I will be brave

Prologue

Remus Lupin was a bit of a weirdo.

He was staggering around the halls, shaking from head to toe, the skeletal hands torturing each other on his lap.

He was physically smaller than anyone else in that castle. His wrist was fine, he could simply surround himself with two fingers, and his face was mostly made of angular bones pointing from all sides in an unclear way.

His honey-colored eyes were always surrounded by black bags, as James Potter, one of his roommates, had kindly pointed out on his second day at Hogwarts.

Apart from that question (to which Remus had lowered his head blushing conspicuously) he and his companions had turned the word just a couple of times and in the most banal situations.

Once, for example, he had met Peter wandering aimlessly in a corridor on the third floor and Remus had kindly shown him the way to the Common Room. Another, however, Frank Longbottom had inadvertently spilled pumpkin juice into his shirt and apologized deeply mortified, swearing he would clean it in a flash.

Sirius Black was his fourth (and last) roommate, the only one to whom he had turned more than a vaguely curious look, the first time he had heard of the sixth-year girls discussing him.

He always walked around with James, his hands in his pocket and a constant grin on his sharp face. According to what the professors said, he was extraordinarily gifted in any subject, practical or theoretical.

This did not make up for the fact that, unfortunately, he was conspicuously unwilling to do so.

Remus always considered himself a good observer. The Muggle school had been a nightmare as a child and after three transfers had realized that it would be better not to be noticed. At the canteen and during the interval he sat alone and watched who was around him, sometimes with the company of a good book on his knees that very often remained untouched.

You could tell a lot about a person just by looking at them. Remus knew it well.

Sirius Black was not an easy person to understand, but after a careful analysis lasted the first three months of school, Remus could claim to have found the diagnosis.

Sirius never noticed, Remus was an expert at not being noticed. But even if he wasn't, Sirius Black and James Potter, from the height of their popularity, as attractive, fun, socially gifted and scholastically gifted boys, wouldn't have looked at him more than once in pity.

Sometimes he would have liked to be like them: bold, proud of himself, with the ability to always know what to say. But it was just Remus John Lupin. I mean, a perfect nobody.

At least, until that day.