Oranges
It was almost a week and Remus still didn’t know what that scent was, but he was dying to smell it again.
That day, it had been so hard not to touch Sirius, not to look at him and lick his neck and see if he could taste that sharp apple scent in his mouth, that Remus had to exit the room quickly with his books held over his lap, and at that point, he gave up trying to deny he wanted to do not-just-regular-best-friends things to Sirius. Like lick all over his skin.
The first stretch was such a success, but only for a minute – he worked hard to pretend he hadn’t noticed anything, and being able to smell Sirius like that was bliss (torture, because he couldn’t do anything about it, but bliss), but after a minute the scent of Sirius’ emotions transformed again, like they had at breakfast. Confused and scared – rotten lemons – and then more fear. Sour milk. Vinegar. He hadn’t smelled such strong emotion off of Sirius for a long time, and although he didn’t want to discourage it, (maybe Sirius did believe he had a cold? That he couldn’t smell?) he wanted Sirius’ crisp apple smell back. Sharp. Demanding. Delicious.
So he stretched again. He didn’t know if it would work, but he didn’t want Sirius afraid anymore, so he slowly, carefully, “accidentally” pushed his leg against Sirius’ too. For reassurance, he told himself. And it worked. Perfectly. Except, now, it was Remus’ turn to try to hide (his boner) and run off after class. Great. Now Sirius would think he was avoiding him, avoiding this whole awkward situation, except for that he caught a whiff of relief (floral) right before he left; Sirius wanted to be left alone too. He could do that. This would be ok.
So now here he was, sitting in the library a week later, feeling guilty and wanting to make Sirius feel that way again, in equal measure. And here was Lily, who had come in smelling like oranges, and he felt equally guilty, knowing her secrets when he didn’t mean to.
“How was your day, Lily?” Remus asked, as he set out his potions homework. It had been a while since he had needed her help on essays, but he liked to get the work done while she was around, anyway, in case she had suggestions. Or more like, snarky comments whenever he said something incorrect. He was not below just reading his essay out loud and listening for when she made derisive noises. And he knew she didn’t mind.
“Oh, alright, I guess… I’ve been looking forward to going to Hogsmeade next weekend with James. Maybe after he’ll stop bothering me so much,” she said, distractedly, leafing through some history notes. Remus knew this was a lie. (Not that James would ever stop going after her, he wouldn’t, not when she had given him the slightest attention, but the idea that she wanted him to leave. She didn’t.) He had wanted to get her feeling focused, or happy, or curious, or something other than… oranges.
What if he told her? He didn’t have to tell her everything… there was such a thing as Legilimency, and he had heard that some people had that ability from birth, not from any learned skill. He could just say that he could magically pick up on other’s emotions. So what was the worst thing that could happen if he told her?
She could find out he was a werewolf. But she was a true friend, and she would never harm him, and besides, as a muggle-born, she didn’t have some of the same prejudices others did. He thought it would be okay, really.
She could be furious at him for not telling him yet… but that was why he wanted to tell her, and surely, she would understand that, right? Messing with people’s emotions was what he wanted not to do. And he really needed help with Sirius.
Also bad: the possibility that she would want him to learn more Legilimency to control himself, which he couldn’t. Maybe he could tell her he was trying to do that already.
He hardly noticed, in all of this, that her scent had changed to something like clean robes. Caring, or maybe she was worried about him. He sighed.
“Are you alright, Remus? You’ve been a little off the past week. Is everything alright?” Lily’s green eyes picked over Remus, trying to figure him out. To be honest, he was quite surprised she hadn’t found out his “furry little secret” yet. Maybe she had. Maybe she just hadn’t known about the “smelling-people’s-emotions-in-a-blatant-disregard-of-privacy” part. Ugh.
“I’m alright, I’ve just…” Remus stopped. Was he really going to do this? To trust her with this? Why not? “So. Have you ever heard about people who are natural legilimens? Like, can feel people’s emotions from birth, or whatever?”
Lily frowned. “I didn’t know there were natural legilimens like that. I mean, Severus always thought that branch of magic was interesting, but I just thought it was creepy. Why would you ever want to see the inside of someone else’s head? And yeah, yeah, it’s not mind reading, Sev told me that enough, but I still don’t like it.”
Oh… shit. This was not turning out well, Remus always hated to bring up Snape around Lily. “What if… they couldn’t help it? Like a baby, or whatever, couldn’t help reading emotions? What if they hated it?”
