Lover // Remus Lupin

Chapter II

Loving someone is equivalent to watching a flower grow. It starts off slow, boring almost, as the roots take to the soil and began to spread their way through it. After time, growth begins to occur. However, if the attention is not given to the flower, the growth will stunt. Sometimes it may continue at a slower rate, other times, it will keel over and cease to live. It all depends on the way it is nurtured and if it was a rapid growing plant or connection or not.

There are a variety of variables when it comes to the idea of fostering love. Settings, family, friends, all those things are events or occurrences that could influence the result of falling in love, positively and negatively. Your own commitment to it as well is a major influence on the success rate of love. If you are unable to feel comfortable in your own skin or are merely looking for someone to fix you, love is the last thing that you will find success and comfort in.

Love is messy and it is crazy and there's no properly controlling it. It's a wildfire that no one can put out and it burns everything it touches. But the burn isn't harmful, more so changing. It changes the perception people have of the world and even how they view themselves. There's no predicting love or controlling it and it tends to prey on the least expecting, forcing them together into something neither understands.

Love can happen in the places you least expect it. You could be enemies who find a common bonding moment and end up falling in love. You could be strangers who have never met before but are thrown together by chance. Or you could be mutual acquaintances because one of your cousins is best friends with the other half of the relationship. There is not set-in-stone storyline that love must follow. Love is familial, it's platonic, it's romantic. It's not something that can be defined by one simple definition.

Even when you feel unlovable or undesirable, perhaps even like a monster, there may be someone in the world waiting for their Beast to take them away from the pompous Gaston. Sometimes, that person just so happens to be the youngest daughter of the Black family, the very same family your best friend escaped from, and you swore never to get involved with.

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"The longer you stare at her the more people will notice," Peter quipped, nudging Remus in the side as the light-brown-haired man stared over at her dark locks cascading over her robes, "Sirius included. Don't want that, do we?"

"Bugger off, Pete," James chuckled, ruffling the blonde's hair, "Padfoot has known about Moony's obsession with Cassie for years. We all have."

"It's not an obsession," Lily butted in as she finished unloading her books from her bag, turning around on her stool to look at the boys, "Remus is allowed to have a crush. Though I'm not so sure why her of all people."

"My cousin is not like the rest of my family," Sirius sighed as he swept into the Transfiguration classroom, "She's one of the only ones I can stand. But she has a betrothed, Remus, we already talked about this."

Remus felt his heart crack slightly at the mention of the man Cassiopeia Black was promised to. The wretched Barty Crouch Jr who Remus knew would cause her nothing but pain. Of all the Black sisters, Remus knew that it was Cassie that had the most potential in life. She wasn't made to be the dotting housewife that created more heirs in the pristine bloodline. The lycanthrope wanted to give the girl the world and more if he could, take her travelling around the muggle countries that he would catch her reading about in the library at night.

Remus Lupin had been in love with the youngest Black daughter ever since first year when she swept in behind her sisters like a hidden treasure. Each Black daughter seemed to have created a wall around their youngest sister to protect her from whatever there was out there. But when Andromeda Black managed to slip her way from the family, the wall cracked, and Cassie began to grow into her own person. As each of her older sisters graduated, Remus watched from afar as Cassie became the person that was always hidden deep down beneath the surface her mother had forced upon her.