The Hogwarts Express
"We don't have to talk about it." Remus said under his breath barely looking at Sirius as he dragged his trunk up off the train platform and onto the Hogwarts express with ease.
"Okay, yeah sure. We don't HAVE to... but we should." Sirius hissed back quietly as they both stepped onto the train. Whispering in Remus' ear was a difficult task for most as the boy, who wasn't even sixteen yet, stood at a comfortable six feet and one inch in height, but the task was ever more difficult for Sirius as he was just shy of five foot six.
"Really, its not a big deal. Lets just enjoy our time at school. We don't even have to think about it if we don't want to." Remus said with an unnervingly calm smile plastered across his scarred face. Remus didn't tend to make a habit off smiling so whenever he did, his friends knew that something was either vey right or extremely wrong. In this case it was the latter.
"Think about what?" Peter chimed in. If Peter had any talent in this world, it was his hearing. He wasn't even a particularly nosy person by nature but when one hears everything that he hears, curiosity tends to take over and it could get quite irritating. The boy would sniff around for information like a rat sniffing around for cheese.
"Think about how McGonagall's gonna flip when she founds out about the party we're planning." Remus grinned. He'd found that as he got older, his ability to lie became much more refined. Years of pranks, lying to his father and even lying to himself had given him an impressive capacity to bend the truth to his will.
"Well, we'll just have to make sure she never finds out, then." James beamed as he opened the door to an empty carriage. The group had ended up being unbelievably early to Kings Cross Station that morning, which meant that they had first dibs on which tiny carriage they would cram their eight bodies into. They had stayed in a shabby bed and breakfast just across the street after a very stressful car journey in which Hope had to make a two way trip from Wales to London and back again just to get all nine of them down their in time. "We've had quite a bit of practice through the years."
"What party?" An overly confident little voice asked, suddenly reminding Remus that his little sister had boarded the train as well this year.
"No party. We're just joking around. Aren't we, James?" Remus elbowed the other boy.
"Yeah, Rom. We don't party at Hogwarts. All we do is study and hang out quietly in Hogsmeade." James said in his best 'talking to kids' voice even going out of his way to bend down to her height, placing his hands on his knees in true fashion of a single child that has no idea how to talk to younger kids.
"Sounds boring." The little girl huffed before turning on her heels and dragging her luggage over to a crowd of first years until her curly little head had disappeared into a carriage of her own.
"Great. Now she thinks I'm boring." Remus expressed mostly to himself, lifting his hands up in the air and dropping them back down heavily.
"To be fair, Moony, you did leave the Halloween party early last year to finish the last chapter of some big old book." Mary scoffed as she took a seat on the other side of Marlene from Dorcas, squishing Peter further against the wall.
"First of all 'Carrie' is not just any big old book, it is a masterpiece of horror fiction and second of all... I couldn't watch another drunk teenager nearly drown trying to bob for apples." Remus shook his head at the thought, only pausing to turn to Sirius and nudge him harshly in the ribs. "Mate, can you move up a bit, Please!"
"No, I literally cannot. Unless you want me to be sitting in James' lap. He's a handsome bloke but I'm not really that way inclined." Sirius snapped in his usual overly sarcastic tone, throwing out his hands at his sides to show how little room there was. "Or maybe Lily should sit on his lap and then we'd have a little space."
"Screw you, Black!" Lily scrunched up her nose to show a childish level of disdain at Sirius' comment. Lily and James had been a new development that most of the group were very surprised by. Of course, the surprise wasn't that James liked Lily (everyone in Hogwarts had know that since 1972), it was that Lily was able to be within one hundred metres of James without rolling her eyes. That certainly was a new development.
"Oh you'd be so lucky." Sirius scoffed.
The eye rolling was now solely reserved for Sirius.
"Do you have to be so crude?" Mary cut in.
"Always, my darling." Sirius fluttered his eyes, blowing a kiss in the unimpressed looking girls direction. Remus was caught off guard by the sudden change in demeanour (or maybe it was his eyelashes). Sirius found a way to jokingly flirt with all of his friends but every time he did so with one of the girls, Remus tended to wonder whether it was even slightly genuine. Sirius' 'reputation' around the school certainly didn't help with Remus' wandering mind. He had no idea why it bothered him so much.
"Wow, such a gentleman. How do the girls keep themselves at bay around you. I'll never know." Remus muttered, flipping the page of the book he had just started reading. He had found that reading a book was like wearing giant headphones, people didn't tend to talk to you unless they needed help or something. He found that it was a great entertainment tool but also a good cover for secretly listening into conversations and silently judging.
Sirius couldn't find it in himself to make up a witty retort since he was still deciding whether to be angry at Remus for his very sudden confession and the nonchalance that followed it. This made for a much more peaceful trip to Hogwarts than expected since Sirius and Remus' bickering always ended up being a huge distraction for everyone around them and taking up pretty much the whole conversation for the entire train ride. The others must have been too caught up in their own conversation that they didn't notice something was wrong. Although Remus much preferred this as he could read his book in peace. Merlin! Maybe he was boring just like Romely had said.
They arrived at school as it was about start getting dark. In Remus' mind September was the death of summer. You might still get a good day of sun if you were lucky but leaves would slowly begin to fall and rain would plummet any chance of a nice day out. Thankfully, the rain hadn't touched them from the train to the castle, leaving the air to hang around the group in all its bitingly cold glory and the sky to exist as a never changing greyish void.
