Warnings: Slash! SB/OMC and RL/SB
While Romulus is mine, everyone else as well as everything Potterverse related belongs to J. K. Rowling, as well as various companies whose names I don't remember. I just like borrow it all for some good old fashioned non-profit fun.
"There's not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin."
– Rubeus Hagrid, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
by M.E.
He'd always been the jealous type, even though it didn't blatantly show. When we were younger, before we ever went to Hogwarts, he would alternate on a regular basis between being jealous of me and being protective. He was my only friend – no one else wanted to be friends with a boy who was constantly fluctuating between shy and retiring and loud and boisterous
Somehow they knew me for a freak without ever being told.
Romulus knew all my flaws and shortcomings and still he forgave me for them, standing up for me even when he wouldn't stand up for himself. At the same time he couldn't stand the "special treatment" I received from our parents after I was bitten when we were seven. But the good times outnumbered the bad, and we generally got along together quite well.
Then we went off to Hogwarts and met Sirius Black and our lives changed forever.
Sirius was Romulus' friend before he was ever mine, just as he was my friend before he was James and Peter's. At eleven he was a nervous prankster, uncomfortable with his own housemates and unsure of how to make friends with anyone else. I think it was pure chance that he and Romulus ever became friends in the first place, they were both so shy around strange people.
I didn't even meet Sirius until we were well into that first term, when he mistook me for Romulus. I'd been having problems of my own making new friends at Hogwarts, afraid that if I let anyone get close to me, they would find out about my... problem. The only person that I had really talked to besides the professors at that point was, as it had always been, Romulus.
After that initial case of mistaken identity in the library, Sirius and I became partners in crime, playing pranks on people throughout the castle. Sirius especially delighted in tormenting Snape, whom he loved to traumatize simply because Snape's snoring kept all of the other first year boys in Slytherin awake at night, Sirius included.
Sirius, Romulus, and I were inseparable when Sirius and I weren't busy pranking. But, while Romulus had no interest in playing pranks on anyone, he resented the friendship that Sirius and I had. We used to fight about it a lot of the time when Sirius wasn't around, and I never had any illusions about how he disliked sharing the two of us.
It got worse when Sirius finally made peace with James and Peter, forgiving them for whatever slight James had made on the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of that first year. When Sirius was taken into James' group, I was adopted as well, and for a while there Romulus was livid, sure that he had somehow lost both of us. I don't think Romulus ever really forgave James and Peter for that, he had never been very good at sharing.
By the end of our second year we were secure in our two little cliques – that of Sirius, Romulus, and myself, and that of James, Peter, Sirius, and me. Romulus never became a part of that second group, despite pressure coming from not only me, but Sirius and, surprisingly, James as well. He was not given to pranks and jokes, my brother. He was more studious, though he could be incredibly sweet and softhearted sometimes, a true Hufflepuff to the core.
I guess, considering how Romulus could be, I shouldn't have been so surprised when, in our sixth year, I found him and Sirius both busy trying to snog each other's brains out behind the greenhouses. They made a good couple, Romulus and Sirius, and it was obvious as time passed that they really cared about each other. Unfortunately for me, it was then, as I watched my twin invade my best friend's mouth his tongue, that I was in love with Sirius.
I'd known that I was attracted to Sirius since the previous year, but I'd never said anything to him about it because of... well... my thing. Sirius had never been secretive about the fact that he liked both guys and girls, and I wasn't afraid of rejection or disgust from him. Even if he wasn't interest in me that way, I knew that he wouldn't let it destroy our friendship. Rather, I was much more afraid that he might return my feelings and want to have an actual relationship. I didn't want to saddle happy-go-lucky Sirius with all the problems that go along with being emotionally involved with a werewolf, all the pain. Though, in the end, I couldn't save Sirius from himself. Or anyone else from Sirius, for that matter.
It's hard being in love with your best friend, harder still when that friend has no clue about your feelings, and it's plain agony when that very same friend ends up in a long term relationship with your brother. Every day I had to be careful that I didn't reveal how I felt about him to anyone else. I was pretty sure that I had them all fooled, though in the end, I think James may have begun to suspect that something was up about halfway through seventh year.
James' grand scheme to get me to kiss Sirius was what gave him away. It was so hard for me to not immediately jump at the chance to kiss Sirius when James presented his challenge. But as much as I wanted to do it, I refused to let myself give in, knowing that I'd feel awful about taking advantage of Sirius like that, to say nothing of the fact that I would have been betraying Romulus' trust. But the strangest thing was that Sirius didn't really seem all that adverse to the idea, despite his half-hearted protests to the contrary.
I think it was that more than anything else that decided me in the end. Just for once I wanted to pretend he was mine, and so I leaned in and claimed his lips.
It was... wonderful, unlike anything I'd ever experienced before or since. Which is probably just as well, since I'll never get another chance now.
Romulus has been missing for three weeks now, and considering the circumstances, they're pretty sure he must be dead. He just disappeared one day, when he disapparated from the Ministry at the end of the day and, according to Sirius, never showed up at their apartment like he should have. Of course, considering what Sirius has done, there's no reason I should believe what he says. He probably killed Romulus himself.
The bastard couldn't be content with taking and breaking my heart, he had to destroy my brother and my only friends as well. After my twin brother, Black was my first and closest friend. Strange that he should also be the one who ruined my life.
My brother was always jealous, afraid of anyone who might take away what he had, leaving him alone. How ironic that, in the end, I am jealous of him, because, if nothing else, he doesn't have to live with the aftermath of Sirius Black's betrayal and all the loneliness that comes with it.