Remus walked up the stairs to the boys' dormitories, repeatedly smacking himself on the forehead.

You total, total idiot, he thought. You utter, utter moron. You absolute, unreserved, unmitigated, git.

He paused to open the door to their room, and then resumed. How could he have been so stupid? He hit his forehead with renewed vigour, punctuating the voice in his head with strikes to the front of his skull as it called him all the names it could think of.

Sirius looked up from the magazine he was reading and muttered a greeting Remus couldn't hear over the pounding of his hand on his forehead. "Why are you doing that?" Sirius said.

"Because I'm an idiot," Remus said. "And a git."

He sank down on the edge of his bed and drummed the heel of his hand into his eyebrow, hoping that he might somehow be able to just knock the memory of what he'd done out of his brain. It wasn't working. It was all he could see, all he could think about, and all he could feel. He hadn't even known sensations could come back so vividly, unbidden.

"What?" Sirius said, tossing his magazine aside and looking up a little too eagerly.

Remus grimaced, and gave himself three more knocks to the forehead. All it seemed to be doing was giving him a headache. "I just kissed Susan Dixon in the library," he said.

"How does that make you an idiot?" Sirius said with a look of utmost confusion that slowly became a nod of approval. "She's very kissable."

Remus sighed. Susan Dixon's relative kissability had absolutely nothing to do with it. "I shouldn't have done it," he said.

"But Susan's fancied you for ages," Sirius said, brow furrowed.

"Yes," Remus said, closing his eyes against the thought and the rather odd churning sensation in his stomach. "I know. That's what makes me a git."

"How does kissing a girl who you know fancies you make you a git?" Sirius said. Remus sighed again. He should have known Sirius would be the very last person who'd understand.

"Because," Remus said, as if he was explaining NEWT level Arithmancy to a five year old, "I don't even fancy her, but I knew she fancied me and…." He trailed off and tapped his forehead again with the heel of his hand, just because he couldn't think of anything else to do and he thought he probably deserved it. "Well," he said, reluctantly, "she was just there and she seemed quite keen and so I kissed her because – "

To be honest, he wasn't entirely sure why he'd done it.

Well, he was.

David sodding Reynolds.

He'd been in the library, perfectly happy, when David and Olivia had come in, holding hands and smiling at each other like they invented being in love.

He was a little less than perfectly happy, then.

They'd sat at a table right in his line of sight and laughed at some private joke that he secretly suspected was him, and the familiar sensation of David Reynolds-inspired rage had started to gather in his chest.

But he'd been fine. Absolutely fine.

Well, not fine. Not fine at all, but on a fairly even keel at least.

And then Olivia had slid onto David's lap and started playing with the hair on his oddly-shaped head.

The even keel had been nothing but a distant memory. It was a wonky keel; a dangerously wonky keel.

And then Olivia had started trying to separate David from his lips right in front of him, and, well….

Remus couldn't have remembered the name of the book he was reading if his life depended on it, but he remembered thumbing the index for a hex to turn David Reynolds's head into a sprout. He remembered thinking that he'd settle for a cabbage if he had to. He remembered being annoyed with himself for being petty enough to look up cruciferous-vegetable-head hexes, and being even more annoyed with himself for being annoyed that there wasn't one.

And that's when Susan Dixon had come over to sit next to him, told him she thought he looked miserable and asked if there was anything she could do to cheer him up.

Even though he'd already decided that it wasn't helpful, he smacked himself on the head three times in quick succession, ignoring the fact that Sirius was still waiting to hear the rest of the story.

Susan had a crush on him, and everyone knew it. He knew everyone knew because everyone had told him: Peter had told him, James had told him, Lily had told him, some fifth year he didn't even know had told him, and even Sirius had gotten in on the act, telling him that he should ask her out even though he didn't fancy her because – well, Remus hadn't really listened to the reasoning, but it was something about a certain thing and not looking gift horses in the mouth.

It had all started when she'd told him that some Slytherin boys were teasing her for being Muggle born and he'd said that if it happened again she should come and tell him and he'd sort them out.

He'd meant that he'd sort it out because he was a prefect, and it wasn't until people started telling him that he had a not-so-secret admirer that it clicked that she might have thought he meant something else.

Of all the people who could have sat down next to him in the library and asked if they could do anything to cheer him up….

He'd said he was fine and tried to be convincing, and she'd asked if he wouldn't mind helping her with her homework if he wasn't too busy.

He'd thought about it for a moment, and decided that sitting there seething about David Reynolds and Olivia didn't really qualify as busy, and had agreed.

