2.  James Potter

James Potter was a self-important show-off with glasses and dark, unruly hair.  He spent most of his time chasing around a red-headed girl named Lily Evans who seemed to genuinely want to avoid him.  He played Quidditch—a game that bores me to death.  He was also my brother’s best friend.  When my brother ran away from home for good, he went to live with James.

How could I not fall for this boy?

He didn’t much care for me but, through the wonders of Legilimency, I had a way of putting myself in his path right when his resistance was at its lowest. 

“Sod off, Regulus,” James snapped at me.  “Even if you are Sirius’ little brother, if you don’t stop hanging about looking at me like that, I’m going to bash your face in.” 

                “Lily doesn’t understand you yet,” I said.  “She only thinks you’re arrogant because she doesn’t know what you’re like inside.  Don’t worry, when she figures it out, she’ll want to be with you.”  It was exactly what he wanted to hear though he didn’t let on. 

                “You don’t have a clue what’s going on, Regulus.  Shut up and leave me alone.”  But he didn’t want to be alone.  I draped my arms around his neck.  He wanted to be touching someone.

                “She’ll come around, Jamie,” I whispered reassuringly.  “Until then, I can be here for you.”   He grabbed me by the shirtfront in his protest, managing to pull me much closer.   

                “Look, I don’t fancy boys,” he said vehemently.  “Sirius warned me about you.  He said you liked to mess around with people’s heads and make everything dirty and disgusting.”

                “I can give you what you want, Jamie.”

                “Yeah?  Then why don’t you drop dead?” 

                I kissed him.  He didn’t stop me because, really, he’d been hoping that I’d keep going even though he was being so nasty.  Because he was curious and as long as it was all my idea, it was okay. 

                James Potter was the only person Sirius really cared about.  There was nothing “dirty and disgusting” between them.  They were pure, like brothers are supposed to be.  At fourteen, I had already figured out something the golden-eyed boy didn’t know at sixteen or eighteen or even twenty.  That Sirius could fuck you without giving a fuck about you. 

I don’t know if I ever really loved James Potter but having him mattered more to me than anything else in the world.  I loved that he craved me, that his fingers dug into my back like nothing could make him let go.  I had nothing to call it but love. 

James Potter was a virgin when I got to him.  Obviously, I wasn’t.  Seduction was my only talent and I’d been practicing whenever I got the chance.  Because I was his first, I got to define sex for him.  I got to set the standard.

                Sirius had been right to warn him about me.  My intentions were bad.

I’d read Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses that summer and taken it to heart.  Particularly the way Vicomte De Valmont seduces Cecile, a virginal young girl just out of a convent, and gives her an education in the erotic so as to ruin her for her future husband.

That was what I wanted to do with James.  I wanted to ruin him.  Ruin him for chaste, masculine friendship with my brother, ruin him for saucy Lily Evans who I really didn’t doubt would come around and go out with him eventually.  I wanted to make the only person Sirius really cared about no better than me, about whom he couldn’t have cared less.

“No one else will ever make you feel like this,” I whispered and I called it love. 

As it turned out, Potter wasn’t the sort to do anything by half, either, and we ended up making each other crazy.  He went from seeking me out once in a while, rather like Sirius did, to wanting to see me everyday, then several times a day.  If he glimpsed me in the hallway, he’d get hard, drag me to the boy’s room to suck him off between classes. 

He accused me of using a love potion, of putting some sort of spell on him. 

“I’m not clever with magic like you are,” I told him.  “I couldn’t make a love potion or cast a spell like that if I wanted to.”  I didn’t mention Legilimency. 

It was spring and we spent nights rolling around on the green grass of the Quidditch pitch.  We skipped meals to take advantage of empty corridors and common rooms.  There were dark circles around his eyes from lack of sleep, mine too.  We used potions to keep awake for our classes.  

I finally collapsed and wound up in the hospital wing. 

“What have you been doing to yourself, Regulus?” Madame Pomfrey asked me, raising an eyebrow.  I told her I hadn’t been sleeping well.  I told her I was concerned about finals.  She knew I could care less about my studies, but she also knew I wasn’t going to tell her anything more so she left me alone. 

That afternoon when she was out, Sirius came in.  The hospital wing was deserted.  He took off his clothes and got into bed with me.  He made love to me the way he used to, not the sort of heartless shag he’d been giving me for the past few years.  He kissed me gently, he held me, and he was kind.  So kind, even though most of the things he said were terrible.

“You’re poisonous, baby,” my brother told me.  “You debase everything you touch.  You need to stay here, Reggie, stay in the sick ward.  You belong here—you’re sick, you’re not right.  There’s something seriously wrong with you wrong with you.”  And he cried.  He told me I was wicked and cruel, then he cried.  “I did this to you.  You used to be so sweet and good; you always did as Mum said.  You were an angel and I turned you into a vampire…a beautiful, purple-eyed, little whore.”

“It’s not your fault, Sirius,” I told him.  “You didn’t do anything to me.  I’m bad and evil all on my own.”

“You have to keep away from my friends, Reggie,” he said.

 “I will, I promise I will.” 

James Potter got over me soon enough.  I don’t know what damage I did him, but I must have loved him a little if only because I knew that what I did to him was the worst thing I had ever done.