Portraits of a Flower in Bloom | Jily

13: Crash Landing on You

~ Sunday 18th September, 1977: Remus & Sirius's day ~
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Remus sighed heavily again, rubbing his temples with his inked stained hands. He glanced out the windows, squinting his eyes, trying to get them adjusted after hours of mindless focus on homework. The Hogwarts' grounds wore the early afternoon like a beautiful, light jacket. Despite it being Autumn, it was relatively mild and the sun sat happily in a cloudless sky... Now if only my goddamn stupid mind was as cloudless as the stupid sky, Remus thought bitterly.

Despite the wonderful day occurring outside, Remus had been writing and reading and researching furiously for the past 5 hours, to take his mind of a certain situation that had occurred the night before. He folded his arms on the table and laid his weary head to rest, looking down at the lazy Sunday below him. He spotted a group of third year boys walking round the lake, jokily trying to push each other in when any of them let their guard down. Remus chuckled, remembering the last week of 6th year. James and Sirius made another one of their ridiculous bets, somehow winding up with Sirius twenty feet in the air, jumping off his broomstick into the lake. He remembered James laughing so hard he almost threw up. He remembered Sirius swimming back as fast as he could to try and beat James with his broomstick. He remembered Sirius jumping out of the water, shirtless and soaked head to toe, his hair was slightly shorter then, and was slicked back, shining in the Summer sun.

Remus bolted harshly upright, almost certainly rupturing something in his back, "time to- time for charms now. Yes, charms" he whispered to himself.

The reasons that Remus was in the library were as follows. One, he had homework that he needed to do (a given). Two, Sirius never goes in the library. Therefore, one plus two equals three: he wouldn't have to see, or talk to, or think of Sirius for a whole day. And a special added bonus: Four, if he ever started thinking about a certain black haired boy, he would add another hour to his time in the library. Thus, lots of time in the library, plus ignoring any feelings entirely, equals good grades and a clear mind. The only unfortunate downside with this plan was that, at the rate he was going, he'd be in the library until he was around one-hundred-and-three years old.

Remus groaned and face planted the table. Why was this god-awful, snobbish, flirtatious, self-righteous boy living within every nook and cranny of his mind. He truly could not understand. Sometimes, back in their first years at Hogwarts, Sirius played on his mind a lot. His hard home life had created a sullen boy who could sometimes break down. That used to play on remus' mind from day-to-day, that feeling that he wasn't the only one who had life a little tougher than others. He felt like they could relate in a way the other just couldn't.

But now... he didn't think it was because he felt sorry, or similar to Sirius, it was... something else. Something very, very irritating indeed. Something that made him think about every detail of every interaction they'd ever had and feel a horrible spiky feeling in his stomach. He let out a silent scream into his History of Magic essay.

"Yeah I get you, Mr Binns' assignments have me thinking maybe it'd be easier to become part of history rather than have to write about it."

Remus jolted up, coming face to face with that one certain boy, much closer than he had expected, "what the fuc-"

Remus' mind decided to turn to fight of flight mode at this unexpected circumstance. Well, closer to 'blind panic' or 'cry uncontrollably' mode, more than fight or flight. And today his body chose the classic Blind Panic. Which included a special move of: launching your body as far away from Sirius as possible... whilst on a chair.

"Jesus Christ, Moony are you alright?" Sirius jumped up from his chair, leaning down to Remus, inspecting his head that had just made a very loud thwacking sound against the centuries old wooden flooring, "I didn't mean to scare you that much, is your head okay? I sounded like a pretty solid whack."

Remus slowly sat up, rubbing the very hot and throbbing back of his head, "yeah, no, absolutely fine, I feel... fine."

His body decided today was the perfect day fo continual betrayal and Remus suddenly felt his body going limp as his mind took in a flurry of bright lights and a horrible ringing noise. He could feel himself falling back down to the ground again. Here we go again, he thought, falling bitterly back down, I suppose this is how I die.

Instead of a horrible, ricocheting pain throughout his head, he felt his body falling gently into a soft embrace, "I've got you", Sirius whispered, his eyes in a sad, worried frown, "don't try and sit up again, you've hurt yourself , but I'm here, I got you."

He smiled sweetly, and Remus felt his eyes swell with tears. As Sirius turned away to ask the librarian who'd come to check on the commotion if she could get the nurse, Remus felt hot tears drip down his face, his hands unable to wipe them away before Sirius turned back.

"Hey, no don't- don't cry, your totally fine, there's no blood, you'll be fine, it's all good," Remus could tell Sirius was panicking, his eyes had grown so big with fright he now resembled a lost puppy dog looking longingly for its owner. Remus could feel a horrible rush of pins and needles flow through one of his hands. He craned his neck ever so slightly to see where Sirius' hands were placed around his stomach, holding his body ever so gently. Remus placed his hand over one of Sirius'. He could see a flicker of confusion cloud Sirius' face momentarily, before he looked Remus back in his tear-swollen eyes, and gripped his hand.

"Jeez Moony, you must of really put some strength into that chair move if you're willingly showing me this much affection," Sirius laughed quietly. Remus could see last the jokes, and into the genuine aspect of worry that was seeping into Sirius' mind at the moment.

Remus tried to let out a chuckle, that came out more as a light cough.

Sirius' eyebrows furrowed even more, "so-sorry, I'll shut up. I know you're actually in pain... sorry."

Remus smiled a minute grin, as much as he could bear to try and signify he was okay. That the pain - the very real pain that coarsed through his veins and drove around his body; the pain that had caused the floods of hot tears to flow from his eyes, was not from the probable concussion he'd just acquired. It was instead caused by the feeling of his heart feeling as thought it had been surgically removed from his body, as he realised the reason this stupid, arrogant, confident, beautiful boy who was holding him right now had been constantly running through his mind since the Summer holidays... was because he was in love with him.

This is... not good, was Remus' last thoughts before he fully passed out.