NOTE: Because Regulily. This is pretty much all fluff. For the sake of this fic, Death Eaters and Voldemort don't exist and the only source of conflict is house and sibling rivalry. Yay.
Sirius Black was, without a doubt, the second most irritating boy at Hogwarts. In fact, Lily could hardly remember a single day in all their years of being housemates that Sirius hadn't annoyed her. He not only found it incredibly amusing to harass her with mocking compliments and wild attempts to set her up with James Potter of all people, he and his friends had also made a game of attempting to hex the pants off Severus- and that was not okay. In fact, James was the only barrier standing between Sirius and the title of first most irritating boy at Hogwarts, and that was only because James had joke-proposed to Lily one too many times. Mostly, all Sirius did when he wasn't with James was strut around causing mayhem with his other friends and being stupidly good-looking. That alone was still enough to earn her eternal displeasure, of course. Which is why when, one day, Lily whirled around the corner of a fifth-floor corridor to run headfirst into Regulus Black, her immediate instinct was to start shouting at him.
"Excuse me! Could you be any less aware of where you're going? If you were just walking on the left side of the corridor like a normal person, maybe traffic could pass and you wouldn't be knocking people aside. Some of us have classes to get to, you know!" Her armful of books and parchment had gone flying when they collided, and she busied herself with collecting her fallen belongings while she huffed at him. When she straightened to find him blinking politely instead of laughing at her or seeking some sort of humiliating revenge, she paused.
"You've dropped your quill," he said, holding it out to her. "I apologize for knocking you over."
Lily furrowed her brow and reached for the quill, taking a step back as she tucked it into her bag. "Uh… thank you," she said.
She'd known that Sirius had a brother, of course. He complained about him all the time- loudly moaning to the entire common room about his stuck-up prat of a brother and how best to prank him. Lily even knew, thanks to her quiet friendship with Remus, about Sirius' suspicion that Regulus was a part of the same gang of Slytherin bullies that tormented the other houses. She had seen him around the castle before, sitting across the Great Hall or walking about with his Slytherin mates. None of that prepared her for coming face to face with him. She tilted her face up and he was still just looking at her, and Merlin was he attractive. He had the same fine, aristocratic features and thick black hair as Sirius, but the similarities ended there. Stormy gray eyes framed with impossibly long black lashes and full red lips that disappeared between his teeth as he studied her questioningly… and he had apologized to her. Lily shook her head at him and forced a smile.
"Sorry for snapping," she said. "Thanks for grabbing my quill for me." Then she rushed past him, all the way down the hallway and around another corner out of his sight. She was at the other end of the castle before she realized that she had forgotten why she was rushing down the fifth floor corridor to begin with. What the hell, Black, she thought to herself. Very strange indeed.
After nearly bowling him over in the hallway (and it had been sort of her fault, as she began to admit grudgingly to herself) Lily began to notice Regulus in the halls of Hogwarts. In fact, it became such a common occurrence that she began to wonder how they had never spoken to one another before. She wasn't precisely sure why, but she decided that she wanted to be his friend. Maybe just to piss off Sirius and Potter (because that in itself would be worth it) but also because she suspected that he was quite a different person than his brother was making him out to be. She said as much to Severus, and took to studying the bits of his routine that she could, hoping to orchestrate another opportunity to speak to him. At first, Severus didn't say anything when she casually asked about Regulus; when she took to sitting with him at the Slytherin table for meals, however, he became outright suspicious.
"What do you care about Black?" He actually glanced up from his Potions notes to ask her, with a frown on his face.
"I don't, of course," she said quickly. "He just… He's different from Sirius, isn't he?"
Severus scowled at the table as he answered her. "Clearly. He's a Slytherin. Rampaging about the castle like an inbred fool is beneath him."
"Sev, Regulus is related to Sirius. You just called him inbred."
