Author’s Notes: MWPP era, in their Fourth Year. Sirius’s POV.
Chapter 9 – Bella Luna (1)
(Part II)
Sirius’s eyes flicked to Remus. The book had dropped a few inches and Sirius could see Remus’s amber eyes, still focused on his text, but not moving – he had stopped reading.
Sirius’s heart felt like it was trying to force its way out of his chest. His eyes darted half-frantically around the circle.
“A real kiss,”
Winnie and Evans wore matching you-brought-this-on-yourself expressions. James looked sympathetic. Peter wouldn’t meet his eyes.
Sirius could hear his blood thundering through his veins. He felt warm and nervous and oddly eager. What is wrong with you? he demanded of himself, half frightened, half awed, wholly confused.
“Well?”
“Right,” Sirius responded. “Right.” He stood and walked on unsteady legs to where Remus sat, book now cover-up in his lap as he gave up even the pretense of reading.
Remus watched him approach, an unidentifiable look in his amber eyes. His head tilted slightly as the black-haired boy drew closer, keeping his eyes on Sirius’s face.
Sirius crouched down in front of Remus’s chair. “I, um –” he started in a low voice.
“I know,” Remus’s soft voice sounded strange. “I heard.”
“If you don’t want me to, I won’t,” Sirius murmured. “They can’t make me answer about you. I can face the consequences for not taking the dare.”
“No, I –” Remus’s voice broke. “It’s okay.
“Are you sure?” It was suddenly very important that Remus not be forced into anything. “Because I don’t have to if –”
“Shut up, Siri. I don’t mind. Really. I –”
“Get on with it!”
Sirius barely heard her. He was watching Remus carefully, trying to divine whether or not the younger boy was telling the truth.
“Siri,” Remus seemed to understand Sirius’s uncertainty. “I’m fine with it.”
Sirius thought he saw something flicker deep in the amber eyes, but the next moment he was sure he had imagined it.
“It’s just a dare, after all,” Remus added. “Right?”
Something very like a fist clenched in Sirius’s chest, but he forced a grin. “Right,” he agreed. He took a deep breath and leaned forward. He shifted, realizing how awkward his current position was for this, and braced one hand on the cushion by Remus’s shoulder, sliding the other hand carefully into the tawny locks behind Remus’s ear to help himself balance.
Remus’s eyelids drifted closed and his chin tilted upwards as though he had done this hundreds of times.
That thought made Sirius pause, but then Remus’s lips parted slightly, allowing his tongue to dart out to moisten them, and all coherent thoughts fled Sirius’s brain. He took another deep breath and leaned in again, tugging lightly on Remus’s hair to draw the other boy closer as the distance between them shrank to nothing.
Sirius didn’t remember closing his eyes – though at some point he must have done so – but it didn’t matter because he was kissing Remus and it was so much better than kissing Natasha ever was, and there was the damp nudge of a tongue against his lips, which parted in acquiescence to the gentle touch and where the hell did Remus learn to kiss like that?
There was a low, nearly inaudible moan, but Sirius wasn’t sure if it had come from himself or Remus. There were hands on his shoulders, against his neck, in his hair, and he didn’t mind, only tugged again on the tawny locks twined about his fingers, trying to get closer.
Then Remus pulled back and Sirius just barely managed to stifle the whimper that rose in his throat at the loss. He opened his eyes to find Remus watching him, a slight flush in his pale cheeks.
“Wow,” Sirius breathed.
Remus flushed a little darker. His hands had dropped to clutch the book spread across his lap.
Sirius opened his mouth, but, before he could say anything, he realized the circle of Fourth Years behind him and various other students around the room had erupted in sound several moments before. The noise of wolf-whistles and giggling brought Sirius back to Earth with a painful thump.
“Um…” he trailed off.
Remus offered him an awkward smile, then tilted his head, biting down lightly on his lower lip.
Sirius’s eyes fixed for a moment on the bright red, beestung lips, then darted away.
“If you two are quite finished,” Evans drawled, even as the noise from the rest of the common room died away with a few just-audible mutters of ‘It was a dare’.
Sirius turned.
