I've returned from the past

Chapter 23

Hadrian stared at his portrait and the portrait stared at him- Remus looked between them with a look of inexplicable alarm. 

For some reason, since early morning, everyone had been avoiding Hadrian and he hadn't even run into Arcturus. Now he's perfectly capable of tracking each and every one of them down but the energy is wasted if they don't actually want to speak with him and he'd much rather that they didn't. 

But he does want to know why. 

So he's waiting for the portrait to confess. Which it won't because Remus is there. 

Instead he looks incredibly bored, staring at him- and the judging feeling he gets doesn't go away. 

The staring competition ensues. 

He still sees the slight scar peeking out from the collar of his robes in the portrait- from a run in with a killer- and there's still that nick by his ear- still that stupid arrogant air around him didn't seem to go away- could nobody see how pretentious this guy looked? 

Hadrian must be making a weird face at the portrait because Remus pokes him on the shoulder. 

"Are you done staring at him?" 

"No. How the hell did the Dark Lord fall for that?" 

"Pup!" Remus hisses, the copy gave him a, 'You're me and I'm you. You're talking crap about yourself-' look. Then returned to looking at his nails. 

"Look at him!" He motioned to the whole portrait. Remus actually seemed to have a visceral reaction as he dragged Hadrian away. "Hey it's not offensive if it's truth!" 

"Honesty without kindness is just brutality," Remus points out with a rather rugged tone. 

"Kindness without honesty is manipulation," he argues. "I'd rather be brutal." Remus sighed deeply. 

"You are too young, seriously..." I am not. I'm old enough to be your frickin great grandfather. Actually how old was he... forty-eight plus the thirty-four plus fourteen... He stumbles in his steps. 

Merlins fucking uncle- he cannot seriously be ninety-six. Ew... he was twenty-five years older than Tom- does that count as grooming? 

Oh hell no, he would not be going there. 

"My wrist hurts can you let go?" Remus pauses and lets go of Hadrian's reddened wrist with a sigh and ran a hand through his brown hair. 

"Listen pup, there are people in here that would kill you for saying that." 

"Would Sirius?"

"No but Lord Black would."

"He's not here." Remus stared at Hadrian with a furrowed brow. 

"How do you know that?" 

"I can't feel him."

"Can you feel everybody?"

"Yes. I know where everybody is. Thaddeus is strangely confined to the library, Reinhard is in the duelling room with Aiden, Abraxas is in his bathroom looking in the mirror as always and he's been there for a few hours, Arcturus is having tea in the kitchen with Narcissa, Lucius and Regulus. Sirius disappeared a few hours ago for something and your here. I think I also felt Barty but strangely enough he's in the Dark Lords room." Remus blinked at him rather slowly and then said slowly, 

"That was rather informal." 

Hadrian gave his teacher a snide look and said, "Would you like me to repeat what I said with all the unnecessary Lords, Ladies, Mistresses, Madame's and Monsieur's or-"