JO PRESENTS HER NEWEST, BEST KEPT RECORDS TO REGULUS WITH A BRIGHT GRIN, as they sit cross-legged on the floor of the Room of Requirement. Radio Ethiopia. Blondie. Teenage Depression. Talking Heads: 77. Rattus Norvegicus. "Which one?" Jo questions, biting down on her bottom lip, trying to curb the grin that she just can't seem to fight off. Her voice echoes against the walls of the room; it's nearly empty, save for the record player that stands in the center. There is a dim blue light illuminating Regulus's face as he sits across from her, legs crossed and chin resting on his fist.

He stares down at the options presented to him; the five records Jo spent forty minutes picking up in her dorm before she carried them down to him. She is nervous and she doesn't know why, but her stomach is eating away at itself when he leans back on his hands and says to her, "You pick. I want to hear your favorite."

"Hmm," Jo muses, examining her options. She doesn't think of her favorite, The Strangler's new album that Sirius got her for Christmas, but instead she thinks of what Regulus would like, what might impress him the most. She grabs the bright one in front of her and holds it up for him. "Talking Heads."

Regulus smiles, genuine and wide. "Talking Heads then."

Jo stands, trying not to think too hard about what she's doing and what she's saying, and she starts the album up, the bouncy bass of Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town, instantly filling up the room, every inch of it. Jo can't help the grin on her face, or the way she taps her foot, and when she turns to Regulus to gauge his reaction, she sees that he's doing the same to her. "Have you ever listened to muggle music before?"

"No, I don't think so," Regulus says with a slight shake of his head, eyes cast down as his thumbs brush against each other. "Sirius used to play it at home. Our rooms were next to each other, so I could hear it through the walls sometimes."

Jo crosses her legs as she sits across from him once more. He doesn't look up. The dim, blue light casts shadows across the right side of his face. "Sirius got me a few of these," she tells him, hesitant and gentle. "He actually got me the first record I ever owned."

Gaze still cast down he asks her, "Are you two close?"

"Sometimes he feels more like my brother than James does," Jo answers with notes of fondness, admiration in her voice. But guilt floods her as she sees Regulus flinch. "Sorry."

He looks up at her now, gives her a half-heated, lopsided grin. "It's alright," he assures her. "Suppose that makes sense. He does live with you, after all."

Conversation lulls, and the music fills the space between him. Jo closes her eyes, lets her head drop behind her shoulders as New Feeling starts up. She always gets this euphoric feeling when she can listen to music like this. It makes her feel like she's floating, like she can feel every note echo against her bones. Jo lets herself sway a bit before she remembers that Regulus is in the room with her. The reminder makes her head snap up, blushing at the realization that he was watching her with careful eyes.

She clears her throat. "I've always wanted to hear them live," she says, pinkness still in her cheeks. "Or anyone live, actually. I've asked all my friends dozens of times, but no one will take me."

"I'll take you," Regulus says, so swiftly and so surely that it makes Jo laugh.

"You'll take me?" she questions. "To a concert? In a muggle city?"

He shrugs. "Why not?"

She snickers. "I don't think either of us would last very long on our own out there."

"I'm sure we could figure it out."

There's not a drop of hesitation or uncertainty in his words, no sarcasm or teasing in the way he speaks to her. He stares down at her as Jo shakes her head. "You're barking."

"I think it would be fun," he insists. "I've never done anything like that."

"You don't say," Jo replies with a bit of a smirk, and Regulus chuckles, shaking his head, letting his gaze drop.

The music takes over once more. Jo watches Regulus now, watches his reaction. His head bops to Tentative Decisions, taps his fingers to Who Is It? He lets himself fidget and move when he likes a song. He sits still, biting down on his bottom lip when he doesn't.

Jo feels a bit strange, like there's some sort of indescribable feeling settling in the pit of her gut as she just watches him, while his eyes flicker, constantly moving but never landing on her. She racks through questions and conversation topics so staring right at him doesn't leave her feeling so unsettled. "Do you know what you want to do after you finish school?" she asks, randomly and suddenly, almost rushing through her words.

His eyes snap up at her. Regulus studies her for a moment. "No. Not a clue," he answers. "Though I suppose there's something picked out for me already."

Her chest lurches. "That's a bit sad."

