Mercury Lies
Chapter 13: to avow

'Sorry,' Remus apologised, his voice dropping to a whisper, as if to better suit the slightly eerie silence that reigned in the cottage. He drew his knees up to his chest and rested his head on them, looking at Black, who had been leaning against the frame of the window, and was peering down at him, the badge on his chest blinking flashes of blue light across his face. 'I honestly didn't think anyone would be here.'

Black looked at him and then shrugged one shoulder upwards nonchalantly, leaning his head back against the frame and looking up, gaze resting upon the flash of surprisingly ornate ceiling that was visible, just above them. 'There wasn't the last four times we played this. People normally go as far as the guest quarters and then give up,' he said, heaving a big sigh.

Remus considered this for a brief moment and then looked back at Black with a questioning look on his face. 'Doesn't it get lonely?' he asked. Of all people, Remus would've expected Black to be the one to least love being part of this silence, sitting, all alone, for hours, waiting until the search ended. If anything, Black seemed to be made up of loudness, which emanated from his body even now, revealing itself in way his leg was jiggling up and down and the messy way he kept readjusting his hair.

Black snorted. 'You mean, why am I not hiding with James in the chicken coop?' he asked. Having worked on farms every summer since he was a teenager, Remus could clearly imagine the experience, and he pulled a face. Black barked out a laugh. 'Exactly. I'd rather sit up here by myself, thanks. Besides,' he added, 'if you win, Euphy allows you to eat her excellent chocolate cake, which she only makes on New Year's, all by yourself. Totally worth it.'

'Right,' said Remus, a bit absently. The pain in his thigh was getting uncomfortable in this position, so he gingerly lowered his legs, allowing them to rest upon the floor. The soft fabric of the curtain fell back against his feet, swishing gently back and forth in an inaudible breeze, which was coming in from somewhere in the house. He leaned back so that his back was against the glass, and then he glanced down at his watch. 'Three hours to go.'

Black tilted his face back down, looking at Remus. The badge chose that exact moment to light up, dimly, making his face seem, for a moment, otherworldly, and Remus couldn't quite make out the expression on it. 'Feeling better, then?'

Remus reached for the scar that ran through his eyebrow before realising what he had done, and gently lowered it again, flexing his fingers before putting them, splayed wide, upon his knee. 'Yes. It didn't hurt that much,' he admitted.

'You're a terrible liar,' Black said, sounding amused at the fact. He leaned forward and scrubbed a hand through his hair, readjusting it the same way he'd done when he had been sitting on Remus's bed a few days ago. Remus wondered if it was a new habit of his.

Wisely, however, he chose not to respond to Black's comment, and instead, gaze following Black's fingers, he mindlessly said, 'it's quite long, your hair.'

'Don't you start,' said Black, looking up at him while he readjusted his fringe. 'I get enough of that from McGonagall. She tells me to cut it all off at least once a week because it's supposedly unsightly. As I keep telling her, it's going to be the same length as Margois Benée's and there's nothing she can do about that.'

Remus had no idea who that was. 'Who?'

Black stared at him. 'Margois Benée. The Snakes,' he prompted, looking at Remus as if he was being stupid on purpose. 'The band?' he said, finally, his voice taking on a slight edge. When Remus only shrugged, Black blew out an impatient breath. 'Unbelievable. They're only the best thing to happen to wizarding music since The Hobgoblins.'

'I don't –' Remus began.

'If you finish that sentence with "listen to wizarding music", I'm not sure we can still be friends,' Black interrupted.

'– know who The Hobgoblins are,' Remus finished, as he had originally intended.

Black made a long and unattractive sound in the back of his throat, which sounded, at best, like a snort gone wrong. 'Sometimes, I genuinely believe you're about five-hundred years old –' he said.

'Shut up,' Remus told him.

Black levelled him with a look. Remus obediently, although slightly reluctantly, fell quiet. 'As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, all of my records are here. They're somewhere in Jim's room. I mean, I put them in his sock drawer last time I was here and told him to guard them with his life, so they better still be there. His dad's got a record player down in his office.' Then, a bit more quietly, he added, 'we could listen to them sometime, if y'want?'

