When half past two in the afternoon rolled around, Sirius could be found in the boy's dormitories, sitting on his bed, moping. He'd been in and out of there all day, making random appearances in public, flirting with the girls, so that people wouldn't realize anything was wrong. Now, he was sitting here, miserable and bored, because he knew Remus wouldn't want to be stranded in the wilderness of Hogwarts' grounds with him and he had nothing to do.
Of course, it was a nice distraction when James burst into the room and practically fell into his lap.
"Padfoot, you bugger, what're you doing?" his friend demanded. "Moony's been waiting for you in the foyer for the last bloody half hour!"
Sirius stared at him, then leapt off the bed, grabbing his cloak, gloves, scarf and hat and sprinting down to the entrance hall. He had an inkling as to why Remus wanted to walk with him, and it wasn't a good thing, but if he could spend this time with him, he wasn't about to complain.
He skidded out of the main doors and stopped abruptly, breath coming in huffs, making clouds of steam appear in front of him. Remus was sitting on the top step, elbows resting limply on his knees. He looked dejected – as though his only sane companion in a mad world had abandoned him because he couldn't take the strain.
"Moony!" he panted, and Remus started, turning to stare at him, before his face lit up with a grin. "Let's go freeze our arses off doing something worthwhile, as opposed to making an interesting-shaped groove on the steps."
Sirius held out his hand, which Remus took, and hoisted the other boy to his feet.
"I was wondering whether you'd ditched me for some girl," Remus said playfully, as they made their way down the steps.
"You think so little of me," Sirius murmured, with a faint grin. Remus was apparently a better actor than he, or had perhaps Obliviated himself. That was the only explanation. Couldn't the other boy feel the tension? Maybe it was all in Sirius' head.
-
They spent a good half hour at the start of their walk in silence, a distance of about four feet in between them. Remus waited patiently for Sirius to start the ranting as he usually did, but for some reason Sirius was quiet and every time Remus glanced at him he had a little frown on his face as though he was thinking deeply about something.
Eventually, Remus decided to take the lead and began to rant himself.
"-I mean, it's absolutely ridiculous the way they're all behaving like rutting bulls who've been kept in isolation all their bloody lives! You'd think they didn't bloody see each other every bloody day! And they don't even have the decency to find somewhere private to engage in their...their...serial molestation! I nearly ended up joining in with four couples on the way to the library 'cause they'd parked themselves right where anyone could walk into them! And then another lot fell on top of me while I was trying to read!" Remus kicked irritably at a small pile of snow that was annoying him with its mere existence. "And another thing – this whole celebration is pointless! I can understand couples celebrating it, as long as they do it privately where I'm not going to see things I don't want to see – I'm never going to be able to look bloody Amanda Gregson in the face now, by the way – but the way that it's become almost obsessive to get a date to spend the day trying to eat...It's horrific! It's out of control! It's...stupid!"
"You're right," Sirius said gruffly. "It is stupid. The whole stupid bloody thing is a bloody stupid waste of my bloody time."
Remus blinked at him, surprised.
"I thought this was your cue to try and convince me that Valentine's was a wonderful holiday, if only I would loosen up a bit?" he said slowly, looking at Sirius as though the other boy had been possessed.
"Oh come on," Sirius snapped. "We both know you're right! It's a day of unwanted attentions from stupid idiots who don't think things through, have mouths that run away from them and spend their lives living with their stupid bloody heads up their stupid bloody arses because they're arrogant stupid gits and suck!"
With this declaration, he stomped off ahead, leaving Remus behind, somewhat stunned, wondering what all that had been about.
"Um...Sirius?" Remus called, stumbling as he tried to catch up with the other boy. "Sirius! Sirius, wait!"
Sirius stopped, staring moodily out into middle-distance, somewhere about five feet in the air in the middle of the lake.
"Sirius, is this anything to do with - "
"No. No it's not," Sirius cut him off, and Remus swallowed the rest of the sentence about that Ravenclaw bird, who he'd seen been thoroughly molested by some snot-nosed git from Slytherin. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. I was...I was out of order. First I was late, now I'm snapping your head off. Sorry. Just forget everything, okay?"
"If I do," Remus said quietly, frowning slightly at his friend. "Will you start acting normal again?"