The Book I Read is playing almost too loudly. Jo almost misses it when Regulus says, "Suppose it is."

"Well, what do you like doing?" Jo asks.

Regulus takes a very long time to answer. He thinks about it. Leans back, hands propping him up as they lay flat against the ground. The blue lighting illuminates him. He tilts his head and Jo can see how he chews on the inside of his cheek. "I like making potions," he says carefully. "I like reading."

"Maybe you could have your own potion shop," Jo offers up, and pictures it. Regulus, with his traditional dark robes and shiny curls behind the counter of a potions shop. One overflowing with magical plants and carefully labeled vials. Jo imagines going there to buy healing potions and she imagines herself, leaning up against the counter and having a very serious, very adult conversation about the potential medical benefits of Wiggentree. "A little quaint one, maybe in Diagon Alley."

Regulus looks as if he is fighting for composure again, biting down and choking back a smile. His eyes are wet. "You think I could do that?"

"Of course, I do," Jo answers easily. "Even if I am better at potions."

He gives out, let's a wide grin spread across his face, and he looks at Jo like she has revealed some new, great furry to him. "It's better than I thought it would be. The music."

Jo gives him a sour smile. "Did you think I would have bad taste?"

"I thought there might be a chance," he teases, never letting the unabashed joy fall from his face and Jo relishes in it. "I'm willing to admit I was wrong, though."

Once again, inexplicably, Jo feels her mouth go dry. "I can show you the rest of my record collection, if you'd like."

Any coldness Jo has associated with Regulus is gone in that moment, when he beams down at her, and she feels warmth spread from the inside out. "Yeah, I'd like that."

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Jo's always loved Remus. Always loved him more than Peter, more than Sirius, sometimes even more than James. She remembers, very clearly, the day she first met him, the day James first invited him over one hot, summer afternoon. He was timid, picking at a sandwich Euphemia had made for him with long, shaky fingers and a bouncing leg as they all sat around the dining room table, devouring lunch. He didn't say anything, he kept his head down and smiled when his friends made jokes but never laughed. But when James started in on his typical teasing of Jo, like he always did, Remus gave him a sharp look and said, "Don't embarrass your sister like that."

Jo was enamored from then on out. Completely enamored.

Her crush blossomed and grew as she started Hogwarts. When Jo rushed to James for help, he would dismiss her, ("Piss off, Josie, you're embarrassing me in front of Evans"). But Remus was there, with his soft timid smile and hushed words. He'd walk her to her classes when she got lost, help her with her homework when she didn't understand, and spend lazy Sundays in the common room with her when she was lonely. Jo did her best to make him laugh more than James did, be a better friend to him than James was. Her dry humor and monotone delivery paired well with Remus's snark and snide commentary. And as Jo closed out her first year of school, she spent summers with Remus, sitting on the sidelines with him, and sometimes Peter, watching as James and Sirius played Quidditch, ran and wrestled in the grass. They walked into town together, always several steps behind everyone else, nicking sweets from stores when the shopkeeper wasn't looking and laughing while James scolded them. The two of them were thick as thieves.

Jo would tell her friends, once she had them, that she was going to marry Remus. That was her plan, from the moment she met him. It wasn't until the middle of Jo's third year that Remus started to catch on.

It was a painful, awkward conversation. Jo cried the first time she had ever cried in front of anyone else. Her sobs were ugly, and snot filled, and Remus couldn't make eye contact as he told her it wasn't her fault, that if he had to pick a girl to be with, it would be her. But he didn't want to be with a girl. He had to repeat that last bit a few times before Jo started to catch on. She hated Sirius for a few months after that.

Remus told Jo, after she stopped crying over the whole thing, that she was the first person he had ever told.

And after that, they only grew closer. There were no secrets between the two, no lies. They would gossip and snicker together, sit in the corner and fill the room with giggles and whispers and they would annoy the people around them. There were times they would be inseparable, times they spent almost a little too much time together. Jo would crave his company when he wasn't around. Jo would tell him things she never told anyone else. Jo would think that Remus was one of the only people who ever really understood her.

Now they need Peter as a buffer.