'Oh,' responded Remus, surprised at the way this had gone. 'Y-yeah, sure.'

Black cleared his throat. 'Cool.' He looked back at Remus, then casually drew up one knee, leaning his elbow on it, and putting his face in his chin. 'I'd love to be in a band,' he said softly.

Remus scrunched up his face in disbelief, but the look on Black's face was wistful, gazing off into the garden, so he carefully ironed out his expression before Black could catch it. 'What would you play?'

'Guitar,' Black replied, without hesitation, fingers tracing absent, unseen patterns upon the glass. 'I got myself one for Christmas and taught myself to play – four years ago now? No, five. Yeah, five,' he decided.

'Wow,' said Remus, trying not to make it sound as impressed as he felt.

Black turned his face back towards him. 'It's not that hard,' he said, but his voice carried a note of arrogance in it, as it sometimes did.

Remus raised an eyebrow. 'Are you even remotely aware of the fact that you can sound like a complete prat?'

Black gave him a magnificently charming grin. 'What do you even know about music?' he teased.

Remus bit the inside of his cheek. When he was three years old, his mother had started him on piano lessons because, or so she'd later told him, he'd been begging her to let him play, like she could, for years. Remus only vaguely remembered playing, but he remembered loving it, dearly. The lessons had come to an abrupt, screeching halt two years later, when he was bitten. They moved out of Chepstow quite quickly after, and his mother had sold the piano she had inherited from her grandmother, alongside all of her scores, back to the store, so that they could pay the exorbitant fees St Mungo's had charged them for Remus's treatment. The store had given her back only forty per cent of what everything was worth, and it remained a sore point for both of his parents, who had never brought it up around him again.

Guiltily, Remus had forced himself to keep quiet about it, and if he spent some time remembering the flawless rows of ebony and ivory keys, the dusty wooden slats and the creaky left foot pedal, he never told anyone. Once, during a holiday, he had found an old, handwritten score of the Moonlight Sonata, but had quickly put it back on the shelf when his mother had rounded the corner. That afternoon, with his parents otherwise occupied, he had gone back for it, but it had already been sold.

He closed his eyes. 'Beethoven, Hayden, Mozart, Schubert,' he recited from memory, seeing, in his mind's eye, his old piano teacher, Mrs Merrick, standing in front of him. The black-and-white striped dress she always wore billowed in the summer breeze floating into the room of the ballet class, and he could smell her perfume, heady and lingering, but her face remained blurry, and when he opened his eyes, the memory faded, and she was gone.

'You went off there, for a bit,' Black said.

'Sorry,' Remus apologised, shaking his head. The motion brought him, firmly, back to the present.

Black smiled kindly at him. 'Impressive, though. Das Wiener Klassik,' he added, his pronunciation flawless.

Remus stared. 'How many languages do you even speak?'

Black shrugged vaguely, then looked out into the garden again, tracing his fingers over the panes, up and further, until his arm could stretch no more. By the time he finally responded, Remus had all but forgotten about the question. 'Five,' Black said, his voice light. He dropped his hand onto his elbow and rubbed, absently, over the skin.

Remus wasn't really sure what Black expected him to say to that, exactly, so he just hummed in the back of his throat and then fell quiet. Black's reply gave rise to a myriad of complicated feelings in him, overlapping and muddling together, so that, in the end, only a few were recognisable to him. There was admiration there but, in the very pit of his stomach, there was also, ugly and dark and twisting, something which could not be anything else other than envy, and Remus blew out a deliberate breath, fighting to regain control over himself.

Just before a full moon would hit, and even for a few days after it had passed, Remus's emotions would be raw and very close to the surface. Something that would normally merely irritate him, would seem like the most annoying thing in the world around a full moon. And something like envy, which he had been clearly feeling now, would turn into a ruby red jealousy, which tasted coppery-metallic in the back of his throat. He didn't want to lash out at Black, for no reason at all, so he drew in a breath, trying to collect himself.

