#three YEARS | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

astranix · 10 months ago

Text

slytherin sirius black × gryffindor james potter

the most non-angsty sirius and regulus running away fic ever coz we don't have enough of those

"This was, without a doubt," Regulus pants, glancing over his shoulder, "the stupidest thing you've ever done! And that's really saying something."

"This was also, without a doubt," Sirius says, glaring, "the best decision of my whole miserable life."

"We're gonna starve, you fucking idiot—!" Regulus says, smacking him on the back of his head. "We have nowhere to go."

Sirius freezes in his steps.

"Uncle Alphard?" he asks. Regulus smacks him again, and Sirius smacks him back.

"We can't go there, Sirius," Regulus says, wincing and rubbing his head. "Mother would know. She must already know, because it's the only place we could possibly go!"

There's silence for a second.

"Right. Lestrange isn't an option, neither is Dolohov," Sirius says, grimly. "Mulciber is a bitch, Avery's too thick to understand. Snape's probably homeless himself. What about you?"

"Barty's parents never leave him alone," Regulus clenches his jaw. "And Rosier would probably not be home. He's been sending me postcards from France."

"Fuck," Sirius scans where they're standing. "Andromeda hasn't talked to you since she ran, has she?"

"You think she'll talk to me before you?" Regulus scoffs. "She hasn't. And we can't live on the fucking streets, you know that."

"We have money," Sirius says.

"Yeah, but we would have to get it exchanged into muggle money, which, one, we don't know shit about. And two, we would have to walk straight into Gringotts. Anybody could see us."

Regulus tugs at his hair, always the one who worries more, always the one who gives up earlier.

"Well," Sirius, hedges, "if we could find an owl, we wouldn't need to go to Diagon Alley."

"Oh yes, of course," Regulus says, snidely. "All our problems are now completely solved! We just need a goddamn owl!"

The muggles walking past them give them strange looks, and Regulus lowers his tone.

"Look, Sirius," he says, fixing him with a determined expression. Sirius already hates where this is going. "You're sixteen, you're going to be out of Grimmauld in a year or two, anyway. And if you move out, I'll move with you. But we—we can't do anything except go back. It's cold. It's going to rain soon. We haven't eaten in a day."

Sirius stares at him, incredulous.

"If this is about your ego," Regulus starts, angrily, "then—"

"No!" Sirius interrupts, hotly. "Are you insane?! This is about our continued existence. She would kill us, if we went back! She's a fucking psycho! She was just about to curse the shit out of you, for no reason, which is literally why we ran—"

"I can take it," Regulus dismisses. "Besides, you ran out, and dragged me along."

Sirius gapes at him, unable to speak more.

"No," Sirius says, firmly, and looks straight at Regulus, because what he says now is what they do, this is final. "We're not going back."

Regulus's shoulders drop, defeated.

"Right," he mutters, and the sudden resignation that settles on his face, bitter and tired, makes Sirius think that sometimes, he's no better than his mother.

They stand silently, for a tense, uncomfortable moment.

Then, "I have an idea," Sirius says, because he does.

And it's a bad, bad one.

Of course, it's also the only one they have.

That, right then, that's when it starts raining.

Regulus scrambles for shade under the shed of the muggle shop closest to them.

Sirius braces himself, and raises his wand.

It's only a moment before the Knight Bus pops, loud and purple and sharply at contrast with the grey evening.

"Godric's Hollow," he says to the conductor, and hands him a handful of sickles. "And two hot chocolates."

They take a seat, and Regulus looks at him with a dubious expression.

"Godric's Hollow?" he pronounces, slowly. Sirius ignores him, grabbing the two mugs that the conductor gives them.

"Why are we going to Godric's Hollow?" Regulus insists, his teeth chattering in the cold. "Sirius? What the hell? We don't know anyone there."

He's right.

Sort of.

Sirius just hands Regulus the hot chocolate, refusing to answer.

"We're going to die," Regulus mumbles, gloomily. "We're really going to die."

"Shut it," Sirius says, and gives the conductor two sickles more for blankets. "You're not."

(-)

Sirius knows which house they have to go to, the moment he sees it.

It's big, bright, there's green grass surrounding it. It looks like one of those pictures in childrens' books, flowers and fences and whatnot.

It's barely drizzling by the time they reach.

Regulus had settled to just watching Sirius do whatever he wants to, but as soon as he starts walking towards the house, Regulus freezes in his tracks.

"I really need some information, right now," he says, quietly, wary eyes on the house. There's something beautiful about the whole scene, brick-red and cosy, and that's even more suspicious, isn't it.

They don't know anybody so warm.

"It's Potter's house," Sirius admits, finally. Regulus startles, whipping around to stare at him, absolutely shocked.

Anybody would be.

"Potter?" he hisses, like he's never heard the name before. "Potter?! What—! Sirius, he hates you! You hate him back! You hate each other!"

"I know," Sirius says, and rings the doorbell.

