For A Candy Cane A Day on the Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft and Wizardry Forum.
S.S. True Colours
— James and Regulus —
Remus stared at the scene in front of him, his mouth sat and eyes wide. Regulus quickly hurried past him, leaving him alone in the corridor with James. Remus huffed, averting his eyes as James rebuttoned his shirt.
"Is this a joke?" Remus asked sharply. His jaw tightened at the sound of a zipper. "That's Sirius' brother."
"Moony…"
Remus shook his head and held his hand, effectively cutting off James before he could say anything else. If Remus didn't know better, he would have said that James sounded remorseful. But he did know better, and he knew that James never felt bad about anything.
"Does Sirius know?" Remus said. "Of course he doesn't know. He'd kill you. And frankly, I wouldn't blame him. That's his fucking brother, James!"
James rolled his eyes, clearly nonplussed by Remus' narrowed glare.
"James."
"Look, it's all just a bit of fun."
Remus's mouth dropped open. All of a sudden, he could feel a headache coming on. "That doesn't make it better! I'm pretty sure that makes it worse."
"Then we'll stop." James gave a half-hearted shrug. "No big deal."
But Remus recognised that tone. It was the same lilt he spoke in when he told Lily that he'd stop bothering Snape. To the untrained ear, it might have sounded sincere. But Remus had no doubt that it was lie—just a half-hearted attempt to get him off his back.
"I'm serious," Remus insisted. "Sirius can't find out about this."
"Then I guess you better not tell him."
"And you better stop."
"Fine." James strode ahead of Remus, heading towards the Gryffindor common room. He threw a backwards glance at him. "You coming?"
And with nothing else to say—nothing else that would actually be heard, anyway—Remus trailed behind with a deep etched frown.