So... Been a while. Yep. I didn't quite realise how long and then I looked and my reaction was thus, "2008? THAT WAS SIX YEARS AGO." I actually have a significant number of words sitting on my old hard drive for this (like, my OLD hard drive, like the one before the last one OLD) but surprisingly I never worked out a way to connect any of it with chapter 2. So obviously some time and space (just, you know, six years of it) + an insane amount of shit to do has revived my muse for writing this dreaded chapter/hopefully the next few. I wouldn't blame anyone for having forgotten about this fic entirely. If you haven't, I hope you enjoy the long awaited third instalment. Enjoy! :)
September 12, 7:47 pm
Bloody hell.
Hate the library.
Have been coming here for two hours every day for the last week. Granted, those two hours a day have meant I've completed more homework in one week than I've completed before in my entire lifetime (although - and I run the risk of using the word granted again here - as Charlie pointed out the other night, most of what I do get done is wrong).
Haven't had much time for diary writing either. Made a special effort to bring my diary today though because, today is the day that I launch project ~move in.~
(Jeremy thinks I need to work harder on creating better project names but Jeremy is a twat, so).
Over last week (excluding the weekend obviously because there's no way in hell I would spend time in the library on the weekend, not even if it guaranteed me immediate sex with Remus - actually I take that back, sex with Remus would probably be more interesting than what I did on the weekend, which was eat and laze about), have accumulated the following notes about Remus Lupin's library behaviour.
- He always arrives at about 8pm and leaves at about 11pm.
- He can sit still (sexily) and write (sexily) for an inhuman period of time.
- He is also left handed, like me, which is obviously a sign pointing to the fact that we're meant to be together.
That's really all I've accumulated. There's only so much staring one can do in a public place before it verges on being illegal.
But today is the day that I use this accumulated information for the purposes of attack. Haven't quite worked out that bit yet. Am slightly apprehensive that if I actually approached him in person with the intention of "attack" I'd either snog him out of pure desperation or have a nervous breakdown that resulted in me saying the word "hello" over and over again, incapable of stopping or moving further into a proper sentence.
I mean, it's possible am over dramatising things slightly. Slightly.
Shit, someone just looked over judgmentally. Cannot afford another Sirius Black disaster. Back to work.
8:10pm
Remus Lupin is late.
Remus Lupin is never late.
Well… At least not in the time I have been observing him.
Maybe he's ill? Maybe he tripped in his hurry to get to the library at eight on the hour exactly and fell down thirteen flights of stairs, breaking every bone in his body, including his left wrist? Maybe he lost that one quill that he always uses and it sent him into a psychotic episode warranting admission to St Mungos?
The possibilities are endless, really.
Am getting quite bored. Obviously it's only been ten minutes past the point where he usually turns up looking responsible, tired and sexy, somehow simultaneously, sending me into what should be irreversible palpitations, but still. My attention span has never been a point for gloating.
8:13pm
Subject has arrived. Repeat, subject has arrived.
(Jeremy and Sirius would be proud of how authentic I sound in my attempt to re-create plans of warfare).
He looks a lot more tired than usual though. He almost looks sick?
8:39pm
Okay something's definitely up. He's been staring at the same line for the past ten minutes without any sign of distinct eye movement. In fact, am not entirely sure he hasn't just fallen to sleep all together.
Can't really approach him in this state, can I?
8:45pm
He was definitely asleep because Lily Evans poked him awake as she walked past just now.
How does she make relatively normal social interaction look so simple?
He's getting up, he's getting up! He's headed for the transfiguration section behind him. He's probably trying to do that assignment on conjuring spells. The one I'm currently struggling through. The one that is in fact due tomorrow.
Should really get priorities in order.
Shit he's looking over here. Why is he looking over here?
Shit! He's walking over here! Shit!
4:57am
Obviously can't sleep. Am still in a state of shock.
Would write more about state of being but it probably won't make any sense without context. Will give context.
Previously, at approximately 8:46pm
Remus approached me pointedly as I scrambled to get all my school work in order (so it looked like I was actually doing some, instead of scribbling in my diary like a mad stalker).
Although, to be honest, I was becoming more and more convinced that I was a mad stalker.
"Are you using that book?"
Remus Lupin was asking me a question.
Directly.
Get it together, get it the fuck together, I chanted to myself.
"Uh… Sorry, do you mean this one?" I stuttered, holding up a tattered copy of Brunswick's guide to advanced transfiguration, my arm whining in protest at the weight of it.
