AN: This chapter's for my main reviewer Meow3594. You've been great, cheers again.

Chapter 11: Positive Tension

Remus didn't get far before sobs started coming from his left shoulder, pitiful gulping sounds.

He guided Lily into a classroom, mercifully empty on a Sunday. She slumped down the wall next to the door, sitting on the floor with her knees bent and her face in her hands. The sobs loudened and quickened; they became wet rattles, starting in her chest and rising through her throat to be muffled in her palms. Remus hovered uneasily by the door, not sure how to act. He shifted his weight from foot to foot for a few seconds until sympathy tugged at his feet, and he slid down the wall next to Lily, lying almost horizontally to accommodate her head. She nestled just below his collarbone, eyes directed into his lap, ear pressed into his ribcage.

Two damp shoulders to show. Lily seemed to have no problem crying in his presence. Remus didn't know what to make of it.

"Sirius didn't mean what he – what he said, did he?" she managed between gulps. Her eyes were huge and green either side of a pink nose, beseeching Remus to tell her that Sirius hadn't meant what he said, that it had all been senseless spite, that she wasn't a hateful, sadistic bitch.

The problem was Remus was pretty sure Sirius meant everything he'd said. He had no trouble telegraphing his emotions.

"James doesn't think you hate him", he told the top of her head tactfully. "And neither do I", he added. He didn't mention that James' adoration was more to do with misguided romantic notions than actually knowing the content of her character.

And he liked Lily because she was kind, clever and pretty–

Not that I care what she looks like, he told himself sternly.

She just happened to be – well – nice to look at. That was all.

Lily drew her sleeve around her knuckles and dabbed at her eyes.

"I wish I'd never got you involved in this", Remus murmured.

"You'd probably be dead." She chuckled bitterly.

He could hardly reply to that.

"I'm glad I found you though", she continued, her voice adopting the soft, intimate quality Remus' had taken on.

Remus looked around the room. A chalk mouse, standing on its hind paws, tail disfigured by smudges, had been drawn on the blackboard. A tray of snuffboxes lay on the desk at the front of the classroom, suggesting they were in a Transfiguration classroom. Briefly, he wondered what McGonagall, their stern head of house, would think of two of her students, one in tears, shoulders touching, sitting against a cold wall in an empty classroom.

The tears kept falling. Insecurities pooled in his throat.

"It's just – I'm sorry you had to you had get mixed up in everything just now – you know – with Sirius, and you probably wish you'd never met me now, right?"

"Don't be daft Remus. I like you."

She stiffened for a second; her head felt heavier on his shoulder and she swallowed audibly. For the second time in as many minutes Remus was had nothing to say, so he studied her movements and mannerisms closely, desperate for any sign to help him interpret her remark. Maybe her breathing quickened a fraction, but that could be wishful thinking. Lily's comment grew bigger as the silence continued, punctuated by the occasional sniffle. It bled into the still air of the room, pressed against the window panes which were milky with age. Those three, seemingly offhand syllables hung in the air above him, huge and complex, three glass chandeliers the brain couldn't process as a whole, so it would try and split them into composite parts: a chip of crystal, a candle, an arm. Every breath, every tear of Lily's was agonised over by the perturbed werewolf.

It's nothing, he told himself, don't be daft Remus, it's just platonic. She's not saying anything because she's upset, obviously.

And his stomach dipped as he convinced himself Lily was just being friendly.

He gave up counting her blinks and scanned the room again. The desks were arranged in loose rows, four deep and six across, with a gap down the middle of the room. Leather-bound volumes on Transfiguration lined a bookcase at the back of the classroom; many of them were faded by age, their red bindings loose and peeling, to show bone-white adhesive spines. They looked like so many strips of flesh. Remus shivered.

"What's wrong?"

Lily had craned her neck to look up at him with dewy eyes. The chill became a thrill.

"James." There was only sky in the windows from their position on the floor, ribbons of white and blue. "He won't want to see me."

She took his nearest hand into hers. Fingertips, slick from tears, curled round his hands, soft and enticing on the raised bones of his knuckles. She was cautious around the darkened skin.

"I punched a wall", he said softly, answering her tracing fingers.

Lily giggled.

Remus immediately wanted to make her laugh again.

Neither of them spoke for some time. Footsteps and chatter – dampened by the wall – would slide by behind them occasionally. Lily's fingers were restless in his, full of tiny strokes and squeezes. He smiled. The white in the window was steadily being burnt off; the sky would be clear blue later. An owl flew past in a blurred arrangement of feathers. The tears stopped at last. Eventually, Lily's head came off Remus' shoulder, the displaced hair tickling his neck. She moved into a sitting position, head back against the wall, and looked at him, offering an apologetic smile.

"Sorry about that", she mumbled, embarrassed now her tearful display had ended. An index finger wiped at the last of the unshed tears. Remus grinned.

"Don't be daft."

Lily giggled.

Remus stood and moved in front of Lily so their feet were almost touching. He offered her his hands; she took them, pulled herself up and overbalanced, pressed tight to his nervous form for a few seconds. Lily righted herself and turned for the door, leaving a flustered Remus with the impression of delicious softness against his front. He stood, nonplussed for a moment, blinked twice as if to rearrange his thoughts, and followed Lily.

Madam Pomfrey came out of her office as Remus and Lily came through the double doors of the Hospital Wing. Sadness lined her face; she looked far older than a witch in her late twenties as she turned to Remus.

"He's over there", she said, with an incline of the head towards the corner of the room, where a privacy curtain hung in the same place as yesterday.

No comment was made on his discharge the day before.

The sensation of heat between his fingers returned. Lily gave his hand a reassuring squeeze and released it; it fell to hang limply by his side. He swallowed; the skin around his Adam's apple tightened, clinging to every muscle in his neck. Remus nodded in Madam Pomfrey's direction. She offered a curt nod in reply before returning to the sanctuary of her office. He took a hesitant, measured step forward; it was the movement of one who comes to the edge of a cliff or a waterfall and looks down, relishing the kick of vertigo.

Lily didn't move.

A second step came. His pulse stretched to fill his ears, two knocks of blood for each footstep on the pale wooden floorboards. The synthetic screen loomed large; it became a bank of white that filled his vision, at once alien and familiar. It looked like the surface of the moon. It gave no clues as to what lay behind it. Desperately, he wished James was asleep. Then he remembered who was watching him, and his feet sped up despite himself, suddenly determined to hide any fears he had.

Remus came to stand in front of the curtain. Numbness stole through his limbs. The skull he was housed in was his only source of sensation. Beneath it was a separate set of arms and legs he had little control over. He succeeded in lifting a hand, barely concealing the trembling digits from Lily, and managed to shape it into a pincer and send it forwards. It snapped at the curtain, unable to find any purchase on the waxy material. The fumbling continued accompanied by the click of plastic hoops above him on the metal rail the curtain was attached to.

Something rustled on the other side. A bedspring creaked, the paired slap of bare feet came a second later, and then the curtain was pulled back.

Remus stood face to face with James Potter.