Jegulus - I'll be good

Part Fifteen

Two days later..."Party at the Gryffindor common room! Partytime! Tell everyone!", Sirius' excited voice was carried through the corridors, "only for six year and up, actually." Remus next to him shook his head. He would never really understand where his boyfriend got his enthusiasm for partying from, especially not in these times..but whatever made him happy, as long as it didn't harm anyone. "Don't you think you've partied enough for the next five years this year alone?", he still couldn't resist to ask, but he did it in an amused voice, because something like enough didn't really exist in Padfoot's vocabulary, that much was clear. "Definitely not, Moony. Times like these scream for more parties than ever. Should we stop having fun, just because there's a war going on? We'll be busy enough after school with this whole situation", Sirius replied more honest than he usually was. Before Remus could answer to that, James wrapped an arm around his and Sirius' shoulder: "He's right, Moons. We won't live forever, but we need to make the best of it." "And the karaoke part is really fun", Wormtail added to the conversation and almost ran into an armour, because he didn't look up from his potions book. The Black shrugged off James' arm and made a huge jump forwards, before turning around to his friends like a Prima Ballerina: "And that are all amazing reasons to have a party, dearest moonshine boy." Grinning he waited for a reaction, but then started to wave like an idiot: "LILY! You have to come to our party too!" James immediately turned his head around and smiled instantly when the redhead came up to them: "He's right." "You just want me there so someone sings with you guys", Lily commented and placed a kiss on James' lips before shoving her hand in his, "but of course. I'll bring Marly too and maybe I can get Alice away from Frank for an hour." "Seems like I'm outvoted", Remus admitted with a small smile, "but I wasn't serious anyway.""Of course not. I'm Sirius."James snapped against his brother's head: "This joke is slowly getting old, you idiot." "Lily, tell your man to keep his hands off me", Sirius whined jokingly and hid partially behind Remus, "he's so mean to me.""This building is going to be so quiet without us", Peter realised and put the book into his bag, "and now excuse me..I'm meeting my girlfriend, but I'll come to the party a bit later." "Don't forget to use protection!", Sirius and James said at the same moment, which caused Peter to turn red and tell them they were idiots, while walking down the hallway. "I'm really happy for him that he found someone..he's such a nice person, more people should give him a chance", the Evans pointed out with a smile. It always seemed a bit like he was standing in James' and Sirius' shadow involuntarily - Remus too, but he chose to be there. So it was even better that someone else saw his worth too. "That's true", James agreed, "he's definitely one of his kind." The party was going on for an hour and a half, Sirius and James started with their karaoke show - more or less. They were actually singing and playing instruments, but with covering songs and the others danced to it. They were surprisingly good. James had been playing piano and guitar for quite some while and Sirius grew up with the piano too, but soon found love for electric guitars and he learned fast when he was passionate about something. And now that was regularly part of the Gryffindor parties. James had his fun and didn't mind the attention - and Sirius even less, clearly. That was why he let him alone after a few songs to get something to drink and actually talk with other people. "James, come here!", Marly giggled and waved at him. Suspiciously the Potter walked over in a circle of girls - Marlene, Dorcas, Lily and Mary sat together and had a bunch of different nail polish in the middle of them. Now at the second look he also noticed that each of their nails were painted in another colour. "What are you doing here?", he asked interested and sat down next to Lily, who simply moved over on his lap. He didn't mind that and wrapped his arm around her. "We are in the middle of creating a safety nail polish", Marlene explained, "Lily made a potion that should react to love potions and similar things and we mixed it with the colours.""That's a very cool idea", James said honestly impressed, "do they work?" Not that he was doubting Lily's skills, but it seemed like a pretty hard thing to do. And it was a weird place to do that too, but that was just his own opinion. "That's what we want to find out now", Dorcas replied and held up two bottles of the polish, "want to test it too?""Sure, but don't give me the green colour, that's awful", he said grinning and took a dark red instead, "Lily? You have more practice with that." Lily only laughed and then painted his nails quickly. And as expected, it looked way better than he ever could've done it. "And now?", he wanted to know and looked into the round. Marly pulled a mug out of nowhere it seemed and put it into the middle: "Just a drop of the liquid should be enough to change the colour of the nail polish to white. That's why we don't use white ones."A moment of silence, when she put drops of the cup on every nail with a pipette. For a minute, nothing happened, for no one. And then, suddenly: "It changes!" All heads were turned into Marly's direction for a moment, before turning back to their own hands and really: The polish slowly changed to white. "Incredible", Lily said a bit breathless, "it really works!" "That's really, really cool. Good job", James grinned. He absolutely was impressed on more than one level. How great was that? It was bad that such a thing was needed, but unfortunately he knew how often girls were tricked into taking love potion and other things..so that was a really great thing. "It needs a bit of fine tuning, but I didn't expect it to work so well", the redhead admitted a bit shyly, but excited and visibly proud. James kissed her cheek and she let him stand up. "You, Lily Evans, are absolutely amazing", he grinned and squeezed her hand. He let the girls alone and walked to the portrait, so he could leave the common room to get some food from the kitchen. He didn't come far. Just out of the little tunnel, he almost collided with someone. And to his surprise, it was Regulus. The younger Black stared at him like a scared fawn into the lights of a car. And without wanting to sound rude, James just could think of how much worse he looked than just two days ago. The circles around his eyes seemed to have gotten even darker and his lower lip looked like it was cut. His hair was pure chaos and even though he wore his school uniform, it was a complete mess. This absolutely didn't look like Regulus Black. "What are you doing here? That's the Gryffindor tower", James finally spoke out after his confusion disappeared a bit and made room for being worried. The party just next door was completely erased from his mind at the moment. Regulus stared at him for even longer and didn't seem to know what to say..or how to use words to begin with, because he tried a few times, but nothing came out. James softly pulled him aside and made him sit down on the bench, after the Slytherin almost lost his balance. Regulus sank into himself and for a few minutes they just sat in silence. James really wanted to know what was going on and every second that passed without a word being spoken, he became worried more. "Did you fight against a bear? You look like you did. Or was it a hippogriff? Did you walk through the whomping willow?", the Potter shot some questions, because it didn't seem like he would get any answers otherwise. Regulus shook his head slowly and twisted his fingers and finally found some words: "You said I should come to you, if I..if I need..help." Suddenly, the world seemed even quieter.