He nodded. He looked… Awful. More awful than I could ever remember him looking.
"Er… Sort of. I don't know if you can really consider it using when I've been reading the same sentence over and over again," I tried to joke feebly.
He nodded, seemingly not having registered what I'd said. "It's fine. Can you lend it to me when you're finished?"
He went to walk away and part of me paused, the large, lazy part of me that wanted to be comfortable for the rest of the evening willing me to let him.
"Remus?" I asked, standing uncertainly.
He turned, casting his tired gaze back to mine.
"We could share it?" I offered tentatively, "I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm going to be here until 3am at this rate so, if you want to come over and read it with me… then…?"
For a horrible moment I thought he was going to say no and tell me I was an idiot. Not that I would have blamed him, it was a pretty ridiculous notion that involved him basically reading over my shoulder as I attempted to decipher what, by that point, seemed like Hungarian.
"Yeah, okay," he said simply.
He collected his stuff from his desk and shifted to mine, taking a seat with a tired sigh.
It was mildy horrifying but I was still standing, half in shock, half in terror.
"Uh… Are you...?"
"Sorry," I said, zipping into my seat and pulling it into the desk as fast as if I'd been electrocuted.
"Where are you up to?" he asked, stifling a yawn.
"Oh, you know, the first paragraph," I laughed, trying to sound natural. A difficult feat considering my entire brain felt like it was on fire. I've never experienced my brain being on fire but I'm pretty sure that's what it would feel like.
"Do you need help or…?"
"No, no," I said quickly, sliding the book towards him, "I'm just going to sit on this bit for a while. You can look through it for now and I'll yell when I need it again.
He nodded absently, taking the book and flipping forward a few chapters. No great surprise he was so far ahead.
I tried to go back to my work but it was almost impossible. The worst part of it was that all I wanted to do what write about how I was feeling and what was happening, which was obviously not an option in such close proximity. At least, not if I was going to avoid a situation like the one with Sirius.
I tried writing out a few incoherent sentences, just to keep up the pretense that I was still working. Even incoherent sentences were difficult to manage. I'm pretty sure I would have had trouble writing random words.
I sneaked a glance sideways and realised with a jolt that he'd fallen asleep again.
I touched his shoulder gently. "Remus?"
He jerked awake suddenly, almost falling off his chair. Stilling himself with his arms on the table, he shook his head.
"Sorry," he coughed.
"It's fine," I said quickly, "are you alright?"
"Fine," he assured me quickly, "didn't have a very good sleep last night."
"Are you sure you're not sick?"
He shrugged, almost as if in disinterest. I dragged my eyes back to the incoherent sentences again, trying not to feel too awkward.
When I looked back only a minutes later he'd fallen asleep again. It was unbelievable.
"Remus," I said, louder this time. He woke with less fanfare, shaking his head again.
"Seriously, are you okay?"
"Sorry," he said, his voice sounding weird, almost like he'd given up on holding onto whatever composure he'd had earlier, "I'm so tired."
I could see from what he'd written on his parchment that he was much less ahead that I'd given him credit for. In fact, his sentences looked about as incoherent as mine.
"Maybe you could ask McGonagall for an extension…?"
"Can't," he replied glumly, "I've already got one going for Slughorn and I have a heap of other stuff for arithmancy due over the next couple of days."
I realised that he didn't just look tired, he looked sad. Had he looked this bad last week, before the weekend? No, definitely not. He'd looked completely normal. I wracked my brains, trying to think of a moment I'd seen him over the weekend, realizing I hadn't seen him once. Had he and the others gone out a lot? Surely he wouldn't be feeling so sorry for himself. Had something happened with his family?
"I'm just already so behind," he said, emphasizing the sentence.
I frowned. "But you're always quite on top of things…?"
He laughed sounding completely unamused. "I must put up a good front, then."
He started, like he'd said something out of turn. "Sorry, Isabella it's not… I'm just over dramatising it."
He didn't sound like he was overdramatising it. More to the point he didn't seem like someone who made a point about being dramatic about schoolwork (unlike me). If anything, he seemed like the opposite.
"What about a break?" I suggested impulsively.
"Look, no it's fine, thanks but," he started, "I should really stay and slog this out."
"Yeah if you stay and slog it out any longer I reckon they'll find your corpse here in thirty years. Which might be a bigger problem for you than not handing this into McGonagall tomorrow."
