JO MAKES A SUDDEN AND ABRUPT REALISATION.

More like an admission, really.

It comes after a long while of thinking about the way Regulus holds her face in his hands and the gentleness he treats her with and how he is the only one who can make her feel less on edge after the incident. A Tuesday afternoon, sunny outside but dim and dusty in the dungeons where Jo peers over a silky pink cauldron of Rat Tonic. She bites down on her lip as she examines it, waiting for it to darken into a rich garnet. A strand of hair falls loose as she stares, dangling in front of her face, almost dangerously close to the swirling potion.

Before she can reach up and tuck it behind her ear, Regulus does it for her. He lifts his fingers to her temple and gently pulls the strand back, tucking it behind her ear, touch grazing against her scalp. Jo, with wide, surprised eyes, looks up at Regulus. He smiles down at her, kind and warm, and says, "Careful."

And Jo wants to kiss him.

She almost does.

She almost leans up on the top of her toes and pushes her lips against his right in the middle of their Potions class, on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. But she doesn't. She has to clench her fists to stop herself. Jo stays still, for a moment, and swallows the beating heart in her throat, and turns her attention back to the Rat Tonic.

There's no going back from there, really. That's it.

And once Jo admits it to herself, retrospectively, everything seems to make sense. The dryness in her mouth, the buzzing in her gut, the inexplicable need to be near him as much as she can and the admiration that glosses over her eyes every time, she looks at him, or even thinks about him. She can't say for sure when it started, his late-night summer visit or the hug on the train, her birthday or as he sat by her side in the Hospital Wing or even that first night she caught him crying. Jo just knows that as she sits there in Potions, hands suddenly shaking, it feels like it's been forever. She realizes why Dorcas asking if she fancied him felt so wrong-it feels so trivial to Jo. It does not feel like her infatuation with Remus, giddy and light-hearted. It does not feel like whatever fleeting sweetness she had for Ivan Reed for just a moment. It feels heavy, burdensome, like an ugly truth she must disguise and conceal. It feels dangerous in her consciousness.

Jo wants to kiss him. She wants to kiss him and hold his hand and make him feel better when he's upset. She wants to hurt the people who hurt him, and she wants to make his life better and she wants to bite everything she feels for him down, swallow it until it is nonexistent.

If she's afraid of how it feels, she can imagine what Regulus would think of it.

Jo doesn't even let herself ponder.

So she makes the admission. Makes the admission that she wants to kiss him and hold him and that she be with him in any way she can and then she pretends that she didn't. And she tries to go back to normalcy.

She tries to move on from the Crouch incident-avoiding him in corridors as best she can, an intense fixation on his name on the map her brother left her. She lets Dorcas caress her hair and tell her, "He'll get what he deserves," and does her best not to cry. She rants to Hestia and Emmeline and apologizes for dragging them into it. She listens to their insistence that it's not her fault and that they love her and care for her. She tells James and Sirius over floo and watches them both go blind with rage and feels some sort of vindication at it.

It has left her more shaken than she would like to admit. Sometimes she'll dream of it, waking up in a cold sweat with panic ripe in her chest, breathing heavily and failing like she had been trying to knock herself back into reality.

Jo mostly lies awake at night, though, and asks herself if she's becoming weak. And every night, she has a different answer.

The whole incident has left her uneasy, with pent up, aggressive nerves that she can only take out on her Quidditch team.

The Prewett twins tell Jo that she is a more intensive captain than James, that at least he had a gift for levity, a way to make practice fun. Jo does not make the practices fun; she makes them hard, unbearably hard, and long and exhausting. They are constant and brutal, and Jo doesn't let up until she starts to feel bad for her teammates. But their first match is against Slytherin and Jo's not entirely sure which seems more humiliating to her, losing to Crouch or losing to Regulus. So she pushes her team and she pushes herself until they are on the brink of hating her.

