When the Sun and Stars Unite (Jegulus Oneshots)

nobody warns you before the fall

"What are you doing here?"

"Nice to see you, too," James said, grinning. "I've come to pick you up, obviously."

Regulus furrowed his brow. "James...I told you, I have to go home. My parents—"

James pressed his thumb to Regulus's bottom lip. "No," he muttered. "You don't have to do anything but let me take you out of the station, out of London, so you can spend some time with me."

***

James surprises Regulus at King's Cross and whisks him away for the best Christmas holiday of his life.

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James Potter shuffled from foot to foot and tried to rub warmth into his arms as he waited at King's Cross Station, facing the brick wall that led to Platform Nine and Three Quarters. It was the middle of December, and the air around him was freezing. A sharp, biting wind whistled through the station, and James was thankful for his coat and scarf.

He was waiting for Regulus to come through the other side. Regulus was in his final year of Hogwarts now, and he would be leaving the station soon for the Christmas holidays. He had no idea that James was waiting for him, though. James had spoken to Sirius before planning to meet Regulus, and Sirius had told him that Regulus was always expected back at Grimmauld Place for the Yule festivities, whether he wanted to go home or not.

Apparently both brothers had hated the stuffy traditions that their parents forced them to participate in, and James could only imagine that it would be worse for Regulus now that Sirius no longer lived at Grimmauld Place. So James had decided to surprise Regulus by meeting him at the station and whisking him away from the boredom that would no doubt await him at Grimmauld Place.

Despite the cold, James's stomach flooded with warm excitement as he imagined Regulus coming through the wall. He hadn't seen him since summer, after James graduated from Hogwarts. James had insisted that Regulus come to his house as much as he could, but that hadn't quite gone to plan. Regulus did come to the Potters' house a few times, but they never had the chance to be alone.

James actually found it mildly funny how they'd managed to have more private encounters in a castle full of teachers, students and hundreds of house elves and never get caught, yet they couldn't manage to sneak off anywhere when Regulus came over to visit. Sirius was always around, even more suffocatingly so when Regulus visited, James noticed. James had always known that Sirius held a protectiveness over his little brother—even though he quite frequently spoke disdainfully of Regulus and talked about how annoying or irritating he was to anyone who'd listen, Sirius had a tendency to lose his temper if anyone else spoke ill of him. That protectiveness had only tripled when he became aware that Regulus was having a relationship with someone, and it didn't seem to matter that it happened to be Sirius's best friend.

Even though Sirius did start to relent over the summer and grow more trusting of the relationship, he still apparently wasn't prepared to let James and Regulus out of his sight, as he'd make a conscious effort to be irritatingly present whenever Regulus was over, even going as far as to innocently join them if they decided to go for a walk somewhere to get out of the house.

James's parents were always home, too. Even though James was eighteen now, when Regulus came over to visit, Euphemia was adamant that Regulus wasn't allowed to share a bedroom with him. James hadn't told his parents that there was something intimate going on between him and Regulus—he wasn't sure of his own sexuality, whether he was gay or straight or what any of it even meant—but it seemed Euphemia had learned her lesson from allowing Remus and Sirius to share a room in times previous when Remus came over to visit. It didn't matter that Sirius wasn't her real son, she'd said—since he'd moved in with the Potters, he was as good as her son, and she wasn't going to let her sons practice premarital sex—not under her roof, anyway.