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It was a guilty pleasure he'd picked up during his years on the road: Muggle magazines. He'd started out with home decorating ones, but seeing as he moved so often, he quickly became interested in fashion ones. He always made like he was buying it for a girlfriend or wife, but late at night over a cup of tea and a program on the WWN, he would flip through the pages, savoring the petty Muggle musings and passing the women with cheekbones too high for their faces to concentrate on the men with bulging muscles under thin t-shirts, wishing he could be like that. He saved every single one, for those occasions when he couldn't get out to a Muggle store, and brought the whole collection in a briefcase whenever he picked up and left.
When Dumbledore asked him to teach at Hogwarts, he packed up faster than he ever had before. Once settled in, he opened that briefcase, and started reading about some bit of Muggle celebrity gossip from ten years ago. After a few minutes, a knock came at his door.
He closed the magazine, and called, "Come in!", assuming it to be Severus with his potion or Dumbledore with further instructions, and he didn't care if either of them saw his bad habits. It was, however, a student.
The boy entered, books in hand, head down slightly, looking pale and scared. "Professor Lupin?" he asked as he approached.
"Yes," he said. "And you are?"
The boy had reached his desk and held out a hand for him to shake. "Cedric Diggory, sir. House of Hufflepuff."
It was then that their eyes met. The boy had remarkably beautiful eyes, though they were grey and didn't stand out at all, and long, dark eyelashes. His cheekbones were high, like the women in the magazines, and his smile was small but genuine. They shook hands, and he gestured for the boy--Cedric, he told himself, and then, no: Diggory--to sit down. "And what brings you to my office before classes have even started, Mr. Diggory?"
"Well, sir, I always like to get a bit of a head start on my coursework, so I was--er, I was wondering if--" His eyes had wandered to the colorful corner sticking out from underneath his book on hinkypunks. Cedric shook his head and looked at him again. "I was wondering if you could tell me what we'll be studying on Monday."
"Certainly, Mr. Diggory," he said as he pulled the hinkypunks book towards himself a little. "We'll be covering Unforgivable Curses."
Cedric's eyes widened in a mix of surprise and horror. "I thought we weren't allowed to learn how to do those until seventh year."
"We won't be doing them, Mr. Diggory," he chuckled, as if everyone made that mistake. "Just studying them."
"Oh," Cedric said, sounding slightly disappointed. "Well, thank you, sir." He gathered his robes and started to stand up.
"Is that all you wanted to know?" He felt a smile twitching at his lips, and gave in.
"Well, now that you mention it, sir..." His eyes drifted back to the corner of the pile of books.
"You want to know why I was reading a Muggle magazine."
"Well, I don't mean to pry..."
"You're curious, and that's what I like in a student." What am I saying?, said a voice in his head, which he promptly switched off.
Cedric looked straight at him again. "I've seen my mother reading them. My father says they're Muggle trash, but she seems to enjoy them. What's in them?"
"Well this one," he said, pulling it out to reveal a very thin but very pretty girl of about 20 with far too much make-up on, "is an American one called Cosmopolitan. It has bits of celebrity rubbish, adverts that smell like the product they're selling, long drawn out articles about how to make one's boyfriend happy..."
"A bit like the Daily Prophet, then?" Cedric said and grinned.
He grinned back. "But I really read it for the photographs. So I suppose I don't really read it, per se." He opened to a random page, with the girl from the cover on one side and one of those men he longed to be (who happened to be in an advert for tight-fitting underwear) on the other. Cedric's eyes widened again, then he looked away.
"I really have to be going, Professor Sprout is probably looking all over for me, I'm a Prefect, you know," he babbled.
He frowned as Cedric gathered up his robes again. "Did I upset you?"
"No, I just--" He looked down the front of his robes. "I just didn't know other blokes looked at pictures like that," he said in a small voice, and slipped out of the door with a small "thanks again".
He stood, bewildered, behind his desk for a moment before he ordered the door closed, made himself a cup of tea and sat down with the magazine, thinking that Monday was going to be a very interesting first day indeed.