Title: Shuffle Your Feet (or, A Centipede)
Rating: PG
Pairing(s)/character(s): Remus/Severus
Summary: Remus POV: After a long period of not speaking, Remus finally receives word from Severus.
Notes: MWPP era. Not a happy fic, I'm afraid. Also, not a very long
one. Kinda follows along the same line (although jumping around a bit)
as a story I was working on (Marked Just the Same) a very long time ago.
He came into class late. He did not apologize as most students do to teachers. He just sat at his desk, took out his book, quill, and parchment and let the professor lecture him about being on time. Slytherin lost 10 points because Severus was late and unapologetic. He was wet, too. Came in out of the rain from Merlin knows where. He never told the teacher where he was coming from. Never made excuses. Never had a pass. You would think that as a Death Eater these things were planned out ahead of time. But they weren't. Severus accepted his punishment, whether it was point deduction or detention or an essay on promptness. He did not argue or whine, like most students did. This is what made him differ from other students. This is what made him differ from most anyone else.
I heard James next to me whispering a spell and the next moment a gasp from Severus as the quill on his desk turned into a centipede. Letting the insect crawl over his hand and down his desk onto the floor, he quickly turned around to who he could only guess played the prank on him. He reached into his sack for another quill, and as he did, looked at me, expressionless. He did well with that.
James and I lost sight of the centipede, but we guessed that it was still lurking somewhere in the classroom, hopefully to disturb the next set of students to use this classroom. At the end of class, Sirius congratulated James on a job well done and I mumbled something about having a headache and full moon soon and blah blah blah and need to take a nap just as an excuse to get out of watching the Quidditch match. Whether or not they believed me, I'll never know, they just accepted (they were very accepting these days) and told me that they'd see me after the match.
I hurried to my room. Lily looked concerned as she bumped into me in the common room, and asked if she'd see me at the match. I said no and continued to my room before she could say anything else. I half expected her to knock at my door and come into the room wanting to talk, but when a half hour passed, I knew she had gone. I wanted to talk to her about everything that had happened but still I kept quiet. She had been quiet around me, too, so I couldn't blame myself. The only reason she had to come around here was to secretly snog James. They think that I don't know about it. They think that I sleep soundly, but it isn't so. You would think that James would make a big deal over it, but he's being quiet. Other than the few small pranks they still play on Severus, they've been walking on eggshells around me. I suppose I don't make it easy for them. I could say that I'm ready to talk to Sirius. I could thank James for interfering. But I don't.
I stared out the window, wondering where Severus had come from. Had it been from Hogsmeade or the forest? Had there been some meeting in a secret location here at Hogwarts? I would never know and even though he and I were not speaking, there was never a time I didn't wonder what he was doing.
Looking out the window wasn't going to help. Working on my assignment would allow me to get my mind off of things for a while. I took a long piece of parchment from my desk and prepared myself for writing an essay by going over last class' notes and past reading assignments. I got no further than writing my name on the parchment when I saw that the centipede Severus' quill had climbed from my bag and onto my desk. The insect crawled over the parchment and turned itself back into a quill. The quill lay on the parchment for just a moment and then as I was about to pick it up, it came to life. It began to write:
"I wish you wouldn't stare at me in class ---- werewolf."
I recognized the handwriting. There was no doubt who it was. I stared at the message until I couldn't look at it anymore and crumbled and threw the parchment and the quill out of the window and into a puddle down below.