The boy just rolled his eyes and flipped the page of the textbook in his lap, muttering some quiet retort at her. Lily sighed, ignoring him, and leaned on her elbow to peer down the table, hoping for a surreptitious glance of Regulus. She spotted him seated beside Evan Rosier, sipping gracefully from his golden goblet and staring across the Great Hall. Rosier was speaking quickly to him, a serious expression on his face, but if he was listening at all it wasn't apparent. He kept his eyes trained on some invisible spot above the tables, unblinking. Lily found herself studying the way his black hair waved perfectly across his forehead; she stared at his red lips and how they pursed slightly in reaction to whatever Rosier had said to him. She had just gotten to admiring how nice his dark green and silver tie looked against his pale skin when he turned his head in her direction and they made eye contact. Those lips quirked up in what could have been a polite smile but maybe it was a slightly amused smirk, and she felt a hot flush creeping up her face. Lily immediately averted her eyes, and was met with Severus staring back at her, his Potions book still open in his hands.
"I obviously don't give a damn about Black, Sev," he said in a mocking tone, rolling his eyes and shutting the book. She opened her mouth to protest but he was already standing up with his bag hoisted over one shoulder. "Don't worry about it, Lil. Your secret is safe with me." With a smirk, he strode towards the exit of the Great Hall, leaving her alone at the Slytherin table, sputtering, "I don't have a secret!"
"What's so interesting over at the Slytherin table, huh Evans? You and Snivellus finally get engaged?" Sirius was laughing. Lily closed her eyes and massaged her temples, trying to block him out. It was late at night, and she was seated at a table in the Gryffindor common room, attempting to finish an essay for her Charms class.
"Severus is my best friend," she said shortly, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her glare back at him. She stared resolutely at her parchment, twisting her quill in her fingers. I only need to edit one more paragraph, she thought. Almost done.
"Yeah right, Pads," James was laughing now. "As if Evans would ever touch a Slytherin."
"I dunno, that git's always trailing after her, isn't he? Best friends my arse." Sirius flopped into the chair across the table from Lily, staring at her with elbows on table and chin in hands. "So?" He asked with a wolfish grin. "When's the wedding?"
"I am not dating Severus!" she said hotly, slamming her quill down on the table. Suddenly she was hit by a stroke of inspiration, and she added, "For your information, I already have a boyfriend."
"What?!" James Potter was immediately at her side, kneeling beside her chair and staring at her with huge puppy eyes. "That's impossible, Evans, because we're soul mates."
Lily rolled her eyes and went back to correcting her essay. "We are not soul mates, Potter. I don't think there's enough room in your heart for a soul mate, considering how much you love yourself."
He clutched at his chest. "You wound me! One day you'll see the light, Evans. Wait!" He brightened. "I can duel your imaginary boyfriend for your hand!"
She snatched her things off the table and stood, scowling at him. "He is not imaginary! And you won't be dueling him for anything, least of all my hand. That's positively medieval." She started to stalk back to the girls' dorm, but stopped at the foot of the staircase to turn back and fix James and Sirius with flashing eyes. "He isn't Severus, he isn't imaginary. And," she said with her chin in the air, "he's a Slytherin."
She watched with satisfaction as both boys' mouths dropped open in confused, incredulous gapes. With a sniff and a flip of her long red hair, she stomped up the stairs and flung herself onto her four-poster bed. It was only when she was safely under her covers with the curtains drawn closed around her that she began to laugh hysterically to herself.
The next day, Lily had breakfast at the Slytherin table again. She kept what she hoped was a subtle eye on Regulus as he drank his coffee and studied the Daily Prophet, and when he finally stood to exit the Great Hall she hastily got to her feet to follow him.
"I'll be right back, Sev," she said in response to his raised eyebrow, and hurried after Regulus as he strode out of the hall.
"Hey, wait up!" She caught up with him just before he started up the staircase, and he looked startled to see her standing beside him.
"Lily, right?" He looked down at her and gave her that polite smile, and she found herself smiling back a little at his use of her first name. Take that, Sirius, she thought to herself. He knows my actual name.
"Yeah, it's Lily. So uh, Regulus," she began awkwardly. "Basically, I was wondering if you wanted to uh… hang out with me. Like, go for a walk on the grounds during lunch? By the lake? Or something?"
He tilted his head at her. "You want to… hang out with me?"