“I suppose that would be different… it would probably be inconvenient, I’d imagine, not being able to turn it off…”
“It’s so inconvenient.” Remus could have smacked himself across the forehead. That was not the way he wanted that to come out. He closed his eyes, and breathed slowly, waiting for Lily to yell at him, or tell him off, or any number of things. Instead, he smelled her disbelief, some herbal spice, and then, annoyance – smoke – of course, and then, was that cinnamon? Amusement? He opened one eye slowly.
Lily was gaping at him across the table, looking stunned, and then let out a loud peal of laughter. “That makes so much sense! So that’s why you’re so good at taking care of people, you gave Mary a handkerchief the other week before I had even noticed she was crying, and YET you’re so oblivious whenever someone isn’t right next to you, you dumbass! Marlene was trying to set Mary up with you, did you even notice? “Mary thinks you’re sweet, Mary likes studying with you,” and you know what you said? “I hope you and Mary have a fun time at Hogsmeade together”, TOTALLY ignoring what she said! You dumbass!” Lily paused, considering. “Wait. Does Marlene like Mary?”
Remus looked at her, stunned. Waiting. Would she be embarrassed, now that she knew he could tell what she was feeling? It didn’t seem like it. He guessed she had actually been fairly open with him before; it wasn’t too much different. He hoped. Maybe she was just avoiding it by feeling other things, instead. Maybe she hadn’t entirely realized yet.
It took another couple of seconds for her words to sink in. “I… didn’t… I knew… ah fuck. I didn’t know Mary liked me, I guess because she’s been avoiding me ever since that conversation with Marlene…” Remus paused. He knew who Marlene liked. He knew who liked Marlene. He knew who liked Mary (Peter, although he just was happier when she was around - no lust, that he could tell). He couldn’t tell Lily any of that. “Lily, that’s the problem. I know all of this shit that I shouldn’t know, and I don’t want to make people uncomfortable around me by telling them that I can tell, but I don’t want to invade their privacy. Don’t you see how this could be an issue?”
Lily was grinning back at him now. “I can tell who likes who, too, for the most part. It doesn’t take magic.” Her face softened. “I guess I can see how that could be uncomfortable, but the fact that you’re considering that makes it… not okay to pry, I guess, but you’re being considerate. I know you’re not malicious. It’s okay.”
Lily considered for a minute. Remus caught a brief hint of oranges before molding vegetation, and his face became somewhat red. Okay, now he was in for it. Now she understood.
Lily’s face was also turning bright red, reflecting her embarrassment and clashing with her hair. “You won’t tell James, will you?”
“NO! Lily, no, no, I won’t. I… well… I’ve been around you a long time, and I haven’t told James anything. I don’t really talk about it with anyone, much. It doesn’t do me many favors… the Marauders all know, of course, and you. But not many others. I don’t want it to change things, and I’m sorry for invading your privacy.” Remus also stopped to consider. “I’m telling you now because I need your advice…”
Lily seemed to collect herself a bit at this. “I’ll give you advice if you do me a favor.” Her grin was back, a little too mischievous for Remus’ liking, reminding him uncomfortably of James. Or comfortably. Good god, they would be such a power couple.
“What’s the favor?”
“I want you to tell me if any of my friends are pining for each other unnecessarily. I’ll tell you who I suspect, and you just have to confirm or deny. In a way, you’ll be doing them a service; I’ll stop at nothing to get them together. If one of them doesn’t feel the same way, you can just say not to try, no harm done. Does that sound okay? Using your powers for good?”
This was the exact sort of shit that James would pull if he were a little more of a match maker. He had already told the Marauders that he wasn’t going to carelessly tell anyone anything that they shouldn’t already know, but Lily wasn’t a Marauder. And this did seem like a good cause. And he really needed her help.
“I’ll do it.”
“Marlene and Dorcas.”
“… yes...” Remus could have added that Marlene did, in fact, like Mary, but he thought she liked Dorcas rather more, and would be happy. Dorcas was head over heels for her, too. It smelled like pineapples.
“YES! I can’t wait, I have a plan made already!” Lily smelled like springtime and cinnamon, and it made Remus happy too. Thank fuck she hadn’t been angry with him or embarrassed for long. “So what’s your problem?”