"Oh my god," Regulus breathes out, disbelieving. "You're mad. You're actually mad. We spent so much of our money to come here, Sirius. And when Potter, for obvious fucking reasons, turns us away, we won't even—"

The front door opens.

Regulus tugs at Sirius's sleeve.

"We can still run, come on, it won't be as embarrassing then," he says, frantic, "Even Alphard would be better than this. We could hide in his dungeon."

"Alphard has a dungeon?" Sirius asks, curiously, just as James Potter steps out.

He looks at them for a second, blankly, blinking behind thin-wired round frames. His hair is a mess, as usual, he's wearing actual pyjamas. And then, a moment later, his brain seems to catch up with him.

"What," James Potter says, bewildered. "What are you doing here—?"

"We need a place to stay," Sirius says, demands. Do the Potters rent out rooms to guests? That would make so much more sense. "For some days."

"Huh?" Potter's expression says that they do not, in fact, own a guest service. "Wha—?"

Sirius sighs, and pulls Regulus with him, again, not away from the house, like they should be going, but towards, and then he—then he just—

He walks inside Potter's house.

Just. Pushes past him, and walks in.

Like he owns it.

Regulus and Potter stare at each other, Regulus is horrified, Potter is confused.

"Thanks," Sirius's voice comes from inside.

"You're welcome," Potter mutters, automatically, before blinking dumbly, again, and going inside.

Regulus, reluctantly, ridiculously, follows him.

(-)

So.

Sirius has now, in a span of 24 hours, cussed out his mother, thrown cutlery at their father's head, forced his way into someone’s home, and clearly, he has no plans to leave.

James Potter is apparently, and bizarrely, completely okay with this.

"My parents won't be home until late evening," he says, uncertainly, in his own home, while Sirius sits on the couch, comfortable as all hell, reading the last edition of Witch Weekly. "We should eat something."

Yes! Regulus's stomach says.

"We can't cook," he says, aloud, apologetically. "We had elves."

"Well, we don't. And I can cook," Potter says, shrugging. "What would you like?"

What the fuck is even going on, Regulus thinks.

"I'll help," he says, instead. Potter just shrugs again.

(-)

"Why?" Regulus asks, as soon as they reach the kitchen, shutting the door behind him. It's not like the kitchen at Grimmauld. It has a muggle stove, and what Regulus is guessing, other muggle... devices.

"Why what?" Potter says, and the slight grin on his face tells Regulus that he knows exactly what he's talking about.

"Why—" Regulus huffs, "why're you doing all this?"

"I'm hungry," Potter says, with an infuriating smirk, as he opens the shelves, takes out a pan and some plates. "And my mum taught me well."

"You know that's not what I'm asking," Regulus says. "Why did you let us in? Why're you letting us—" stay.

If he is, that is.

"Actually you'll find that I did not, in fact, let you in," he replies, setting the pan on the flame and dropping a unnecessary amount of butter. It sizzles and melts, and Regulus can't bring himself to meet Potter's eyes. "That would imply you asked."

"Okay," Regulus huffs. "Why didn't you kick Sirius and me out then?"

Potter's expression flickers a little, and he looks away, absent-mindedly cutting the tomato he's got on the counter.

Regulus waits.

Chop chop chop.

"Well," James says, finally, quietly, eyes on the thin slices of tomato, "you can't quite say no to Sirius Black, can you?"

"You... could have," Regulus narrows his eyes.

Potter just shakes his head. "He's...he's—"

"Oh, god no," Regulus exhales, because no way. "Not you too."

"'Too?'" Potter repeats.

"You like Sirius, don't you?" Regulus asks, scoffing when Potter gives him a wide-eyed expression.

He's so painfully obvious.

Regulus doesn't want to interpret any of this. He goes on, anyway.

"You know he's using you, right?" he asks, quietly.

Chop chop chop chop.

"He doesn't know anything about that, Black," Potter says, eyes firmly on the pan, as he slides the onion and tomato slices off the board.

"Sirius," Regulus says, slowly, "always knows when someone likes him. He always, always knows what anybody feels about him. My brother's a lot of things, but oblivious or delusional he's not."

"Maybe I just don't mind the company, alright?" Potter replies, curt, and Regulus is just about to reply, when a sudden noise comes from outside, the thud of the door.

"James, honey?" says a woman's voice, sounding mildly confused.

#sirius black #james potter #prongsfoot #pre-prongsfoot #starbucks #regulus black #slytherin sirius black #at this point im not even certain if i wrote this or not???#im clearing out my REALLY old drafts #like #three years #i guess #no clue #but well

68 notes · View notes

bedlamsbard · 8 months ago

Note

I know this is kind of out of nowhere but for the longest time I was super weird and mentally dismissive of your burning out of Star Wars because I was someone who survived the OEU's insanity back in the day and managed not to burn out of Star Wars in the face of ridiculous nonsense like the Yuuzhan Vong and Killiks, so if I could survive that, you were of course entitled to dislike Star Wars but I still found it silly. Anyway I just finished watching Tales of the Jedi(Resolve) and I Get It Now.

