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[A guide was given to us along the dark waves...]
It's damp, gray and cold outside. Officially, smoking is not allowed at Hogwarts under the threat of being expelled, but Remus Lupin doesn’t care. Frankly, Remus Lupin hasn’t cared for a long time. In the Gryffindor common room, James starts a fight because he is sad and wants to sublimate, but he quickly calms down when Remus actually invites him to fight.
Remus is also sad and wants to sublimate, but he knows how to fight.
Sirius again doesn’t understand what he wants: either Remus, or to peck out Remus’s brains with his next whim. With all the love he has, Remus perceives some of Sirius's desires as nothing but the whims of a rich child who, since his childhood, could afford to buy anything. And now he apparently thinks that he can buy Remus, too, just not with money. He thinks that Remus will tolerate all his outbursts like he tolerates full moons. Remus doesn't want to be patient, Remus can get tired too.
Offensive words and screams, such an environment quickly gets boring, and Remus again moves away from the castle to the Lake, surprised at how he got used to it and no longer feels anything.
[Wind.]
She sits by the lake, throwing pebbles into the water, and doesn't even notice him at first. James and Sirius are quarreling in the living room, Marlene and Dorcas are kissing in the bedroom, everyone is happy with each other, and she can sit by the lake, as long as no one touches her. Her hair flutters, even in a ponytail she makes because otherwise it prevents her from destroying her own lungs; he doesn't judge her. He silently sits down next to her and hands her a pack of cigarettes, without asking anything; she silently hands the lighter back without answering. Having lit two cigarettes, he hands her one exactly at face level (her thin lips slide over his scarred fingers for a second) and tosses a pebble through the water, looking at the circles.
They don't need talking. They could talk, but they don’t need to, they don’t even look at each other, sitting shoulder to shoulder. Both have their own reasons to burst into tears right now, leaning their backs against some tree with these-always-thorny branches and hugging their own knees on the ground. Don't care about the uniform.
-- I know that if I shoo you all away, you might not come back. Scratch that, no one will come back...
-- I'll come back.
-- Probably the only one.
[The smell of stagnant water in the lake fills the lungs with cigarette smoke.]
Sirius smiles as he kisses him, pulling Remus towards him by his tie. Sirius smells like expensive perfume, firewhisky and what seems like Remus's shampoo, just out of spite, just to subtly hint to everyone that they are a couple (as if no one knows). Remus allows himself to be pulled by his hair, bite his lips until they bleed and think that this is love and he already understands everything.
They have known each other since they were eleven years old.
They are sixteen and a couple now.
Of course this is forever.
Remus loves things about Sirius that he once hated. All his worst character traits, all his creative laziness, unstable empathy, egocentrism, but at the same time all his charm, geniality and attempts to be good. Remus sees all his injuries, understands all his defense mechanisms, and is not deceived by his actions. To put it simply, Remus loves the human nature in Sirius.
Human puppy.
The Prank happens to them somehow absurdly right away, very painful, as if out of spite, why why why did he do that, Lily, why did he do that to me, he knew, he knew everything, why has he done that, Evans, why did he betray me, was it really funny, was it really funny that I could have killed a person?!
Lily has nothing to answer to this. She only squeezes the weak hand tighter in hers and tries very hard to prevent Remus from falling further. He’s small. He's scared. He's confused. Tender, trembling and vulnerable Arcana Hanged Man. Time stands still when he hugs her, but it always happens, it’s something traditional. His voice trembles, his hands are dry; she listens carefully, bowing her head to hear out the quiet weak “I don’t know what to do, I just want to do what’s right”. She has nothing to say to him. She just wants him to not be in pain anymore. He tells her that that night tore a piece of his life away from him in Sirius, and she thinks how proud she is of Remus as she cradles him in her arms...
[The love boat crashed due to stupid laughter.]
But Remus has no one else. Looking at Sirius’s sad face is painful, looking at his empty face is unbearable, Remus’s heart aches, of course, because this is love, sometimes it’s just very stupid and hurts, but this is love.
But Sirius still didn't understand why Remus hadn't talked to him all these months.
Remus returned to him, sure that Sirius had realized his mistake. But Sirius was trying to figure out that complex password of "forgive me" just so he could be next to Remus again. After all, it’s so convenient to be next to Remus. After all, next to Remus, Sirius feels loved, feels like a rock star, feels like a lottery winner... and does not realize that Remus needs to be loved in return, and not just possessed.
“You are my most beautiful” sounds like “you are the coolest accessory.”
All compliments are to show off him as a thing.
All the kisses in the living room and loud moans in the bedroom are to show that it is Sirius who has the mysterious tall scarred Welsh boy on a short leash, whom you just want to feel sorry for and love love love.
Remus feels this, but he has nowhere else to go -- who needs a poorly socialized crippled werewolf without an education and a rich family? -- so he exposes his throat, puts on a collar and wears it like a crown on his head, and not as a mark for the guillotine, which has already fallen from its height... or was it Remus who could not resist the very edge of the cliff on which he had been balancing for so long after the Prank? Remus became ruder, angrier and quarreled with everyone who even for a second tried to hint that Sirius did not look much like a loving partner. Afraid that he would be left alone without Sirius, Remus clung to him so tightly that everyone else simply slipped through his fingers. So now that he doesn’t have enough hands to cling to his leather jacket, Remus has no one else to cling to.
[Remus looks at Lily; feeling of falling.]
He tried millions of times to talk to her again, like before, like before all the quarrels, when they sat shoulder to shoulder by the Black Lake, throwing pebbles into the water together, and then she hugged him around the waist, and he sang some kind of lullaby to her, because it gave them a feeling of home.
But she no longer wants to read strange philosophical poems to him or listen to his reasoning.
He stopped being her friend almost a year ago, when something in their argument went sour, broke irreparably, and he is no longer “Rem” or even “Remus”, now he is
Lupin
Lupin
Lupin
Sirius was never afraid of him, because he did not fully understand that Remus was alive and had feelings too. Sirius was not afraid of him due to the limitations of his own imagination, due to his own confidence that Remus would never do anything to Sirius, would never go against his word, that he would come running to Sirius again, as he did after the Prank. And Remus was silent, endured and came running back, closing his eyes in panic at the mere prospect of being left alone for a second.
Although the world did not end with Sirius.
There were those who saw him as a person, and not just a temporarily controlled monster. The lighter trembles in his scarred fingers as he lights the cigarette himself, leaning so close to the fire that he almost burns his lips. Remus is again sitting by the Black Lake, leaning his back against a tree with these-always-thorny branches, throwing pebbles into the water and hugging himself around the waist, trying not to howl right now from the pain of loss tearing from within. There were those who were not afraid of him because they believed in him. Graduation is the day after tomorrow, and Remus knows that tomorrow his story with Sirius will end.
[Lily turns away; hitting the water.]
He's been following the wrong person all this time.
[A guide was given to us along the dark waves…]