Sirius managed a faint grin and a raised eyebrow.
"Normal?" he said. "Me?"
Remus chuckled and walked off, Sirius falling into step beside him.
"You'll get over it," Remus said, after a space, convinced that Sirius was just upset about his Ravenclaw, no matter what he said. "Plenty more fish in the sea and all that. No big deal. Besides, it's not like it was love."
Sirius seemed to hesitate for a moment, before giving Remus a bright smile that seemed forced.
"Yeah!" he agreed, a little too cheerily. "Yeah! Love, pfft! What a silly idea!"
After that, Sirius began to act more normal, though sometimes Remus felt that Sirius was struggling to keep the tone light and happy. However, Remus was not more than a little worried and even that, by the end of the walk, was completely gone from his mind.
-
He didn't love Remus. He didn't love Remus. He didn't love Remus. He didn't love Remus. He didn't love Remus. He didn't love Remus, he didn't love Remus, he didn't-
Oh bugger, what was the use?
Sirius lay on his bed, staring up at the canopy above it as he listened to the sounds of sleep coming from the other three beds in the room.
He did love Remus, he did, he did. He loved Remus and he believed in sodding bloody fairies ((never mind that he'd kept three in jars by his bed when he was little, that was very much besides the point)) and Nevernever Land and Peter sodding Pan who had an easy life of it because the only men he had to choose from were a bunch of under-tens and a shipful of fat smelly pirates and he was probably still a preteen anyway and wouldn't appreciate it properly if someone like Moony wandered into his life and was all sexy and clever and adorable and...
Well, the confrontation this afternoon hadn't gone that badly. Moony hadn't even mentioned the Valentine, and he didn't even mention rejection. He just said 'You'll get over it.' And 'It's not like it was love', which, actually, it was, but Moony didn't think that and that made the whole thing completely different.
Moony obviously knew Sirius liked him, otherwise he wouldn't have said 'You'll get over it'. He'd have just said,
"Sirius, you stupid tosser, why are you giving me a Valentine?"
Or something to that effect, probably accompanied by a solid clout around the head with a very heavy book.
The important thing now was that Sirius avoided letting Remus find out that it wasn't just a silly girly crush and was actually full-blown-ever-after-his-and-his-matching-towels-misty-moors-and-corsets silly girly love.
Which could be a problem.
Sirius could feel that something inside him had...loosened slightly today. Whatever it was, it had quite enjoyed freedom, thankyouverymuch, and wasn't overly keen on the idea of being locked up again. Or smothered until it bleeding well suffocated, the irritating little snot-rag that it was.
His face became determined. Or at least, he hoped it did, but given his lack of sleep and the current hour being stupid o'clock in the morning, he probably looked more inebriated than resolved.
That aside, he knew what he had to do. He had another plan, and this one would probably lead to him not losing as much sleep as the other one had.
'Operation: Avoid Moony' was to begin tomorrow. Or later. Or three months from now, when he'd finally recovered from sleep deprivation.
If he ever got to sleep, that is.
-
Remus got the feeling that Sirius was avoiding him.
He tried to confide in James, but the other boy had just laughed and asked where on Earth he'd gotten that idea.
Remus felt it best not to respond with the fact that he was pretty sure he'd heard Sirius muttering something like 'Operation: Avoid Moony' the other night. He didn't mention this because one, James probably wouldn't believe him and two he wasn't sure that he'd actually heard it, being only half-awake at the time. And even if he had heard it, it might not have been Sirius. Although, it had sounded an awful lot like Sirius, and since Sirius' bed was the closest to his…Even so, it was distinctly possible that Sirius had been just having another one of his random dreams.
Logic, however, dictated that he had actually heard it, since Sirius was quite definitely avoiding him.
The black-haired boy was, with regularity, turning up late to class, apparently losing that teleportation power that Remus was sure he had, the many times he'd seen Sirius on one side of the school one minute, then turning up to class just as the bell went, not looking at all ruffled.
Now he was turning up a good five or ten minutes late, and getting about a billion detentions from staff left, right and centre. The teachers who didn't give him detentions right off the bat were subjected to the utmost of Sirius' repertoire of misbehavior, only without any of his usual stealth. It was painful to watch.