'I'm boiling,' Black announced, out of the blue, and before Remus could even comprehend that sentence, Black had found a way to pry open the window, and the cool and sharp wintry air drifted into the room, smelling faintly of what turned out to be apple trees, which were stood in what turned out to be an enormous vegetable garden, planted very close to the cottage. The window swung inward, and Remus pushed the cool glass back to ensure it wasn't throwing him off the sill. Reluctantly, it stabilised, which might have had something to do with the spell Remus cast, a second later.

Remus shivered from the cold air that was ghosting past his neck, and only then noticed that, again, silence had fallen between them. It made Remus a little nervous; Black had always been the one to fill the silences between them, but when he dared a glance, he found that Black was sitting with his back against the frame of the window, head tilted back towards the ceiling, seemingly at ease in the silence. The badge on his chest glowed blue with every beat of his heart and there was, oddly, a kind of vulnerability about the way he was sat, throat fully exposed and eyes closed, which made Remus nervous.

'Are you okay?' he blurted, for want of something to say.

Black's eyes slowly opened and Remus felt them settle upon his face, luminous and grey. 'Sorry?'

'Are – ah, never mind,' Remus fumbled, and then, after some thinking, settled on, 'what do you want to do when you leave Hogwarts?'

Black frowned, and then turned his head to look out into the garden, emotions flashing rapidly across his face. 'Curse-Breaker,' he said, eventually.

Remus breathed out, lips curving into a smile. 'I should've thought. It suits you,' he said.

Black was still gazing out into the garden, but Remus could see part of a grin tugging at his lips. 'Does it?' he asked.

'Adventure,' Remus listed, raising his right hand and tapping each of his fingers in turn, starting with his little finger, and then counting on out towards his thumb. 'Travel. Challenges. Riddles. Goblins.'

Black laughed, tilting his head so that he was looking at Remus from the corner of his eye, the rest of his face obscured partly by his hair. 'I'll admit, it's specifically because of the last one.'

'Goblins tend to have that effect on people,' replied Remus dryly, feeling, somehow, triumphant at having made Black laugh. There was something different about Black tonight, like a kind of solemnity had come over him, which was evidenced by the fact that he looked, again, out towards the garden.

'They do at that,' Black responded, tone quite serious. However, he pulled away from the window and then readjusted his position on the sill, so that he was now sat crossed-legged, elbows leaning on his knees. This decreased the distance between them significantly, and Remus scooted a little more towards the side, intent on providing him with more room. It ended with the elaborate hanging window pull digging uncomfortably into his back, but Black had already extended his legs further, so that Remus had no choice but to settle in.

'All right, my turn. What are you going to do after graduation?' Black asked him, while Remus suppressed a grimace, and tried to avoid the cool metal of the pull against his skin. He failed, miserably, and curved his back forward, attempting to find a comfortable position despite it. Black blinked, and pulled back his legs slightly. 'Better?' he asked.

'Yeah,' Remus admitted, scooting forward a little, and thankfully feeling the press of the metal pull leave him. He turned around and adjusted it so that it was tucked, safely, between the frame of the window and the wall, and could not bother him anymore. Then he turned to Black, and said, 'I wanted to be a Healer, but that's not going to happen.'

Surprise registered clearly across Black's face. 'Why not? You're top of your year, you're Head Boy, and you practically dragged half of my year through their O.W.L.s.'

Remus offered Black a sardonic smile. 'I'm not very good at Potions,' he said, instead, which was true. 'I only scored an E on my Potions O.W.L., so I tested out of Advanced Potions. Didn't meet the grade requirements.'

'Oh,' said Black emphatically. 'Shit.'

'Yeah,' responded Remus. 'It's all right, though. I'll just apply for a whole host of jobs and see who's willing to have me.'

'You'll find a place in no time,' Black said, which Remus thought was very kind of him. He offered Remus a grin, and then started patting down his pockets, fishing out a pack of slightly battered-looking cigarettes from his back pocket and lighting one up with a lazy flick of his wand.

'When did you start smoking?' Remus asked him.