He'd had a thought – Sirius had suggested the previous day that rather than being 'a pathetic moping tosser' he should take action, try and make Olivia jealous or something – and for just the briefest of brief seconds, the thought that this would be the perfect opportunity had flitted through his mind.

But it was a brief flit. He'd barely registered the thought when he dismissed it.

Until, that was, he leant over to show Susan a passage in her textbook that he'd found useful, and Olivia stopped kissing David and started watching him. He'd wondered if perhaps Sirius was right, that perhaps Olivia was jealous that he was talking to another girl. Another girl who everyone knew liked him.

Now he was sitting on his bed and not in the library under Olivia's gaze, he thought that what he obviously should have done was told himself not to be so ridiculous.

But, of course, he hadn't.

Susan had managed to get ink on her face somehow, and then….

He screwed his eyes shut, unable to stop replaying the image of him wiping the ink of her face and tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear.

For a split second he'd thought that she was actually quite pretty, and wondered what it might be like to kiss her, and unfortunately, that was all it took, and before he really knew what was happening he was finding out.

It had been nice. Very nice. At first it had felt odd to be kissing someone other than Olivia and he'd had a flash of doubt that he might have forgotten how to do it, but soon enough the sensation of her lips on his had taken over. He'd been surprised how different it felt, but it was a good different.

And, ashamed as he was to admit it, knowing that Olivia was watching him kiss Susan, well, meant that he kept doing it for a bit longer than perhaps he would have otherwise.

And then he'd had a thought: what on earth are you doing?

And another one: are you actually doing something Sirius thinks is a good idea?

He'd come to his senses pretty quickly after that, offered Susan a weak smile, mumbled something that he hoped, but doubted, was non-committal about the subject of going to the Quidditch together on Saturday and made as hasty an exit as he thought was polite under the circumstances.

And that's when the voice in his head had started calling him all the names it could think of, and then inventing some new ones because the ones it could think of didn't really do justice to quite what a git he'd been.

"I only did it – " he said. He paused, almost too ashamed to say it out loud. He screwed his eyes shut and swallowed. Wasn't confession supposed to be good for the soul? "I only did it because Olivia was there with her tongue down David Reynolds's throat," he said quickly.

He didn't feel any better. Sirius looked confused for a moment, mentally separating his garbled words. "You decided to take my advice to stop being a pathetic moping tosser and make her jealous, then?" he asked, a rather smug expression on his face.

"Yes," Remus said, glowering. "And now I feel like a git. So thank you."

"Makes a change from feeling depressed and miserable," Sirius muttered. "Did it work?"

Remus ignored the question. "I shouldn't have done it," he said. "Now Susan's going to think I – and we're – and I'm going to have to – and she'll hate me – "

"Could I have the slightly less cryptic version?"

"I think there's a chance we're going to the Quidditch together."

"How much of a chance?"

"A very real chance."

"Why?"

"Because I think I asked her if she wanted to go with me."

"Why did you do that?"

Remus didn't really know why, and he knew that by doing it he'd compounded his problem ten fold. But it had seemed like the thing to do at the time. He didn't want her to think that he'd just kissed her because Olivia was watching and she was there and he thought she wouldn't mind.

He didn't want her to think that. Even though it was the truth.

Remus wailed a nondescript word that seemed to only have consonants in it, grabbed a book from the pile on his bedside cabinet and smacked himself on the head with it before groaning and flopping back on his bed. "Well I think it's a good thing," Sirius said. "Progress. At least you're uttering whole sentences now."

"Oh yes," he said, "this is a big improvement. Now I'm miserable, depressed, stressed and a git. I've got a date with a girl I don't even like who really likes me, and I've got a pounding headache."

He let out an exasperated sigh. How could he have let this happen? How could he have done that to her? How could he have –

The door flew open and James and Peter barrelled into the room, animatedly talking about how they were sure to trounce Hufflepuff on Saturday. Remus curled up into a ball and stared at the wall, wondering whether if he really, really, wanted to, he could just cease to exist.

"Are you alright?" Peter said, tossing his cloak onto the top of his trunk.

"No."

"What's the matter?"

"Did you ever do something so unbelievably stupid that you just wanted to gouge your own brain out with a spoon, just to get rid of the memory?" Remus said. "Or wish you could turn back time just so you could slap yourself really hard? Or did you ever have the feeling that all you want to do is hide somewhere really small so you never, ever, have to deal with another human being ever, ever again, because you're obviously totally bloody useless at it?"

Peter stopped what he was doing and gazed at him, open-mouthed with incomprehension. "Er, no," he said, eying him warily. "I don't think so."

"Why are you being all melodramatic again?" James said. "I thought we were over that?"