Also, Sirius had achieved a new record, managing to find his way to his own bed first time for the whole week. This fact should not have made Remus as irritable as it did, but he found that he was rather missing the feeling of someone warm and quite obviously half asleep crawling into his bed of an evening and snuggling up to him like he was a big teddy bear.
This revelation was partially what was annoying him. Previously, he had believed that he had seen Sirius' inability to navigate the dorm as something of an amusing annoyance. Apparently it was something more.
Currently, Remus was curled up in an armchair, trying to read a book, but painfully aware of Sirius on the other side of the common room, sprawled on one of the two-seater sofas with one of the girls in their year – he didn't care which one, he hadn't bothered to look at her that closely – in the way that he usually did with Remus. For some reason, either to do with lack of good sleep ((due to Sirius not waking him up by flopping on top of him, oddly enough)) or the approaching full moon, or something else completely stupid, nameless and irrational, Remus was terribly, terribly annoyed that the girl was pressed that tightly against Sirius' side and that she kept touching him. That much touching was totally unnecessary. It was like she wanted to keep making sure Sirius actually existed or something.
Scowling something awful and annoyed at himself for it, Remus shifted his position slightly, moving the book to hide the pair. Then, for some stupid masochistic reason, he totally defeated the object of this by lowering the book just slightly so he could glower at them over the top of it.
The nameless girl ((who probably wasn't nameless, and was probably in one of Remus' classes and in actuality a very nice girl)) was now leaning in very close to Sirius and appeared to be whispering something in his ear – or at least, that had better be what she was doing – and now Sirius was laughing, his loud, barking laugh that he laughed when he found something that particularly tickled him, and she was grinning smugly that made Remus want to slap her in a girly manner and in an effort to suppress the growl that was rising up inside him he clenched his fists.
He vaguely heard the ripping noise and a yelp that sounded oddly like it came from Peter. He felt his arms jerk though, the feeling of something giving way, and he blinked back to life, looking down at his book, that was torn neatly in two pieces.
"Oh bollocks!" he swore, trying without much hope to fit the two sides back together. Bloody moon. How was he supposed to know his own strength when it changed so substantially every bloody month?
"Moony?" James said hesitantly, as Peter cowered behind him a little way away. "I think you should go have some quiet time. Now, before you kill something other than a book and I kill Peter."
Remus sighed and stood, trudging up the stairs to the dormitory, staring down at the two half-books in his hands with a mixture of mournfulness and righteous anger. Bloody Sirius. He'd never have hurt the book if bloody Sirius hadn't had that bloody girl bloody draped all bloody over him.
He'd really liked that book as well.
He'd have to appeal to Mme. Pince to get her to teach him that charm to mend damaged books.
-
The only problem with being a dog was that you couldn't laugh.
On nights like this, when the air was fresh and the sky a deep velvet blue and the moon made the clouds streaked across it glow silver, shining so brightly itself that it had two rainbow-colored halos that Sirius had paused to admire on his way down to the Whomping Willow with James and Peter, being unable to laugh was a particular problem.
Tonight was the perfect night for flying, ploughing through the air at speeds too fast to be safe, and laughing like a lunatic at the joy of it all; or for just running like a madman through the fields surrounding Hogsmeade, leaping and tumbling, letting his cackles ring out into the night.
Of course, when he was human, he couldn't run and bound and roll and tumble in the same weightless way he could when he was Padfoot. He only regretted that he was unable to laugh – he could manage without opposable thumbs, clothes and magic, if only he could laugh – but in lieu of that he gave a delighted bark and cleared the fence around the field easily, followed closely by Moony.
One of the good things of having a werewolf for a friend, Sirius thought with the small, human part of his brain as he wrestled with the huge beast, was that if you were ever unsure where you stood with him, you quickly found out during the full moon, as werewolves had far less qualms about expressing anger than humans.
Moony had not tried to eat him upon seeing him tonight, so he obviously wasn't angry at Sirius. In fact, the wolf had seemed more interested in playing with Padfoot than pretty much anything else, and Sirius was willing to bet that James and Peter were getting quite bored. Not that he particularly cared.
Letting out another joyous bark, he sprinted off across the field, Moony in hot pursuit.
-