The corners of his mouth turned up at that. "What do you have in mind?"
We ended up in the kitchens. It's slightly humiliating to describe the "Hufflepuff secret" to someone, only to reveal the secret is food but Remus seemed pretty impressed nonetheless.
"I've never been down here before," he admitted. "James and Sirius have, I think, it never much interested them though."
"Why, they looking for booze?"
He snorted. "Probably."
When the house elves greeted me by name I had the good sense to look a little embarrassed. I got over it though.
"Miss Isabella," a house elf called Gilly said sweetly, bowing.
"Study special, Gilly," I said with a wink. She giggled and pottered away.
"So what do you get up to on the weekend that has you so wrecked? Brutal booze up with Black and Potter?"
I had to give it to myself, I was acting a lot more confident than I should have been considering my brain still felt like it was on fire.
He snorted again. "No, actually. Completely boring, normal weekend. I must be coming down with something."
"I never get sick," I said conversationally. "It must be one of the only talents in life I can boast about."
"That and the Hufflepuff secret, apparently."
"Well that too," I agreed. He was looking slightly more alive now, although his eyes still looked worryingly dark. I realised in the warmer light that he was bruised around his jaw and collarbone.
I wanted to press on but clearly there was nothing more for him to tell. He'd had a normal, boring weekend. Still, some part of me was unsatisfied with the response.
"What about you?" he asked lightly. "Normal, boring weekend too?"
"Hmmm," I hummed. "Oh well, actually, I had to deal with the horror that is my eleven year old brother having a girlfriend."
"Really?" he asked in surprise.
"Yep. I mean first of all he goes and ends up in Ravenclaw, the smart house, far surpassing all the expectations my Mother had for him, which were all based on me being a spectacular failure-" He laughed at that point. The sound of it thrilled me. "-and this weekend when I accost him in the corridor, asking him how busy life is as a first year these days, why he hasn't written, etc, he informs me he has a girlfriend! I mean… Surely it should be illegal, right? "
"I had my first girlfriend in first year, actually," he said with a laugh.
"What?" I asked in disbelief.
"Well it lasted approximately four days. She informed me pretty brutally that she thought Sirius was a better match for her and that was it, heart break."
Gilly arrived promptly at that point, carrying a tray with two cups of coffee and a saucer of buttered toast, a block of chocolate sitting fatly on the side.
"Thank you, Gilly!" I exclaimed, reaching for the coffee and toast greedily.
Remus looked at me critically for a moment. "You usually have chocolate on toast?"
"No, but the combination is perfect, see, because the toast is actual sustenance while the chocolate serves to cheer you up."
"I do agree that it cheers you up," he said, snapping a piece and putting it in his mouth. I stared at his lips a moment longer than was socially acceptable, imaging the taste of chocolate there. "Although I've always found chocolate to be terrific sustenance too."
"Chocolate fiend, huh?"
"Hmmm," he murmured in assent.
"So is it common, for Black to steal your girlfriends?" I asked, referring to our earlier conversation.
He chuckled. "If I had any to steal. My dating history is pretty sparse."
I could feel my heart beating uncomfortably against my rib cage. No possible prospects on the horizon then? I wanted to ask. He kept talking before I could stutter out anything awkward.
"I don't think he would, though," he said, "Steal my girlfriend, that is. He's a good friend. They all are."
"Unless your girlfriend was Lily Evans, Potter wouldn't be interested though, would he?"
"True," he admitted. "And Peter has about as much luck with girls as I do."
I wanted to disagree because as polite as Peter Pettigrew seemed, I thought it unlikely that Remus' sparse dating history compared to Peter's rumoured, non-existent one.
We sipped our coffee in silence for a few minutes. Listening to the house elves busying themselves with cleaning, singing fragments of popular songs as they went. Most of them were of my Mother's taste.
"Thanks for suggesting this, Isabella," he said genuinely.
"Oh, you don't have to call me Isabella," I started.
"You prefer Izzy?"
I stopped. No one had called me Izzy before. A lot of people in Hogwarts referred to me as Isabella and I'd never bothered to correct them, never considering that my full name might lead to two separate names entirely. I certainly had never referred to myself as Izzy. I wasn't even sure I liked it. My Dad had coined Bella when I was younger and most of my close friends had adopted it. Did that make it more my name? I didn't know.
"My friends usually use Bella," I said decidedly.