Sometimes, Jo thinks they really do hate her. The Prewett twins certainly tell her they do frequently enough, half of the time it's jovial and half of the time Jo's completely positive it's not. They put dung beetles in her porridge and turn her quill into thick worms. Leo Bainbridge, stocky and gruff, never complains, but Jo watches as his face turns red and he huffs and puffs and shoots her fierce glares. Her third year Seeker, the foul-mouthed Ciaran O'Larcan, and Phoebe Harrison, the newest and rudest Chaser, let Jo have it at the end of every practice. The only person who doesn't is Ewan Moss, the seventh-year Beater who is an unbearable kiss-ass and is so completely enamored with Jo it's embarrassing. Even for her.

It makes Jo pray that she doesn't act that way around Regulus.

Despite that, Jo has whipped together a pretty decent team, in her opinion. She's not quite sure if they're as good as last year or if she can ever hold a candle to her brother as captain or even if she really cares, but it serves well enough as a distraction.

And as she stands at the bottom of the pitch one Saturday morning, about to face Crouch for the first time in weeks, about to make her debut as captain, she inhales deeply, holds her breath for as long as Regulus told her to in that empty classroom, and exhales through her nose. Then, she kicks off the ground.

It's a brutal match. Jo quickly realizes that as much as she has been pushing her team to perfection, Regulus has been doing the same. And their mutual agreement not to discuss Quidditch is helping her as much as it's hurting her. Jo would give up anything to know what he told his Chasers about her, thinking about it as she nearly plummets to the ground trying to block a Quaffle that she misses.

She doesn't have much time to pay attention to anything but the fast-moving Quaffle-it spends a decent amount of time in the middle of the pitch, falling in and out of the possession of one team only for the same thing to happen to the other. But every now and then, when Jo's watching her Chasers perfectly execute formations she made them practice, she'll steal a glimpse at Regulus, catch the sight of him circling the pitch up in search for the Snitch. Even as her rival, he provides some sort of comfort.

That is, of course, until she spots O'Larcan circling him like a vulture. That makes Jo snicker. Every time, she recalls her instruction to the young Seeker: Don't you dare lose sight of Regulus Black. He knows what he's doing better than you do.

And after the long, brutal match, Jo feels worse than she did after any practice she's held. She feels like she's been wrung dry. She is sore like she has been beaten with a Beater's bat and her head feels like it is suddenly twenty pounds heavier.

But it's a Gryffindor victory.

A freshly showered Jo sits on top of the shoulders of the Prewett twins in the Gryffindor common room and she drinks an ungodly amount of Firewhiskey. She revels in the cheers of her name and thinks that, perhaps, it is the first time she has heard the envigored chant of "Pot-ter! Pot-ter! Pot-ter!" and it has not been dedicated to her brother. That, Jo thinks, is a fact that she likes.

Jo hasn't drunk this much in a while, not since the last victory party, the one that left her puking in an empty boy's lavatory while Lily Evans cried. But it feels different, this time around. It feels a whole lot better to Jo. She feels good, almost too good. Dorcas and Alice grab her hands and force her to dance to ABBA. They swing her hands until. Inadvertently, Jo starts swinging her hips. She throws her head back and laughs and as music plays and night goes on, Jo loses more and more of her head.

Eventually, Jo finds herself tucked in the corner of a couch with a bottle of Firewhiskey in her hand, Ewan Moss seated in the spot next to her, looking like he's trying to decide if he's allowed to move closer to her or not. But Jo doesn't pay him attention. She's watching as Prewett number one (Fabian, she's decided, whether that's correct or not, she hasn't a clue) takes a handful of Bernie Botts Every Flavored Beans and shove them down his throat, gagging and coughing and nearly spitting them up, all in the name of a dare, and thinking about how she would really like to sneak out to see Regulus.

Jo scrunches up her nose in disgust as he eventually swallows, choking them down with tears in his eyes. Fabian notices this, catches Jo's eye, and when he has regained his voice, calls over to her. "Oi, Potter, truth or dare?"

"I'm not playing the stupid game," she calls back to him, words slurred by her strange combination of adrenaline and alcohol.

The other one, Gideon, points a stern finger at Jo. "You're drinking the Firewhiskey, you're playing the game."