Remus shot Sirius a pleading glance and then pulled his pillow over his head and groaned into it. "You tell them," he said.

"He snogged Susan Dixon in the library to make Olivia jealous and now he feels really bad about it because he's a big girl."

"I am not a big girl," Remus muttered into the pillow.

"But you just kissed her?" James said. "It's not like you agreed to go out with her or anything."

Remus lifted the pillow far enough to raise an eyebrow at James. "I thought we talked about the benefits of the kiss and run?" James said.

"Oh he's got the kissing and the running mastered," Sirius said. "It's just the bit in between where he managed to accidentally ask her out that we need to work on."

"Accidentally?" James said. "How on earth did you manage to ask a girl out accidentally? Six months ago you couldn't even ask a girl out on purpose."

Remus pulled the pillow tighter over his face, half-hoping he'd suffocate. All it really did was make his face sweaty. He sat up, tossed his pillow aside and slumped against the headboard. "What am I going to do?"

"I could get off with her, if you want," Sirius said.

"What?" Remus said.

"Well then you'd be able to break up with her for cheating on you, thereby retaining the moral high ground and your reputation as a good boy."

Peter and James exchanged glances, shrugged and nodded half-heartedly. "How do you know she would even – " Remus trailed off as Sirius raised an eyebrow at him and grinned. "Does your ego know no bounds?"

James rolled his eyes. "I think we all know the answer to that," he said.

Potter, kettle, calling, Black, Remus thought.

"It's not a bad idea, though," James said.

"And," Sirius said, "in the highly unlikely event that she does turn me down, she'd come running to you to tell you what a pig I am for trying to get off with my best mate's new girlfriend, and you'd refuse to believe that I'd do that and break up with her for bad-mouthing me."

"The only flaw in the plan being that no-one on the face of the planet – let alone someone who knows you as well as I do – would believe you wouldn't do that," Remus said.

"Hey!" Sirius said, doing a good impression of being genuinely insulted. "I wouldn't."

"Like you didn't try and kiss Olivia before I asked her out?"

"I didn't try and kiss her – "

"That's not what she said."

" – I did kiss her."

It took Remus' addled, headachy, brain a moment to process what Sirius had just said. "What?" he said. His tone was a little angrier than he expected.

"She's the one who broke your heart," Sirius said, raising his hands defensively. "Not me." Remus glowered for a moment. Sirius smirked. "Did she always do that weird thing with her tongue?"

"What weird thing wi – "

Remus stopped himself just in time. He had no desire, on top of everything else, to become the kind of person who discussed that kind of thing with his friends. Especially friends like Sirius. "That's beside the point. How could you?"

"How was I supposed to know you liked her?"

"You could have asked!"

"What?" Sirius said. "Now I'm supposed to ask your permission before I get off with a girl?" Remus folded his arms across his chest and let out an annoyed sigh. "Just so you know, I'm planning to take Heather Noonan to the Quidditch this Saturday," Sirius continued. "Assuming, that is, it's alright with you."

Remus' anger dissipated as soon as it had flared. "She's nuts," he said. Sirius grinned.

"I know."

Remus flopped back on his bed and stared at the canopy. He knew what he'd done to Susan was very unfair – to kiss a girl he wasn't even interested in just to make someone else jealous was bad enough, to choose to kiss the one girl he knew had feelings for him was pretty much unforgivable. And then to somehow ask her out…. He was caught in a hideous hinterland between wanting to deal with Susan like a man and wanting to curl up in the smallest place he could find and hide until it all went away.

He knew he should do the right thing – just come clean and deal with whatever happened next, but the other option seemed so much more appealing. He half-heartedly eyed his bedside cabinet and wondered if he'd fit.

"What am I going to do?"

"I've still got half an hour – "

"We're not doing that," Remus said, rolling his eyes at the very idea.

"You could tell her the truth?" Peter offered.

"And then wait for her to kill you," Sirius said. "Nice plan, Pete."

James looked thoughtful for a moment. "Maybe you should just take Susan to the Quidditch?" he said. "She might grow on you."

"Like a fungus?"

"A nice fungus," Sirius said. "She's a much better kisser than Olivia."

Well that was true, Remus thought. And then hated himself for thinking it.

"Is there any girl in this school you haven't kissed?" he said, trying his best to sound appalled.

"Yes. Heather Noonan, for starters."

"Tell me that's not the only reason you're going out with her."

Deafening silence.

"You're unbelievable."

"I know," Sirius said, his voice lilting with amusement.

Remus stared at the canopy, his brain full of swirling thoughts he didn't want to have to think and images he didn't want to see again. One thought seemed a little louder than the others, though. "When did you kiss Susan?"

