crushed - remus lupin

-fourteen-

"And so yeah, I spent the whole summer riding my motorcycle and doing other cool stuff."

"Sirius, you spent the whole summer getting your ass beat at quidditch, stop lying."

James pulled Sirius away from Ella Novak, who Sirius was currently trying, and failing, to impress. The girl had a smirk resting on her face, obviously pleased that he was making such an effort to impress her.

Padfoot and Prongs started walking down the train, looking for their other friends. They passed Peter, who was sitting in a compartment with a bunch of Hufflepuffs.

"Have you seen Moony and Vix?" James asked, waving toward the cheerful girls beside Peter.

"Nope, sorry!"

The two moved on, grumbling about how annoying their friends were to find.

They came across Remus first, who was deep in a conversation with one of the Ravenclaw girls in the compartment he was in, while Veronica played with the ends of his hair. James had to stop himself from visually gagging.

Sirius distracted James from his gag reflex by asking Remus, "Have you seen Celeste? She stayed with you, right?"

"Yeah, she did, but she separated from me, I think she went to sit with Rosier."

A scowl crossed Veronica's face at the mention of Celeste's name, and a scowl crossed Remus' at the sound of Kai's.

"Well yeah, she stayed with him, but he chose to sit with me so." Veronica's voice was horribly high pitched, and sounded shockingly like what muggles call a fire alarm.

Remus' face darkened for a second, and he had to bite back the words defending Celeste that were waiting to be released at the girl beside him.

James and Sirius sighed a bit before moving on to go find Celeste, grumbling rude words about Veronica all the while.

Soon after, the boys found Celeste, sitting in a compartment with some of the biggest douchebags they went to school with. Kai's arm was slung around Celeste shoulders, and she looked as uncomfortable as ever.

"'Leste! D'you wanna join us to go sit down? Though I'm sure these guys are great conversationalists, tell me Mulciber, where do you get all of your jokes? Blood Supremacy Weekly's comic section?" James asked, a teasing smirk on his face.

Celeste looked excited to leave and opened her mouth to let them know before Kai interjected. "She's fine. She doesn't want to sit with blood-traitors like you."

Sirius snarled at the boy in front of him. "I'm fairly sure Celeste has a voice of her own."

She opened her mouth once more, but Kai shot her a look and she shut her mouth once again.

Obviously frustrated, the boys left and went to their usual carriage, to sit there, incomplete, for the second time ever.

-

"Come on, 'Leste! You have to join or I'll
lose my mind!"

James had been trying to convince Celeste to try out for the Gryffindor Quidditch team for a solid hour now, but she wasn't budging.

"You've never even see me fly? What if I'm horrible!"

"I need beaters, and I've seen how you hit Sirius when he's rude to you! If you suck at flying we can deal with that on its own, but I need you to try."

One look at James' puppy eyes, and she gave in.

"Fine, but you owe me pepper imps from Honeydukes for the rest of your life, Potter."