T.B.C means To Be Continued (so now you know all you people out there who were previously ignorant to ther fact.)
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That night, Remus stayed away from the dormitory for as long as he could, just wandering the halls of the school until he was sure that everyone else would have gone to their common rooms, or bed. At one point, he found himself outside room 30 on the third floor. It was strange, he reflected, everything had started here, in this room. If he had just avoided it then, he wouldn't be here now, wandering the corridors, lonely and cold.
He hated everything around him, everything. He wanted to destroy something and it scared him how close he had been to punching Sirius in the face, how powerful he had felt when it was him pushing someone else up against a wall. He tried not to think about what would happen when he would have to face Sirius. He tried too, to put James' pale face and inert body out of his mind but it was impossible and he roamed the school unable to think of anything else.
At around 9 o'clock, he made his way to the kitchens, his stomach writhing with hunger. He hadn't been eating properly and it showed. Looking into a mirror on the second floor, Remus noticed how thin he'd become. His face looked sallower and he had dark shadows underneath his eyes. At least my hair is nice and shiny, he thought bitterly, running his hand through his tawny blond hair, letting the strands catch the light before falling back to his face.
In the kitchens, he ate like one starved, grabbing everything the house elves put in front of him-as much as a delaying tactic before he had to return to the dorm as from sheer hunger.
Finally, he was forced to stop eating and go up to his bed. The dormitory was silent when he entered it and he was glad that there was no one he would have to talk to. He pulled on Sirius' pyjamas and fell into bed.
By 2 o'clock he had finally drifted into a dream filled and unrestful sleep.
The next morning, Remus awoke to find the dorm empty apart from Peter, who was just getting dressed.
"Where's Sirius?" asked Remus blearily, pulling himself out of bed and staggering towards the bathroom where he splashed his face with cold water, rinsing the sleep from his eyes and waking himself up properly.
"I don't know," called Peter from the other room "He left before I woke up. We'll probably see him down at breakfast."
When they reached the great hall, breakfast was in full swing. Sirius was sitting surrounded by girls at the opposite end to where the Marauders usually sat. He was obviously telling a hilarious story as he had everyone in stitches around him, but there was something different about the way he was sitting, the way he was talking a little more loudly than necessary, throwing his arms around more and laughing a strange forced laugh. None of the girls had noticed and most looked delighted that Sirius Black, the Sirius Black, had deigned to sit with them. Occasionally Sirius would throw a cursory glance at where Remus was sitting with Peter-who was immersed as usual in The Daily Profit crossword.
At the end of breakfast, Sirius left alone with one of the girls, Stella. She was in most of their classes but Remus had never really paid any attention to her before. She had blond hair that flicked in a pretty sort of way, just reaching her shoulders. She was very well endowed in the breast department and was just a little shorter than Remus, with large blue eyes and a pretty freckled face. He knew that she was widely considered very desirable and had only recently split up from a long-term relationship with a seventh year Hufflepuff. Remus noticed, with a small twinge of jealousy, that as Sirius walked away from the table, he slid an arm around Stella's waist and leant in, his mouth pressed against her blond hair, and whispered something that even Remus' wolf's hearing couldn't pick up.
Remus felt put out. He felt confused and tricked. He thought of the sketchbook filled with his image and of the row that they'd had directly after visiting James. Could he have been wrong about Sirius' feelings for him? Sirius was just his friend and yet Remus felt betrayed, as though they had had some sort of unspoken agreement that neither of them talked about. One that Sirius had just broken by leaving with Stella. Sirius was definitely the most desirable boy in Hogwarts. He had large, soft brown eyes and longish black hair that flopped into his eyes and just touched his jaw line. He wasn't very flashy, but drew attention to himself with his loud bark-like laugh and his way of making everybody feel comfortable. He had an unassuming ease about him, and was obliging and kind to most people and most of the girls in Hogwarts would have been thrilled if he just talked to them. And yet Sirius had only had a few serious relationships, all with girls older than him, ones that had ended on very good terms. Although there were many rumours-most of which Remus suspected were spread by Sirius himself- Remus knew that the furthest Sirius had gone with any girl was kissing.
So why did Remus feel this way? Why had Sirius suddenly started becoming interested in girls that usually he wouldn't have looked twice at? It was all too much.
While Remus had been contemplating all this, and staring at the door of the great hall, Peter had finished his crossword and was already getting up from the table.
"We've got loads of homework to do Remus, we better get up to the common room. I'm doing Ethelred the Unready for my history of magic project and we've both got astrology, potions and transfiguration homework."
Remus followed Peter up to the common room and spent the rest of the day pretending to do homework, whilst really waiting for Sirius to come through the portrait hole and join them. But Sirius never came and at dinner he was sitting with the same group of girls. Remus had to suffer listening to peter talk about Ethelred the unready for the whole of it. He went to bed early and didn't hear Sirius come in.
"Excuse me, sorry, sorry, excuse me." Remus muttered as he squeezed past the people in his potions class, making his way towards his usual seat at the back. Peter was already there but Sirius was sitting with Stella at the front of the classroom. Remus saw with a pang the place where James should be sitting.
"Excuse me, sorry, thanks." He slid in next to Peter and a red-eyed Lily. He tried to smile at her but saw Sirius laughing out of the corner of his eye and the smile died on his lips.