Black took a drag of his cigarette, swiping his hair out of the way. 'Fourteen?' he guessed, when he pulled it back out of his mouth, scrubbing at a spot on his chin with the inside of his thumb, cigarette wobbling, in-between his index and middle finger, dangerously close to the wooden frame of the window. Remus opened his mouth to warn him, but Black then put the cigarette back into his mouth. 'I think, yeah. Got my first one off my Uncle Alfie. Found him on the terrace at this ridiculous dinner party my parents were hosting,' Black said, smiling at the memory. 'He gave me one and told me that he'd rather I smoke it in front of him than try and sneak a cigarette into the house.'

'Very responsible,' Remus said.

Black grinned, blowing out a thin gust of smoke. 'I know. He's brilliant.' He leaned his head sideways, against the frame of the window. 'One of the only decent Blacks, really. Don't see him a lot, though, he lives up north.'

'Scotland?' Remus guessed.

Black snorted. 'Not that far north. Manchester,' he said.

'I've got relatives there,' Remus replied, thoughtlessly.

'Muggle ones?' Black asked, voice suddenly quite curious.

Remus looked at him, then nodded. 'Yeah, we see them every year at Christmas. My mum's sister lives there with her husband and their nine children.'

Black spluttered around his cigarette, and had to thump himself on the chest with his fist a couple of times to stop his coughing. 'Nine children? You're having me on.'

'They're very religious,' Remus shrugged.

'Nine children.' Black shook his head, having obviously not heard Remus's response. He looked terrified. 'Nine bloody children. Merlin. Imagine how expensive that would be.' He had seemingly forgotten about his cigarette, which was almost falling out of his fingers.

Remus raised his eyebrows. 'That's what you're thinking about?'

Black looked at him, eyes wide. 'What else is there to think about?' he demanded.

'It's fun?' Remus proposed. 'You're never on your own. There's always someone to play with, someone to help you with your homework, someone to do the chores when you don't feel like it. It's great.'

'You're an only child,' Black surmised. He seemed to have found his cigarette again, and put it back in his mouth, fingers pressed against his lips.

Remus looked at him from under his eyelashes. 'So?'

'Only someone who's an only child would glorify having siblings,' Black said. 'Trust me, it's nothing to write home about.'

Remus frowned. He racked his brain, sifting through countless of students at Hogwarts, and suddenly, a fifth year Slytherin Prefect sprung to mind. He had only been appointed this year, but his surname had been Black, and it was only now that Remus, stupidly, made the connection between the two. The younger Black was much quieter than this one, with a face that was less defined but no less regal, eyes very, very light blue, almost grey. He was always very polite and, during Prefect meetings, he sat in-between Isa Shafiq and Walden Macnair. His name was – 'Regulus,' Remus said.

Black looked straight at him, expression unreadable.

'He's – he's a Prefect,' Remus said quickly, and vaguely wondered why that came out of his mouth sounding like an apology. 'Slytherin. Kind of – kind of quiet,' he finished, lamely.

The look on Black's face was murderous. He pressed out his cigarette against the window frame, and flicked it, over Remus's shoulder, out of the window. 'Can we not talk about him?' he sneered.

'Sorry,' Remus mumbled, chastised, looking down at his knees.

'For fuck's sake, stop apologising for everything,' Black said, louder than necessary, his tone impatiently sharp around the edges. His voice filled the room and seemed to boom back from the walls, making Remus draw his shoulders tighter towards himself without meaning to. Although he tended to win them, he didn't like fights; and he didn't want to fight with Sirius. He chanced a glance upward but saw only that Black's brow was lined with tension, so he shifted his gaze, and looked at the curtain in front of him, instead.

'Not my favourite topic,' Black sighed, running a hand through his hair, and readjusting it, again. 'Sorry.'

''s all right,' Remus told the curtain.

Roughly two hours later, wintry darkness had plumed all around them, obscuring even the nearby vegetable patch from view. As they had always done, Remus's eyes had completely adjusted to the shadowy perception and he could see Black sitting across from him as clear as day. The window had since been closed, as Remus had reluctantly admitted to having turned into an icicle about an hour into their game, and Black had smoked through four more cigarettes, which were lying, some still quietly smouldering, in the ashtray Remus had conjured to prevent Black from tossing them out of the window.