Though he did love mild weather more than most people, Remus found himself basking in the sudden warmth of the castle. He shuddered at first, letting the familiar sights and sensations enter him. He'd call Hogwarts a second home if his first one didn't seem so dreary in comparison. The grand corridors led into the even more grand hall, where four tables stretched the length of it, all pointing towards the professors table right at the far end. In front of the table, sat a solitary wooden stool topped with a withering, pointed hat. It suddenly hit Remus that that hat would decide where his sister would spend the best part of the next seven years of her life and in turn, would affect how Remus was to spend the next three years of his.
He wouldn't mind having his sister in Gryffindor with him, if anything he'd constantly worry about her if she were in any other house, especially Slytherin. Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw might have calmed his nerves a little but the idea of Romely hanging around in the gloomy dungeon, doing her homework next to Snape or Barty Crouch Jr made him shudder completely.
He scanned the hall for her but then realised that the first years mustn't have arrived yet. Once they had, Dumbledore made his little speech that seemed to get much less impressive every year and then he was followed by a short few words from McGonagall before the ceremony began. It dragged on, as usual but eventually Romely's name was called.
The eleven year old placed herself down onto the stool and then the hat was placed on top of her, almost covering half of her long, dark-blonde curls in the process. Her round face was bright and hopeful and for a moment Remus wondered if they were even related. He knew that they must be when the hat called out its fateful decision:
"GRYFFINDOR!"
As soon as the first syllable echoed through the hall, Remus felt the widest grin crack through his hard features. A new kind of warmth, a joy, spread throughout his frail body. From the top of his head to the tip of his toes fizzed impossibly and all that he could do was cheer and applaud with the rest of his housemates. He got to his feet in an attempt to catch his sisters gaze through the crowd but before he find her, Romely had made her way to him, seemingly smiling just as wide as he was.
"Get in." Sirius bellowed holding out his fist for Romely to bump, which she enthusiastically accepted. "Little Lupin's come to join us."
"Well done, Rom." Remus offered but they both knew deep down that neither of them needed to say anything. Their faces said it all as Remus cleared a space so that she could sit next to him for the next half of the ceremony.
"Thanks, Remmy." She laughed.
"Wait... Hold on a hot second." Sirius looked half confused, half evil. "Remmy?" He asked, barely able to mask his absolute glee at the revelation of this nickname and brand new torture material.
Remus shot daggers at the boy next to him. Out of all his nicknames through the years, Moony had been the most tolerable yet, since a good few of these names were unkindly given by a vicious group of Slytherin students. 'Loopy Lupin', 'Loony Lupin' and 'lanky queer' being longstanding favourites. You really just have to stop for a second and admire the award winning uses of the English language that these bullies deployed. Remus wasn't thrilled for upcoming use of the name 'Remmy' that he was sure was inevitable at this point as Sirius would dig his claws into anything that might produce a laugh or two.
"Please don't ever call me that."
"Too late, Remmy." Marlene grinned. "He's never gonna give up and you know it."
"Mate, we gotta keep little Lupin around. She's golden." Dorcas joined in on the attack.
"I'm sure she'll make her own friends in no time and she won't have to hang around with us losers. A fate worse than death, if you ask me." Remus rolled his eyes at his overly enthusiastic mates.
"Ah, yeah. Of course, Rom. You don't wanna hang out with us and find out all of your brothers dirty little secrets." Mary leaned over the table so that they could hear her better.
"Come on, Mary." Remus rolled his eyes before turning to Romely. "there's no dirty little secrets to find out, don't get excited."
"Oh, I know there is and I will discover them." The little girl shot back. She was smart. Way smart than him, already. And she was tough and sarcastic and funny. She had all the shiny little specs of youth dotted across her face that Remus had lost way too young. His innocence had been cut out of him in a split second. He didn't remember much about that night, just pain, the worst he'd ever felt. He was only six but he'd known already how bad pain could be. He loved her sister because she reminded him of how youth was supposed to be. Obviously, Romely wasn't unscathed especially after everything with their dad. Lyall always found a way to hurt you, even if it wasn't physical.
"Oh no. Remus is an impenetrable fortress. His secrets are locked away more securely than the prisoners in Azkaban." Sirius cackled as if he was telling a ghost story.
"I'll find a way. I'm smart like that."
"Ooh. Like brother like sister, then?" Marlene asked, genuinely curious with a slight mocking tone. She was as studious as him but would never let anyone know it until exam results came in and she would gloat worse than Sirius. Marlene was too cool to revise, apparently. Marlene was too cool for a lot of things. Too cool to care. Too cool to cry. Much to cool for school policies about make-up, piercings and skirt length, as well.
"Oh no. She's way smarter than me." Remus shook his head, quietly smiling to himself, which he didn't do very often. As he continued to eat his dinner after the ceremony, he noticed Sirius glancing over at him with an odd look on his face. He didn't pay much attention to it for a while until the gaze began to bore into his skull, filling his head with ideas. Remus wondered for way too long what hi friend was thinking. Did he secretly hate him? Did he prefer his sister? Did he wish he was sat next to James or Mary? "Alright, mate?" He decided to just bite the bullet and say something. If Sirius had a problem with him, he'd just have to deal with it.
"Yeah, yeah." Sirius nodded slightly, raising his eyebrows a little, then he leaned into Remus a little, speaking under his breath so only they could hear. "You okay? It's fine, you know."
"Yeah, course I am. Thanks, mate." Remus whispered back, of course he wasn't completely okay but he also wasn't one to let people know him. Like really know him. So he just showed his quiet affection by bumping Sirius' knee with his.
He was glad Sirius was there. He supposed he could survive if Sirius was there. The others too. Of course, he needed the others. He just needed his friends and Sirius was part of that. That was obviously why he felt so strongly about the long haired boy, right?