Remus
I take my usual seat at Sirius’s feet and pull out a copy of Metamorphosis by Kafka. I start to read as Belle tells everyone goodnight. Rose, the stubborn witch, argues to make her stay and after some convincing, she eventually drops Belle’s hand and lets her go to bed. I don’t miss the glare she shoots me. I pretend not to notice since I truly don’t give a shit and continue with my reading. Rose has taken it upon herself to ‘keep her eyes on me’ and it’s becoming quite a nuisance. Recently, she’s taken to lurking behind pillars as her pathetic attempt at tailing me. She’s worse than Snape, and he’s pretty fucking bad. It's been decently challenging keeping up the ‘model student’ act while keeping tabs on Belle and dealing with the usual ‘furry problems’ as my friends so lovingly phrase them. Eventually, I decide to, again, address Rose’s hostile behavior because I really can’t have her continuing to follow me (and by extension Belle) around so I glance up at her,
“Rose, you can’t honestly think I’m still ‘out to get her’?”
She huffs and looks at me with a hard glare. I muster an exasperated look and glance around at the group.
“Look, maybe that–” she motions in the direction that Belle ascended the stairs. “isn’t because of you but can’t you see that something is going on with her? I’m worried,” Rose says.
Lily gestures suggestively to me, “I mean, we kinda know what’s been going on.”
I have to school my expression to mask my surprise. I’m certain that Belle has kept our few private encounters, just that, private. In fact I doubt she’d be able to speak to anyone about it without turning beet red and stumbling over her words; by the time she finally articulated herself, she would’ve thought better of saying anything and shut her pretty little mouth. She’s not exactly known for being popular with boys in the school. I might have helped James scare a few potential interested parties away, but whatever, I was only doing my good friend a favor. My eyes move to James and I quickly conclude that he has no idea about the few intimate interactions I’ve had with his cousin.
I have purposely been ignoring the possibility of being caught. Belle has always been off limits and up until this year, I had no problem with this. Yes, her ghoulish presence in my life has been a constant reminder of the worst night of my life. And yes, over the summer, I dreamed about her haunting blue eyes night after night. But other than that, I hardly thought of her. I don’t know what triggered these increased nightmares but I can no longer look at her without ice running through my veins and guilt compressing my lungs. I thought that if I got her to leave me alone, then I would finally find peace. I was wrong.
I started dreaming of her voice next. At first, I couldn’t place the voice; it would whimper and cry until I woke up. Then instead of waking up from the odd dream I found myself standing in front of her. She was crying and whimpering. Her eyes sparkled with tears as she sat crumpled on the floor. The soft, careful, cadence of her voice invaded my dreams when finally she called out my name. That’s when I wake up now, with my heart aching in my chest and my dick straining against my pants. Those whimpers play like a broken record in my mind all day. It is taking all my self-control not to corner her someplace dark and secluded in order to recreate the noises. Maybe this is why I can’t keep my distance, because lately all I want to do is watch the tears stream down her face while she chokes on my cock.
I feel a stirring in my pants so I forcibly rip my attention back to the group. Lily looks around and her panicked eyes land, again, on me when she realizes that we are not on the same page. Playing dumb was definitely the right play here. Her face manifests a swirl of different emotions before settling on bashful as she tries to do damage control.
“I thought, we all knew,” she tucks some hair behind her ear and motions to James. “We sorta joked about it the other day?”
James furrows his brow and unfocusses his gaze as if trying to recall the memory. Before he even has a chance to confirm this with the group, Sirius lets out a gruff, “Ha!”
He leans back into the cushion and flourishes his hand loosely, “Prongsie has the memory of a goldfish, Lils. Just tell us what’s going on already!”
“It’s nothing really.. Except I know she’s been pretty anxious lately. Probably about school, yeah.” Lily says. She is a terrible liar, I conclude and pray to Merlin that Sirius is only ½ listening. If anyone has the tenacity to wrench a secret out of someone, it’s him.
Peter, who has been warming his hands near the fire, says, “Well your guess is better than ours seeing as she’s your best friend?”
Sirius adds, “Yeah, aren’t you girls meant to be staying up, sharing secrets, and having pillow fights?” He grabs a small throw pillow from beside him and chucks the pillow at James’ head. James swats it away with an animated grin and bats his eyes at Lily.
“You ever share any secrets about me?” James says.
Lily doesn’t respond to James, instead, she fiddles with her fingers. Her nose scrunches up before she says, “I’m sure she’s just feeling angry after Defense Class today.”
That’s a better excuse and it also sets James and Sirius off on a rampant tirade about the injustice in the ministry. I laugh along as the conversation shifts into planning a revenge prank on our Professor. At Sirius’ mention of using explosives, namely fireworks, I know I have to intervene.
“Instead of using actual explosives and getting yourself expelled, why don’t we just transfigure a handful of exploding snap marbles into classroom objects. Then we can set them all off either all at once or in sections for more of a psychological approach,” I muse as I really try to sell the idea.
Sirius scoffs, “I still think we should blow up everything that lycophobe owns, maybe a hand, or his dick?”
“That’s just cruel Pads,” James grins wolfishly. “I love it. But we shall need to live to fight another day. Let’s listen to Remus this time and the next time your crazy cousin goes off the deep end we’ll try whatever exploding spells you like.”
Sirius pouts, “Why do we always have to listen to Moony? Moony is such a–”
“We listen to Moony because of what happened the last time you planned a prank on your own,” James snaps at Sirius.