Peter’s jaw had dropped. James looked amused, though a little
startled, as did
James met Sirius’s eyes and Sirius got the funny feeling that James was trying to ask him something, but, for once, Sirius had no idea what was going on in James Potter’s head – his own was still full of whirling fog.
Finally James blinked and looked away. “Your turn, mate,” he reminded the grey eyed boy.
Sirius started. “Oh!” He’d completely forgotten about the game. That’s why you and Remus… kissed, he reminded himself. “Right.” He glanced quickly at Remus, but the other boy wouldn’t meet his gaze. Is he angry after all? Sirius wondered, a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Rem?” he lightly touched the brunet’s knee.
Remus looked up and their eyes met.
Something flipped over somewhere inside Sirius, and he couldn’t decide if it was good or bad. “Are you –” he started to ask.
“No,” Remus cut him off. “I’m not upset.”
“Oh.” Sirius shifted. “Good. I –”
“Si-ri-us,” James’s sing-song tone drew out his friend’s name. “Come back to us, Si-ri-us. Let someone else kiss Re-mus.”
Remus’s amber eyes widened, startled, even as Sirius felt his jaw tighten and his hands curl compulsively into fists.
“I’m just going to head up to the dormitory,” Remus said loudly, rising swiftly to his feet, book in hand.
“Spoilsport,” Winnie grumbled.
Sirius looked up at his friend.
“I’m fine, Siri,” Remus quietly answered the unspoken question. “Really. Go play. See if you can’t keep Pete from daring Lily to kiss James – or the other way around. I don’t think she’d be horribly appreciative of it at this moment in time.” He grinned, then headed away towards the stairs.
Sirius’s insides seemed to be melting, but it didn’t hurt. How odd, he thought.
“Are you going to take your turn?” Winnie inquired.
Sirius turned back to the group. “Oh. Yeah. Sure.” His brain didn’t seem to be functioning properly. “Um, Winnie, truth or dare?”
Winnie raised an eyebrow. “Dare.”
“Uh,” Sirius blinked, trying to think. He walked on his knees back to the circle to buy time. Not enough. “Dye your hair pink for a week.”
Winnie snorted, and flicked her wand, casting the spell.
“Looks good,”
Winnie grinned. “Why, thank you. It is rather a fun idea.”
“Hey!” Peter protested indignantly. “How come when I use the dare, it’s boring and over-used, but when Sirius does it, it’s fun?”
Sirius laughed with the others, feeling more like himself now that his insides seemed to have stopped squirming and his head had cleared. “I’m just gifted, my good man,” he replied. “And was quite fortunate in my chosen victim.” He winked at Winnie. “Stunning, dear girl,” he told her gallantly, bowing slightly from his sitting position. “You are simply stunning.”
Winnie laughed and turned to Evans. “Lils. Truth or dare.”
* * * * *
“Sirius! Remus! Peter! Sirius!” James came hurtling into the dorm, still in his Quidditch robes.
Sirius, who was partly immersed in an advanced book on Transfiguration (cleverly obtained from the Restricted Section), peered over the leather-bound tome at his flustered friend in a mixture of curiosity and annoyance.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at practice?” he inquired.
James shook his head, half-panting from having clearly bolted up the stairs. “Got out early,” he explained, leaning against the doorjamb. “And, oh, sweet Mischief! You will not believe what I – Where are Remus and Peter?” he was looking around the room, but Sirius was the only Marauder in sight.
“Am I not good enough for you anymore?” Sirius asked, letting his voice wobble on the verge of tears and widening his eyes as he gazed desolately at the pink-haired boy.
“Afraid not, mate,” James replied without missing a beat. “It was fun while it lasted, but it’s time for me to move on. Greener pastures and bluer skies. That sort of thing. Where are they?”
“The Abyss of Words,” Sirius shuddered dramatically. “Re is helping Peter with that essay Binns set us. What happened to you that you need all of us?”
“Nothing happened to me,” James responded, stressing the pronoun. “Why aren’t you with them?”
“Did you not hear where they are?” Sirius arched an eyebrow, sidestepping the question.
“Mm,” James nodded absently, mind clearly on other things. “So what are you doing by yourself, then?”
