Thursday 11th March 1976
Hello, Grant.
Wotcher, Remus.
How are you?
How am I? How are you, you silly twat; you’re the one having a made up conversation with me.
Yeah, sorry about that.
S’ok, I’m not busy. I’m not even real.
You are real, I just can’t talk to you in real life. I don’t know where you are, even.
Nuffin’ I can do about that. What’s up?
I kissed Sirius.
Bloody hell.
What should I do?
How should I know? Didn’t I tell you not to?
Yeah, but. He kissed me back. For a minute, at least.
Sure you’re not just imagining that?
Yeah...
Remus gave up at that point. He had been lying awake in bed since at least five o’clock in the morning, alternately panicking and soaring with joy. He had to be mad. Mental. Crazy. Bonkers. Lost it. He’d thought that talking to someone else might help - but who could you talk to that early in the morning? Especially when it concerned a secret which could very well get you expelled, for all Remus knew.
Unable to find a solution by talking to an imaginary person (or at least an imagined version of a real person), he returned to his previous, somewhat less constructive diversion – trying to relive the three minutes on the staircase with Sirius last night without reliving the part where they both ran away from each other.
Did he regret it? It was too soon to tell. On the one hand, Remus might well have just ruined the best friendship he had ever had – or ever would have. On the other hand, it had been a bloody good snog.
In Remus’s limited experience, he thought it probably made sense that just because you really madly fancied someone, it didn’t mean that when you finally kissed them it would be as good as you’d imagined. And Remus knew he had a very vivid imagination sometimes – but Sirius was Sirius. It had been anything but disappointing. It had been perfect, in fact.
As long as you pretended that last part hadn’t happened.
Stifling a groan, he scolded himself and tried to think rationally. Approach it like an essay, he thought. Lay out all the facts, then make your argument.
So, the facts:
a. Remus Lupin had kissed Sirius Black full on the lips.
b. Sirius Black had not immediately thrown a punch.
c. Sirius Black had actually kissed Remus Lupin back (despite what the imaginary Grant had to say)
d. Sirius Black had also kissed Mary MacDonald, immediately afterwards, and with considerable vigour.
e. Sirius Black had not come to bed. At all.
Bollocks. Shitting buggering bollocks.
Remus climbed out of bed, it was no good lying there tossing and turning. He had to get out of the tower. Sirius’s bed lay empty to his left. If he wasn’t in it, then he was most likely in the common room. To be safe, Remus took James’s cloak.
He was good at being quiet and moving without a sound, but he needn’t have worried. Sirius was dead to the world – he lay on the couch, head flung back, the perfect line of his jaw exposed. Mary was curled up against his chest, a patchwork quilt thrown over the two of them. Remus hurried past, wanting to get as far away as possible.
The prefect’s bathroom was probably one of the weirdest parts of the castle. Remus had thought the older students were teasing him, when they gave out the password in the train back in September. He went once, and once only, in the first term, but couldn’t get past the thought of actually removing all of his clothes in such a big open room. What if someone came in?
However, on this particular morning it was the only place he was sure he would not be found – even if the marauders decided to use the map; they couldn’t come and find him without the password.
