He sat there, staring at the tea he'd just poured into the delicate china. His mother would shout at him if she saw him using it. With a soft plop, the tea strainer was dropped into the scalding water, and he continued to stare down as the first bit of dark red, or was it brown? seeped out, and darkened the water to a dirty tint.

He hadn't put enough tea leaves in. He had meant to make rose tea, but as he took the cup in his cold hands and took a sip, he realized it was just hot water, with an undertaste of bitterness. He had never made tea for himself before; he was used to Hogwarts. Tea was always already made. It was the people that knew how to make a good cup of tea he admired.

The first and only time Remus had made tea for him, it tasted wonderful. It was then, as he lay there in his dormitory bed on Christmas vacation, just done being violently sick, that he realized how different Remus was from everyone else. Remus was...strange. What a lovely, refreshing word to think, to voice. How strange were his long, slender fingers, letting the tea strainer down into the teapot with delicacy and precision, and how strange the way he gently poured the darkened water into a teacup for him. It was so strange how he actually sat on the bed, next to him, not caring about germs, or whatever he could catch from him, the sick boy, sick as a dog. It was strange, the way he had leaned forward, teacup in his hand, and so strange, the way he'd put the teacup to his dry lips silently, and smiled that small smile that crossed his lips when a few sips were taken. And a few more, once he realized how nice the tea tasted. Remus kept looking at him, always silent, never the way other boys were.

He hadn't been sick since four years ago, when he'd taken his first sip of that tea. Remus had said it was rose tea he'd made for him. It couldn't have been rose tea. This tea, which he had now taken yet another sip from, tasted awful. He dumped it out in the sink. The tea strainer clinked sadly as it hit the porcelain, the top fell off. Soggy rose petals and black twigs were strewn across the off-white of the sink.

He wondered, then, for the first time in the three weeks since summer vacation had started, what Remus was doing. He realized he knew. Friends weren't supposed to give away secrets that could mean the other friend's life. Remus knew; he knew; and so now it came to this: Remus was reading a book, sitting in that wooden chair by his window, perfectly happy and forgetting he had ever had friends.

Remus, in his strange, distant way, was forgetting about him.

Strange, the way he suddenly became terribly, violently sick in the sink, for the first time since that one day, when he'd seen Remus' face closer to his than it ever had been and ever would be, felt the mattress sink slightly with his light weight, and tasted on his lips the peaceful heaven made only for him.