Different

Smiles

He is only eleven when his father tells him he can never marry or have children.

"I'm sorry," he says sadly. "Perhaps I shouldn't have told you so soon. But it isn't safe. Not with – what – who – you are. I thought I should tell you before you went to school and started looking at girls." Lyall Lupin swallows and will not look at his son. "As we all do," he said. "But – you can't. Not in that way."

Remus barely understands. He doesn't know any girls. He doesn't see how looking at them can be different from looking at boys. It is nearly the end of his first year at Hogwarts before he begins to see. She is tall and blonde, a sixth year, and the unloved cousin of his friend. She is part of a group of senior Slytherins; very sure of themselves, very loud, very happy.

"Why are you looking at her?" Sirius asks, when he notices Remus' gaze directed at Narcissa. "She's a bitch, like the rest of the women in my so-called family."

Remus colours.

"She's pretty," he says. "I like looking at her. She has a nice smile." He can't explain of course, that looking is all he can ever do' that he can't flirt as Sirius and James are already beginning to, that he won't ever have a girlfriend, let alone anything more. That explanation would lead down roads he isn't ready to travel. Not yet. Not even with his friends.

Years later, he is sitting at a table in Sirius' old home, at a meeting of the reconvened Order of the Phoenix. The girl opposite him is very young, and her hair is bubble gum pink. But she has a smile he remembers, a smile just like her aunt.