“Thought I’d look up some stuff about Animagi,” Sirius hedged, hoping the usually-fairly-astute James was too preoccupied to notice. He really didn’t feel like trying to explain why he was really by himself instead of with his friends. He wasn’t sure he could tell even James how every time he had been close to Remus, in the week since the Truth or Dare game, he had kept feeling the urge to kiss the boy again. He didn’t even want to think about it – it confused him. Remus was a boy, after all, and a friend, besides. He’d thought at first it might be because they were friends, but he’d had to drop that theory because he certainly didn’t want his lips anywhere near James’s or Peter’s – the very idea made him rather ill. Then he’d thought it might just be natural to want to keep kissing someone after having done it once – like eating biscuits, you just couldn’t stop – but he hadn’t wanted to keep kissing Natasha, he’d only done that because it was the only way to shut her up. His most recent idea was that it was because Remus had been such an incredible kisser, but he’d discovered that idea made him wonder who Remus had been kissing to get so good at it, and that made him feel even more ill than the thought of Peter’s lips.
“Well,” James was saying, “you’ll just hear first.”
“Hear…” it took Sirius a moment to remember that his bespectacled friend had wanted to tell him something.
“What I saw,” James elaborated.
Sirius waited.
“Aren’t you going to ask?” James demanded.
Sirius rolled his eyes – How like him to run all the way here from the pitch and then make a big production of it – but put down his book and asked, “What did you see, James?”
“Well,” the hazel-eyed boy exhaled with gusto and crossed the room to sit on his own bed, facing Sirius, before launching into his tale. “We got out of practice early, and Frank and I were on clean-up duty. Everyone else went ahead to change while we brought everything back to the shed. So, we were talking about the practice when we got to the broomshed, and the door was locked. I thought that was kind of strange, since we usually leave it open during practice, but I just assumed the last person to shut the door before practice must have locked it without thinking – you know, like Remus and Peter always lock their trunks – and Frank must have thought the same, because he unlocked it without knocking and we went in and guess what we found inside!”
“A yummy nougat center?”
“No!” James exclaimed, clearly not listening to a word Sirius had said. “We found two people kissing!”
Sirius blinked at his friend. “So?” he asked.
“They weren’t just kissing,” James continued. “They were… touching.”
“They were in the broomshed,” Sirius reminded the pink-haired boy. “If all you want’s a snog with your girl, you can do that anywhere.”
“No!” James practically shouted. “You don’t get it!”
Sirius frowned, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited.
“It wasn’t a boy and a girl. It was two boys.”
Sirius nearly swallowed his tongue.
James quirked a black eyebrow as Sirius choked. “You okay, mate?” he asked. “I know it’s shocking, but it’s not like you had to watch it.” He shuddered. “It was just… weird.”
“Who –” Sirius coughed. “Who was it?”
James shrugged. “A couple of Sixth Years. One’s in Ravenclaw, the other’s in Hufflepuff. Don’t remember their names, though. Why?”
Sirius ignored James’s question in favor of asking another of his own. “Are you going to… do… anything?” he had a very funny feeling in the pit of his stomach and his throat was tight.
“Turn them in, you mean?” James wanted to know.
“Yeah.”
James considered for a moment.
Sirius watched him, forcing himself to breath, not to say anything, not to start counting the seconds slipping by, not to fidget. He wasn’t sure why this was so important, but he was starting to feel ill.
At last, James shook his head. “No, I’m not a tell-tale. How many times have we broken rules? This is different, of course, but… It’s their business. It doesn’t affect me. As long as I don’t have to see it again.”
“You should let them know you won’t tell,” Sirius suggested, determinedly hiding his bizarre anxiety. “They’re probably worried.”
“They bolted pretty quickly,” James admitted. “But they weren’t actually, you know – doing it – so it’s not like we caught them at something illegal, even if they are underage, which I don’t know, anyway.”
“Yeah,” Sirius nodded, picking at a loose thread on the duvet beneath him. “You should still let them know. Think how you’d feel if you’d been caught during a prank and didn’t know if you were going to be reported.”
