I'm back from vacation! Woo! I got a friggin' sunburn so that's always nice! Nobody else got a sunburn except me! *pouts*
He should've started worrying when Hermione looked at him funny when he came into class. He should've started worrying when she shook her head before jumping into her lecture. He should've started worrying when she glanced at him and bit her lower lip a few times during the lecture. But no, he started worrying when she called him up after classes.
James and Sirius had questioned her about it, but she'd glared at them and they were forced to give him sympathetic looks and walk on to their next class, Peter waiting by the door for them before walking off with them as well.
"Remus," Hermione said, very seriously, leaning against her desk and crossing her arms over her chest, "What's going on?"
Remus fidgeted with the strap on his bag for a moment before going for naïve and innocent, tilting his head and blinking at her, "What're you talking about, Hermione?"
She gave him a look that said she didn't buy it before rolling her eyes and grabbing a piece of paper from the stack of homework. He prayed he hadn't done what James had when he was infatuated with Lily and everyone knew, which was drawing or writing absentmindedly on the side of the parchment. James had gotten very many strange looks from the professors when it first started, as he'd turned in his homework like that.
Instead, however, every margin was clear of doodles or writings. Remus looked curiously back at Hermione, his confusion real.
"Remus, this is – to put it bluntly – crap compared to what you used to turn in."
"Oh, homework," Remus hoped he kept the tone of relief out of his voice. Apparently not, Hermione was arching an eyebrow at him.
She shook her head and frowned, "What's going on with you? Normally, you turn in the best, and I asked the other teachers at lunch, and it's only in my class that this is happening. Now, what is it?"
"I – uhh…" All of Remus's thought processing went straight out of the window, and he was left to flounder and stutter.
"Is it me? Am I doing something wrong? Remus, I thought you were okay with me now," she looked extremely concerned that it was all her fault, and Remus shook his head and tried to find anything except the truth to tell her.
"No, Hermione, you're brilliant, it's just – uhh, that is to say that I – uhh," if he kept going on like this, she was definitely going to find out.
Just whenever he was trying to build up enough of a lie, Hermione gave a sigh and moved around to the other side of her desk, opening up a drawing, "Alright. I'll make a deal with you. If you can pick your grade back up in two weeks, you can have…this." She grinned and held out something that Remus hadn't seen in ages. She looked at the dark cover before looking back up at him as he blinked at it. It was basically like a briefcase, with different dividers and sections, and he used to put it in his bag when he'd had it. "I haven't opened it, if you were wondering, but I am curious." Apparently, she didn't know what it was. "So, do we have a deal?"
"I feel like I'm selling my soul to you or something," he snorted before grinning and nodding, "Yes, we have a deal. Where did you get that, by the way?"
"McGonagall," she said with a hum, twirling it around on its corner on her desk, "She said she forgot to give it back once your seventh year was done and asked me to."
"And so you're holding my drawings as ransom?" he asked with an even bigger grin, watching as her eyes lit up and a smile appeared on her face.
"You draw?" she asked.
"Yes," he said warily as she looked back down at the thing with renewed interest.
"Hmm," she hummed before smiling back up at him, "Well, once you get your grade back up, I'll be happy to give them back."
"Conniving," he smirked as he crossed his arms over his chest, "Did Draco and Blaise teach you?"
"No, Fred and George," she corrected before sticking her tongue out at him.
He chuckled and grinned back up at her, "I am sorry that it's been slipping, Hermione, it's just been…personal stuff that I've been letting get to me. It won't happen again."
"It better not," she muttered playfully as she sat down, watching as he walked out of her classroom before she sat up and called after him, "And it's 'Professor Granger!'" She heard him laugh and shook her head, a small grin working its way on her face. Somehow, he really had become her favorite Marauder, and she wasn't all that opposed to it.
"It's been two weeks."
