stained glass and kafka
Despite the high september sun watching over the school the wind still curled around them, cold and spiteful, as they meandered back to the dorms tossing their hair back and forth ruining any of their attempts at looking remotely civilised. The girls skirts blew up every now and then and unlike the others Remus had the decency to avert his eyes for them which Lily sent him a small smile as a thank you for. Mary didnt seem to notice the boys side glances whenever it happened and if she did she kept her composure very well. Remus had a sneaking suspicion it was due to Mary’s unfortunate crush on Sirius and so any attention from him, unsolicited or otherwise, was fine with her.
He had noticed this spark, as his mother called it, the first week back at school. The mere thought of confirming such a suspicion with either of them made him feel rather nauseous though so he decided to watch it unfold before him instead. Perhaps said nausea was due to his feeling that he needed to protect Mary, he knew he didnt she was perfectly capable of protecting herself, but he still felt the need to nonetheless. He doubted this being the stem of the reason however as he’d had no problem with her prior crushes.
The idea of either of them together made him intensely uncomfortable but he had been berating himself for feeling such a way as it really was quite cruel to feel so abhorred by your friends happiness. He had considered broaching his hypothesis with one of the others, perhaps Lily or James, but had decided against it as he could still not quite put his finger on the exact root of his feelings.
It wasn’t that he was jealous of them, he hadn’t felt this way for any of his other friends indeverring in romantic relationships, only them, so far. But after a month or so of intense internal deliberation he had come to the conclusion to just internalise such feelings and not talk about it, as was sensible.
In order to achieve such internalisation he had spent said month regularly haunting a corner of the school he knew his friends would not find him, often accompanied by a volume of Kafkas letters in order to help him map out his own feelings. Said haunt was not necessarily as secluded as he may have wished and he now, through no fault of his own, sat every few days reading silently next to a ravenclaw girl. He forgot to ask her name, or actually say anything of depth to her until the 9th occurrence of such a meeting. It was twilight and the September sun had made them overestimate how long beyond curfew they were and as she began to pack her things away Remus noticed she was doing so at quite a prolonged rate and after about 2 minutes being spent flattening her page he had gotten the hint.
“Is it bad I still don't know your name?”
“Yes,” she replied, “Yes Remus it is.”
“Sorry, i'm always reading and when i look up you've left again,”
“Oh, well bye,”
“Wait what?”
“Its 10 o’ clock, curfew was half hour ago,”
He hadn’t even noticed the sun setting behind him, he had no chance at noticing the clock chiming in the background.
“Look ive got to go but i’ll see you tomorrow i guess,”, she had begun to look out of the stained glass window they’d been leaning against and into the courtyard and beyond it across the campus.
“Wait no, it's getting dark you can't walk back alone,”
“There's no one around, i think i'll manage it across the pavillion,”
“Still it's impolite,”
“Didn't take you to be so concerned with courtesy,”
“I'm not,”
“So i can walk back alone,”
“No,”, Remus wasn’t sure why he was so intent on walking her back but the idea of leaving her to walk across the albeit very tame but dark campus alone made his brow furrow with an emotion he wasnt able to identify until he was back in his dorm, staring at the ceiling, as protectiveness. He was beginning to wonder if his hormones were causing all the processes of rational thought to up and leave.
“Ok, well hurry up then,”, and he did.
They walked to the 6th year ravenclaws building in comfortable silence, or what he assumed to be comfortable silence but he found any escape to quiet to be comforting. He hoped it was comfortable, the idea of making her feel anything but made him feel horrid.
As she walked away he felt a pull at his navel and realisation dawned on him and he was suddenly thankful of the descending darkness that hid his reddened face.
Only as she had her hand on the door did he call after her, “Wait, whats your name?”
She turned to face him, her hair being flung from its place tucked over her shoulder in the process and falling down her back to lay itself at her waist, curling slightly at the ends, in a way that Remus would find himself thinking about over breakfast the next morning.
“Evangeline. But dont you dare call me that.”
“Goodnight Evangeline,”
“Dont.”
“Night Evie,”
“Better. Goodnight Remus,”
And as Remus walked the short path to the boys building he heard a small snort from an upstairs window. His eyes made out three figures silhouetted by the well lit room behind them which he assumed to be his friends. Shit.
There was a conspicuous silence when Remus entered the dorm, about half an hour later after finishing a few more of Kafka’s letters, that he found particularly unnerving, he had prepared himself for some adolescent roughhousing so when it did not occur he was almost concerned. But it seemed as though James and Peter had gone to sleep and Sirius was somewhere, such whereabouts were currently unknown, so he opted for a shower instead to mull his new found revelation over in privacy.
Once he’d returned ready to spend another few hours staring at the ceiling of the darkened dorm and having those little daydreams about her that border on being normal dreams but not quite due to your self control and consciousness, he found Sirius’ bed still deserted with his homework strewn across the bed.
He didn’t hear Sirius return until late into the night and only then due to the restlessness of his mind which was spiralling with thoughts of her. Sirius skulked quietly back to his bed and shoved his homework onto the floor. Remus heard the weak groan of the bed as Sirius sat down on the side and decided to try and catch a look at the other boy. Perhaps it would offer an explanation for his absence. And it did. Sirius was sat directly in the moonlight that shone through the dorm room window and it illuminated all his perfections in an almost cruel way. His looking like a potentially ghostlike vision distracted Remus for a moment from the reddish swatches that thwarted his delicate throat. Remus felt his stomach fall as he realised just what Sirius had been off doing.