Rage

Romulus was happy that things were back to normal. He knew that Remus sometimes had trouble sleeping, so the purely drained look wasn’t entirely new. He just wished that it wasn’t he that had given Remus. And speaking of looks, the way that Sirius had stared at his brother, he didn’t miss it.

He had known about Remus’s sexuality for a while now. He did too. He remembered that night that Remus had told him. Scared, hoping that Romulus wouldn’t push him away.

He heard footsteps down the hall in their small house that could never be a home. His brother appeared, looking scared. His eyes were bloodshot, and there were tear tracks down his face.

“Hey Rem, what's wrong?” his voice was full of concern as he looked at his brother. He was shaking slightly.

He took a deep breath, trying, and failing, to pull himself.

The 10-year-old seemed to stare into space for a while, before looking at his brother.

“Can you promise me something?” Remus asked. He looked like he wanted to run, but knew it was too late for that.

“Yeah Rem, of course.” His reply was simple, having complete faith in his brother not to ask something he couldn’t do.

“I can’t have you pushing me away for this. I need you to stay with me. Promise me you’ll stay,” Romulus let out a laugh, knowing that nothing Remus said to him would make him push him away.

“Remus John Lupin, whatever made you think that I would push you away, please tell me so I can stop right now,” he was still laughing a bit at the shock, when Remus said it.

“Romulus, I think I’m bi.”

Romulus stopped laughing at once, staring at his brother with a bemused expression.

“Please, Romulus, you promised, I can’t lose-”

“Shut up,” Romulus cut him off, “Okay, I’m not going to push you away, you idiot. Just surprised, is all. I’m happy for you, but are you sure? I mean, how do you know?” Romulus was generally curious, nothing in his voice or expression said anything about pushing away his brother.

Remus just smiled and said, “Saw one of the boys in the town and thought ‘wow, he’s handsome, more handsome than his friends’ and I’m like, ‘no, Remus, you don’t think that about other boys’ and I was like ‘why not though’ and shut my brain up.”

Romulus laughed, and hugged his brother.

Seeing someone look at his brother like that, he didn’t know how to feel about it. Especially when the person that was looking at his brother didn’t even know how he was looking at his brother. He decided that he would ignore it. At least for now.

They made their way down the stairs from their dorm into the common room. He saw Mary there, laughing with a few other girls. There was the red head, who had tried to calm Remus down at the platform and got the lesson many learnt about Remus and physical contact. She was talking to a girl with light blonde hair, and grey eyes.

Mary waved at him and called over, “Hi Romulus. I was wondering if I could introduce you to my friends?” she asked, looking over at him hopefully.

“Only if I can introduce mine,” he replied, a smirk on his face as he said it.

“Oh, okay then, Mr. Let's-Make-A-Deal-Here,” she said, mirroring his smirk.

“This is Lily Evans,” she pointed to the red-head, “Marlene Mickinnon,” she said pointing to the blonde.

“Hello Lily, hello Marlene,” he said back.

“Hi,” they said back.

“Well then, this is my twin brother, Remus,” Remus waved as Romulus pointed to him, “you can call him Rem if you're his friend. That's Sirius Black, don’t be fooled by the name, he’s a cinnamon roll,” he said pointing to the raven haired boy, “and that’s infuriating morning person, also known as James Potter, also known as pedwar-llygaid,” he finished, pointing at James.

“Okay, I let it slide this far, what does that mean,” he said, obviously getting a little annoyed.

“Oh, pedwar-llygaid? Well, pedwar-llygaid, ‘pedwar’ means ‘four’, and ‘llygaid’ means ‘eyes’, so ‘pedwar-llygaid’ means ‘four-eyes’,” he had an almost permanent smirk on his face by this point. Everyone laughed, James even chuckled a little bit.

“Why am I not surprised?” he asked, still chuckling.

“Oh, there you lot are. I woke up alone and almost panicked a little thinking I was late to breakfast,” Peter had come down, wearing his school uniform.

“Oh, and this is Pete. Pete, meet Mary, Marlene, which I’m going to call Marls because ‘Marlene’ is a mouthful for a lowly Welsh boy, and that’s Lily,” he said, pointing to the respective people.

“Hiya Pete,” Mary chirped cheerily.

“H-hi,” he said, looking slightly flustered by the ambush of three very pretty girls.

Finally, they went down for breakfast, talking happily. 

_

Remus had thought about telling his brother about the room, but decided against it. Why couldn’t this just be his?

He talked with Lily, laughed with Marlene, made fun of James for being an idiot. He teased Romulus, scared Peter, and got pushed by Romulus as payback. All while laughing, of course. Fun and games. But there was one thing keeping his mind occupied. 

The way Sirius had looked at him, coming out of the shower. How his eyes had darted to different parts of his face, a slight blush creeping up his neck as he looked Remus up and down. How he didn’t even know he was staring. 

He decided to ignore it. It didn’t matter, and he didn’t think about things that were out of his control, or completely pointless.

A delicious smell was wafting from the Great Hall. Remus and Romulus stopped, looked at each other, and Remus reached towards him, and pushed him back, and bolted towards the Great Hall. 

Romulus caught up with him, dragging him back and pulling ahead. Remus leapt forward, catching the back of Romulus’ dark green long-sleeve. He stumbled backwards, surprised.

They reached the doors in the same fast sprint, they raced down the hall. Dodging fellow students, jumping over pets. Remus stretched out his hand, and smacked his hand against the hard wood of the tables.

“Yma!”

“Yma!”

They turned to look at each other, they had called it at the same time.

