The Bet // Remus Lupin Fanfiction

27

"What?!", they yelled together.

"I kissed Remus Lupin at the New Year's Ball", I told them once again.

"And you are telling this to us now? Like when we are on the train returning to Hogwarts? Like a week later?!", Laura exclaimed.

"It's not my fault both of you were on a trip", I mumbled.

"That is no excuse! We could have used the floo network and reached you within seconds!", Clare reasoned.

"Stop blaming me! Do you even know how I spent this last week?! My wish to share it with someone was way more than yours!", I replied.

This shut them up.

"Okay. What did you do after you kissed him?", Clare asked patiently.

I smiled nervously and shifted in my seat. "I ran away."

They stared at me.

"Can you repeat what you said? I think I heard it wrong", Laura said.

I scratched the back of my neck nervously and gulped. "I ran away and went to my parents to tell them that I am returning home using floo powder."

Laura took a deep breath. Clare spoke.

"O-kay. But you surely wrote him after you returned, right? You didn't just leave him standing there without any explanation?"

I looked at her sheepishly. "I did write-", they looked relieved, "but not to Remus. I wrote to Regulus wishing him happy birthday and apologising to him for returning without telling him. I was the one who invited him after all."

The glare the two of them gave me made me squirm uncomfortably.

"So you didn't do anything in the last week? Not a word to him?", Laura asked.

"Um.. Well.. No", I answered and prepared myself for the outburst.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

"How would you feel if someone does that to you?"

"You finally accept your feelings after such a long time and then you decide to leave him hanging in between?!"

"You need to apologise right away!"

This continued for half an hour.

Once they were done with scolding me, they started pestering me to go and talk to him right away. I lost my patience.

"I don't want to alright! I am still not over the fact that I like him, that I like my enemy! I mean, how the fuck is that possible?! I have spent the last four years thinking that I hate him when in reality I was actually attracted to him. Like, can you even imagine how I felt the moment I went back home?! I was screaming in my pillow for literally an hour because I couldn't understand what in the world was wrong with me. But then I eat some chocolates and I start to calm down and then I am smiling like an idiot thinking that he kissed me back, which means he probably likes me too. And then I realise that I am smiling while thinking about him and I start to panic again. My heartbeat rate meets the sky for the hundredth time that night and so I try not to think about him and sleep but sleep doesn't seem to come and Remus doesn't seem to leave my brain. So I am starting to think everything since my first year and I start to doubt if I ever hated him at the first place! And then the worst thought comes that 'what if he thinks of it as a mistake?' because if I didn't write to him, he didn't write to me either, did he? My brain that night and even today is fucked up as shit and I need to calm my nerves and get my thoughts on track before I talk to him because if I don't then I'll end up ranting like I am doing right now and-"