Remus looked up from his book and grimaced at Hermione as she looked down her nose at him. She was dressed in a red tank top and jeans, barefoot, with her hair barely keeping in its hold on the top of her head. James and Sirius had dragged Peter out to the Quidditch pitch, and so he'd pretended to be taking a shower and promised to be out once he was done. However, he grabbed a book from his shelf, made his way out to the living room, and plopped quite happily on the couch. He stayed like that for about an hour, wearing his old jeans and a t-shirt that he, James and Sirius weren't quite sure on who the original owner was, but the three passed it around. However, Peter thought that sharing clothes was exceptionally weird, and thus didn't participate.
"Uh-huh," Remus said as he sat up, looking up at her and trying not to notice that her shirt was rather form-fitting. He'd concentrated on his homework and would keep his eyes trained on his parchment in class, and he'd thought he'd improved, but the look on Hermione's face said otherwise.
She tilted her head towards the stairs to the basement, "Come on." He winced and stood, following her and Flooing with her to her flat. They walked through her bedroom and came to a stop in front of a door that Remus wasn't quite sure was the purpose of.
She pressed her back against it and looked very seriously up at him. "Now, you have to swear to me that this doesn't leave this room. You are not to tell Sirius, James, or Peter, or any of the Weasleys. The only other people who know this are Harry and Luna. I am doing this because I trust you, and I…" She bit her lower lip before grimacing, "I guess I'm kind of embarrassed."
He tilted his head down at her in confusion and she sighed, turning the knob slowly as she spoke, "See, the truth is, I'm not always bookish and I kind of…" Remus blinked into the room as she hid her face with her arms and backed away to let him enter, "I kind of paint."
"Kind of?" Remus questioned, turning back around to gape at her. "Hermione, this is gorgeous! These are amazing, why are you embarrassed?"
"It's so terribly out of character for me though! I'm not supposed to be into art!" she said before flopping into an armchair in the room, watching him nervously as he looked around at the walls filled with her works.
"Who told you that?" Remus asked, glancing back at her before tilting his head at one that had the Whomping Willow and the Forbidden Forrest.
"I did," she muttered before shaking her head and picking up the weird little briefcase thing, "I'm assuming you've already guessed, but you've improved your grade. Exceeded what it was originally, actually."
Remus grinned and took the case from her, moving and sitting on the couch, motioning her to move and sit next to him. She did so as he unzipped the case, shifting around in the different folders until he found his sketchbook and flipped it open, grimacing at the dust. "I guess this wasn't opened for a while, huh?" He smiled at her when she waved her wand and the dust disappeared, before turning to face her and scoot back to rest his back against an arm rest. "Don't move."
"What?" she asked as he reached forward and grabbed a pencil and eraser and set the sketchpad against his legs, bringing his knees up closer to him.
"Don't move," he grinned before his eyes flicked to the paper and a few scritch-scritch-scritch sounds were heard.
"Why?" she asked slowly, but kept her position anyway. She was facing him as well, arms wrapped around one knee, resting her cheek against it.
"I'm going to draw you," he said with a sigh, looking up and cracking another grin before looking at his paper again, "You can lose the deer in the headlights look, really, it won't hurt. Try smiling, I hear that's what most people go for when they're the subject of a picture." He glanced up and smirked when he saw her smirking as well. "And keep your sarcastic comments to yourself. I'm working."
He worked in silence for a while, glancing up at Hermione every once in a while. She felt…tingly, while under his gaze. Her body somehow knew that it was being drawn, and it felt light and as if the air around it was getting a little thicker. She watched him while he worked, watched the small crease in between his eyebrows and how he twitched his head every time a piece of his hair would get in his way. His eyes though…it was unfair that they were such a pretty color.
He glanced up and one corner of his mouth was tugged, and she tried to get rid of an oncoming blush, before he spoke, "You know, I thought it was weird too. Art, and everything. But it kind of made sense. I needed a way to get whatever got me so obsessed with reading something into something I could keep. So, after I read something I liked, I would draw anything from that book. A particular scene, what I thought a character looked like, some place that was described in it. After a while, I started drawing my friends. And professors. And people I didn't like. I just kept drawing – and that's why McGonagall took up my stuff. I drew all the time in seventh year, before I got here, and she said that she wasn't about to let me fail right before the N.E.W.T.s, and that I'd get it back after the test. I guess she forgot, and I did too. So, Miss Granger, you are the first subject I have drawn since I have been in the nineties."