“Tie,” they both said gruffly, and sat down by a very startled red-headed boy.

“Calm down, it’s only breakfast,” he said.

“‘Just breakfast’ he says,” Remus mocked sarcastically, “Well, pengoch, I haven't had pancakes in, Rom, what's the English word for am byth?” he asked. He really couldn’t remember it for some reason.

“I think you’re looking for is forever,” Romulus said with a raised eyebrow.

“Ah, yes, I haven’t had pancakes in forever,” Remus stressed the word,  trying to get it right on the first try. Romulus smiled, Remus took that as a sign that he did good.

The rest of the group appeared. 

“Godric, how can you run so fast?” James asked, slightly breathless. 

“Gotta run fast, if you don’t, you get your arse jumped,” Romulus said.

“Well not here!” Sirius said dramatically, “James didn’t even let me get my beauty sleep! And now you maniacs are running! You’re making me look bad!”

I don’t think you could, like, ever look bad, Remus thought, then stopped himself.

They sat down, talking and laughing, joking and teasing. That was until McGonagal came around. 

“Here are your schedules. And Mr. Lupin?” she asked. Both twins looked up expectantly.

“Romulus, that is. I wanted to remind you of your detentions. Every night for a week, don’t forget.”

“Yes, athraw,” he said with a smile on his lips. McGonagall shook her head, but her lips twitched upwards slightly. 

“You two, behave yourselves,” she pointed to the twins, then went on passing out schedules. 

“So,” Sirius said, “I was wondering, what do you lot want to do today?”

“I was thinking,” Remus said, “that we could walk about the castle a bit, look around. Scope things out for if we need to run away from some teacher or another. Then, we could maybe we could mess about outside?”

“Dod o hyd i’n cyghreiraid?” Romulus asked with a smirk, (find our allies?).

“A gelynion,” Remus said, (and enemies).

“Think you already got that covered,” Romulus smirked at him.

“Okay, I hate when you guys do this. What. Are. You. Saying,” Sirius looked slightly annoyed, but it was mostly amusement.

“None of your concern,” they replied in perfect unison.

“Don’t play mind games right now. My brain didn’t get its respective break because of four-eyes here,” he jerked his head in James’ direction.

“Sorry, but who are you guys?” the redhead asked, looking at them.

“Well, who’re you?” Remus replied, annoyed that they had been interrupted.

“I’m Fabian Prewett. Who are you,” Fabian asked.

“I’m Nunya,” Remus said.

“Nunya what?”

“Nunya Business.”

“......what?” He looked utterly perplexed.

“You heard me,” he didn’t know why, but it was exceedingly easy to pick on this kid. He looked older, maybe 13 or 14, but he didn’t look threatening, and Remus wanted it made clear he wouldn’t take any shit from him just because he was older. “I don’t want you to know.”

“....why not?” he asked, still looking clueless. 

“Yeah, Remus, quit being dwp,” Romulus said, coming from behind, (stupid).

“Oh! You two are the ones from the feast!” Fabian, for a small moment, had a victorious smirk, then turned white with fear. “O-oh, you two are t-the ones from t-the f-feast.”

Remus, who had perfected a manic, toothy smile, gave Prewett one at that moment, “Remember us?” He knew there was a fire in his eyes. He was looking at Fabian like a predator looking at its prey, and Remus liked the way Fabian opened his mouth a few times, then promptly grabbed his toast, and swiftly walked away.

Romulus shook his head besides him, giving him a disapproving look. 

“What? We needed the room anyway. Not like he was important,” he said, slightly defensive at his brother's look.

He tutted, “We can’t do that anymore, Remus. At least try to be nice to people.”

“Hey, they said don’t be mean, that doesn't, Rom, what’s the word for o reidrwydd?” Why was he having such a problem with his English today? Then he felt the eyes of Sirius Black on him, and he remembered.

“Necessarily,” Romulus said.

“Well, that didn’t necessarily mean to be nice to people. I wasn’t mean, just wasn’t nice,” Romulus rolled his eyes, and sat.

_

They wandered around for a bit, Remus and Romulus talking with Lily and Mary about their favourite muggle rock bands, Sirius not having a clue about one band. Remus was pretty  insistent about a band called The Beatles. Mary liked a band called Queen, which name was pretty odd if you asked Sirius. Lily said something about a band called ABBA, and that was quickly encouraged by Mary, but the twins made faces of disgust, saying that, ‘ABBA wasn’t even a rock band’ and Mary said ‘Don’t matter, ABBA is god’s greatest gift’. Romulus liked two bands, Deep Purple and Pink Floyd. Remus agreed, and Mary liked Deep Purple, but Lily was still on how great ABBA was.

The purebloods stayed out of the conversation. James and Sirius shared the same look of confusion when T-Rex was mentioned, thinking about the dinosaur itself, but then Remus explained that it was another muggle rock band.

Marlene, who was pureblood but knew a little bit about some muggle music, mentioned David Bowie, and the two half-bloods and muggle-borns seemed to switch into fangirl mode, and instantly talked about Remus’s favourite song from him, Changes, and just how great it was.

“Sorry, but what are you guys talking about?” James asked. “I’ve never heard of anything you guys are talking about, and I don’t like feeling left out.”

“Sorry mate, I have some old Beatles and David Bowie records, but I haven't got a player,” Remus said, looking apologetic.

“You have records?” Lily asked excitedly.

“Yeah,” Remus replied.

“I have a record player!” she squealed.

“Oh my god yes. Remus has ‘Let It Be’ from the Beatles,” Romulus said.

“Okay purebloods, you're about to get educated,” Mary said excitedly.