Shadowed Souls
Chapter 8.Joyeux Noel (or Joyeux non-Noel) to all reviewers.
Gracie: yeah, it's not nearly so much fun to write about perfectly balanced people in situations without any angst-potential either. I hope you enjoy more Herm in this chapter.
Pip, Pie, Lady of the Duindain, Ryuen, Queen Smithy, white owl, Marauder etc – thank you so much for the reviews. They always provide me with useful food for my muse, which is very narcissistic *pats muse on the head*
Farewell: hee hee. I'm back from Prague with a tiara (only cheap, but still…) so I can nance round pretending to be Celebrian *bounces up and down* Yet more Elrond-fic (my muse is as focused on seeing TTT as I am) – Starlight on Western Seas.
A/N: This is sort of an interlude while I write my big chapter which will feature angst! near death! and Voldemort! *evil laughter*
A mop of red hair emerged into the emptiness of the room. Swiftly following it, three sets of flailing limbs appeared. Ron cursed vividly. Hermione tripped over the hem of her robes. Harry rubbed one eye ruefully.
"Bloody hell, Harry," Ron hissed. "I think that Cloak's shrinking. Between you and Hermione there was no room left for me."
"Don't be so stupid, Ron," Hermione snapped. "We were fine. You were the one who kept poking his elbow in my…"
Ron flushed scarlet and interrupted Hermione's rant with a horrified coughing fit.
"Anyway," Harry said quickly, before the moment degenerated into chaos, "why don't you tell us what you know, Hermione? We really need to help Sirius."
Hermione shuffled impatiently, looking at the boys perched on the desks before her.
"You mean you still haven't guessed? You've had the whole evening."
"Will you stop saying things like that," complained Ron, scuffing the floor with the tip of one dusty shoe.
"But it's obvious. How could you not see it?" replied Hermione angrily, scowling at the redhead.
Harry began to lose his temper.
"What's obvious? What is it? What do you think is going on?" he demanded impatiently.
Hermione sighed dramatically and settled back against the scarred wood of the desk.
"They've had a fight," she declared.
"So what?" asked Ron grumpily.
Harry furrowed his brow in confusion. He stared at her with worry clearly visible in the depths of his green eyes.
"But why? Why would they argue? It doesn't make any sense," he blurted out.
Hermione rolled her eyes.
"Remus…" she answered slowly. "Remus is in love with Sirius."
Harry looked at her in amazement, his mouth opening and closing like a stranded fish.
"But … but … how?" he stuttered.
Ron shot up from the desk, his gawky limbs unfurling like those of a particularly ungainly giraffe.
"You're nuts," he yelled. "I've thought you were for ages, but now I know it. You're absolutely, certifiably bloody nuts."
Hermione stared at him with a stony look upon her face, and opened her mouth to speak, but Harry was quicker.
"Just shut up 'til Hermione has explained, please, Ron," he insisted.
"'Til I've explained what?"
"Why you think this … that … that Remus loves Sirius."
"'Cause she's strange," Ron said crossly, still smarting from Harry's rebuke.
Hermione shot him a look of pure venom and scorn.
"I'm not being strange, Ron," she paused. "It's just the way he looked … the expression on his face when Harry mentioned Sirius. I can't explain it. I just knew."
Ron shook his head slowly, an expression of exaggerated confusion plastered across his features, but Hermione stubbornly persisted, "Remus is in love with him."
Turning to Harry, the redhead exclaimed, "Great. Now we're supposed to trust female intuition. God, Hermione, you're getting just like my mum."
But Harry was gazing blankly into space, eyes fixed on something the others could not see. Abruptly, he started from his seat, and headed for the door at a run. Ron and Hermione exchanged dubious glances, but they soon followed him, with the discarded Cloak draped across Hermione's arm.
Thundering through the echoing corridors, they skidded to a halt at the faintest suggestion of the glimmer of Mrs Norris' unearthly eyes. Breathing heavily, they crammed themselves into a dusty cupboard, tripping over piles of textbooks and fractured cauldrons. Hearts thudding, they waited in trepidation for discovery. When no angry footsteps stormed along the corridor, they slipped from their hiding place, and made their way cautiously back to Gryffindor.