"I feel honored," she muttered, grinning when he playfully hissed out a "sshh!"
"So, how'd you start?" he asked after a few moments.
"I was…my childhood wasn't all that great," she gave a sigh, "I got picked on a lot. My hair was huge, my teeth were larger, I actually liked schoolwork – I can't even tell you how many times I got shoved into the dirt on the playground. I'd walk home crying. One day, I took an early turn and got lost, and walked past an art gallery. So I just stood there in front of the windows with these tears on my face and someone finally came out of the gallery and saw me. It was one of the artists, and he asked me what was wrong. I told him that the other kids picked on me, and he had me follow him into the gallery. We walked through all of these crowds of people, up until we got to this back room. He sat me down at a table, handed me a piece of paper, and a pencil, and sat down across from me and told me to draw something that gave me hope. I told him I couldn't draw. He said that drawing was a mindset, and I had the potential to get into that mindset, because I was six years old and stopped in front of an art gallery to look at the art inside and didn't look at the toy store next door. So I drew. I still have that picture somewhere at my parents' house. I drew something every single time I got picked on. Needless to say, I got a lot of practice. I got better and better, and I moved on to painting before I came to Hogwarts. When I was thirteen, my mum – without my knowledge – entered one of my paintings into the gallery I'd stopped in when I was six. We went there and I just stared at the wall my painting was on, and all of the other amazing paintings up there. And then someone came up to me and gave me a hug and said 'I knew you could do it.' It was the man from when I was younger. He owned the gallery."
"My childhood wasn't so good either, if it helps," he muttered, his eyes continuously trained on the paper now as he worked, "With the lycanthropy, I was afraid someone would find out, and I'd be treated as a freak that would snap and kill everyone. Sirius, Peter and James found out and I thought that was it, everything was over. But they kept it a secret, and they still did up until we got here and found out that everyone knew anyway. I guess that's when they became my best friends."
Hermione hummed and shut her eyes, a small smile on her face, "Harry and Ron became my best friends when they fought a mountain troll with me."
The scritching stopped and he looked back up at her as she peeked an eye open, "What?"
"Yeah, Hogwarts got weird after you left," she grinned back. "There was something going on every year."
"That sounds…exciting," he looked doubtful of this fact before smiling, "You can move now, by the way, I'm done."
She sighed and stretched, moving next to him to look down at the drawing, "This is…wow. I mean, wow. This is brilliant, Remus." She reached up and pecked his cheek, "Thank you."
He grinned and turned to look at her, "Why are you thanking me? I should be thanking you."
"Why?"
"For bringing me here, for giving me my stuff back, for being stationary in one spot for what must've felt like forever…." He looked at her pointedly, "I could go on."
"Don't," she blushed, but couldn't help but smile a little.
Hours later, Hermione woke up on the same couch, hair completely worked out of its band so that it was everywhere, a pressure on her stomach making her look up and blink at Remus's head. She sighed and ran her hands through his hair as he slept, smiling at him for a few moments before finally whispering, "Remus. Remus." She frowned and poked him in the side, making him groan out "what?"
"Let me up," she murmured.
"Why?" he asked with a sigh.
"I hate sleeping on couches," she stated.
"Too bad then," he hummed, and she gave a huff before he sat up. She smiled for a few seconds before he gripped her arms and towed her over so that she was lying with her head on his chest. "Technically not a couch," he muttered when she looked up at him curiously, putting an arm behind his head and settling the other on her waist.
"If McGonagall or anyone else walks in here…" she worried.
"We'll worry about it then," he said before pecking her hair, "Goodnight."
She snorted and rolled her eyes before settling into him, a smile back on her face, "Goodnight."
Just to be clear, they didn't do anything except fall asleep on each other. Also, I am so freaking tired right now. My eyes don't know how to stay put anymore, they look over here or over there but I want to look at the screen and it's just weird.