Jo flinches. "Says who?"

"Says me!" he answers with a laugh. "You drink my Firewhiskey, you play my games. Those are the rules."

Fabian-or did she assign that one to be Gideon? - gives Jo a staggeringly smug smirk as he says, "You may be captain on the pitch, but we're the captains here, Potter."

Jo rolls her eyes, thinking that with the map and the cloak it would've been all too easy for her to sneak into Hogsmeade and get the supplies, but of course she had to leave it up to the two of them. "Alright, fuck, truth then."

Gideon boos her. "How devastatingly boring."

Fabian wiggles his eyebrows as he asks, "Are you really shagging Remus Lupin?"

A frown works its way onto her face-she'll never be able to dodge that one, she thinks. Good for Remus and Sirius, though, Jo notes, taking another swig before she answer. "No. Why do people think I am?"

"Rumor has it," Fabian whispers, scandalized as he leans forward, "you spent a few nights in his bed last year."

"Yes, because as everyone knows, the best time to shag someone is while your brother's in the same room," Jo quips with a roll of her eyes. "No, I'm not shagging Lupin. Never have."

"Not that it's anyone's business."

That interjection from Ewan Moss makes Jo jump-honestly, she had forgotten he was there. But she looks over at him now and sees that he's staring at her, soft smile and a hand placed in the spot between him. Jo feels almost a little bad for him. Moss is looking up at her with moony eyes and a sort of desperation that reeks from him, made only stronger by the alcohol. She really doesn't have much to say about him one way or the other; he seems nice enough, a bit fit but not nearly enough to distract her from her newfound realizations.

Jo nods, and gestures towards him with her Firewhiskey. "Right, what Moss says."

Fabian gives her a scoff. "Moss'll agree with anything you say if he thinks it'll earn your approval."

Moss flushes a furious red, crossing his arms and looking like he's trying to sink into the couch. "Piss off, Prewett. Whichever one you are," he mumbles under his breath.

Jo flashes him a look of sympathy. "Impossible to tell the two of them apart, really, what with the both of them being so bloody annoying."

"Heh, yeah," he chuckles, eyes cast back down to the ground like he can't find the courage to look her in the eye. That's the thing about Moss, Jo notes, he can't even speak to her unless it's about Quidditch, can't hold a single conversation. That's what makes it so unbearable for her, and it just makes her crave Regulus's presence even more.

Jo deposits her almost empty bottle onto the group and stands, trying to blink back the sudden dizziness. "Right, well," she says, shaking her head, "I'll be off to the kitchens, now. Don't wait up."

Moss is quick to his feet as well, taking an uncertain step towards Jo. "Want some company? I'd be happy to join."

She purses her lips, not bothering to think of a good enough lie before a half-baked one falls from her lips with no forethought. "Erm, no, thanks. I don't think anyone else alive needs to see me eat treacle tart. Thanks for the offer, though."

"Of course," he nods, and takes a step away from her. "I'll see you later, Jo."

"Right," she says with a shake of her head before she slips out of the common room.

Regulus is exactly where he always is, waiting for Jo like he always is, and Jo feels different than she always has. That buzzing, those nerves, they've been intensified ever since Jo's admission, and the alcohol makes it even worse. Jo always thinks he's beautiful, but when she sees him there in the light of the moon, in an old, ratty sweater and hair slightly disheveled, Jo feels her gut tumble, feels like she's not drunk on the Firewhiskey but on the sight of him. Jo can't help the grin that stretches across her face as she approaches, matching the one he wears.

Jo's so far gone; she feels like she's lost all control of herself.

Regulus looks like he's trying to maintain a stern expression but is failing pathetically. "Don't start, Potter," he instructs, any attempt at authority lost at the way a chuckle leaks into his voice and Jo can't believe that she gets to see him like this. That she's the only one who gets to see him like this.

Jo raises her hands. "I didn't say anything."

"I can see it on your face," Regulus says as he stands across from her, neither one of them moving. "Your unbearably smug face."