In the common room, by the dying embers of the fire, they found Harry. His untidy hair fell into his eyes as he hunched over a heavy, leather-bound book. Drawing nearer, they realized that it was the photo album which Hagrid had given him.
"What is it?" Ron inquired, his voice unusually subdued.
"This," muttered Harry, his intense concentration never leaving the page. Hermione and Ron shuffled as near to him as they could, leaning over his shoulders to peer at the album.
It was a shot of the Marauders and Lily from their final term. Peter bobbed nervously in and out of the frame, hopping from one foot to the other, as if afraid of the photographer. In the foreground were Lily and James, sitting on a picnic rug, surrounded by the ruins of a meal. Their hands were entwined, and her head was resting on his shoulder. Behind them stood Sirius and Remus. To a casual observer, there was nothing out of the ordinary in this: they were merely two friends crowding close together to fit in a photo. But Sirius' hand crept softly around Remus' waist, pulling the fairer boy to him. A small smile of bliss crossed Remus' face, and leaning into the embrace, he smiled contentedly, all worry fleeing. Sirius looked at the closed eyes with an expression of utmost tenderness, which the students had never expected to see upon his face.
"I think that Hermione may be right," Harry said in a shocked voice.
"Umm hmm," Ron replied, nodding, his eyes wide with amazement.
Hermione allowed a little triumphant satisfaction to seep into her expression. As one, she and Ron moved to sit in the chairs beside Harry.
"This certainly explains things," Ron said, although a hint of uncertainty still tainted his voice.
Harry stared at his hands glumly in the flickering light of the fire. In the stillness, they heard, somewhere far away, the dull crash of a heavy object hitting the floor, and, further still, the mournful cry of an owl hunting.
They waited in silence for what seemed like an eternity, until Hermione shifted uncomfortably, and said, "So what do we do now?"
Harry looked at her, his eyes as hard as agates in his deathly pale face.
"I don't think we can do anything," he replied somberly, each word leaden.
"Why not?" Hermione's voice rose shrilly with anger, indignation coursing across her face. "We have to do something. They can't just go on like this. It'll kill them both."
Her voice suddenly dropped to an awed whisper.
"Sirius loves him too. That picture…" she trailed off, but then rallied. "We can't … we mustn't allow it to go on. It shouldn't be this way."
"You've gone daft, Hermione, you know that? Now it's all flowers and pretty birds," Ron said sarcastically, although as he glanced at the photo, his face too, softened, and his eyes grew dark. Hermione was oblivious to the change.
"You're so … so mundane," she whispered angrily. "You can't think of anything beyond the next meal."
Ron stood, his face clashing vividly with his hair, mouthing silently with fury and indignation, but the livid silence was broken by the next words Harry uttered, and their quarrel was quickly forgotten.
"I know what you mean, Hermione," he said in a gloom-ridden voice, "But we can't do anything. There's nothing we can do. Whatever we try will fail, and only make things worse."
Ron and Hermione stared at Harry. They saw, as if the first time, the troubled swirl in the green eyes, the dark circles beneath them, the fear and despair rising in his face.
" We can't do anything," he repeated. "We can't meddle. If we try, we don't know what'll happen."
"But…" Hermione began. For once it was Ron who kicked her in the shin.
The three looked at each other, weighing the issue which lay between them, and then Ron and Hermione nodded, swayed more than anything by the sorrow reflected in their friend's eyes. With heavy footfalls, they returned to their dormitories, and lay sleepless until the dawn.
TBC
A/N2: I hope that no-one thought Ron was being homophobic in this chapter, because that certainly wasn't my intention. I just wanted to show him as the least emotionally sensitive of the three, and thus as the last one to see the love between Sirius and Remus.
I would fly to the moon for reviews *grins*
I'm in a very silly mood.