Remus awoke early on Saturday morning and remained under the warmth of the covers for some time, relishing the feeling of having enjoyed a dreamless sleep. Without feeling the anxiety that many of his dreams left behind, he felt blissfully blank, full of potential. Today he would meet Lily at the dragon's burial mound for their picnic, their first actual date. He began to stir and stretch, smiling contentedly. It was still early, and the bed tower was full of the soothing quietude that only the innocent sounds of sleeping people can bring. He pushed back the bed curtains and listened for a few minutes, allowing himself to be lulled by the sounds of gentle breathing and the soft buzz of snores, trying not to think too hard about who, exactly, was sleeping while he eagerly anticipated his date. Eventually he got up and dressed in silence, observing how the dim, grey morning light made everything look somehow less tangible, less harsh.
His friends still slept, and Remus was grateful for the solitude. Although they had come to an uneasy truce last night, he had to admit he probably trusted James and Sirius a little less now. He could forgive Peter for snooping; he had only done what James and Sirius had asked him to do. So, typically, no one apologized and everyone forgave, more or less. Apparently this round of fighting about Severus was over.
But last night Sirius was hinting at something. He must suspect that Remus had feelings for Lily; in fact, Remus was almost sure of it. The flashes of Legilimency this week certainly revealed a suspicion lurking in Sirius's thoughts. He wondered if Sirius suspected Lily of returning Remus's feelings. Last night's needling had been directed solely at Remus, but hadn't Sirius wondered out loud what Lily was doing in the Room of Requirement after Remus's transformation? Clearly James had no clue, and Sirius hadn't told him of his suspicions. Remus and Lily would have to be careful. He couldn't bear to sacrifice such bliss now that he had tasted it, not for fear of Sirius's interfering, not even – as much as it shamed him to admit it – not even for his love for James. He thought of Lily's wish for a life with no regrets, and he hoped that he would have none. He sighed, trying to shove worry from his mind.
Thankfully, after two lessons from Professor Dumbledore, Remus was already having an easier time controlling his Legilimency; he would see the headmaster again next week to continue working on Legilimency and to begin addressing Occlumency. Remus now spent part of each day meditating and focusing his mind, and it seemed to carry over to his interactions with others. He'd seen fewer memories after two days of practice, and he felt hopeful that one day he would have complete mastery of it.
Quietly, Remus opened his trunk and retrieved the blank piece of parchment he sought. Then he bounded down the stairs to the Common Room and sank onto the sofa, opening the map and quietly activating it, searching for secret passages he and his friends hadn't discovered yet. It would help to pass the time until noon when he would finally see Lily again, finally be alone with her. A thrill coursed through his body, and he let his mind wander into fantasies about kissing her, feeling her body against his. Perhaps they would go to the Quidditch match together later, after their picnic. They would sit innocently side by side, not touching, casting furtive glances at one another as they shouted for the Gryffindor team. Thinking of the team reminded him, of course, of one player in particular. Guilt niggled its way momentarily into his heart. Remus frowned.
Perhaps instead he and Lily could stay on the hill all afternoon. His reverie quickly blossomed into one that made his cheeks flush as he started to imagine things they hadn't done yet. He hoped he would be able to figure out what to do if their kissing did escalate into something more. Although he wasn't entirely ignorant, his experience with Elphaba last year had been limited to extended periods of snogging and groping. He had read a couple of books about sex; and, of course, he had perused his share of Playwizard issues. But his main source of practical information about how to pleasure a woman was Sirius, who was quite the blabbermouth until October when Prudence Perdue cast a muteness spell on him that lasted a week. After that, Sirius was disturbingly discreet, even around his friends. At any rate, Remus wasn't certain he trusted him; it would be just like Sirius to give Remus misleading information about feminine preferences, just so he could laugh at his post-coital mortification.
