The night was a calm one; a waning moon hung low in a sky sparking with stars. A gentle breeze rustled the trees of the forbidden forest, providing a soft ambiance to the castle. A tentacle rose out of the murky depths of the lake just to fall back into the water, spreading concentric waves out over the glassy surface. Hogwarts castle was sleeping, all lights out with the noticeable exception of a single beam from a window halfway up Gryffindor Tower.
"You wanker. You bloody wanker." It wasn't a particularly inspired insult; it lacked imagination and wit and could be applied to almost anyone, unlike the personalized invectives that so often graced the mouth of the wanker in question. However, the pure venom with which the words were spat out into the frigid air of the common room surely gave Remus Lupin a certain number of points on the scale of verbal abuse.
Angry wasn't part of it, Remus reminded himself. He wasn't losing control, he wasn't completely, hysterically enraged. His face wasn't slowly blushing to the color of his maroon, Gryffindor-spirited pajamas; his nails weren't digging into the flesh of his palms until it hurt. He was simply informing the idiot standing across the room of the complete foolishness of his actions in a manner appropriate to the situation.
He was a vaguely aware of Peter huddling in the corner of his eye, the mousy boy's face twitching compulsively from left to right, between Remus and that bloody wanker Sirius Black, who had the nerve to look completely surprised and utterly innocent.
Remus opened his rant by asking, "What in the name of Merlin's stubby left toe were you thinking?"
The voices in Remus' head began their inner dialogue. Merlin's stubby left toe? That's a new one.
"You must have swapped your brains for a case of butterbeer and a snog in the lavatory because what you just did was not only incredibly idiotic, but -" Are you yelling? I think you're yelling now. That's weird. Did you just refer to Professor Binns's underwear? Do ghosts even have underwear? In fact, can ghosts even undress themselves or are their robes permanently part of their being? "-And I can't believe that you'd risk me mauling someone, even if it is that slimy git Snape, because you of all people should know how it feels to be completely -" When you're done with this we should go to the library and look it up. Can ghosts get naked? It's an interesting question. Dammit I don't care! I'm trying to tell Sirius off. Shut up! Shut it NOW!
Remus glared at a considerably guilt-faced Sirius and ended with a disappointed sigh that was somehow worse than the entire previous ten minutes of yelling, his voice hoarse and filled with melancholy as he dealt the final blow, "And I thought you were my friend."
The room was filled with a heavy silence as Remus shrunk from avenging spirit to a lonely and tired boy. He picked up his textbooks, carefully keeping his back to Sirius, and said a quiet 'goodnight' to Peter as he trudged up to the dormitories. He dropped the books in a messy pile at the foot of his bed and crawled under the sheets, staring at the ceiling and wondering what he had done. Thirty minutes later, when Sirius entered the room, he pretended to be fast asleep, furiously, silently ignoring the apology so blatantly stamped across his friend's entire figure. Wanker. He thought to himself, but the word fell flat and failed to provoke the resentment of the moment before.