Between Coffee And Cigarettes

-12-

After Halloween, Remus seemed to avoid Lenny as much as he could. Whenever Lenny would come into the Great Hall to eat, he would leave immediately at her sight. He would avoid any kind of situations, where the possibility, of them being alone, occurred. Lenny on the other hand didn't complain about it.

After Remus had left the bathroom, that night, she still sat in the tub, for hours. The water eventually got cold, leaving her lips blue, teeth shaking and goosebumps all over her skin. Her frozen body let her snap out of the shock and she hurried to get out of there, hoping she wouldn't catch a cold.

The past weeks, she concentrated on her classes, writing essay after essay, going to the library to study and do her homework.

Her days were always the same: waking up, going to the kitchen early in the morning to get coffee, before heading to the library to study wit Reg. After that she would go, get breakfast and then run to the first period of the day. At lunch, Lenny normally did homework and smoked her fifth cigarette of the day to calm herself down. When her classes were over, she sat down somewhere quiet to write essays, those places mostly being the library, the Black lake, the common room, Astronomy tower or the kitchen. Studying till late, she then would go to bed, sleeping for maybe three or four hours.

The lack of sleep she got was definitely showing, even Peter would comment about how blood drained her face looked and how dark the bags under her eyes were. But to be honest, she couldn't care less right now. Lenny welcomed the distraction from her thoughts about the boy, who always left her behind confused, needless to say that she didn't like that. In fact she hated that he so often could make her speechless and she hated that he seemed to play with her.

So even though she was exhausted physically she was so consumed with her work that the darkness, which so often threatened to swallow her up, was no longer perceptible. When there was an hour of free time or a Hogsmeade night out on the weekends, she truly felt relieved. It had Lenny always confused how random her mood could switch and under which circumstances, but right now, she just enjoyed, not feeling heavy all the time.

Nevertheless, she missed the moments with Remus. He didn't come to the kitchen for two weeks straight and when they met there by accident, he would go immediately. She missed the talks and the silenced they shared between coffee and cigarettes. Oddly, she missed how vulnerable she felt around him and how vulnerable she could make him feel.

Sharing and talking about feelings was never a strength of her. It made her feel uncomfortable and predictable, so she never really talked about them, except with Sirius, Lily and sometimes Regulus and James. 

Mindlessly she stalked up the Astronomy tower. November was almost over and the nights were cold, but clear. Lenny's breath showed up in a little cloud every time she exhaled and her nose was numb and red. Why she ended up here instead of the cozy, warm and good smelling kitchen, she didn't have the slightest clue, but when she saw a familiar figure standing there, leaning on the railing of the window, the freezing air got bearable.

Turning his head, looking over one shoulder to see, who was interrupting his peace, the expression in Remus's face changed. Why her? Out of all people? Why her? Were the first questions that went trough his mind. To him she was like a magnet and to stay away from her for the last month was one of the hardest thing he ever had to do, but right now that didn't really matter, he just wanted to be alone.

Tomorrow was a full moon and, as always, Remus was scared, angry and sad. Scared, because he didn't want to hurt anybody. None of his friends, which ever so kindly turned with him into their animagus form, deserved to get in danger, this great, every month. He didn't mind hurting himself, he was used to that by now, but he could never forgive himself if any of Sirius, James or Peter would get seriously hurt.