...I recognise that may not be the most hinged thing to say to someone I don't actually know, and apologise for my mild to moderate insanity; I slept three hours, am very sick, it's shark week, and my brain seized on you as someone who'd Get It and who I had been hard on in my thoughts in the past, but, like, none of that actually affected you until I randomly said it? So anyway sorry for babbling at you like that lmfao, I'll stop talking now

Okay. I've been thinking about these since I saw them; I saw the first one before the second one arrived, which was a hell of a thing to wake up to since I saw it first thing in the morning. While my usual policy is to leave messages along these lines in my inbox, I was genuinely upset and wanted to respond once I had a more coherent reaction than "why me, gods, why does this always happen to me."

So, first of all, I'm sorry that you had an installment in canon that didn't do it for you; it happens to the best of us and there are very few people in fandom who uncritically (or even critically) enjoy everything in canon, especially in a fandom as big and long-running as Star Wars.

It's also very common for people to fall out of love with a fandom, even a fandom they've been in for a very long time; I would say that fen who have consistently been in one fandom for an extended period of time are probably rarer than those who haven't. It's not always because there is one installment that is just The Worst; often that's just a tipping point for fen who have been on the edge for a while. (Ask your average former MCU fan who left after Avengers Endgame.) Other times fen just drift away from a fandom without a reason to push them out. Maybe their favorite characters have died, maybe the canon is no longer telling stories they're interested in even if none of those stories are "bad," maybe it's a closed canon and without new stories there's nothing to keep them there; there's any number of factors.

I had a very dramatic breakup with Star Wars three years ago, and it was about three years after I really should have gotten out of the fandom, because I had not been having a good time for a while at that point. And honestly, considering that I hadn't had a healthy relationship with either Star Wars or the fandom for a while before that, for various reasons that go well beyond what was happening in canon, arguably I should have gotten out even earlier. However, I'm monofannish to a fault and I really needed something that would actually kick me to a new fandom -- which meant it couldn't come from Star Wars.

I don't really dislike Star Wars as a whole. There are individual installments that I quite dislike, there are some that I still love, and the vast majority of Star Wars I'm neutral on. I do however have a very fucked up relationship with Star Wars, including the canon, the PTB, and the fandom itself. I have gotten regular abuse on Wake and Gambit for the past ten years, which really screwed up my relationship with AO3 and with the prequel era. There is canon that I really, really dislike, some of it because it personally does nothing for me (the ST), some of it because from my point of view, it completely fucked over a story I love (Rebels S4, TCW S7, some other stuff that contradicts stuff from the EU I love; I came out of the EU too), some of it because I just plain don't like it (THR, most of the comics), and some of it because watching it just plain made me feel like I was being gaslit, which is not something I say lightly (Mando is the worst offender, but there are others). A lot of these are problems that could come out of any fandom, especially a large, long-running, multi-media fandom; I know a lot of Marvel people who have very similar problems, though I think the scale tends to be slightly different there just because the canon is set up differently.

When I switched fandoms, I had to recalibrate my entire relationship to fandom, to canon, to AO3, and to how I interacted with all of them. I still have to check myself in most of those places because my relationship with Star Wars had screwed me up so much. I had to train myself into being able to post on AO3 again; I do talk regularly about how a lot of what I write is shaped by trying to avoid getting the kind of reactions I got and still get from my Star Wars fic, even years later. I have to make conscious decisions not to engage with every part of the canon without feeling like a failed fan, especially the installments I'm pretty sure I'll dislike, because I tried to do that in Star Wars and it regularly messed me up. As a cosplayer, I still have a fairly bad reaction to even seeing the word "approvable," and it took a while for me not to have a similar reaction to "screen-accurate." I'm still destashing most of my Star Wars merch and right now, my reaction to seeing new Marvel merch isn't "ooh, would I wear/use this?" it's "when I inevitably have a horrendous breakup with this fandom will I be able to resell it?" which is not a really healthy relationship to have with a fandom. (I have mostly moved off this but not entirely.) I knew that Star Wars had screwed my relationship with Disney World, when I had a panic attack on Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind because I was so terrified that it was going to be ~necessary canon, even though Marvel has never operated that way; Star Wars does with Galaxy's Edge, which I don't really like being in anymore either.

And yes, I'm aware all of these are an extreme overreaction to getting out of a fandom. I'm not happy about it either and I wish it wasn't happening. It's better now than it was a couple years ago and I'm frankly glad I'm not in the fandom anymore; I'm happy for people who are or who have gotten back into it and are having a good time. I am not one of them; I may some day be one again, but probably not anytime soon.

But even if I didn't have this specific fucked up relationship with Star Wars, a fandom I have not been in for three years at this point, sometimes people just burn out on a fandom. I'm not a CSI:NY fan anymore, either. (Which my last big fandom prior to Narnia, which I just drifted away from. I've only been in five big writing fandoms over twenty years.)

#thelearnedsoldier #bedlam replies #I haven't been in star wars fandom for THREE YEARS #THREE YEARS

19 notes · View notes