The Stars and Forbidden Cigarettes | Professor Remus Lupin

Clouds

Come Monday evening, Reverie is in good spirits as she sits through Defense Against the Dark Arts. Lupin has assigned a simple 5-inches on Kappas, which were water-demons that fed on the blood of humans and strangled humans who invaded their ponds. As disgusting as it was to read about them, Reverie finished relatively quickly and now has fifteen minutes of sitting and waiting for class to end.

She watches Lupin sitting in the same relaxed position he'd assume every detention, and, emboldened, she pulls out a piece of parchment from her satchel, tears off a small square from the corner, and takes out her quill and ink. She dips the tip into the ink, but hesitates over the paper, and a small drop of ink falls onto the yellow paper. Shaking her head, she swallows and lowers her quill and writes one word.

Darcy.

She sets her quill down and stares at the paper. She figures that she owes it to him to give him an answer to his question, but she also can't help but feel that this is the perfect way to get under his skin.

When class ends, Reverie hands him her essay along with the small slip of paper on the top. She turns away as he reads it, so she doesn't see the way his eyes cloud with confusion and then clear after realizing what it was in response to. His head fills with dozens of questions, but as he lifts his head and watches her get ready to leave, he gets up, sticks his hands into his pockets, and walks over to her table.

Slinging her bag over her shoulder, Reverie looks up at him questioningly, and he frowns.

"Walk with me," he says, and she does.

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As they walk through the courtyard and onto the grounds, she doesn't know where they're going -- and she wonders if Lupin does either -- but she can't focus on much else when she realizes he slows slightly for her to catch up next to him. He doesn't look at her, instead resolves to look forward, but when her arm accidentally brushes his, he doesn't move away, as much as his brain tells him to. He itches for a cigarette, and he can feel the exact spot they touched burn. So can she.

It's dark out, and before long, she realizes that he's taking them back to the Whomping Willow. As they walk down the grassy stone steps, Lupin speaks.

"I was sure you'd say Wentworth."

Reverie glances over at him.

"If you'd asked months ago," she says, "I was sure I'd say Wentworth too."

Lupin meets her eye and then looks away as they approach the Whomping Willow. He waves his wand quickly, the tree calms down, and the two of them approach it.

"What changed?" He asks. Reverie leans against the trunk as Lupin crouches down and retrieves a pack of cigarettes hidden in a patch of grass.

"People," Reverie says simply. She watches as he stills, before clearing his throat and standing, taking a cigarette for himself. He leans against the trunk, a foot away from Reverie, and as they both look out across the grounds and up at the castle, he extends the packet out in front of her, and she studies the side of his face as she hesitantly takes one.

He pockets the small box, turns towards her, and takes a small step. Suddenly, they are much closer than he'd planned, and he watches as the light from the half-moon casts shadows that dance across her face. He doesn't take his eyes off of her as she puts the cigarette between her lips, and he hates that he can't look away when he snaps his fingers to create a small flame. It lights up her face far too elegantly, and neither of them move as he, almost hypnotized, drinks in her features from up close, and she does the same. There's nothing but a flame between them now, and he tells himself that to move any closer, they'll both be burned, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows that it's far too late for that to be a viable excuse.

Holding the cigarette between two fingers, she leans forward to light it, all while looking up at him through her eyelashes tantalizingly, and he wishes he could say it didn't affect him, because she would be so much easier to hate. But alas, the way his fingers twitch says otherwise, and the way his pulse briefly skids when she inhales and her cheeks hollow out makes him hate himself in a way he could never hate her.

Lighting his own, he holds her gaze as he breathes in, and he tears his eyes away as he breathes out a cloud of smoke that envelopes the two of them. She leans back against the tree too, and Lupin puts a hand in his pocket and looks up.

"You see," he says, tapping his cigarette, "you can make your own clouds." Reverie exhales and adds her own smoke to the otherwise starry and clear night sky. For just a moment, the smoke is opaque enough to not see through, and Reverie grins.

"I can make my own clouds."

Lupin doesn't look towards her, but he hears her smile through her words, and even if he convinces himself otherwise, he doesn't hate the way his heart beats just a bit harder.

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"Take some in your hand, Miss Castill, carefully now, and throw it down after you say 'home.'"

Her hand shakes, and her voice trembles when suddenly all she sees is green and then, at once, nothing at all.

The first thing she discerns from nothingness is a picture frame, the glass cracked and the edges burned but the picture inside still intact. She crouches down, takes out the picture with shaking hands, and cuts herself on the glass, and a sob escapes her as she folds it and puts it in her pocket. She stands and looks around, ash rising from the scorching remains of her living room, and she coughs and squints her eyes. She heads towards the stairs, blackened stone but sturdy, and climbs up to the second level.

The gut-wrenching and terrifyingly deadly feeling overpowers her when she sees them.

"Please, no, no, no, no," she whispers between sobs. Falling down to the ground, she crawls to her mother and father, sprawled on the floor with their arms reaching towards one another, woundless but lifeless, and suddenly she can only think about how they must be freezing but everything is gone and she can't even keep them warm in a burned house. She goes to her mother and cradles her in her arms, just how she used to cradle Reverie, and her body trembles as she realizes that she won't ever hold her back.

She takes her father's hand and lays down with them both, trying to convince herself that it's all a game, but as she looks up, she sees the roof gone and the beams scorched, and the only thing left untouched is the night sky, pristine and full of stars, looking down on her mockingly.

With her only protection millions of lightyears away, she shuts her eyes and wishes that she'd never known about magic, that they'd lived a peaceful and happy life together, and she lets her body heave with sobs and questions and what if, what if, what if...

Reverie wakes with a start. Her pillow is wet and her face is damp, and the only thing she hates more than thinking about that night is reliving it in her nightmares. Shaking, she leaves the dormitory, goes down to the common room, and sits down by the fireplace.

Drawing her knees to her chest, she thinks about her grandmother, how she innocently told Reverie that they were watching over her from the stars, that the Plough and Orion were her guardian angels. She thinks about how her grandmother had no idea that they were there in the sky that night, that the last thing they did was guard her, and that they've brought her no comfort regardless of how much she's tried.

She lets the warmth and the flames distract her, and the light reminds her of Lupin and of his cigarettes, and in some backwards way, she's thankful her father hated smoking as much as he did, because it makes missing him just a bit more bearable and smoking just a bit less painful. Maybe it's self-destructive, maybe it's burning her from the inside out, but so are other things, and if anything, it makes her feel more alive. 

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A/N: Chapter 11!! I hope you all enjoyed! Reverie's backstory is becoming more clear now! Also, we hit 3K reads??!! That's insane -- thank you all so much for reading and commenting and voting! All of your support literally means the world to me. I'm graduating tomorrow, which is terrifying and also partially the reason why this update took a couple days longer than I thought it would. I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy! Much, much love!!