The room falls silent at the commanding tone James so rarely uses. We all respect James and his morals. He protects his family tooth and nail. This is why it’s so rare to hear him reprimand Sirius, who is his closest friend and; for all intents and purposes, his brother. We all know what Sirius did and we all forgave him. But sometimes Sirius needs to be reminded of his place and why he’s not in charge.
Sirius places a hand on my shoulder and squeezes, then without acknowledging the comment, says, “Fine. But we should go the psychological route and torture that bastard for as long as possible. Yeah, Moony?”
I let a smug smile slip over my features and lean my head back against the arm of the chair, “It would be a pleasure.”
My closest friend knows me well as the fire inside me burns brightly at the thought of the prank to come. These types of pranks, the ones with a vendetta etched between the lines, are my favorite to plan since psychological warfare is my specialty. I like to watch the carefully orchestrated chaos eat away at my victim’s mind. I don’t let up until their grip on reality has crumbled and they no longer recognize the once familiar space surrounding them, until their world feels entirely wrong. Eventually, they report our little jokes but this is usually a moot point. We don’t leave behind evidence and since there are four of us, we always have a solid alibi. But as an added security measure, I always choose our victims carefully. A new teacher and a known lycophobe is the perfect victim because when they turn to the Headmaster, he won’t be siding with them against anyone, let alone Gryffindor’s best. After all, we’re just boys with ‘bright eyes’ and ‘brighter futures.’
***
I toss and turn for most of the night. My mind spins with potential possibilities of what tomorrow night– I glance at the clock, correction, tonight– might bring. Should I stay hidden? Yes, most certainly. In fact, I had already asked James to use his cloak of invisibility under the guise of doing some surveillance of our DADA professor’s classroom. I could do that without using the cloak but I’m going to need it in order to observe this odd meeting with Belle’s mum. I try to recall images of a woman from that night but all I come up with are gruesome bloody images of a cowering young girl and her father.
I throw the covers aside and sit up; my skin feels paper thin and my bones ache. I’m angry at the reckless nonchalance at which Belle’s mother has planned these meet-ups. The edge of the Forbidden Forest is bad enough but both this date and the last date were only a few days before the full moon. I know this woman is a muggle but bloody hell, her husband was mauled to death by a werewolf, you’d think she’d have gained even an ounce of self-preservation. Apparently not.
A shiver ran through me and I notice that Sirius left the fucking window open. I stomp over with the intention of slamming the window shut so hard that the fucking Hufflepuffs would hear. Then, I think of a better idea. I gather a bag of supplies for a relaxing bath and walk over to a sleeping Sirius, wand in hand, and vanish his blanket.
The walk to the Prefect’s bathroom is quiet besides my creaking ankles and gentle swish of my sleep pants. The humid air of the bathroom engulfs me as the heavy door closes behind me. The bath lights up with soft yellow lights as the tub fills with warm bubbly water. The room smells like pine needles and honey that reminds me of Christmas morning.
After my accident, Christmas became a grim affair. Mum treated each Christmas as though this might be my last Christmas and Dad was so busy consoling Mum that we hardly ever got around to the happy bit. As always, my friendships saved me and I’ve spent each Christmas with at least 2 of the 3 other Marauders here, in the castle. Mum and Dad agreed that it would be best for me to stay here during the holidays. I think it’s as much easier for them as it is for me. Or it was going to be easier until Belle decided to stay for the holidays.
I dunk my head under the water and let the silence engulf me. God, I miss silence. Not complete silence, obviously that’s something I gave up long ago to my friendship with Sirius. I miss when my mind wasn’t constantly buzzing with thoughts of Belle. Lately I’ve wondered if she has started to go out of her way to piss me off. There’s no doubt that in the past she flirted with the concept. Her mind is almost as sharp as my own, not so sharp that she might realize that each triumph she boasted about fell around the few days before or after the full moon. Instead she bounced around the castle with a shit-eating grin that was reserved only for me.
The holiday would be especially challenging this year. Maybe it would be easier if there were more than 20 people left to occupy the school grounds. I recall how easy it was to corner her in a busy library and how she grinded against me while she whimpered for me to stop. I groan and resurface, gasping for air. I plead with the rational side of my brain to stop but I’m alone and apparently too weak to control my own desires.
I resign myself to my apparent lack of control when it comes to her and reimagine that day. I stroke my already hardening cock as I remember the feeling of her soft thighs wrapped around my waist. The speed of my strokes increase as I imagine the soft curve of her breasts as they rise an fall rapidly while she tried to contain her erratic breathing. I lean my head back against the cool tile and silently curse myself for not ripping the blouse to shreds and running my tongue along the soft flesh.
“Fuck,” I gasp as the memory overwhelms me; I have never been so desperate for another person. My cock throbs against my hand and I can’t help but imagine how it might feel to thrust inside her tight, wet, cunt.
I think of her pouty pink lips and what they might look like wrapped around my dick. Fuck, this is what I need. I move my hand faster and imagine that I’m fucking her smart little mouth. I hear her whimpers and I can see her eyes, wide and gleaming with tears, silently pleading with me for more just as they did when she was chasing her high in the library.
Remus, I hear the desperate voice call out in my mind. Then I’m imagining all the ways I will take her and all the ways I will own her; first, by cumming down her throat and painting her pouty lips with me. My orgasm is in no way satisfying and I know that I will need to make these fantasies a reality, soon.
When I re-enter the common room, I notice Sirius curled on the couch closest to the fire with a slight grimace on his face. I fall asleep quicker than usual, apparently lulled by the unavoidable reality that Belle would be mine by the end of today.