Ah, November. The month of sharp winds stealing words yet sweeping laughter about, hot cocoa as an indulgent and acceptable reprieve to the consistent case of shivers she catches when out of her fluffy, winter-coat, and fastidious Christmas preparations she can only enjoy for the Advent calendars teachers bring into school and the reminders of the impending Winter Break.
It is not too bad, all things considered. And typically, her unsmiling, grim mug betrays her aloof nature, tucked into a book often at this time that would have her eyes creasing delightfully, wrinkled brow for once smooth of stress. It makes her more approachable, though it is a freezing, barren hell to admit how much that matters to her.
Typically.
Unfortunately, this particular November heralds a nightmare befitting it’s creeping cold, a nightmare she has been steadfastly ignoring, until now - when she absolutely cannot anymore.
They have finally reached their Seventh Year, and that means this November, they are facing their first real mocks.
Even the most undisciplined of students are beginning to feel the pressure crack down on them. Everyone’s parents are suddenly circling hawks, beady eyes locked onto them and at any second prepared to fly down with strong beats of their wings to cast judgement. Or at least hers are, as she has bemoaned to James, the lucky sod with painfully supportive parents, who is probably up playing video games at the very second.
(Seriously, screw him, every promise of serious harm she had half-jokingly threatened him with post-breakup and brushed over for Remus’s sake once they had begun dating is a breath away from being fulfilled now. If he would just stop bragging before she utterly loses it.)
She knows Remus’s parents are stricter - hopeful, expectant - like hers too, though their ‘judgment’ would more be concerned fretting and proud reassurances than anything else, no matter the grades he would get. It would still hurt - the disappointment they’d attempt to cloak and the e disappointment within himself, he’d admitted once, and Pandora could not say she did not understand, despite their differences.
That’s why she is here, after all, like a woman on a mission, if the M16 were to accept spectacularly clumsy, undignified spies into their ranks.
Her hair is loose, waves frizzed to a thunder-shocked mess of a cat’s mane, and trespassing in her eyes and mouth. It tastes like, like a cat’s fur ball probably, or anything that specific brand of unpleasant.
Still, her journey is unhindered. Let it be known obstructed sight has never once stopped Pandora Lovegood, and thus there is no reason to bring her clunky, uncomfortable glasses to lessons, thanks a bunch.
She reaches forward, so close, and pulls.
Relief is a drug. Warmth slams into her as harshly as her back slams against the large, blue door of the library, nearly bringing her to her quivering knees. The steaming cups cradled in her clammy hands can’t compare, candles to the sun, she thinks, and deftly slides them into the cup-holders on her backpack.
Composure is slowly returned and she straightens, gaze quickly finding the only other occupant of the room, other than the short, round librarian with kiss-swollen lips and who clearly has other things on her mind. Pandora hopes, knows, she’ll have a similar sight shortly in the form of her own beloved.
Her blunt heels echo as she makes her way over, hovering at an arms-length away from him when she halts next to a shelf, just to observe.
A stack of books five-high have been pushed off to the side, likely to be reviewed later or there simply in-case, and four more are spread out along the large, wooden table, flipped open seemingly randomly; a scene that causes her a conniption simply from looking for a minute at the overwhelming work-to-be-done. Remus has been here all afternoon.
Her boyfriend is splayed with his upper-body almost parallel to the table, uncaring of the hunch that will haunt him later with an ugly stab of pain. His eyes are glued onto his workbook, despite his fatigued frown, intense under furrowed brows. His tongue laps at his dry lips, before being worried between sharp canines. He clearly has not hydrated in a while, maybe since he first sat down. Still, in the lighting, any lighting, he alights her.
”Love,” Pandora greets simply, as they always do - confirming he’s aware of her presence like they’ve learned to do together so he won’t spook, and Remus hums lowly in response. He lifts his gaze sluggishly and takes a moment to stretch his abused back. He would turn around if she was to give him the opportunity. Manners, her boy certainly has. But she does not allow him. Rather, she drops her bag swiftly and moves.
Pandora steps behind Remus who sits on a tall stool, sliding her arms beneath her giant boyfriend’s to wrap around his chest and abs, drawing them to her front. She can feel the latter flex under her light touch, putty to her, even though she’s not yet snuck a hand under the thin fabric of Remus’s tank top. He bares his neck to her, encouraging her to nuzzle closer to his pulse with a low groan. Artfully, she places an open-mouthed kiss.
Then, whispers, “I’ve been looking for you.”
Her eyes had fluttered close contentedly, but she forces them open to capture his as she feels his head turning towards hers. Nose-to-nose, eyes-to-eyes, she marvels a hundredth time at the flecks of hazel and gold in his iris.