In spite of himself, curiosity got the better of him and he looked into the girls' dormitory on the map. There was the miniature Lily. He smiled at the tiny figure, thankful that it didn't look more like her; he already felt like a spy. No, he was spying. He decided to make it up to her later by bringing the map and letting her do her own spying. That was reasonable enough, he thought, although to be perfectly fair he should allow her to spy on him. He watched the figure pacing, back and forth, back and forth, first to the girls' bathroom, then to the bedchamber, then back to the bathroom, over and over again, pausing now and then in the bathroom, then hurrying back to the bedchamber. What was she doing? He was reminded of his grandmother gussying herself up, trying on different outfits and modeling them for the family in the living room the afternoon before her fortieth wedding anniversary party. Remus swallowed. Was Lily primping … for her date with him? At eight o'clock in the morning? He quickly deactivated and closed the map, feeling that perhaps he should make more of an effort to look nice. He stood and stole a glance at himself in the mirror over the fireplace. He ran a hand through his fringe, but it fell back into his eyes immediately. He briefly considered changing into different clothes; but then he reminded himself that they were going on a picnic, not to the opera. He paced the Common Room for a solid five minutes before finally forcing himself to go downstairs for breakfast.
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Remus arrived first, carrying a blanket and a large paper sack. He trudged up the burial mound, his long strides covering the ground quickly. When he reached the top, he stood still, looking around at the treetops. He could feel the warmth of the ground slowly seeping upward into the bottoms of his jeans. He set the sack down and spread the blanket on the grass, silently thanking the dead dragon beneath the earth for providing some heat on this crisp April afternoon.
The sack was filled with items the house elves had shoveled into it. Remus had gone to the Hogwarts kitchen an hour ago, asking for two cucumber sandwiches and pumpkin juice. Instead, the house elves had provided two plates, two sandwiches with thinly-sliced beef and spicy mustard, three kinds of cheese and a little knife, two apples and a paring knife, two chocolate-dipped coconut macaroons, and four bottles of butterbeer. Remus had sputtered his thanks as the house elves, smiling and waving, shooed him out of the kitchen.
Now he removed the items and spread them in the center of the blanket, trying to set a pleasing arrangement. He rearranged the plates and the food items several times while he waited for Lily, smiling at his own nervousness. Then he reclined on the blanket, crossing his ankles and leaning back on his elbows.
As soon as he had settled back, Lily rounded the top of the hill. Remus stood immediately and waited for her to join him. His heart began a tap dance and he smiled broadly, glad that he wouldn't have to watch his behavior around her for the next few hours. She beamed when she saw him, and his insides did a tumble.
"'Lo," he said, still grinning.
"Wow," Lily remarked as she neared the picnic Remus had laid out. She was slightly out of breath from her hike up the steep hill, and her cheeks were pink. "Where did you get all this?"
"House elves," Remus replied, his heart swelling with the pleasure of knowing that he had impressed her with the picnic. "Another secret passage we discovered leads into the kitchens. I brought the map, in case you wanted to look at it some more."
"Really?" Lily looked up at him. "Thanks, I'd like that."
They gazed at each other for a long moment, smiling. A breeze whipped Lily's hair across her face, and she pushed it aside.
"You know, I wanted to kiss you the last time we were here," Remus confessed.
"I know," Lily said cheekily. Then she lowered her eyes. "Me, too."
"I know," Remus retorted with a grin. Lily reached out to poke him in the ribs, but he deftly grabbed her hand and kissed her palm lightly; keeping his eyes on hers, he watched her smile broaden. He lowered her hand, still holding it warmly inside his. "Are you hungry?"
"Not really," she breathed. "I mean yes! Lunch. Right." Lily flushed, laughing.
As they sat down facing each other, Remus reflected that he seemed to make Lily as nervous as she made him. It was a thrilling realization, and he basked in the knowledge as he served her a sandwich. They chatted easily, taking their time over lunch. Remus peeled an apple, cut it into wedges, and placed several on Lily's plate. Lily sliced a few hunks of cheese and offered them to Remus. The butterbeers put them at their ease, and soon they were lying on their sides, each propped up on an elbow as they munched and talked. Large, fluffy clouds sat high in the sky, nudged slowly along by the breeze. Lily's face looked relaxed, contented; and Remus felt he could stay up here forever.
"Tell me something about when you were a little girl," Remus said.
Lily laughed. "Not much to tell. I liked horses, I wore pink and purple to excess, and I had a huge crush on the Beatles."
"All of them at once?"
"Well," Lily blushed, "I was partial to John and George."
"Impressive," Remus smiled. "I would have pegged you for a Paul girl."
"Eww, too pretty."
Remus had to admit he felt a bit relieved. "And too predictable," he agreed. "John was the smart-aleck, and – "
" – and George was the one you could never quite figure out." Lily's eyes sparkled as she spoke, her silky eyelashes catching the sunlight.
"I can see why you liked them," Remus managed over the thudding of his heartbeat.
