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Remus John Lupin.
Even his name gives you butterflies. More than once you've found yourself doodling it on your Transfiguration homework, over and over, Remus John Lupin, R.J.L., Remus John Lupin + Sirius Orion Black 4evr... even Sirius Orion Lupin once or twice, even though it (unfortunately) sounds nowhere near as snappy as your actual name.
Not that it matters, because he doesn't love you back.
You, meanwhile, have loved him for as long as you can remember, since before you even knew what love was. The moment you saw him, you fell, and you've been down at the bottom of this horrible unrequited-love-crevice ever since.
He's just... he's perfect. In your eyes, his beauty is rivalled only by, well, your own. Every night you dream of his honey-coloured eyes, his chapped lips, the way his hair curls gently around his face. When you zone out in class, you envision a future with him, a bright one, a future where there is no war and you and Remus have a cottage with a white picket fence. You try not to dwell on him too much, you really do, but your subconscious will not let you forget for one second that your heart belongs to him.
God, you wish it didn't. But you're sure it always will.
It's all so much harder than it should be. You could cope if Remus was simply uninterested, straight and oblivious and only a friend. Well, you couldn't, but you could cope with it better than you can cope with this.
You'd discovered Remus's secret back in third year.
It's almost unbelievable that it took you so long. For Merlin's sake, he was like clockwork; once a month, he disappeared from the dorm for a night, and for a day or two before and after, he acted strange around you and the others. Somehow, it was James who figured it out, put it all together and brought it up to you and Peter. It was Peter who suggested you all ask him about it. You were too busy telling yourself that it was absurd, impossible, that Remus's terrible excuses made more sense than James's theory.
But you did ask him. Well, you confronted him, it was probably not the best way to go about it. You sat him down on his bed and all stood in front of him, probably feeling much more intimidating than you actually looked, and James asked him.
"Remus, are you gay?"
You were expecting a denial, or confusion. What you weren't expecting was for him to blink slowly and say, "Only at the full moon."
All three of you were dumbfounded, and there was a long silence as you all tried to process that. It finally proved to be unprocessable, and Peter asked what you were all thinking.
"Huh?"
"Y'know werewolves?"
"Yeah..."
"Well it's like that, except I'm gay."
"That is unhelpful," said James.
"I thought you were a werewolf," you found yourself blurting out. "I mean, you disappear every full moon -"
"Oh shit, so he does," said Peter. "We didn't notice that part at all."
"We can get back to that," said James impatiently. "I have more pressing questions, such as, what the shit?"
"I'm not sure how to answer that," said Remus.
"How is that possible."
Remus shrugged casually. "The tides."
"Oh. Right." James didn't look any less baffled, but he seemed to understand that he wasn't getting any more information out of him. "But then... why do you leave the dorm on the full moon?"
And Remus had gestured to you.
"Have you lot seen Sirius? I mean, look at him objectively. Don't get me wrong, I don't turn into some insatiable beast every full moon, I'm not going to lose control and pounce on him or something, but it is kind of torturous being in the same room as him. No offence, Sirius."
Your mouth had gone very dry, and you felt quite sure you were having some exceedingly strange dream. "Er, none taken?"
At the time, it had seemed too good to be true. The love of your life was standing in front of you telling you that he was interested in you. True, he was only interested for about one day a month, but that was better than not at all. Or at least, so you thought.
So when James and Peter gave up on their fruitless questioning and left, you stayed behind, trying to keep your nervous trembling to a minimum. There was a chance this would not go well - Remus wasn't gay right that minute, after all - but you figured it was worth the risk.
"Whatever it is you're wanting to do with me on the full moon," you'd said, "Maybe we could just... do it. So you don't have to leave the dorm and stuff."
Remus had eyed you up and down, looking fairly confused. "Really? Are you sure?"
And, your mouth dry, your heart racing in your chest, you had nodded.
You really wish you hadn't.
You could always rescind it, tell Remus that you don't want to keep up your arrangement anymore. He's not hurting you on purpose; he would let you go the second you asked. But maybe that's why you don't ask - because you can't stand how easily it could all just be over. The ability to pretend that this matters to him, that you have even a piece of his heart the way he has all of yours, is worth the hollowness in your gut and the ache in your chest.
You have always been self-destructive. The others know this, and there has always been someone there - usually James - to drag you back from the brink. But not this time, not when no one but you realizes what you're doing to yourself every time you let Remus crawl into your bed.
There had been a point a few months in, when every touch had still burned and every tentative, childish kiss had been intoxicating, where you'd thought, vaguely, that it would get easier with time, that this arrangement would somehow make your feelings disappear. It was almost unbearably naive in hindsight, makes you laugh with a bitterness you can taste on your tongue. Because it hurts. It hurts more with every passing month, and you just can't bring yourself to stop. No matter how much you build yourself up beforehand - that you'll say no this time, that the pain isn't worth it - you always fall back into bed with him. You know, deep down, that the pain will always be worth one more night with him.
You're both older now, and hotter, and closer to leaving Hogwarts, and you try not to wonder where this is going because you know the answer is "nowhere". For him, this arrangement is purely one of convenience - it's easier to get into your bed than it is for him to go out of his way to avoid you. But soon a time will come when you will no longer be confined to a dormitory together, and getting into your bed on the full moon will become more trouble than it's worth.
And so you take what you can get. You smile, and you do whatever he wants you to, and when he falls asleep you hold him the way you would some precious, fragile thing and think I love you, I love you, I love you, and you try not to let the urge to cry overwhelm you.
You're afraid that one of these days you'll end up saying it out loud. After everything, you're afraid that might be what breaks you - because you know that even if he were awake to hear you, he wouldn't say it back. And he never will.
And so you hang onto him by your single, lunar thread, and tell yourself you'll be fine when it breaks. You promise yourself that you'll move on someday soon. It's far more likely that you'll pine for him forever, and be crushed by the weight of your own broken heart when he finally, inevitably rejects you. He is, after all, almost always straight; but you're as helpless to the lunar cycle as he is.
Obliviously, he swims on, occassionally pushed and pulled by the tides, and you drown, slowly but surely, in his wake. And when you sink to the bottom, you will drift along there, waiting for him to join you, and pretending that he ever will.
-end-