James eyed him suspiciously for a moment before sighing. “You’re right,” he agreed. “I’d want to know. I’ll talk to Frank. He knows them. He’ll tell them we won’t blab.”
“He won’t blab, either, then? You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” James smirked. “I caught him and Alice behind the greenhouses two days ago.”
Sirius’s eyes widened. “And you’re just telling me now?”
“I was going to save it for the next time we play Truth or Dare with the girls.”
“Who says we’re playing with them again?”
“I never got to kiss Lily.”
“You never got to kiss Lily,” Sirius repeated.
“Exactly.”
Sirius groaned, but felt slightly relieved that the focus of the conversation had shifted.
James scowled. “None of that. Lily Evans is the essence of fiery magnificence. One does not groan in a displeased manner at the mention of the essence of fiery magnificence. It’s disrespectful, discourteous, rude, vulgar, crude, uncouth, and many other such synonyms besides.”
“She’s just a girl, mate,” Sirius snickered.
James looked highly affronted. “She is a goddess.”
“She’ll hex you if you so much as breathe in her direction, much less try to kiss her.”
“Au contraire,” James beamed. “If it’s a dare, she can’t blame me, therefore it would be unfair to hex me – a fellow victim of a treacherous game – and Miss Lily Evans, flower of my life, sun in my sky –”
“– fist in your face –”
“– is nothing if not fair.” James glared warningly.
“But, Jamie-boy, you seem to be forgetting a few very important factors.”
“Oh?” James raised an eyebrow, then regally waved a hand for Sirius to continue. “Speak, good Sir Sirius, Knight of the Round Tower Dormitory.”
Sirius chuckled. “Your fair
Lady Faire isn’t an idiot, Sir James. She’ll know it was your idea. She’ll hex
you and whoever is foolish enough to issue such a dare in equal measure. Very
fair. Her friends won’t do it –
they’re her friends, after all. Peter
won’t do it – too scared. Rem doesn’t ever play, and even if he did, he
wouldn’t dare you to kiss her any more than
James glared again, eyes narrowed behind his glasses, until he realized it was useless. “Heartless, unfeeling wretch,” he muttered, and flopped backwards on his bed. “Just because your last girlfriend was a nightmare that wouldn’t go away doesn’t give you the right to take pleasure in destroying my very soul.”
Sirius grinned. “Of course it does. What else are friends for, after all?”
James groaned in a long-suffering sort of way and propped himself up on his elbows. “If you’re so miserable being alone that you are reduced to finding enjoyment in keeping me from the sweet embrace of my beloved, why don’t you just go and find yourself a new girl?”
Sirius started. “What?”
“It shouldn’t be hard. They all love you.”
Sirius scowled. “What would I want another girl for? I’m still basking in the glory of being liberated from the last one.”
James rolled his eyes. “I doubt that. You’ve been moody and broody and restless lately. A girl might perk you up. Look what it’s done for Frank.”
Sirius didn’t respond, tugging a little more insistently on the loose thread.
“See?” James gestured at Sirius, who merely scowled again. “My point exactly. Maybe we can ask some other girls to play Truth or Dare with us. You might find one you like.” He laughed. “Unless you’d prefer to snog Remus again,” he joked. “Like the queers in the broomshed.”
The bottom fell out of Sirius’s stomach and kept falling, taking all the blood from Sirius’s face with it.
“Speaking of, I want to tell Remus and Peter – they’ll think it’s a laugh.” He rolled himself off the bed and headed for the door. Hand on the knob, he turned. “You coming?”
Sirius shook his head, throat suddenly too tight for words.
James frowned in concern. “You look a bit peakish, mate. You want to visit the nurse?”
“No,” Sirius managed to force out. “No, I’m all right.”
James gave him a long, piercing, look, but let the matter drop. “See you, then.” And he was gone, the door swinging shut behind him.
Sirius stared for a long moment at the closed door, trying to figure out why he felt nervous and on the verge of panic.
TBC
(1) “Bella Luna” – ‘Beautiful Moon’ (in both Spanish and Italian).
A/N: To e-mail me (reviews, etc.) click the link below.
KawaiiTenshi27@hotmail.com