He sits in between them now, as the crowds in the library begin to thin out, sun completely set and the dense smell of old, crisp paper in the air. Jo is tapping the end of her quill against her parchment, leaving faint dots of ink. Not a word has been said in over a half-hour, a stark contrast to their past study sessions, ones that would get them in trouble for being disruptive, loud, distracting. Jo and Remus have not been alone together in months.

Jo is acutely aware of Remus and Peter, writing, studying, thinking that she should be doing the same. But her focus keeps shifting, eyes slipping towards the corner of the library, where Regulus sits in a large armchair, a book in between his hands.

It's like he's some sort of magnet, always attracting her attention. She'll only look away for a minute or two before her gaze is on him again, without her even realizing. Jo scans the words on her parchment, telling herself that she won't look again over and over until she does. She lets her eyes flicker back over to that same corner to see that he is looking too. He is looking at her with a wry smile and Jo lets one grow on her lips as well. She bites down on her bottom lip, forces her eyes back onto her parchment.

"Jo? Are you alright?"

Remus's question straightens Jo out. The smile falls off her face all at once. "What?"

He blinks at her, expression wide and almost concerned. "Are you alright?" he repeats.

Jo shrugs. "M fine."

"You haven't written anything in thirty minutes," Peter comments without looking up from his work, pointing the tip of his quill towards Jo's almost completely blank parchment.

Jo furrows her brow, scrunches her nose. "What, are you timing me? Mind your business, Pete," she snarks.

"You just seem a bit out of it today," Remus says, pulling her attention back towards him. Jo turns to face him again and finds irritation building in her chest as he looks at her. Like he's worried for her, a look he's never given her before. "Actually, you seem a bit out of it most days."

"What a keen observation," she grumbles.

Remus flinches. "Why do I feel like you're still mad at me?"

"I don't know. Because you're sensitive?" Jo counters quickly, earning shocked laughter from Peter.

"Well, there you have it, Moony."

Remus eyes her apprehensively for a long moment before he reaches over Peter and his work to get at Jo's parchment. "Let me review your essay."

Jo is quick to cross her arms over it, ashamed of how little she's written and how poor it likely is. "I'm not done yet."

"Let me look at what you have so far," Remus insists, griping harshly at the edge of it and yanking it right out from under her.

Jo gives Peter wide, indignant eyes and a slacked jaw. "Does he nag you like this?"

Peter taps Jo's shoulder, a gesture of sympathy, of understanding. "It's never-ending."

Jo leans back into her chair once more, arms crossed over her chest just in time for Remus to slide her easy back, the few sentences she did have now marked up and crossed out. "Here. I made some edits."

"Already?" she questions.

Remus gives her pursed lips and an edge in his tone. "There wasn't much to be salvaged."

She shakes her head at him. "Unbelievable."

Peter rolls his eyes and snaps his books shut. "Well, you two have fun bickering like an old married couple," he says, standing. "I'm off to get Helen Birdwhistle into a broom closet."

Jo raises an eyebrow. "You're going out with Helen Birdwhistle?"

"Not yet I'm not," he grins broadly as he turns to leave.

"You're unbelievable, Pettigrew," Jo calls after him, and when she settles down, slinking, she realizes that she is stuck alone with Remus, and all at once, the air is tense.

Jo averts her gaze, looking at the shelves, looking at her shoes, looking back at Regulus. She fidgets, she shuffles, she shifts. All the while, Remus stares, burning a hole right through her. "You promise you aren't mad at me anymore?" he questions once more.

The truth is, Jo doesn't know if she's mad at Remus or not. She tells herself that she's not, because she doesn't want to be, but she feels like there is a disconnect between them. Like whatever was holding them so close together has snapped, and Jo was left with the splinters. She is bitter and uncomfortable with the way things have changed. But those emotions live and die on her tongue. "I will be if you ask me one more time," she tells him.

Attention fixated squarely on her, Remus leans in closer to her. "Well, I have a secret to tell you then."

This makes her halt all of her small, unsure movements, and she looks up at Remus. "Good or bad?"

The smugness in his grin says it all. "Good. Very good."

"Well, go on then."

Remus leans in even closer, close enough that his lips are practically at her ear, and he says, in the lowest voice he can muster, "Sirius kissed me."

The news makes her jaw drop, becomes a priority over her own hesitations. "You're kidding," she gapes, leaning back to take in Remus's expression, his shy little smile and his pink tinge cheeks and the way he's trying to hide in his shoulders. Jo gasps.

