Painted Scars // WOLFSTAR

Year Six: The Daily Prophet

"You're incorrigible."

"I told you, Moony! The female race flocks to me like birds!"

"Professor Sprout does not encapsulate the entire female race, James, and I'd hardly call what she did flocking."

"I would," Peter interjected, dragging his fork against his plate. "She would've never done that for me."

Remus snorted a laugh that he barely concealed behind a bored hand. "She would, Pete, because you're a brown-noser where Herbology is concerned."

Not for the first time since June of last year, Sirius was listening in on the Marauder's conversation over breakfast.

But this time, he was given the privilege of sitting with them, instead of sitting eight students down.

Sirius cleared his throat, feeling uncomfortable with the conversation. "Sorry, why is Professor Sprout flocking to James?" he asked nervously, entirely out of the loop since his recent reinstatement into the friend group.

There was an obvious lull in conversation, no one wanting to be the one to fill him in. Graciously, James rolled his eyes and leaned over, quickly explaining. "I asked her for an extension on the essay and she gave it to me."

"Ah," Sirius said, face going hot in the aftermath of the explanation. For a while, no one said anything. All that could be heard was the scraping of their forks against plates and the noise from other students' conversations. It took several seconds for the boys to get back into the flow of conversation, and Sirius decided not to speak up again.

This sort of thing was to be expected, Sirius thought, but that didn't make him feel any better about it. He wished it didn't have to be awkward – wished that he knew everything the group discussed while he was gone – but he knew that wasn't possible. They'd bonded with each other while he was gone, holding tighter to one another and knitting themselves into a well oiled machine.

Sirius just had to wait for that machine to make room for him again. But it was hard.

The night prior, the one in the corridor, with mumbled confessions and repeated apologies, had gone better than Sirius could've ever expected. Remus didn't say he'd forgiven him, or that he wanted to get together, (which was fine for Sirius – he was already happy enough as it was to have Remus back,) but he did say they could try being friends again.

"I need time," he remembered Remus saying. "Let's just take it slow."

He had, of course, been referring to taking their friendship slow. However, Sirius would sometimes let his imagination wander to a world in which he hadn't meant that. A world where Remus meant taking their relationship slow.

He imagined fleeting kisses pressed against fingertips, soft pulls to one another's waists, hands travelling lower than before, but only for a moment; only light, ephemeral touches that left unspoken promises in their wake.

But then, he'd catch Remus's eye across the table, and would know that wasn't what he meant at all. Remus meant that Sirius needed to take a step back; he wouldn't allow for holding hands in the library, or secret kisses in the dorm bathroom. Much less, kisses initiated by Remus in the Hogwarts corridors.

Those confused Sirius most of all. If Remus wanted to take things slow, Sirius hadn't a clue why he'd kissed him. Even more so, he hadn't a clue why Remus kissed him and then proceeded to tell him he didn't have feelings for him.

"Remus?" Sirius asked, plucking Remus's head off his shoulder and looking despairingly into his eyes. He hadn't expected the mournful look in them, and he immediately knew what Remus was about to say.