“Something… odd… happened last week.” Remus knew what he wanted to say but saying it out loud was something else. How pathetic could he get? “Sirius had a new smell… I mean a new emotion.” God damn it. He peeked at Lily, who didn’t seem to think anything of it, and was waiting for him to continue. “Sorry, they… the emotions… they have specific smells associated with them, to me.” That was kind of backwards, but oh well, Lily didn’t need to know that. “And… I don’t know what it is. The emotion. Of Sirius’.” Remus flinched. This was sounding lame, even to his own ears. “And I really like it. And I want to smell it again. It smells so good, like crisp apples, and it’s just fantastic, and I can’t even eat apple pie without thinking about it, except apple pie doesn’t smell as good, and I so want to taste it, and I can’t just ask him what that was, because he’s so careful about hiding his emotions… it happened at lunch when I told a joke and stretched and then right after he was mad and scared and I kind of ran away and he went to… shower, I think, so I wouldn’t smell him, and then in Transfiguration I just wanted to smell it again because it’s so delicious and so I made him look at me and stretched again, even though that was stupid, and he felt whatever it was again and I almost… Lily, this isn’t funny!”
Remus knew he had been rambling, and he was actually quite caught up in himself, in trying to get the story out as fast as possible before he smelled her disgust, that he didn’t realize for slightly too long that what she was actually feeling was amusement, and happiness. Spiced wine, maybe. And then a second longer to recognize that that wasn’t what was showing on her face, until she burst into peals of laughter.
“You’re really not kidding about this shit, are you? I was trying to be an understanding friend, but oh well, if I can’t hide it, that’s super funny!” Lily got out between giggles, laughing harder at a bewildered Remus.
“I just told you I made my friend uncomfortable, on purpose, and you think it’s funny?” Remus was still disbelieving. “I’d do practically anything to smell that again, and I thought you would be disgusted, or mad, or tell me to give it a rest! I need someone to tell me to quit it and leave him alone because I’m having a hard time convincing myself of that right now, and I can’t ask something like… this… from James or Peter!” He put his head down in his hands, and then brought it right back up. He could smell how she felt, why could he then hide from her? Merlin, this was mortifying.
Lily’s joy had subsided, but she was still surprisingly calm. “Remus. I really am sorry that this is making you upset, but… can you tell me, do good and bad emotions… smell… different, to you?”
Remus tried hard not to flinch. He wasn’t quite ready to tell her the werewolf thing quite yet; her talking about smell was still uncomfortable. “Yeah, vastly different… usually, good feelings smell like good things, in general. And I know you’re going to say that if it smelled good, it must be a good feeling, right? But then why would he be trying so hard to keep it away from me?”
Lily nodded but didn’t answer. “Okay, so tell me, do different emotions smell the same coming from different people?”
“No… a lot of times, they smell similar, but not quite the same. Most of the time I have to use context clues. See, that’s another thing; I love the smell of laughter, from anyone, and I hate fear, from anyone, and I might like Sirius’ laughter more than others, but I’ve never smelled anything this attractive on anyone else…” Remus stopped, sure he had said too much. He had told her he was bi a long time ago, but he didn’t need her thinking he had a crush on Sirius. Even if I want to lick his neck and put my fingers through his hair. They were just friends. They were best friends. He did not need to be in love with Sirius, who wouldn’t ever feel the same way. I’m fine, totally not crushing on my best friend, it’s fine.
Lily’s happiness was back, simmering beneath the surface of an otherwise calm exterior. And the mischief in her eyes was back, too. “Ok. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to try to do some recon by talking to James. I’ll try to figure out if he’s talked to James about this, and then we can figure it out from there. I’m not going to give you any advice yet, because you’ve probably thought it all out, and more, but maybe if we know what it is, you can get past it somehow. Alright?”
Remus knew better than to disagree with her outright, when she was plotting something. She was just as good at making plans as any of them, although usually to different ends, and she never got in trouble. But this determination from her about this subject was almost frightening. “… you won’t tell James about this, will you?”
“No, I won’t tell him about Sirius… although, is it alright if he knows I know about your… Legilimency? You did say that he already knows about it.” Her eyes almost pierced right through him.
Remus flashed through scenarios in his head. Tell her yes, and he would have to tell James that he talked to her about it. Tell her no, and she would want to know why, and he might have to tell her he’s actually a werewolf. Why else would he say no? “Yes, yeah, yes, that’s alright,” he bumbled. Wait, now he would have to talk to James about why he talked to Lily. Fuck, why was this getting so complicated? Lying should be second nature by now, he hid everything, why did it have to be so difficult when his emotions were involved?
And why was this particular issue so emotional? Okay, sure, it was technically about an emotion, but why couldn’t he get himself together? So what if he loved this feeling from Sirius, and he wanted to smell it again – and lick his neck - and crush my lips to his and stick my tongue in his mouth and – okay, so he was totally crushing on Sirius. And he desperately needed Sirius not to know, because he was his best friend, because he loved him. Because he was in love with him.
Fuck.