I didn’t think he’d tell you that.”
“Thank you for that, by the way,” says Regulus. “Next time you ask one of your friends to babysit me, try to show a bit more discretion.”
“Piss off,” says Sirius, looking genuinely a bit abashed. “As if I was wrong to be worried.”
“Why? Because I’d ruin your darling reputation by being so horrible to the Potters?”
Sirius blinks at him, long and slow. “Because you’d just run away from home after our mother crucio’d you, you git.”
“Oh.” Regulus falls silent. His gaze falls on James’s sleeping face, still flush with fever, a sheen of sweat on his brow.
He doesn’t know what shows in his expression, but when he looks back up, Sirius is staring at him with wide eyes.
“Merlin,” he says.
“What?”
“You—”
“Reg?” A slurred voice, heavy with sleep, and Regulus turns immediately. James cracks his eyes open, and a grin spreads over his face. “Hi, Reg. Where’d you go?”
“I—” Regulus darts a half-panicked glance towards Sirius. “I was just letting you sleep.”
“I couldn’t find you.”
Sirius clears his throat loudly. James blinks, and some awareness seems to come back to him.
“Padfoot,” he says, pushing himself up onto his elbows.
“Hey, Prongs,” Sirius says, full of warmth. “When’re you getting out of this bed, huh?”
“Not soon enough. How long were you sitting there?”
His smile turns blithe, “A while. I’m starving, though, gonna grab something to eat. Rest up, okay?”
James nods as Sirius gets up and leaves, sending Regulus a long, searching look on his way out. Regulus can’t help the breath he releases when the door clicks shut.
“He suspects,” says Regulus.
“Who, Sirius?” James tilts his head to the side, unconcerned, and pushes himself into a sitting position. “Probably.”
“I wish you’d sound more worried about that.”
James hums noncommittally. “Is that soup?”
“James,” Regulus sighs, but he still takes the tray and places it carefully in James’s lap.
James spoons the soup into his mouth thoughtfully, “He’ll have to find out eventually, you know.”
“You and I share different opinions on that.”
“Yeah, and your opinion makes no sense. How would we keep it from him? Logistically, how would that work?”
“I’ve kept bigger things from Sirius.”
“I haven’t.”
A pause. Regulus looks down at his lap, at his hands laid over one another, murmurs, “I know, James.”
James sets down the spoon. Wordlessly, he reaches over and brushes his thumb down the side of Regulus’s face, a soothing gesture. Regulus leans into the touch, drops his cheek into James’s waiting palm. Lets the solid warmth of it seep into his skin.
“I just don’t see the point,” James says softly. “The longer we keep it from him, the harder it will be to eventually tell him.”
“It’ll always be hard to tell him, no matter what.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he’ll think I’m trying to take you from him.”
James looks at him incredulously, guilelessly, “But you’re not.”
Regulus’s mouth twitches, and he turns his face into James’s palm to hide his tiny smile. He presses a kiss there—once, then twice. He thinks of being eleven and watching Sirius walk away from him with an arm slung around James’s shoulders. Of being thirteen and knowing desire, real desire, for the first time: at the sight of James laughing at a joke Sirius was telling him.
“No,” he whispers, and he presses his face deeper into the skin of James’s open hand. “Of course I’m not.”
The question is past his lips before he can think twice: “Why do you want Sirius to join the Dark Lord?”
Could be worse, he supposes. He could have screamed. He could have cried I’ve done everything to please you. I’ve done everything, and he’s done nothing, and you still pick him, you still trust him more than me, why, why, why—
regulus is having a normal one guys (ibhfts ch 14 sneak peek)
i was tagged by my darlings @itsjaywalkers and @imdamagecontrol
from ibhfts ch 13:
Later that evening, James cradles the fingertips of one of Regulus’s hands, sitting on the bed while Regulus stands over him. Some metaphor about knights and princesses, here, some story about towers and salvation. Stay with me, he almost whispers, might have done, though Regulus does not seem to have heard anyway, his face turned to the side.
“Tell me about The Little Prince,” says Regulus. His eyes are fixed on the copy lying on James’s bedside table.
“You’ve already read it.”
“I want to hear you talk about it.”
“Come here, then,” James tugs him into the bed, situated so that they lie side-by-side while their legs hang over the side, Regulus’s face tucked close to his, his nose brushing James’s cheek.
Regulus still looks at him with this quiet wonder, this awe that sends James’s heart skittering. He swallows thickly, closes his eyes.
“What do you want to hear?”
“Your favorite part,” Regulus murmurs. “With the fox.”
James smiles, eyes still closed. “But you don’t like that part.”
“I like that you like it. Tell me.”
everyone has definitely already been tagged but still i'll tag @foursaints @static-radio-ao3 @veryinnovative and @xjustakay