"As I was saying, before Mr Lupin so kindly decided to bless us with his presence, today we will be learning the theory of hair-growing potions, and some of you will be remaking the ones that you did last week. Those who will be redoing the potions are, Stella Artois"-there were a few sniggers at her name-"Remus Lupin, and John & Jenny Rodgers. Now could the rest of you please get on with the work, the instructions are on the board."
Remus tried to concentrate on the potion but it was impossible. He couldn't help stealing little glances at Sirius every now and then. Sirius was sitting at the front, his long legs sticking out from under the desk, completely ignoring the instructions on the board, sketching something in his sketchbook. I wonder if he's drawing me, thought Remus, immediately embarrassed by his thoughts. Of course not.
At the end of the class, Remus bottled his potion and handed it apprehensively to the Professor. It was a strange khaki colour instead of brown and it looked like the crushed porcupine quills hadn't dissolved properly and were still floating around in it. However, he felt a little better when on the way back to his desk to tidy up, he passed Stella's cauldron and saw the bubbling bright green mixture in it. It's a shame Sirius didn't help her, he thought, he always gets the potions perfect.
From the back of the classroom, Remus heard a high-pitched shriek. He looked up from the left-over ingredients he was gathering, in time to see Stella's cauldron tipping over, it's bright green contents spilling over onto the surrounding desk and floor.
"Oh Sirius! I'm so sorry!" Stella flustered, as he immediately produced his wand, vanishing the potion before it had time to seep into the wood. "Your sketchbook! It's gone all over your sketchbook!" Remus' eyes darted to the black book on the front table and saw that it was beginning to turn a little bit furry and was glowing with a strange green light.
"Oh that's ok." Sirius said nonchalantly "There was nothing good in there anyway." Remus and Sirius' eyes met for a moment, Sirius' displaying no emotion before he turned away. Stella was looking slightly confused and worried, as if even she could sense that there was something wrong with Sirius' character but this was quickly replaced with a pink flush of pleasure as Sirius snaked an arm around her waist and placed his hand on her bottom, steering her gently out of the classroom.
Remus was burning with anger, confusion and curiosity. Impatiently, he tidied the remaining items and hurried down to the front bench where Sirius' sketchpad still lay. Picking it up, he shoved it into his satchel and walked out of the classroom at a brisk pace. Peter was waiting outside but Remus just brushed past him, saying he was going to the library to do some research for the history project. Instead, he made a beeline for the Gryffindor boy's 6th form dormitories and once there he flopped onto his bed, pulling the curtains around and sealing them with a muttered spell. Carefully, he retrieved the still slightly glowing and more than slightly furry sketchbook from his bag and quickly leafed through it.
What he saw shocked him. All the drawings on the original pages of the book were still there, but some pages had been ripped out while other drawings had been deformed or scribbled out with a thick black pencil. The extra pages that Sirius had been drawing on weren't there and Remus could imagine them, lying scrunched up at the bottom of a waste-paper bin. He closed the book and opened it again, looking at his face, blackened or with an extra nose, large erupting spots covering some of his foreheads, while in others he had a protruding horn or knife blade. All were drawn so realistically and with such an obvious passion that it made Remus shiver.
On the fifth time he opened the book, he saw something he hadn't noticed before; right at the very back of the sketchbook, pushed in so far that you couldn't see it was there, was another page, an extra piece of paper. Eagerly and with trembling fingers, Remus pulled it out. On the page was the drawing that Sirius had been doing in potions. It was completed and Remus stared at it horrified. It was a drawing done in black pencil, the lines confident and bold, done with Sirius' usual vigour. It was a picture of two people on a bed, one of them obviously Sirius, the other a girl. It could have been any girl, with her long hair and her small bare, round breasts. Both figures eyes were closed and both were completely naked, their legs entwined and the bed covers rucked up beneath them. Sirius was on top, his mouth pressed against the anonymous girl's, her hand pressing in the small of his back, his arms lost behind her hair and the bedclothes. Remus could see the curve of her hips and the in way that they had been drawn you knew they were lifted off the bed, pressing up towards Sirius. The drawing hadn't been animated but Remus didn't need much of an imagination to picture the movement of the two bodies.
He turned away in disgust, crumpling the page up in his hand, feeling that he was about to throw up. Carefully, he ripped it into tiny little squares, and, stepping out of his bed, he sprinkled them onto Sirius'. Then he placed the sketchbook on top.
Sirius would not see how much he had got to Remus. He would not get the pleasure of seeing Remus' reaction, nor would Remus ever look or talk to Sirius again. He felt dead. It was as if the sketchbook had been the last straw and he was dying, retreating from the world that had brought him so much pain. He couldn't even cry as he lay back in bed, the curtains hiding him from everything, everyone. He didn't go down to supper, nor did he talk to the other two boys when they finally came into the dorms. He was silent as he listened to them changing, heard them chatting-Peter in a light, jolly way, Sirius with a strained air of carelessness. Remus didn't hear if Sirius had seen the scraps of paper on the bed, or if he had even tidied them up, but the next morning, by the time he got up they were gone and the bed looked neat and tidy as if they had never been there.