AN:
okay so after I saw my stupid miskate I'll just shut up and let you read the chapter. I can be really stupid sometimes...
thanks for RacingShadows for the Beta (:
enjoy the chapter (:
James' point of view
It was an early Saturday morning in the beginning of October. Gryffindor's common room was quiet and empty. Almost.
On one of the red couches sat a pale boy who hold an open book on his knees and read. In fact, he didn't read, but stared at the pages in front of him in boredom. He was tired, but couldn't go back to sleep after he'd already woke up.
Every other morning like that he would've spent on planning his pranks, or bothering his sleeping friends. But that morning was different.
That morning he wasn't himself, but Remus Lupin, and Remus sat in the common room and read early in the morning if he couldn't fall back to sleep. Or at least, that what James assumed.
James didn't know how to feel about this whole situation. On one hand, he was confused and didn't know how to deal with this trouble. He didn't know how to act like Remus, and wasn't sure if people will actually buy it. Remus didn't love to talk about himself and always thought twice before he did something. But for James it wasn't easy to control his instincts, and he didn't know if he was able to stop himself from saying some inappropriate things.
But, on the other hand, that situation had positive sides too. He could see the world from Remus' point of view and learn more about his friend. And besides, it was a great idea for a prank, and a big challenge.
At first he wanted to just tell Sirius and Peter about this, in spite of what Remus had said, but after he thought about it for a while he decided it would be funnier to see if his friends will figure out what was going on.
The sounds of footsteps made him come out of his thoughts and he raised his look from the book. In front of him stood a tall redhead girl in her red nightgown that fitted her hair.
"Hi, Remus," said Lily and sat next to him.
"Oh, hi, Ev- Lily. Good morning," he greeted her with a smile.
"What are you doing down here so early?" she asked and glanced at the book that lay on his lap, closed.
"I couldn't sleep, so I came here to read." He said and put the book on the near table. "And what are you doing here?"
Lily smiled at him, "the same, only I didn't brought a book. Say, do you want to go trough the lists from September? We haven't finished them yet."
James didn't know what she was talking about, but assumed it was something to do with her and Remus' job as being head boy and girl. James'd never asked Remus what they were doing. He knew Lily and Remus were good friends and talked a lot. James used to laugh at his friend for spending that much time on writing stupid lists and talking with the other prefects about the school rules, but inside he felt jealous of his friend for spending so much time with Lily.
Sometimes he feared something might happen between the two, but Remus had promised him they were just friends, and that he would never do something like that to his mate. And James trusted him.
"Ah, okay," he replied to Lily's question, even though he wasn't sure of what he was supposed to do.
"Great, I'll go get them," she said and ran upstairs to the girls' dorm.
James sighed and watched her back. At least one good thing comes out of it, he thought to himself, I get to spend more time with Lily, and maybe I can even show her that I'm not that bad as she thinks.
Lily came back after a few minutes with a package of sheets in her hand.
"There," she said and gave James half of it.
James looked at it and saw that the pages were full with Remus' thin handwriting. He sighed again and tried desperately to change the subject.
"So… are you going to Hogsmeade next weekend?" that was the first topic that jumped to his mind, which made sense after all those times he'd tried to ask her out.
Lily raised her eyebrow. "Yes," she said, though she looked confused. "I think so."
"Who are you going with?"
"I don't know. Potter will probably ask me out, again." She muttered.
"And what are you going to say?" he asked in curiosity.
"Eh… no." she snorted.
"Oh." James lowered his gaze. He wanted do defend his dignity so badly, but how could he do that when he was supposed to be Remus?
"And whom are you going with?"
"With my friends, I guess. Who else can I go with?" he shrugged.
"Why won't you ask someone out?" Lily asked with interest, though her voice sounded pleading.
James would have loved to answer that question, but Remus didn't have very high self-confidence.
"Who would want to go out with me?" It was a reasonable question. Remus wasn't that handsome, with all the scars that decorated his face, and his dull tawny hair. He also never used to open up to people, and didn't have that much friends beside the Marauders and Lily.
"I would go out with you," answered Lily to his rhetorical question. "You know, if you weren't gay."
"Oh, yeah, that's great," James cursed Remus in his head, but then Lily's words kicked in. "Wait, WHAT?!"
"You did what?!" James' scream echoed in the room. He and Remus sat in the back of the library, supposed to be working on the lesson they have missed because of the spell accident.
Remus smiled in embarrassment (which looked weird on James' face). "I kissed him."
"And why, the hell, did you do that?" asked James, annoyed.
He didn't like that conversation at all. It wasn't enough that he just found out one of his best friends was gay, now he had to hear he had kissed his other best friend that was gay too? And most important- what will happen to his reputation when people find out he had kissed Sirius Black?! (Okay, so it wasn't really him, but no one knew that except for him and Remus.)
"I didn't mean to do it," said the black haired boy, "it just happened, I forgot I was supposed to be you."
"How can you forget such an amazing thing?" James grinned, but then his face turned serious again. "Why did you even want to kiss him?"
Remus blushed, making James shudder in the sight of the shade of his own face.
"I…" Remus mumbled something unclear that James didn't catch.
"What was that again?"
"I love him, okay?"
James stared at him. "You love him?" he said dumbly.
Remus nodded, blushing even more. James wanted to hit him.
"Okay…" he said slowly. "First, you gotta learn how to control that blush, because to me that would never happen. Secondly, why didn't you ever tell me? It wasn't very pleasant that I had to find out from Lily that you're gay."
Remus looked at him in surprise, "What? She told you?"
"Yes, well, she thought I was you," said James and Remus seemed to understand. "So why didn't you tell me?"
"I thought if you knew, you would tell him and I couldn't take that risk. I didn't want to ruin our friendship."
James nodded. "So what made you go and kiss him now?"
"He told me he loves me." The blush returned to his cheeks. "Well, no, he told you, but still…"
"That was very stupid of you." said James. "But that's why you're a Marauder."
Remus laughed. "Yeah, well… I'm sorry."
"It's okay, just don't do it again. Never." Remus nodded. "So what happened next?"
"I ran away."
"Well, you can't let him think that I'm the one who loves him!"
"Then what am I supposed to do?" Remus seemed lost.
"Tell him… Tell him you just wanted to know what it's like, you know, to kiss a guy."
"Oh, yeah, that sounds like a good idea," Remus' smile came back to his lips.
"Well, of course. It's my idea."
For a few moments they both fell in silence, and tried to keep working on their essays.
"Hey, if you kissed Padfoot, can I kiss Lily?"