Remus Lupin hates smoking, not that this has ever stopped him. He hates the smell of the smoke, the yellow stain it leaves between his fingers, the taste that lingers on his tongue. In fact the only part he had ever enjoyed was the burning in his lungs, the high that came from feeling his impending mortality. In short Remus smokes to die.
Remus sat on his windowsill the night of August 31st, waiting for something to happen. Something, quite literally anything, had to happen some time soon. Some divine sign that he was going to break the miserable pattern of bouncing from school to school, town to town for the rest of his life.
Well there was no escaping this time.
After he had been forced to leave his old school (he had been sensing his mum's growing agitation from being in one place for more than a year leading up to his GCSEs) he had felt adrift. It wasn’t like he was leaving behind lots of friends, he supposed he had friends - in the loosest sense of the word.
He knew people, liked them even, and they appeared to tolerate him as well but they had never been close. Remus craved the companionship that he saw in his peers. Tomorrow. Tomorrow was his last chance, he was going to boarding school. In a school as large as Hogwarts, Remus supposed that he must be able to make friends, there would have to be someone there that would understand him the way no one else had ever tried to.
Remus sighed, stubbing out his 5th cigarette of the night. He felt sick. He could smell the smoke in his hair and it felt as though it was wrapping his skin in a suffocating film. Fuck this. He stood up pulling off his t-shirt that was now drenched in sweat as a result of thick summer heat creeping into his room through the open window.
After showering, Remus felt almost human again. Resigned to his sleepless night, he took it upon himself to triple check the contents of his trunk in preparation of the following day. His trunk was mainly filled with books; everything from textbooks to battered novels. The list he had been given suggested a few textbooks but other than that required very little equipment.
Hogwarts was what could be described as an… unconventional school. It was one of the country's best (and most exclusive) sixth forms and was infamous for producing ‘free-thinkers’ and excellent results. At least that was what the booklet Remus had received three months prior had claimed.
The school itself was situated in a vast castle in the Scottish highlands, completely isolated barring a quaint village called ‘Hogsmeade’ (there had been speculation of the headmaster paying off local officials to rename the town after his school, but this was yet to be proven).
The school was split up into four houses assigned off of an interview and personal statement, it was in this house that its sixth form students resided in. This setup allowed its students the freedom to be essentially living on their own while attending their lectures and classes to be able to pass their A-level exams. Remus had chosen to study History, English and Geography much to his parents dismay. In his father’s eyes an English degree was about as useful to his future as taking up knitting (another of Remus’s hobbies).
His summer had felt like a lifetime, every day bringing relentless heat but as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon the temperature became bearable and this was when Remus had felt alive. While he spent his days lolling around shying away from the harsh sun his nights were spent out. Sometimes he would crash parties or chain smoke on a curb with some of the other kids in his neighbourhood but mostly he found himself alone.
He had never felt so free before.
Isolated on the poorly lit streets he was no longer the boy with the dead mother and absent father. He told himself that it wasn’t his father’s fault that he wasn’t around, he worked, remus went to school but things had changed after his mother had died a few years prior. Remus had grown up alone, it was where he felt most at ease but if he thought about it too much he would begin to feel the painful ache in his chest longing for someone. Someone who understood.
So caught up in his own thoughts, Remus barely registered the sun peeking over the horizon until his alarm clock went off. The blaring sounds choked him into action.
“For fucks sake” he muttered trying desperately to turn the bloody thing off with little success. He continued cursing the clock under his breath until he relented and smothered it with his pillow and lobbed it into the now empty wardrobe sat against the far wall of his bedroom. Well what was left of it.
He knew his father wouldn’t drive him to the station, Lyall Lupin had never been a reliable parent, so he has resigned himself to a lengthy cab journey with his trunk. This, he thought, was going to be absolutely mortifying.
He had always been rather skinny and as a result not particularly strong, so lugging around an awkward trunk around London was asking for disaster. Remus sighed, clearly it wasn’t enough for his father to ship him off to boarding school in the middle of fucking nowhere he also had to make the long and arduous journey there a form of public humiliation.
Dragging his case down the stairs and out of the low front door, Remus was struck by the lack of personality in his house. It didn’t really feel as though it belonged to him, there were no family photos lining the walls, no marks on the walls following his childhood, only empty walls painted an inoffensive cream. In a desperate attempt to escape his wife’s death, Lyall Lupin had sold their family home and moved across the country to a completely lifeless house. Remus had never protested, to him it felt like a waste of his breath. His father would sooner set fire to what little hair he had left than to change his mind.
After a rather uneventful cab ride Remus arrived at Kings Cross station, ready to get a train up to Scotland. From there he had been instructed to wait for a coach that picks up the students from the station in Hogsmead and brings them up to the castle.
‘Should be a piece of fucking cake’ thought Remus, bitter at the prospect of spending his Sunday travelling up to god knows where. His father had probably gotten the schools location from ‘How to get rid or my child’ magazine or ‘negligent parents monthly’. Remus snorted at the idea, if anyone was to read such publications it would be Lyall Lupin.
Remus was snapped back to reality by a glaring boy staring at him. Not just any boy however, he was possibly the most beautiful boy he had ever seen in his life. He had ivory skin, high cheekbones and ebony hair that swept down to his shoulders. Remus wanted to drink in every one of these details and commit them to memory, in a completely platonic way of course. To his frustration, his cheeks heated up and he looked away from the boy.
Remus turned away, what he didn’t notice was the smirk from the black haired boy who had certainly noticed the redness in Remus’s cheeks.
This was going to be an interesting year.