"Oh, sorry," he said quickly, "that's probably more traditional, really."
"I had a friend when I was younger who called me Iz, actually, like Liz, except obviously for Isabella, not Elizabeth," the words stumbled out of my mouth as the memory appeared. "But, yeah, Bella is... I mean, it's what everyone has always called me I guess."
My stuttering had unravelled my earlier confidence entirely. "Should we head back?"
"Hmmm," he said, nodding and finishing off the last of his coffee.
We made our way back to the library. He seemed significantly brighter afterwards, managing not to fall asleep in between sentences. He worked quietly beside me until 11, when the library closed for older students.
"How are you going with it?" he asked as we packed up our books.
"Not great," I answered honestly, "I'll have to try and convince Charlie to stay up and help me finish."
"Well I'm going to be up for another couple of hours, do you just want me to help you?"
I paused, uncertain.
"It's fine," he assured me quickly. "Honestly, I owe you. If you hadn't convinced me to take a break I'd be looking at an extra extension I can't afford, as it is, I might actually finish. I'd hate to think I'd distracted you from finishing."
I agreed, following him to the Gryffindor common room. I'd never been inside before. When we swung through the portrait hole I was impressed with how warm it seemed. Apart from Hufflepuff, I'd only even been inside the Ravenclaw common room and it had been too cold for my liking.
I swallowed uncomfortably when I realised he was headed for armchairs in the corner that were currently being occupied by Peter, James and Sirius. I followed unwillingly.
"How goes it?" Sirius asked.
"In better shape than I was a few hours ago," Remus admitted. "Isabella helped me a lot."
I smiled in recognition. Sirius raised his eyebrows at me as if to say, "Told you."
"Yeah, well, now you're going to help me," I said with a sign, sinking into one of the chairs.
"Can you help me too?" Peter asked miserably. "These gits said they'd only help me if I agreed to help them with their next prank."
"Sirius' next prank," James corrected sternly, "I am skating on thin ice with Lily as it is."
My heart sank slightly as Remus' eyes moved to Peter's essay. I told myself it was fine, I'd got far more than I'd ever bargained for and I should have been grateful.
"I've had a change of heart," Sirius said suddenly, snatching Peter's essay away from Remus.
"Seriously?" Peter exclaimed. "You couldn't have had a change of heart two hours ago?"
"Had to make you work for it, mate," Sirius said with a wink. He glanced at me briefly and I could only stare back in shock. Could it be that Sirius was not only offering me advice on how to make Remus notice me but also actively facilitating our spending time together?
Remus turned back to me with a smile.
It took until about 2am. The others had gone to bed at 12 as it only taken Sirius an hour to polish Peter's work to near perfection. I wondered if it was just because he was so smart or whether, again, he was actively trying to encourage the other two to join him in the dormitory to give Remus and me some time alone.
"Bloody git," Remus said as they left. "I spend twice as much time working as he does to be half as intelligent."
"Welcome to my world," I said, thinking of Charlie. "Actually I take it back, I spend about a tenth of the time working as one of my friends does to be a quarter of her intelligence. In my books that adds up to a win for me."
He laughed.
By the time 2am hit we'd both finished a satisfactory piece of work. He looked like he was going to crash and burn again but I felt like a live wire had replaced the entire length of my spine.
He walked me out into the corridor which seemed unnecessary but I wasn't about to complain.
"If you need help with study sometimes," he started, "feel free to meet me in the library on week nights. I mean, if you want. I'm usually always there."
"I might do that," I said genuinely. "I've started going to the library in an attempt to do seventh year properly, so."
Such a lie. Such a huge, screaming lie.
"Good, okay, I'll see you there then."
"Yeah, excellent, see you there."
Wait, did I just agree to an actual event, rather than just a vague mention of perhaps studying together sometime? My thoughts were whirring as I walked away.
5:30am
So the more I'm sat here thinking/writing about it, the more brain on fire/spine is a live wire/all possible electrifying metaphors I become.
Cat is mewing in irritation because my feet aren't warm enough. Fight the urge to stuff him further under the covers with big toe. Am the one with real problems here, perspective!
Seems odd to me though, that in my all time pining I hadn't once considered just sitting in the library, or doing anything at all the might actually put me in Remus' direct path.
Am an idiot, obviously.
Am an in-love, brain on fire, spine is a live wire, idiot.
On plus side, am idiot with more than vague plans to see Remus in library.