"Can you?" Lily asked coyly. Suddenly Remus had the sense that they weren't exactly talking about the Beatles anymore. He felt his cheeks begin to burn and his lips suddenly tingled with the desire to kiss her. But then Lily brushed some crumbs off her jumper and went on.
"My sister Petunia and I used to play together. But instead of Cops and Robbers, it was the Beatles versus the Rolling Stones. I was always the Beatles."
"All of them at once?" Remus asked again.
"Suspend your disbelief," Lily laughed.
"How, exactly, does one play Beatles versus Stones?" he asked seriously.
"We would pretend we were on a television game show and have them compete against each another."
"How ordinary," Remus mourned with a smirk. "I was expecting mortal combat. Machine guns disguised as guitars and whatnot."
"Sorry to disappoint," Lily smiled. "But we were ordinary, my parents and Petunia and me. Until I was about five years old." She lay back on the blanket and put her hands behind her head, looking straight up at the sky.
"Let me guess: accidental magic."
"Mm-hmm," Lily nodded. "Petunia – she was nearly seven, I think – she and I would climb the hill behind our neighborhood and lie on the grass. We would try to pick out shapes in the clouds. You know, like that one up there is shaped like a handbag." She pointed.
Remus looked up and saw it, then brought his gaze back to Lily.
"Petunia always saw more shapes than I could. And like a lot of older siblings, I guess, she enjoyed rubbing my nose in it. Then one day she told me she could make the clouds move. Of course, she was my older sister, so I believed her. I never thought about the wind moving the clouds."
"Of course not," said Remus.
"So I concentrated really hard, and I made something happen. There was a cloud that was shaped like a rabbit. I gave it vampire teeth and made it attack her cloud."
Remus snickered. "Brilliant."
"Petunia screamed and ran home, even though she wasn't supposed to leave me alone. She got into a lot of trouble for it. I stayed up on the hill. I was terrified … but fascinated at the same time. I couldn't believe I was actually doing it. I mean, weird things had happened around me before – but nothing like this. I stood there and kept moving that cloud for about half an hour. I don't even want to know what the neighbors thought if they happened to look up. Finally Mum came and got me. She must have seen the cloud while she climbed the hill. I remember her standing there on the summit with me, holding my hand and staring up at the sky. She said, 'Do it again.' But her voice shook when she said it, so I didn't. I didn't move the cloud anymore."
"Hmm." Remus wrapped a strand of Lily's hair around his index finger. She turned her focus toward him.
"Mum and I laugh about it now," she smiled. "But they're Muggles, and so was I, as far as I knew; so of course it was fairly traumatic for us all at the time."
"I can imagine," Remus agreed.
"I think my grandmother called the priest, but he was ill at the time. So no exorcism, lucky me."
Remus chuckled grimly. "But if that was your first bit of semi-controlled magic, it's pretty impressive."
Lily frowned and looked up once more. "I guess it was. I never thought about it." She sat up again on her elbow. "What about you? What was yours?"
Remus cleared his throat. "Erm … fire."
"What?" Lily laughed.
"All I can say is I'm glad my parents weren't Muggles. At least they were prepared for – well, something."
"Great Merlin, what happened?"
"Well … I was four, I think. I was obsessed with Godzilla at the time, thanks to my gran taking me to the cinema; and I had a big plastic dinosaur I played with constantly. My dad had set up some cardboard boxes in the back yard as a city for my Godzilla to demolish. I moved Godzilla through the little streets, growling and shrieking and pretending to crush the buildings and all the tiny imaginary people. But I really, really wanted my Godzilla to breathe fire. And all of a sudden, he did. It was blue. The flames were neon blue. And all the boxes caught fire. So did Godzilla's face. I was thrilled. I hollered for joy while dad rushed over to put the flames out."
By this time, Lily was giggling helplessly.
"Mum thought it was hilarious, too," Remus quipped. "Granted, it only took about ten years for her to think it was funny, but she eventually did. Of course, it didn't help that I kept trying to make things breathe fire. I was pretty obstinate."
"You?" Lily feigned shock.
"Believe it or not," Remus grinned. "Typical four-year-old in many, many ways. I was cured of that little fixation when I singed my pet rabbit Dylan's whiskers trying to make him breathe fire. Poor thing quivered whenever I came into the room after that. I felt terrible. I'm convinced that was the beginning of my over-developed sense of guilt."
