(A/N): Hey Guys! Here's another chapter. A little longer than the last one, but not that long actually.

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise.

Remus

Less than a week later, we met again on the Hogwarts Express, though none of us had yet to see Leo.

"He's checking on Mia, no doubt." Elaine reassured us when we had first all arrived in the carriage, but when the train started to roll and Leo still wasn't there, we began to worry.

We all glanced up as the door opened, to see first Mia, pale-faced and bruised, and then Leo.

He originally had his back to us, sliding the door closed, but when he turned around, we all gaped at the sight of blood on his face.

"Leo! What happened?!" Elaine exclaimed, jumping to examine the wound, and the smell of blood and something else unidentifiable hit me, wafting over from Leo's direction.

"I had a run in with my mother, nothing big." Lily rolled her eyes, glaring pointedly at the gash on his forehead.

"'Nothing big'? Leo, you're bleeding!" He simply shrugged, which seemed a bit odd, before turning to his sister.

"You okay?" She shrugged, shrinking back into the corner.

"Peachy keen." He frowned, stubbornly tugging her hand into his even though she clearly wanted to be left alone- something Leo would usually recognize and concede to in order to keep her comfortable. His run in with his mother must have been pretty bad if he was actively seeking comfort from Mia out in the open like this.

"How was she?" Mia winced in reply to his question, and that was all the answer we really needed.

"That bad, huh?" I asked, standing to put an arm around the younger girl.

"Leo's been through worse." She said, eyeing him, and that's when I saw her for what she really was.

A scared little girl who idolized her big brother to the point of taking after his reckless ways even if it meant her getting hurt.

Leo had been through worse, so she thought she wasn't worthy of our time.

"Yeah, but Leo has a tendency not to die." I remarked dryly, and he flashed me a smile that was more a show of teeth than anything else as he mopped the blood from his face with a handkerchief.

"It's a fairly useful talent, I must say." Brooke rolled her eyes at his rather bland comment, speaking up for the first time.

"You do have a talent for getting hurt though." Mia glanced at her.

It was basically a, 'who are you and what are you doing with my brother?' look.

Mia had seen Brooke before, of course, both at Hogwarts and at the gala we had all attended, but she was still unaccustomed to the fact that this girl was dating her brother.

"That's not a talent, it's just bad luck." James said, and Peter cocked an eyebrow.

"No, I think it's a talent. He's good at it, it doesn't just happen." Leo shrugged, and Elaine snatched the handkerchief from him to clean the blood off properly.

"It's a crappy talent." Elaine growled, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and I saw a small, smug smile form on Leo's lips as he watched her work close up. Leo wasn't usually smug about much, but maybe he had been doing a bad job cleaning himself up on purpose, in order to get Elaine to do it herself and subsequently get her closer to him.

"He also has a knack for trouble and an affinity for getting for getting out of it." Leo rolled his eyes, looking at me sideways.

"Bright as a button, aren't you?" Hmm. I'd never heard Leo use that one before. As soon as Elaine finished cleaning the blood from his forehead, Brooke pressed a kiss to it.

"Stop flirting with other girls." She said, winking at me before kissing Leo again, this time on the lips, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one that noticed the way he leaned back as she did so- preventing her from deepening the kiss. He probably didn't want to kiss her properly right in front of Elaine. Brooke didn't seem upset by this at all, so I waved it off. "I'm going to go hang out with my friends." She announced, and Mia soon followed her, using much the same excuse.

"So, what happened?" Sirius asked as Leo finally took his seat, and we all waited on his reply.

"She was mad at me. She swung at me, I ducked, and..." He gestured to the wound on his forehead.

"There's no way that was done with just her hand, Leo." He winced, and it dawned on me.

"Did she have a knife?" He bit his lip, and shrugged. I barely caught the strange look that crossed his face before it disappeared.

"She can't exactly use her wand in public, not here, not with everyone watching." We all gaped at him.

"What happened then?" He shook his head, leaning back against the seat and crossing his legs. Hmm, odd. Usually when Leo crossed his legs, he really only crossed his ankles, and he only did it when he was trying to make space for someone else. What he was doing right now was actively taking up space- his left ankle was resting on his right knee, and I watched it move through the air as he bounced the bottom leg up and down. Maybe he was still sore from training, and this hurt less?

"She insulted me for a bit then left." I bit my lip, watching him carefully. With Leo, being 'insulted' by someone could mean a great many different things, of many differing levels of severity.

"Leo-" He cut me off, and it grated in a way being cut off by him usually didn't. Man, I didn't think I was in a bad mood when I got on the train, but clearly I was now if I was reacting to one of my best friends like he was a stranger, cutting me off because he didn't care what I had to say.

"I know Remus." He said, meeting each of our eyes. "I know."

(A/N): So, what did you think?

Today in photography I was sitting between my best friend and one of my other friends and we were all writing fanfics.

Please review and/or check out my other stories!

This chapter has had substantial edits made to it on 31/12/22 - Changed it to make it more obvious, when you reread the chapter, and to make it more noticeable to Remus.