"You can't tell anymore," he rushes out.

"I won't," she is quick to assure him. "You know I won't."

He grins, and Jo thinks of her third year, the way Remus's voice was filled with dread and disappointment and pain when he told her how he really feels about Sirius. She swells. "But I think we might, you know."

"Shag?" she prompts, eyebrows raised.

Remus whacks her arm. "Stop it."

Jo takes pleasure in the way he squirms and flushes. "Are you dating now?"

This elicits a groan. "I don't know. I don't think so? It was never expressly stated either way, but I hope so."

"Hmm. You should ask him."

Remus scoffs. "That's likely."

"Merlin, no wonder it took years for you to kiss," Jo whispers harshly, eyes flashing around quickly, assessing if anyone might be close enough to hear. "You two need to learn to communicate."

Remus frowns, brow furrowed. "How would you know? You've hospitalized the only person you've ever dated twice."

Jo thinks it would be nice if, for once, she could go a day without bringing up the Reed-incidents. Her detentions are enough of a reminder. "Well, it's easier to see the solution to problems that aren't your own."

He hesitates. "That's a fair point, actually."

"I'm happy for you, though," Jo says with sincerity, placing a soft hand on his shoulder. "Hope it's uphill from here."

"Me too."

Jo leans back in her chair once more and doesn't think about it when her eyes shift over to Regulus. But the spot he once occupied is empty, and he has disappeared without a trace.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Sirius has made good on his promise, the one he made to Jo all the way back in September and has supplied her with what feels like a year's supply of candy. Licorice wands, Jelly Slugs, Apple Rings, Candyfloss and Cockroach Clusters. The pile is spread out on Alice's bed as her, Jo and Dorcas paw at them, shoveling as many sweets into their mouths as they can. Their early morning classes are pushed to the back of their minds. Jo knows the two of them are, at this point, accustomed to much more sleep than she is, and can't imagine how cranky and grumpy and pissy her friends will become morning. But for now, she is grateful to have them as wide awake as she is as Alice leans her head against Jo's shoulder.

"Jo," Alice starts, biting into some of her Caramel Cobwebs, "you realize that you're the only single one left?"

"What?"

Alice takes a deep breath and snuggles into Jo's shoulder, and Jo sees the way Dorcas rolls her eyes before Alice even says a word. "Well, Dorcas has Marlene, her secret lover," she explains, with a grand gesture towards Dorcas. "I have Frank, Hestia's been seeing Prewett, and Emmeline hasn't told me who yet, but she has a date for Hogsmeade. And you're single."

Jo flinches, defenses up and chest puffed. "Maybe I like being single. Dating doesn't seem to be for me."

Dorcas looks up at Jo with a flat, unimpressed expression. "You've dated one person."

"Yeah, and look how that went," Jo asserts, reaching for a Jelly Slug.

"Maybe you'll like it better if you go out with someone who isn't a twat," Alice suggests.

Jo rips the candy apart with her front teeth. "Well how the hell am I supposed to tell who's a twat and who's not?"

"Just assume they're twats and work backwards from there," Alice says with a chuckle.

Dorcas suggests, "Maybe you should date a friend."

The idea is bad, and Dorcas knows it. Jo has no idea why she would even say it. "I have about seven friends. If you knock off girls and people I consider family members, that leaves me with Lupin and Pettigrew."

Dorcas shrugs. "So go out with one of them."

"I heard Peter's going out with Helen Birdwhistle?" Alice says, sounding unsure.

"That was fast," Jo grumbles under her breath.

"Why don't you ask Remus out?" Dorcas ask, and Jo looks up at her with a glare.

Dorcas was the first person Jo ran to third year, post-rejection, and Jo feels that it's an odd suggestion for her to make. "He's not my type."

"Then what is your type?" Dorcas presses.

Jo falters. "That I'm not sure on. I just know it's not him."

"What's wrong with Remus?" Alice asks. "He's tall."

"So?"

Alice grins. "Well, what else could you want in a boy?"

"I don't know," Jo replies, slow and a bit of snark in her tone. "Why do you like Frank? He's not all that tall."

"He's taller than me!" Alice protests, almost squealing. "And it's because he's kind and funny and compassionate and he treats me