"Dylan?" Lily asked, biting into a macaroon.
"My gran – she was a writer – gave him to me. She named him after Dylan Thomas, although I didn't realize that until much later."
"Tell me about her," said Lily.
Remus took a macaroon and told Lily about his grandparents' meeting for the first time in Argentina while they both visited from England, and how her Muggle relatives initially hadn't approved of their quick courtship and marriage. He described how his grandmother had introduced him to books and poetry at a young age, which later had helped him keep his mind off his lycanthropy after Greyback attacked him when he was nearly seven.
"Over the next four years, I'd spend months at a time reading, especially in the summer," he said. "Until I came to Hogwarts, my parents were worried I'd never come out of my room."
Lily picked at a bit of dead grass, watching Remus thoughtfully. "What kinds of books did you read?"
"Oh, everything. A lot of fiction, in the beginning. Science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, American westerns. Mostly adventure stories. Anything where the lead was trying to get rid of the bad guy. I guess I know now why those were the books I wanted."
"Yeah," Lily sighed, tracing the back of Remus's hand with a blade of grass. Her brow furrowed and she was silent.
"But we have plenty of time to talk about all that," Remus said briskly. "I promised myself I wasn't going to get all introspective on our first date."
Lily suddenly smiled. "I like your introspective nature."
"I suppose that's a good thing," Remus blushed. "It's not likely to change at this point."
"Yeah, seventeen is so old," she laughed.
"Sometimes it feels that way," he replied. Then he flopped back on the grass and clapped both hands over his mouth. His voice was a muffled plea. "There I go again. Please shut me up."
Lily complied immediately by lowering her face to his, nuzzling his hands away, and planting a long, slow kiss on his mouth. Remus couldn't have spoken after that if his life depended on it.
"There. Better?"
Remus nodded. He tucked an arm behind his head and reached up with the other hand to gather a handful of Lily's hair in his fingers. He drew it across his lips, inhaling the scent of her shampoo.
Lily's soft gaze remained on him and, despite himself, he saw Lily looking at him, Lily seeing him, right now … and he felt a sudden, powerful tug of emotion that had nothing to do with the pounding of his own heart. Lily thought him witty, and interesting, and intelligent, and – handsome? And he did look content in her presence, he had to admit. Somehow his scars didn't seem quite as garish as he thought, or his face as pale. How strange, to regard oneself through another's eyes. How accurate was the picture she gave him? Was it embellished by her own feelings? Or was he in truth all the things she was feeling in her heart right now, right at this moment? As he tried to analyze what he was seeing, he realized that, for the second time today, he was acting like a spy.
Remus tried to shake himself out of her thoughts without breaking eye contact. The attempt was successful, although he felt as if he had slipped backwards down a hall whose marble floors had just been mopped. But Lily's eyes pulled him back immediately and she kissed him again, her eyes open and locked on his. The ground seemed to be tilting, as if it were about to dump him off the surface of the earth into the stratosphere somewhere. He couldn't look away; but her gaze, and the images he saw there, made him squirm. With a dull thrill he felt Lily pinning him to the ground with her body, and the spinning subsided somewhat. Her eyes continued to penetrate his, made him see what she saw. It was a heady and dangerous feeling, one that he couldn't quite wrap his mind around. Now he felt as though he were being tossed in a tumultuous sea, one that could easily capsize his little boat, with him and Lily in it, if it only wanted to. Kissing Lily and watching himself be kissed by her, caressing her soft form while simultaneously registering the sensations his touch ignited in her, feeling her emotions and her desire while his own raged and tumbled within him – it was almost more than he could bear.
His breath caught in his throat. Sudden, hot tears sprang to his eyes and he shut them immediately, so Lily wouldn't see.
Twenty minutes later, when Remus finally opened his eyes as they lay there, panting and alive and pleasantly frustrated, he noticed that all the clouds in the sky had somehow wafted down to where they lay on the grass, enveloping the couple in their dewy embrace.
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A/N: The title is from a poem by e.e. cummings, which to me pinpoints the downfalls of too much thinking in matters of love. I couldn't bring myself to have Remus quote another poem in the chapter, so here it is:
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
-- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
and death i think is no parenthesis
Thanks, everyone, for reading and reviewing. As always, those who review get a special treat. This week's special is a picnic with the werewolf of your choice, plus or minus Legilimency.