Author's Note: Hey all! Another chaptered story. I swear this one's done already, I just need to finish typing it up. Sorry it's so short, I promise the other chapters'll be longer. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: All characters belong to J.K. Rowling. Meager plotlines belong to me.
'Remus J. Lupin loves Sirius Black'. And just like that, it is really really real. Writing, Remus decides, is more powerful than thought, though not so much as speech. And since there is no way Remus would ever say those five words (plus the initial) aloud, he must be content with writing them, an action which is perhaps more fraught with peril than spoken words, since those are only heard by one person. Writing can be passed around, read, and laughed at, by everyone. So, weighing the two, Remus is not quite sure which is really the better choice. But since he's already written the five forbidden words (and the one forbidden initial), he might as well continue in that vein. Although now that he has written them, he has nothing left to say.
So, to give himself time to think, Remus dips his quill in the inkwell and glances around him at the empty common room. It is around two in the morning on a Sunday night and the usual festivities ended about an hour before. The house elves have not yet arrived, so the large, circular common room is a mess, streamers and empty bottles of butterbeer clutter the floor while a large banner with a lion on it—which only stopped roaring when someone put an excellent Silencing Charm on it—hangs determinedly above the portrait hole. Remus is alone, curled up in a chair very close to the fire, which still blazes merrily.
The words stare at him from the parchment he has written them on, glistening with ink and burning themselves onto his eyes, transcribing themselves into his mind, and branding themselves upon his heart. He tears his eyes away, uncomfortable, ill at ease, and embarrassed, then shoves the paper into his bag and hauls it upstairs.