Remus had learned a lot about Black in those two hours. He had learned that Black's favourite subject was Defence Against the Dark Arts, and that his least favourite subject was, of all things, Herbology. It also became quite clear that Black wasn't too fond of his family. He did seem to like his Uncle Alfie – which turned out to short for Alphard Black, the famous potioneer, who owned half of the Blackerish & Darvill Potions Shop in Diagon Alley – and his cousin Andromeda, who had just gotten married, and whom Remus remembered had been three years above him. Finally, after procuring Remus's express assurance that he wouldn't tell James before he had a chance to, Black told him that he was going to be signing his name on the lease of a handsome apartment near his uncle's place, in London, on the day they were due to be back at Hogwarts.

For his part, Black asked Remus a whole host of questions, none of which seemed to be related to each other. He asked Remus if he could recite the names of all of his nieces and nephews backwards (he could); what his favourite Fortescue Ice Cream flavour was (stracciatella); if he had ever considered hexing anyone just for the hell of it (Remus very reluctantly admitted that Rodgers had come close); and if he would, given the chance, ride a flying motorbike (he would, because he'd want to know how it flew). When, finally, Black asked him to share a secret he'd never shared with anyone, Remus hesitated for a moment, and then told him that he'd been a hatstall, because the Sorting Hat had wanted him to be in Gryffindor.

Black had thrown him an incredulous look at that, and had muttered something under his breath that Remus had pretended not to hear, but had made him smile.

Presently, Black was sitting back on his haunches, in a position he claimed was very comfortable, thanks very much, and asked, out loud, 'First kiss?'

'Are we twelve now?' Remus replied, voice hoarse around the edges for reasons he couldn't really describe.

In response, Black only grinned at him, grey eyes gleaming in the moonlight that filtered through the window, lighting up the sill.

Remus blew out a long breath through his mouth. 'Second year, Valentine's Day, and that's all I'm going to say.'

Black's brow tightened in a frown, for a moment, but then, surprising Remus, he let out a laugh. 'Ah, right, I'd forgotten about that. Your table got our Love Potion.'

'What?' Remus demanded.

'Well,' Black announced. 'Back when we were ickle, innocent little firsties – and this was Jim's idea, by the way, not mine – there may have been a time where we smuggled a batch of really strong Love Potion into the school to use on the girl James fancies.'

'Lily Evans?' Remus guessed, although he already knew the answer.

'Figured that one out, did you?' Black asked, pretending to be very impressed.

Remus made a gesture for him to go on.

Black grinned. 'For Evans, and we got the batch of potion down to the kitchens and I convinced the house-elves that it was this new and amazingly tasting orange juice, so if they would just be so kind as to swap it with the one they'd already made fresh, Dumbledore's orders, etcetera etcetera.'

'Very convincing,' Remus said.

'We thought so, too,' Black replied, amused. 'But apparently Head Kitchen Elf Blippy didn't really think so. She only swapped the orange juice for one table, and unfortunately, it was the Ravenclaw one.'

Remus was quiet for a moment. 'I hate you,' he deadpanned.

Black laughed. 'So, who was it?'

'I'm not telling you.'

'Go on,' Black said, nudging Remus with his shoulder. 'Share with the class.'

'Who was yours?' Remus countered.

'Clara Johnson, during the New Year's Eve party during our first year,' Black said, without batting an eyelash. 'She took me to the Prefects bathroom, let me feel her tits, and it was the absolute highlight of my year. Now answer the question.'

'No,' said Remus.

'Tell me,' Black insisted, leaning closer.

With Black's face so close to his own, Remus absently noticed some things he had overlooked, before. There was a smattering of freckles, just on each side of Black's nose, and his eyes were actually, if you looked at them quite carefully, not only just grey. One of them was broken up, just at the bottom, by smatterings of an icy blue, and even a shard of light green. For a moment, just a split-second, Remus wondered if –

There was an enormous bang, almost like a canon going off. It seemed to come from the main house, and Remus's involuntary jump at the sound made a fiery twinge of pain shoot down his thigh. His sharp hiss was, thankfully, unnoticeable under the enhanced, sing-song voice of Mrs Potter, which called out, 'Attention all guests! It is now thirty minutes to midnight and the game is over. Please come meet us in the parlour where we will declare a winner and hand out our grand prize!'