She smiled and nodded.
"I typically use the lunch period to study," he told her, still looking at her. She flushed.
"Oh. Um, I mean, if it isn't good for you, that's okay. I could just… well, some other time." She started to back away as she spoke, her cheeks turning embarrassingly pink. "Good luck with your studying!"
"I could always bring my notes down to the lake," he said. "If you wanted."
She stopped. "You'd… Yeah. That'd be great." His ridiculously proper smile morphed into the teasing smirk he'd shot her the previous day at dinner and her stomach flipped a little. How freaking strange, she thought, certainly not for the first time since meeting him.
"I'll meet you in the entrance hall at lunch, Lily," he told her, still grinning as he turned to continue up the stairs.
"Yeah," she said. "See you at lunch." She shook her head and turned around, walking back into the Great Hall and sliding back into her place beside Severus.
"What was that about?" He was squinting at her. She just grinned at him and shoved a piece of toast into her mouth, shrugging her shoulders when he continued to stare.
Potions (with the Slytherins and the other Gryffindors) was Lily's last class just before lunch. She settled into her usual table beside Severus, arranging her tools on the desk and trying her hardest to ignore Sirius and James when they clambered into the seats behind them. Her eyes were fixed stubbornly on the board at the front of the room, squinting as she studied the first line of directions- Amortentia? Really? She made a disgusted noise and said as much to Severus, who readily agreed with her.
"Honestly, why he's having us brew this crock of-"
"Sev!"
"We're students and it's repulsive. Not to mention illegal." He scoffed and went back to fiddling with his wand under their cauldron, working to get the temperature right down to the degree, ignoring Lily's protests that controlled and illegal were not the same thing.
Nearly an hour later, the classroom was filled with love potions of widely varying quality. The cauldron in front of Lily and Severus was, of course, filled with perfectly shimmering pearl-colored liquid, topped with spirals of steam that smelled absolutely incredible. Lily tucked her hair behind her ears and leaned forward to inhale deeply, breathing in the most strangely wonderful combination of vanilla, strong firewhisky, and cologne. She hummed with pleasure and began to ladle their potion into a vial for Professor Slughorn to grade, absentmindedly wondering where it was she had smelled the cologne before and if it actually belonged to the person she thought it did. Unfortunately, her good mood was short lived- ruined by none other than Sirius and Potter, who were still the most irritating boys at Hogwarts, thank you very much.
"What's your potion smell like, Evans? Greasy git?" Sirius was sitting back in his chair with his feet on the table beside his cauldron, and Slughorn was too busy dealing with a flaming desk in the back of the room to pay any attention to his delinquency. Lily gritted her teeth and handed her vial to a glowering Severus, prompting him to label it with their names.
"Just ignore him, Sev," she said loudly. "I'm sure Black's just trying to compensate so no one suspects his potion smells like Potter's Quidditch socks."
Sirius let out a barking laugh and dropped his feet from desk to floor. "Don't be silly, Lily," he said, infuriating her by using her first name just to make a stupid rhyme and making Potter laugh. "Amortentia smells like what attracts you, obviously. I was only trying to work out what could possibly smell attractive about Snivellus. The grease was my first guess, but maybe it's mold? He does live in the dungeons, you know."
Lily stood and glared at him. "Severus and I are not dating!" She exclaimed at the same time that James said, "Obviously her potion smells like me, Pads. Soul mates, remember!"
"As if you would be so lucky, Potter," Severus sneered. His reaction only seemed to delight Sirius, who laughed again and plopped his feet back onto the desk.
"See?! Dashing Slytherin prince to the rescue! Called it. Who else would it be?"
"She only said she was dating a Slytherin. If it's not our dear Snapey here, I'll wager Lily is only trying to excuse the fact that she's too nervous yet to fall into my waiting arms." James had a disgustingly dreamy expression on his face. Severus looked properly bewildered.
"Slytherin boyfriend?" He muttered at her, grimacing as he carefully slid his silver knife back into its case. "You don't mean…"
Lily tried and failed to hide her guilty expression, and Severus actually laughed out loud, a sound that caused several members of the class to glance suspiciously at their table.
