This Trying Affair • Jegulus •

XIII. Godforsaken Mess that You Made Me

The castle could become painfully cold during the winter. The air little a bitter kiss on your nose from the frigid wind before it lost feeling. No matter how cold the rest of the castle got though, Slytherin's dungeons were always the coldest place.

That possibly could just be Regulus's own imagination after returning from Winter Break. He himself was cold and aloof so why would his surroundings not feel the same to him. Though he must admit, he wasn't feeling much anymore.

Immediately after ending his "situation" with James Potter, Regulus had been an utter mess. He had been able to hide it from those around him, but when he had the chance he would put silencing and locking charms on bathroom doors or bed curtains. Regulus would let himself fall apart the way he wanted to, thinking about how that night had gone and about what he had actually wanted to do.

The cold and distant boy who had appeared in the Prefect bathroom and crushed James Potter's heart and love for him was not truly who Regulus wished to be. Regulus had hated hearing James cry. It physically made his heart ache with each shuttering breath he heard James take as he begged for Regulus to accept him, to stop pushing him away, to allow themselves to truly deeply love each other. Oh how he would have given up anything to reassure his Jamie that everything was okay and that they were going to be together. He would have run away like Sirius had done and get to hang out with the Marauders. He would have had actual friends, people who cared about him and that he cared about. Jamie had swore during their many Astronomy Tower nights that the Potters would have loved and accepted Regulus. He joked about how they could've roomed together, that originally his parents would argue against it but they would have given in since they were meant for each other.

All Regulus had to do was accept the offer. Instead he wrapped the chain so tightly around his own heart that it couldn't beat and left the key somewhere he would never find it before reaching out and violently crushing the beating loving heart of James Fleamont Potter. He felt the pressure in the room as the dislodged heart of James stopped beating in his own cold cruel hands. 

Regulus wanted so desperately to take back what had happened that night. He would give anything to see James Potter smile, laugh, love again and that... that is the reason why it had to end. Because no matter how important James Potter was to him there was one person he could never size up to. 

Sirius Black seemed to be the only friend of the Marauders group that appeared unaffected to outsiders. While he was extremely disheartened at his brother's sudden distance from him and his friends, he had enjoyed the time they had spent together. Without the knowledge of Regulus breaking up with James, Sirius assumed that talking to them all were signs that Regulus was slowing moving away from the grip of the Black family and Grimmauld Place. Peter was relieved at the disappearance, but James, Remus, and Emily all knew the truth. That Regulus had sealed his fate to be the opposite of his brothers that night in the Prefect's bathroom. 

As long as Regulus could still see Sirius's smile from the Gryffindor table, still hear his laugh echo through the corridors, or spy on the boy secretly leaving the castle with his friends late into the night for pranks or full moons, he could put up with the mess he had become. The godforsaken mess that James Potter had made him. No, the mess that he had made himself by playing dangerous games with hearts. 

So now after returning from break, Regulus broke down privately to himself, finally safe from the abuse of his parents, but placed back into the emotional torture of having to stay distant from James Potter. 

His mind never left hazel eyed James Potter, who's green appeared to glow in the moonlight of the Astronomy Tower while he tousled his hair. His hair that always appeared to be so messy before he even tousled it, yet it always seemed perfectly placed in it's distressed state.