Remus gives her the smallest, most private upturn of his lips, eyes creasing fondly even whilst he is definitely exhausted, “Apologies, Dora. ‘Didn’t mean to make you wait. I just got lost in this.. all.” He turns back around with a despairing, but companionably amused, glance at his… everything on the table. The chuckle he gives is half-watery.
”I wasn’t waiting,” Pandora elects to inform him. It would not do good to let him stew in his guilt so often, and it would not do good for her own conscience to let him fret so.
The stories of witches and wizards and warlocks she’d grown up on, the unimaginably enigmatic and wise like Merlin from the Arthurian tales of her muggle youth to the outrageously whimsical and defiant, yet truthful, ones of her mother, a Lovegood somewhat estranged from her magical family all shared one common ending: the, or a, magical being would make everything all jolly and well in the end with their powers.
Now, she knows that not to be the truth, otherwise her magic would have ridded her of her anxiety, but she cannot help but want to live up to them, in any way she can. At least, she can be her most good, honourable self. At least, she, and her friends, can find happiness.
She had paused in her speech, enough to get him curious and staring back at her with those desiring eyes, hungry for the words near-dripping off her tongue but not quite out.
She stands taller, gaze tracing how she casts dancing shadows across his cheekbones, before she leans closer and says in true, dramatic fashion, “I have something for you, dear.”
She giggles at his surprise and withdraws completely, softened by his light protests at the loss of her touch.
She kneels back down next to the shelves she had admired him from before and reaches for the cups she had cleverly charmed to keep heat. Then, on second thought, she pulls out the two water-bottles she had snagged earlier in the day and spells them both to be full to the brim.
Clumsily keeping balance, she approaches the table once again and plops her treasures into one of few empty spaces left. This time, she takes the place besides Remus.
In the brief span she’d been gone, he’d already reached for his pen again, gripping it so tightly that even if he wasn’t a werewolf she would be concerned it would snap in half. A crease had formed in his brows and his hand inches towards another book.
With a soft sigh, Pandora reaches across and places her hand on his, effectively halting him. The scarred flesh beneath hers stiffens before she brushes a thumb lightly over it, and then he’s flipped their hands so their fingers are interlaced and he clasps hers like she’s something precious.
”You always do this, Remus. This, where you kill yourself over your studies and isolate because your friends, Sirius and James, wouldn’t understand. And because Peter’s afraid of overstepping and much the same as you anyhow.”
So they are going there.
She knew this when she first approached him, as she ordered their drinks with a brittle smile, before even she had hounded James for Remus’s whereabouts. She’d been resigned to this from the moment she walked to the great hall for breakfast and he hadn’t been standing outside like always, waiting for her.
Her insides gnaw at each other, anyways.
Pandora is half-afraid that there is a wet sheen to her eyes as she speaks, desperation pooling into them, willing him to hear. Despite her dramatic declarations of grand feelings of hate and love and murder and sacrifice, she is not ready for that many emotions, not now, not ever.
But for him, she ploughs on, “You’re not alone. I swear.”
Short. Concise. A veneer of confidence she had summoned by accident. This does matter to her.
He knows. He does.
Remus surveys her with a sudden severity, swayed by her. He speaks lumberingly, like he’s blearily awoken from a long slumber, a stress-induced coma, “But you understand. You do. You would understand.” His head shakes slightly, as if in denial, but his eyes are fogged like he doesn’t yet realise what of. He awaits her to speak.
He is forthcoming with his confusion and he is correct; she does get it, she really does.
There is something to treasure there, that he knows so certainly that she knows what it’s like to stress so much over grades, to feel like you’re slipping into an abyss and must feed hours upon hours to a furnace in order to create light, to see a foothold and climb onwards, reach your peers. That he sees her struggles and her successes. It is the fun of being a half-blood disconnected from her witchy heritage, she supposes, this conflict.
It is caring, at its most broken down, she corrects her thought. They have this in common.
Pandora responds strongly, “I do. You know me. So should it really be a surprise that I’d like to join you in this?”
A moment’s silence only is still too much after that.
Hastily, she defends somewhat astringently, “I am a Slytherin, after all. I have many wants, including that I want to be the best,” then wavers slightly at her own haughty tone. She doesn’t need to be prideful with him and she worries for a split-second she may have come across as offensive, but… something tells her he would understand.
Half shy, half assertive, she magicks her books to appear before them both on the table. They land on the open page of his transformations book, the one on the furthest corner of their table, having been discarded ages ago.
She waits, heart clenched.