"I'm not helping you out of this one," he declared. "This is hilarious."
Regulus was waiting in the entrance hall at the start of lunchtime, just as he had promised. He stood next to the wall near the doorway, leaning against it with a casual sort of grace; his leather schoolbag was slung over shoulder and his feet (clad in shiny black shoes, of course) were crossed at the ankles. Lily had dashed quickly up from the dungeons, even abandoning Severus in an effort to escape before Sirius and James spotted her leaving the castle for lunch- and when she came to a halt in front of Regulus, he was doing the smirk thing again. She opened her mouth to tell him to cut it out, but as she breathed deeply in an attempt to catch her breath, she got a whiff of the same cologne that she had most definitely just smelled in the dungeons. The realization brought a flush to her cheeks, so she cleared her throat awkwardly and just asked, "Shall we?"
He didn't stop doing the smirk thing. He did, however, offer her his arm because of course he would have fancy aristocrat manners to match his good looks and expensive clothes. Of course. Lily gave him a look out of the corner of one bright green eye, but she placed her hand in the crook of his arm anyway and allowed him to escort her out of the castle and down the winding path towards the black lake.
"So," he asked as their feet crunched along the gravel, "How was Potions?"
Lily looked at him curiously. "How'd you know I had Potions?"
He laughed lightly. "You have it with the Slytherins, of course." When she continued to stare at him blankly, he added, "I'm a Slytherin."
Lily rolled her eyes. "It was fine," she said. "Amortentia. A right joke, if you ask me."
"Slughorn honestly has you brewing up love potions?" Regulus made a disgusted noise. It sounded so similar to her own snort from only an hour earlier that Lily burst into laughter.
"What, cause it's illegal?" she asked.
"Well, controlled, technically," he said matter-of-factly. She smiled widely. How is this man from the same family as Sirius Bloody Black, she wondered incredulously.
Before long they were sprawled out in the grass alongside the lake, their notes long forgotten, eating sandwiches (that Regulus had managed to procure with the help of his family's ancient house elf) and laughing hysterically as Lily recounted tale after tale of James Potter's attempts to win her over, and Sirius's common room antics.
"He's really not so awful, you know," Regulus said, leaning back on one hand.
Lily was lying on her back, staring at the clouds and shredding bits of grass with her fingers. "Who, Sirius? He's constantly making fun of me. And trying to prank you, by the way."
"Well, yeah. Sirius. He doesn't mean anything… hurtful. He's my brother."
"I didn't think you guys were close," Lily said, frowning.
"We used to be." Regulus looked almost wistful.
"I'm sorry," she said, turning over and propping on her elbows to look at him. "Hey, do you want to talk about it? I know we hardly know each other, but-" She reached out and placed her hand on his sweater-clad arm, just in time to look past him and make eye contact with a shell-shocked Remus Lupin. Her lips parted in surprise, and when the sandy-haired boy turned and fled, she let out an audible groan.
"What?" Regulus twisted around, trying to see what she was looking at.
"Now I'm really done for," she complained, flopping onto her stomach and pressing her cheek to the ground. "Remus was just there."
His dark eyebrows arched in confusion. "Remus Lupin? My brother's friend?"
"Well… yeah," Lily said slowly, keeping her face buried in the grass. "I, uh… I may have… implied to Potter that we are dating." She turned onto her back again and sneaked a glance at him; when she caught sight of his grey eyes widened in shock she quickly continued. "I mean, I didn't say we were dating, per se, but he wouldn't leave me alone so I said I already had a boyfriend and he didn't believe me so I said he was a Slytherin and-"
"And now Lupin is going to tell him that he saw us and he will assume it's me?"
"Um… yeah, pretty much. I can go tell him we're not- I mean, don't be mad, I've really had a lot of…" Lily trailed off when she saw him break into a wide grin. "What?!"
Regulus leaned slowly into her personal space, his grin softening into the smirk thing again and his hand pressing into the grass on the far side of her body. He kept leaning forward until his thick black hair was brushing against her own forehead and her senses were overwhelmed by his proximity and the amazing smell of that damn cologne.
