This is a really short bit on Remus pretty much just thinking. He's supposed to have Aspergers and Savant Syndrome in this fic but I don't know if I portrayed it quite right, seeing as although half the people I know have either Aspergers or PDDNOS, I don't have it and therefore can't really understand it. So if I made even the slightest misconception or worded something in a way that made it look as though I was making one, please don't hesitate to contact me and tell me and either I will fix it or take the story down all together.
By the way, this was written for the World Autism Day challenge by Nargle-Lover15. (Note to her, I didn't actually end up using my prompt...)
Remus stood outside of Charms, waiting for his friends. Inside his head, he did math problems to keep his mind occupied. His favorites were squares and quadratic equations, but he didn't like using the equation they gave you as a short cut. That made it far to easy. It was much better to complete the square. That way he actually had to work it out and wasn't just plugging in numbers.
Remus was a genius, everyone said so. Ask him any question and he could answer without the slightest hesitation. Not many wizards knew anything about math or science - it simply wasn't required for magic, in most opinions, but Remus disagreed. Wasn't magic, in essence, science? It wasn't as if the power came from nowhere humans could see or comprehend. There was a Wizarding gene, everyone knew that. But most people didn't know what genes were really were. Many wizards did not know that your genes made up just about everything about you, from a bad habit of chewing your nails to the color of your eyes. Most wizards would not know that the answer to the question, "What chromosome determines gender?" (the answer was the last chromosome. Another interesting fact was that girl's 56th chromosome looked like two straight lines, while a boy's looked like a straight line with a crooked one to the left. Just in case you were wondering, although he doubts you were.) Most wizards are not aware that the gene for Huntington's disease is in your 4th chromosome.
But Remus was. He knew all that and more. Math was a strong suit for him, yes, but science was even better. He knew anything and everything in every science book in his town's muggle library - he had read them all several times. While some considered this boring and unimportant, Remus thought it interesting and exciting and didn't understand why more people didn't try to find out as much as possible about the human body and how it worked.
"Isn't that right, Lupin?" Remus was startled out of his thoughts by a sandy haired boy who came up to about his chin. He recognized him as Damian LaFrancois.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?" he asked.
"I asked if you thought the Harpies were going to slaughter the Tornadoes in the next match?" Remus didn't pay much attention to Quidditch, but he remembered Sirius and James had been talking about it in the common room the other day. James had said the Harpies were sure to win because the Tornadoes top Chaser was out because of the broken arm he had gotten last match and he had been replaced by Gwenog Jones, a rookie who'd only graduated Hogwarts two years ago. Remus regurgitated this information to LaFrancois, who grinned and turned to Hufflepuff John Sernoffsky.
"I told you so. Even Lupin thinks so." Remus wasn't sure if this was an insult or compliment, so he refrained from commenting.
"Jones is really good though. They wouldn't have let her replace their top player if she wasn't." Sernoffsky insisted, but LaFrancois only shook his head.
"A rookie is a rookie, Sernoffsky. No matter how good she looked at Hogwarts, this is a professional team. Just cause you had a crush on her..."
"I did not!" he insisted, turning pink. Damian only laughed, and Remus realized this was a joke and he should laugh too, so he did.
The class was ushered inside and Remus wondered where the other Marauders were. He wondered if they were attempting to pull a prank and were late, but they should have realized that being late would make them stick out like a sore thumb as the perpetrators. He thought they were a bit smarter than that. At the next table, he could have sworn he heard Sernoffsky as LaFrancois if "that Lupin kid's laugh sounded fake to you?" but it didn't bother him much. Of course it had sounded fake; it was fake, in essence.
James and Sirius eventually entered the classroom, muttering the usual excuses about having lost their books or taking a wrong turn down the corridor and receiving eye rolls and a detention each in return. Remus relaxed as they sat on either side of him and reported Peter having gone to the hospital wing with an upset stomach. He always felt more relaxed with his friends around him. With them, he didn't have to prove himself, didn't have to be anything besides him. They didn't expect anything extra from him and they didn't want him to be anyone else for them, and he was grateful. He had, in his opinions, the best friends he or anyone else could hope for, and he wouldn't give them up for the world.