Black gave a magnificent grin. 'Let's go then,' he said, jumping off the sill effortlessly. 'We might still win if we're the smallest group.'

'Unless someone joined James in the chicken coop,' Remus pointed out, gingerly lowering himself onto the floor, and stretching out his stiff legs. Black seemed to suffer from no such fatigue, and was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, impatiently waiting for him to finish.

'Come on, come on,' he urged.

'All right,' Remus said, a bit impatiently, and then pushed aside the curtain, so that the moonlight could flood into the bedroom. Black seemed to have had enough, however, and took Remus by the arm, effortlessly steering him out of the room, across the landing, down the stairs, and out of the cottage before Remus could rightly process how fast they were going.

'Slow down,' he said, but he was smiling, because Black was obviously in very good spirits, which was a far cry from the sullen mood he'd been in when Remus had first found him in the cottage. In no time at all, by fumbling through gaps in hedges and pushing through several of which Remus was sure were prized hydrangea bushes, they reached the main house, and when Black pulled them into the living room, they were, to no one's surprise, the second ones there.

Remus's father and mother were stood together by the fireplace, both nursing a drink, and had abandoned the game five minutes in after colliding against each other in the bathroom. Mr Potter had bravely attempted to hide in one of the kitchen cupboards, but had been discovered by the house-elves, and had been sent to sit by his wife while the elves finished preparing the mini chocolate tarts they would be sending out with the champagne just before midnight.

James had chosen not to hide in the chicken coop this year, but had been in the stables, where he'd been joined by Septimus Weasley, his wife Cedrella, and three other people Remus had forgotten the names of. James's hair was messy and there was hay stuck in it, but when Black lowered his voice and asked him how that got there, he turned bright red and refused to talk about it.

Finally, after waiting for ten minutes, the last couple entered the room, holding hands, and it was then Mrs Potter called for their attention.

'You're all getting old,' she announced, with a smile. 'That took forever. So champagne, chocolate and New Year's wishes first, winners later!'

Remus thought it was only fair to join Black and James in booing loudly.

The winner, in the end, was James's cousin, Marlene McKinnon, whom Remus only vaguely knew. She had hidden herself, cleverly, in the grandfather clock in the hall, and since no one had looked there, she got to eat Mrs Potter's chocolate cake all by herself. If Black was resentful, he didn't show it when he congratulated her, but Remus did notice that the cake was missing a suspiciously large chunk after James had gone over and made a big fuss over her.

His suspicions turned out to be correct as, when he had almost reached the bathroom a few minutes later, he was pulled into the abandoned dining room by James. 'Saved you a piece!' he said triumphantly, shoving something wet and velvety soft into Remus's hands. When he looked down, he saw that it was a piece of Mrs Potter's chocolate cake. It had some sort of custardy chocolate filling in the middle, which was slowly seeping through his fingers, and dripping onto the dining room floor.

'Er,' said Remus.

Meanwhile, James had gone to sit on a drawn-out chair, his feet stretched out towards the table. He didn't respond, but simply pushed his fork into the stolen piece of chocolate cake, which was stood, proudly, upon a cake platter in the middle of the table, and took a bite. A bit desperately, Remus attempted to stop the filling of the cake in his hand from getting everywhere, but had to admit he was fighting a losing battle when the chocolate buttercream layer on the top started to melt, too.

Black, who was sitting on top of the table, seemingly without a care for what he was sitting in, said something, gesturing with his fork at Remus. However, his mouth was really full, and instead of sensible words, out sprayed chocolate flecks, which landed upon someone's pristinely white napkin, which had been draped on the back of the chair on which Black was resting his feet.

Remus threw him an unamused look. 'I hope you know you're sitting in sauce,' he said, but then he had to laugh at the ridiculous picture they were making. The two of them grinned at him, and James pulled out the chair besides him, producing a fork out of nowhere and gesturing for him to sit down.

