cigarette daydream || james potter

"Lookin' for the answer,"

The afternoon had begun as something almost gentle.

Sunlight poured across the fields behind the village in long, unbroken streams of gold, catching on the hedgerows and flattening the shadows beneath the trees into soft, wavering patches. From a distance, the world looked slow and harmless-cattle-dotted hills rolling away into a horizon that shimmered faintly with heat, the occasional bird cutting through the sky like a careless thought. Even the air itself felt loose and warm, carrying the faint scent of dry grass and wildflowers crushed underfoot.

Estella walked slightly ahead of Remus along the narrow path that curved behind the last row of cottages.

The ground here was uneven, softened by roots and age, and every step carried a faint crunch of gravel and earth that seemed louder than it should have been in the stillness. She kept glancing back at him, watching the way he moved-not hurried, not tense in any obvious way, but attentive in a manner that never quite belonged to relaxation. Remus always looked like someone who was listening to something just beyond reach.

"You're doing it again," she said at last, slowing until she was walking beside him.

His gaze flicked toward her. "Doing what?"

"That thing," she replied, tilting her head slightly. "Where you make it look like you're here, but you're actually somewhere else entirely."

A faint breath passed through his nose-almost a laugh, though not quite. "I am here."

"That's worse," she muttered.

For a brief moment, something softened in his expression, but it didn't last. The path ahead narrowed as it entered the wooded edge behind the village, where the hedgerows grew taller and the trees leaned inward as if curious about what passed beneath them. The sunlight fractured here, broken into shifting shards by the canopy above, and the warmth of the open field was replaced by a cooler, more contained air.

Remus slowed.

Not abruptly. Not enough to alarm.

But enough that Estella noticed.

"What is it?" she asked quietly.

He didn't answer straight away. His eyes moved through the trees with deliberate stillness, tracking shapes that didn't fully exist yet. A snapped branch. A patch of ground too carefully disturbed. The absence of birdsong where there should have been noise.

"It's wrong," he said at last.

Estella frowned. "It's a park path."

"No," he replied, voice lower now. "It's been used recently. Not by walkers."

That settled something cold in the air between them.

The world didn't change-but the way they stood inside it did.

Remus stepped closer, his attention narrowing with sudden clarity. "We should go back."

"Remus-"

"Estella." Her name this time carried weight.

Before she could argue again, his hand brushed her arm-not forceful, but absolute in direction-and he guided her off the path into the dense undergrowth at its edge. Leaves scraped softly against fabric as they moved, branches bending and releasing with quiet resistance. He led her behind a thick cluster of bushes where the foliage grew tangled and high, forming a natural curtain between them and the clearing.

"Stay here," he said.

Estella caught his sleeve. "What are you-"

"Stay," he repeated, and this time there was nothing uncertain in it.