"What if I'd like to let him assume, Lily?"
"My brother and Evans are doing WHAT?!" Sirius leapt to his feet right there in the Great Hall, nearly tripping backwards over the bench as he stood. James, meanwhile, was opening and closing his mouth and staring in the direction of the entrance hall like a wounded puppy.
"Shut up," Remus hissed. "Not here! And don't say it like that you prat, it makes it sound like-"
"UGH!"
The three boys strode quickly out of the Great Hall, Remus hurrying slightly ahead of James and Sirius so that he could herd them into an empty classroom before they ran out onto the grounds and made idiots of all three of them. The second the door slammed shut behind them James whipped a familiar bit of parchment out of his pocket and declared, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
As soon as the map was finished sprawling across the parchment, all three boys leaned in to examine it. Sure enough, two dots labeled Regulus Black and Lily Evans were positioned together, right at the edge of the black lake. Uncomfortably close together, in James's not-so-humble opinion.
"What the hell," he said, glaring at the map. "She really does have a Slytherin boyfriend?!"
Sirius groaned. "Ugh, I would've preferred Snivellus."
"Look, why does it really matter who Lily dates?" Remus asked.
"Because he's my Slytherin brother!" Sirius exclaimed at the same time that James shouted, "She's only doing it to mess with me!"
Remus rolled his eyes. "Don't be idiots," he said. "She seemed happy enough from what I saw."
"Why? What were they doing? Moony, we need details here!" James pleaded.
He furrowed his brow. "I don't know, they were laughing and she was touching his arm but then she saw me and-"
"No, no more! No more details!" Sirius looked like he was going to be sick.
"Let's go spy on them," James suggested. "I'll just nip up and grab the cloak and we can-"
"We are not spying on them," Remus protested. "I only told you because I thought you'd need the warning before witnessing it for yourselves."
"Okay, okay fine. We'll just wait in the entrance hall. They have to come back inside sometime, after all." He grinned wickedly.
Sirius, meanwhile, was muttering quietly to himself. "Regulus and Evans… Evans with Regulus. What the hell."
"What happened to the polite Regulus smile?" Lily asked breathlessly as he hovered over her in the grass. She was trying very hard to look at his eyes and not his slightly parted lips.
"The Regulus what?" He laughed.
"You… I thought your smiles were so proper," she explained. "Now all you do is smirk at me."
"Hmmm," he agreed absently, twirling a lock of her waved auburn hair between two long fingers.
"I rather like you, Lily Evans," he said suddenly. "I've been watching you for weeks now."
"You hardly know me," she protested. Watching me?! If those words had come out of James Potter's mouth she would have hexed him, but this was Regulus and her heart was fluttering in her chest and he was so close she could smell the pumpkin juice from their picnic on his breath.
"And wouldn't you like to change that?" His lips twisted in amusement.
"You're doing it again!" Lily exclaimed. He ignored her.
"Well, I was thinking," he said. "Seeing as you've already gone to the trouble of telling everyone that we're dating-"
"I did not tell everyone that-"
"Go out with me, Lily?"
"Go out with- oh," she said, her face growing hot. "I- well, I- I rather like you too, Regulus Black." She sucked in her breath and watched as his tongue swiped across his bottom lip.
"That wasn't an answer," he said teasingly.
She reached out shyly to run her fingers through his now windswept black hair. "Alright," she said. "Under one condition."
"Hmmm?" His forehead was nearly against hers again.
"Kiss me," she said, and before the words were out of her mouth he had leaned down and pressed his lips to hers.
He was warm and soft and she felt the light scrape of stubble on his face brushing against her skin and shivered. You taste like pumpkin juice and sunshine, she thought, not even caring how ridiculous she sounded in her own head because sunshine obviously didn't have a taste but if it did, it would be Regulus Black.
She pouted slightly when he pulled away and gave her the now-signature smirk, but it was quickly overtaken by a smile.
"Oh, alright," she whispered against his lips, "I'd very much like to get to know you."