Remus nodded, and then looked down at the cake in his hand, which could hardly be deemed to be suitable for transport. It was still leaking chocolate, kind of pointedly, everywhere. Just as Remus had decided that the best way to go about it would be to simply mush the cake into his mouth and be done with it, the door opened, and, in his shock, he dropped the cake onto the floor.

His father was stood in the door opening of the dining room. He looked tired, and weary, but most of all, he looked impatient. 'Remus,' he said, voice barely a request. 'We're going home.'

'Right,' Remus said. 'Sure.' He attempted to smile at the other two, but his father's sudden appearance had made him too nervous to do so. 'Er, thank you so much for having us.'

Awkwardly, he bowed, as was the custom in pureblood families, and then made his way over to his father, gingerly sidestepping the cake he'd dropped onto the floor, which had really made an incredible mess for such a small piece. His father had stepped aside and was holding open the door for him, and just before he left, Remus glanced back over his shoulder and saw that James had his hand raised in a wave. Black, however, was quiet around a forkful of cake, and Remus could feel his gaze lingering on his neck as he turned around, and stepped into the hallway.

On the drive back to London, a few days later, it started to drizzle, and by the time his mother dropped him off a block away from King's Cross Station, it was sheeting down with rain, and she couldn't get any closer. This meant that when Remus stepped onto the Hogwarts Express fifteen minutes later, his hair was plastered to his face and his clothes were sticking to him oddly. He fished his Hogwarts robes out of his trunk and changed, a bit awkwardly considering the small space, out of his wet clothes, and into the robes, in one of the bathroom stalls at the very back of the train. He stared at his reflection in the mirror above the sink, and then pulled out his wand, murmuring a drying charm.

A gust of hot air blew out of his wand and instantly dried his hair, which fell over his eyes. It had grown too long and was getting wavy, as it tended to do when it was longer. He pulled, absently, at a lock of hair that was curling over his ear, and tried to estimate the length he would need to take off. Just then, there was an impatient knock on the door, and Remus gathered his wet clothes, and made his way out of the bathroom. The rest of the train ride was longer than anticipated, if uneventful, and Remus spent it reading, forgetting, entirely, about his haircut.

But, when term begun, he was constantly reminded of it; in fact, it was turning out to be quite a problem. His longer hair got in the way during a Charms lesson, falling into his eyes, and it ensured he nearly had his fingers bitten off by a Mandrake plant during Herbology, much to Professor Sprout's annoyance. When Flitwick pulled him aside after class on a week into term, Remus had expected to be told about the status of the article, but was, instead, surprised to hear Flitwick ask him if everything was all right.

'Y-yes, Professor,' Remus had stammered. 'Why?'

Flitwick gave him a gentle smile, and merely told him to take good care of himself. Remus left his office, feeling, oddly, both chastised and completely flabbergasted at the same time. Charms had been his final class of the day, and before he could really think about it, he was heading towards the tower classroom. When he pressed the door of the room shut with his back a few minutes later, he was unsurprised to find the window unlocked.

Gingerly, he lowered himself onto the lower, gracefully landing on his haunches. His thigh gave a slight twinge of protest, but otherwise settled down quite quickly, allowing him to get up, and walk towards the edge of the tower, where Black was stood, smoking. Remus stood next to him, leaning on his arms, gazing out onto the lake.

'All right?' he asked.

Black turned and gave him a slow smile. 'Yeah, all right.'

Wordlessly, he offered Remus a cigarette, and Remus accepted it, lighting it with a flick of his wrist.

'It's quite long, your hair,' Black deadpanned.

'Shut up,' Remus said, and then Black laughed, a beautiful, charming thing.

Author's Note: I am sorry this is a bit later than usual – the direction of the previous chapter kind of threw a spanner in the works, and I've had to rework my entire timeline and structure for this little story.

For those wondering, Margois Benée is the lead singer of the fictional French band The Snakes, which were borrowed from one of my first stories, Chocolate Biscuits. They would absolutely be Sirius Black's favourite band, and no one can tell me otherwise.

I hope you'll like it