"A while ago," Sirius said. "She came over to me in the common room one night and asked me what kind of girls you liked and how she should try and get your attention. I told her to ask you for help with her homework."

Remus closed his eyes and sighed. "Oh bloody marvellous," he said, rolling his eyes. Sirius shot him a what-did-I-do? look. "What do you think I was doing with her in the library?" he said. James and Peter sniggered. "Why didn't you just tell her you didn't think I was interested?"

"Why didn't you just tell her you weren't interested?"

"Because – "

"Because you wanted to kiss her and make Olivia jealous."

Remus opened his mouth to protest before realising that just because he didn't want to admit it, it didn't mean they didn't all know it was true. "She said she didn't want too much help," he wailed in his own defence. "She just wanted a bit of a hint so she could figure the rest out for herself."

Sirius smirked. "I told her you were a sucker for that," he said.

"Was that before or after you stuck your tongue down her throat?" he said, his tone rather more tetchy than he expected.

"You make it sound so unromantic."

"Oh it was romance of the century, I'm sure."

"Don't try and take the moral high ground with me, Moony," he said, wagging his finger at him. "I'm not the one wearing her lip gloss."

Remus rubbed the back of his hand across his lips and blushed. James' lips twitched in amusement, and Remus knew that as soon as he left them alone, he and Sirius would be roaring with laughter at the situation he'd managed to get himself into. "What's the plan, then?" James said, desperately trying not to laugh.

"Go to the Quidditch with her?" Remus said. "Try not to give her the wrong idea?"

"You don't think that kissing her and then taking her to the Quidditch is giving her the wrong idea?" James said.

"I'll – " Remus paused, unsure what on earth he was going to do. "I'll put her off me."

"Put her off you?"

"Shouldn't be too hard," Remus said. "After all, as you're all so very fond of reminding me, I'm a pathetic moping tosser. Who in their right mind would want to go out with me more than once anyway?"

Remus stood as far away from Susan in the Gryffindor stand as he could, given that he was standing next to her. The crowd weren't making it easy, and neither was she – every time he edged away she edged closer, and as every cheer rose they'd be pushed together as people jumped around and hugged. Why did James have to be scoring so many bloody goals?

After about ten minutes he came to the grudging conclusion that James was right, and that just the very fact that he was there with her was giving her the wrongest of wrong ideas.

Idiot.

He edged a little further away anyway, trying to avoid standing on other people's toes and failing. He was so preoccupied that he didn't even notice until an almighty gasp erupted around him that David Reynolds had performed an over-enthusiastic breaking charm, catapulted himself off his broom in quite a spectacular fashion, and had broken his leg.

Under normal circumstances, he probably would have cheered. He might even have danced. But somehow, it had no uplifting effect on him whatsoever, in fact, only serving to make him even more miserable.

After the match had finished, they trudged back to the castle. Well, he trudged. Everyone else ran, whooping.

There was the traditional victory party in the common room, and Remus stood by the fire, desperately clinging to his Butterbeer and running a mental inventory of how his plan was going. Susan didn't seem to be being put off him at all, even though he'd been a pathetic moping tosser for most of the day. It hadn't taken a lot of effort.

He'd tried everything he could think of. He'd been boring – he'd even talked about books on Ancient Runes – but she'd just smiled at him and asked questions as if she was interested in what he was saying. He'd tried not saying anything at all, but she'd got all embarrassed, and blushed and stared at her feet, and he'd recognised so much of himself in her actions that he just couldn't persist with it, because he knew exactly how she must be feeling. He was fast running out of ideas.

It wasn't that he didn't like her. She was very sweet, and good company, and kissing her had been very nice but…. She just didn't make him nervous. He supposed that was what had caused all the problems. If he'd actually have fancied her, he probably wouldn't have had the nerve to kiss her in the first place.

There was only one thing for it.

He waited until she went to the toilet and then darted over to his friends. He fixed Sirius with his best imploring look. "You're going to have to get off with her," Remus said desperately.

"I don't think Heather would like that," Sirius said, eying the corner of the room warily. "And she scares me."

Remus swallowed the urge to wail. "James?" he asked hopefully.

"What if Evans sees me?"

"Since when are you two such a pair of cowards?"

They exchanged a rather disgruntled look. "We're not the ones asking our friends to get off with our girlfriend because we're not man enough to tell her we're not interested," James said.

Remus thought about it and came to the grudging conclusion that he had a point. "Peter?" he asked. Desperate times, desperate measures, and all that. Sirius spluttered a laugh.

"As if Susan would even look twice at – "

"Oh thanks," Peter said, crossing his arms and looking thoroughly disgruntled. "It's always nice to know what your friends really think of you."