Jo doesn't know if she feels smug so much as she feels ecstatic that she gets to see him but the reminder that she was victorious today definitely helps. "I'm just saying-" she starts.

Dramatically, Regulus rolls his eyes up the ceiling. "Josephine..."

"-that this definitively proves that I am better than you at literally everything," she finishes with a playful tap of his shoulder.

"So it does," he concedes. "How drunk are you?"

Jo raises an eyebrow at him. "Who said I was drunk?"

He guffaws. "Your breath. "

"Well, I had to celebrate my complete and utter victory against you somehow," Jo insists, looking up at him with eyes as wide as her smile, like she is trying to take in every detail of him and his close-lipped smile and the scrunch of his nose and the squint of his eyes.

"You're such a gracious winner," he quips, hands deep in his pockets and Jo wants him to take them out so she can hold them. "How do you stay so humble?"

Dramatically, Jo sighs and places a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Lesser beings like you keep me grounded," she says, batting her eyes at him.

"So arrogant," he smirks down at her.

"So what if I am?" Jo questions. "There are worse things I could be."

"Like what?" he questions.

Jo smirks. "A loser."

Regulus raises a hand and carefully, so that Jo can hardly feel it, flicks the top of her forehead. "Brat," he teases.

And there it is again. That same feeling that washed over her in that Potions classroom, though it's stronger now this time. Every single part of her is aching for him. She's close to him, but not close enough and the way she can feel his breath hit her is like torture. And god, he's so beautiful, it makes Jo sick. And he's smiling down at her with those eyes and that smile, and Jo is so, so drunk that she can't even think about anything but how badly she wants to kiss him. She doesn't think about consequences or her anxieties or his Dark Mark or Crouch or anything that has ever made her feel any reservation towards him. Jo has no reservations, not about Regulus, not when he's looking down at her like. She has no reservations and no self-control and a bloodstream full of Firewhiskey.

So she bites down on her lip and says to Regulus, "Can I tell you something, Reg?"

He doesn't relent with his stare, just gives her a nod. "Always," he says in a way that confirms it all for Jo.

"I'd really like to kiss you."

The change is immediate. The way his face falls, darkens. How he suddenly has complete control over his expression, how he steps back from Jo. And where there was once warmth, there is now a chill. "Don't say things like that when you're drunk," he states, any sort of joy or ease completely evaporated from his voice. Regulus is, for the first time in a while, stone cold.

It makes Jo flinch. She takes a step back. "Why not?" she asks with a tilt of her head, not fully understanding.

Regulus swallows. "Because you won't mean it when you're sober."

"Do you want me to?" Jo presses, heat heavy in her face and noise buzzing in her ears. She finds herself struggling to keep up with the shift in mood. "Do you want me to mean it?"

The look he gives her cuts right through her. Eyes stern, mouth in a thin line. "This isn't a very funny joke, Josephine."

It's confusion and anger and this heavy, heavy hurt that settles through her, presenting itself in the form of anger. She doesn't understand. Jo just doesn't understand. "Who said I was joking?" she questions.

"You're teasing me," Regulus counters with another step away from her, voice getting lower and lower.

"I'm not," Jo insists, frustration bubbling.

Regulus shakes his head, suddenly unable to meet her eyes. He stares down at the floor. Jo tilts her head down; she wants to make him look at her when he speaks to her, but he stays still. "I can't kiss you."

"Why?"

"Because you're drunk," Regulus says with a tone of finality, "and I'm not. It wouldn't be right."

And then it settles, something Jo's only felt once before that comes back stronger and more heartbreaking than ever. Rejection. Jo takes a step back. It's rejection. Of course. He doesn't want to kiss her. Of course not. Of fucking course not. Jo shakes her head. "Always such a gentleman," she whispers, and knows then that she's going to cry. She can hear it in her voice. "I'll see you later."

Jo turns on her heel. Regulus makes no move to follow her. She takes her time on her way back to the common room, letting herself cry, letting the hole in her chest grow and consume her. And she tells herself, when she gets back to the common room, she'll get over it. Jo'll get over it.