A mirthful gasp breaks through the ringing silence that had consumed for a dreadful moment, and rather than rejection, she hears a lightened, positively glowing voice hesitantly jest, “I suppose not. It were a bit crap of me to presume with you, Lady Lovegood, weren’t it?”
Remus reaches his other hand to rest atop their still adjoined pair, before pulling her hand to his lips gently and laying a slow kiss on the back of it when he receives no resistance - a true gentlemen. He looks up and meets her eyes, mouth still hovering hungrily above her hand, and sees her wide startled smile. Encouraged now, he presses his lips down and down again until she has soon received a flurry of ticklish kisses atop her knuckles.
Remus has cracked a small grin after Pandora’s revelation that only stretches as she leans forwards justbecause and replies, “‘Fraid so, dear. And normally I can respect your intelligence.” With a put-upon sigh, she adds, “And have you even noticed to my left?”
Still, he cannot bring himself to peel his eyes from her, “Forgive me, I beg. I am tired and now only have power to process your ravishing beauty and nothing more.” At this, he pulls himself off his chair and onto the floor, kneeling in front of her, his eyes begging. He’s tall enough that even on his knees for her, his eyes are at level with her breasts. If she so wished, she could just tip forwards and he, her sweet lover boy, would surge to meet her, holding her gently even as he plunders.
His hands go to caress her knees, rubbing a gentle circle, before trailing up her soft, inner thighs. She spares a brief thought for any others catching them like this in public but the librarian had disappeared to the back some time ago and likely wouldn’t return. Plus, no-one would come to the library at this time but her Remus. It’s only them.
Pandora’s breath catches in her chest, as his long, deft fingers rise higher and get closer and stop, spread out like a spider’s web on her hip, attempting to touch all they can at once.
His eyes are darkened, pitch. Lust seeps from him, and from her.
“We- We can’t here.” Pandora says, words choked with more than just reluctance.
In a straining effort, she denies herself for now and fits her fingers beneath his chin and turns his head to look upwards and to the left, rather than into her dilated, starving gaze undressing him indecently.
”Is that…?”
The childish surprise and glee on his face are enough for her to laugh once more, clasping his elbows and tugging him up.
Towering above her, he meets her eyes and asks faintly, as if he’d experienced a miracle and been left shaky in the aftermath, overcome with awe, “My Angel, bringing me all I need. Yourself and coffee. How did you know?”
She rises to her tip-toes, reaching out to caress his face, under his eyes, “The dark circles you’ve been wearing these past few days were a clue, love.”
The dumbfounded look on his face, wiped away quickly by a rueful smile as he leans in, spawns butterflies to shroud them in their own little, world.
He pulls her closer by the hips and hoists her up his body, her legs wrapping tightly around his slim hips and her arms quickly finding familiar purchase around his neck. The surprise has her breathing heavily and she knows with the fire in her stomach that she must be blushing.
Remus presses sweet, slow kisses to her mouth at first. Then, Pandora reacts with more vigour. Her ringed hand crawls up to fist his hair while the other urges him closer. She pushes into him, hungry, and he gives.
She nips at his bottom lip, leeching onto it and sucking. His mouth falls open with a groan, and she takes the opportunity. Her tongue wastes no time in invading his mouth and she licks into him, seeking his taste with a single-minded drive. She compels him to the table with a tug and a whimper and he rests her upon it, eyes fluttering and utterly lost in her ministrations, his free hand roving, exploring her body in a much similar manner.
She removes a hand, letting it fall back and brace her on the table, cueing him to come to her before letting it snake off. A good, dutiful boy, hers is. He meets her without hesitation, with enthusiasm, as he parts her lips with his tongue, one hand still firmly cupping her breasts, insatiably hungry. Pandora sighs into his mouth, limp as pleasure runs its course through her, before she pulls away.
There is only an inch between them, lips wetted and high with each other’s body heat, and she has half-a-mind to reach across again and forget all else. Unfortunately, she, and he, are more sensible than that.
Her free hand returns with a coffee and she presses it to his lips. Pandora watches his throat as he heavily swallows the much-needed drink.
Remus smiles at her again, and she is about to reach for her own drink to hide the mess her face has undoubtedly become from his lips, flustered and plundered, but he acts first. He places the opening of his cup to her lips and coaxes her into sipping. It’s wonderful, warm and soothing to her aching throat, but nothing could compare to his taste.
She licks her lip as she finishes, grabbing her own cup and asking, “Shall we?”, gesturing at their work.
She slides off the table quickly, cheeks aflame, but before she can sit on her stool again, Remus snakes a hand around her waist, helping her on. He leans close, mouth against her neck as he says, low and sultry, “We’ll finish this,” an absolutely filthy look at her body, “in my dorm later, too.”
Then, they begin. Together.