cigarette daydream || james potter

"lookin' for the answers,"

Over the course of the following week, Estella found herself noticing things she was almost certain she should have picked up on months ago.

It began with little moments that, on their own, seemed completely insignificant. Sirius had always been affectionate with his friends, but now she realised there was a subtle difference in the way he acted around Remus. His grin lingered a fraction longer whenever Remus laughed. He always seemed to gravitate unconsciously towards wherever her brother happened to be standing, whether they were walking through the corridors, sitting in the common room or waiting outside classrooms. If Remus spoke, Sirius listened with a level of attention that he rarely afforded his professors. Even during Quidditch conversations-which ordinarily consumed every ounce of Sirius's concentration-his eyes occasionally drifted towards Remus as though simply checking that he was still there.

Once she'd seen it, she couldn't unsee it.

At first, she'd wondered if perhaps she was imagining things after accidentally discovering Sirius's diary. Maybe she was reading far too much into perfectly innocent interactions because she now knew what had been hidden beneath years of friendship.

But then she began noticing Remus.

Her brother was far subtler.

Where Sirius wore every emotion somewhere on his face if you looked closely enough, Remus had spent years perfecting the art of concealing whatever he happened to be thinking. Most people would never have noticed anything unusual about him. He smiled at the same moments, laughed at the same jokes and continued acting exactly as he always had.

Estella, however, had known him for seventeen years.

She noticed the almost imperceptible hesitation whenever Sirius casually slung an arm over his shoulders. She noticed the way Remus occasionally seemed to forget what he was saying if Sirius smiled directly at him. More than once she caught her brother staring absent-mindedly across the common room, only for him to look away the instant Sirius glanced in his direction.

Neither of them seemed angry.

Neither of them seemed awkward.

If anything, they were trying far too hard to behave normally.

It was that very effort that created the tension.

The atmosphere between them carried a quiet uncertainty, as though they were both waiting for the other to acknowledge something neither of them quite knew how to bring up. Conversations occasionally faltered before one of them hurriedly changed the subject. Their shoulders brushed in corridors only for both of them to move apart just a little too quickly. Every interaction seemed to contain an invisible question hanging between them that neither had the courage to ask aloud.

Estella had spent nearly an entire evening lying awake in bed wondering how she had managed to miss something that now appeared so painfully obvious.

*"Honestly,"* she thought more than once, *"I might actually be an idiot."*

A week after her conversation with Sirius, the castle woke to one of those crisp autumn mornings that promised another clear day. The corridors were filled with the usual chaos as hundreds of students hurried towards breakfast, robes only half-buttoned and ties hanging loosely around their necks. Sleepy first-years stumbled after older students while prefects repeatedly reminded everyone not to run, despite several Gryffindors doing exactly that in the hope of getting the best seats before the hall filled.