Remus sighed. Susan had come back and was waving at him. "Anybody have any bright ideas?" he said through a forced smile. Three blank faces stared back at him. "I'll take anything that'll get me out of this without hurting her feelings and making me feel like even more of a git than I feel now. Anything."

Silence.

"You're just going to have to tell her the truth," James said.

"Hate to agree," Sirius said, "but I think he's right."

Remus grimaced. He'd known even before he'd asked that they were right. In fact, he'd known all along. "Wish me luck," he said grimly.

As it happened, he needed far more than luck. A complete personality change would have been a start, he thought, and possibly a script.

He'd found a quiet spot near the fire, where Lily was chatting quietly with a first year about the match, and his friends were as far away as they could be. The last thing he needed was them watching and sniggering at him. They'd probably be running a sweep stake on how long it'd take him to do it or whether she'd slap him. He started out promisingly enough with a 'Susan, I think we need to talk', and then things went rapidly downhill when he started trying to explain things.

"It's not that I don't like you," he said, quietly. He glanced up at the ceiling in thought. "Well it is – "

Her face fell and his insides shrivelled up as he realised that that was The Worst Possible Thing He Could Have Said. He scratched around the arid corners of his mind for something comforting or reassuring to say, knowing that there was nothing he could say that would obliterate the last words he'd said. "Not that I don't like you like you – it's just that – I don't like you like you like that – "

He wondered if there was a record for using the word 'like' the most times in one sentence. If there was, he felt sure he was in the running. "What I mean is that I don't think I like you in the same way that you like me."

"Why did you kiss me, then?" she said.

Because I'm an idiot and a git, he thought.

"I shouldn't have," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry?"

"Yes," he said.

"You're sorry you kissed me?"

"Not sorry sorry," he said, "because it was nice – very nice – but – "

"Did you just kiss me because you wanted Olivia to be jealous?"

He squeezed his eyes shut and wondered what he should say. The truth seemed too, well, truthful, but lying just seemed, well, worse….

"I'm an idiot and a git," he said. She didn't argue. He hadn't really been expecting her to. "You can hit me if you want," he offered. "I deserve it."

She stared at the carpet and he screwed his eyes shut, feeling absolutely rotten, knowing he had no-one to blame but himself, and thinking that he was the very last person he should be concerned about. He hesitated for a moment and then put his hand on her arm. "Will you be alright?" he asked.

She nodded, and offered him a tight-lipped smile. "I really am sorry," he said.

"Ok," she said, and shrugged. "I think I might go to bed."

He watched her disappear up the girl's dormitory stairs and then sank onto the sofa nearest the fire. He was just resting his head on his hand and letting out a sigh of relief that it was, at least, over, when someone hit him round the back of the head.

He ducked far too late, his hand flying to the throbbing spot on the back of his skull where someone had just whacked him, and looked up, fully expecting to see Susan having apparently changed her mind. He took in red hair and a furious expression and knew he was in trouble.

Lily threw herself down next to him, crossed her arms and glared.

"What was that for?" he asked feebly. As if you don't know, he thought.

"Turning into a boy," she said.

He stared into the flames and wondered if his face was hot because he was sitting so close to the fire or because she'd succeeded in making him feel so utterly disappointed in himself that his skin was burning with shame.

He wondered about it for a long time, eventually coming to the conclusion that it was the latter.

He really hoped Susan would be alright. He couldn't stand the thought that he might have made her feel even a tenth as bad as Olivia had made him feel. He didn't think he possibly could have done, but it wasn't the kind of thing he thought he should leave to chance.

"I know in light of all the violence this is probably the wrong time – " he said, turning towards Lily a little on the sofa. Her eyes flickered with something that looked a little bit like amusement, and she uncrossed her arms, which he took as a positive enough sign that continuing might not be detrimental to his health. " – but could I ask a favour?"

Lily rolled her eyes at him, but then nodded. "Could you go upstairs for me and make sure she's really alright?" he said. Lily unclenched her jaw and he offered her a sheepish smile, before fixing his eyes firmly on the sofa cushions. "Tell her you never thought I was good enough for her," he said. "Give her your speech about moping and chocolate if you have to."

Lily's face softened back into its normal one and she smiled at him briefly. Then she did something he really wasn't expecting. She leant over and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

"What was that for?" he said. Lily got to her feet and looked at him for a moment.

"Still being marginally better than the rest of them," she said.

A/N: Many, many, thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter.

Some of you (quite a lot of you, in fact) thought Remus needed a hug after the last chapter. If you still think he deserves one, leave a review, form an orderly queue and he's all yours : )