The Stars and Forbidden Cigarettes | Professor Remus Lupin

Seven Words

One week into the new year, the train arrives with the Hogwarts students and professors who had left for the holidays. The Great Hall is prepared for their return, and those left behind are already sitting, waiting. Reverie hadn't seen Lupin since that night, but as she enters the Great Hall, she sees him speaking to McGonagall near the Head Table, and she quickly looks away and makes her way to her seat just as students begin trickling in through the doors.

When Reverie finally sees Oliver, she stands up from her seat as he makes his way to her. It isn't a big, running gesture of hello. Oliver is smiling softly, gently at her as he approaches, pulling his trunk behind him, and when he stops before her, she cocks her head to the side, grinning, as if to appraise his arrival, and then Oliver wraps his arms around her torso and Reverie wraps her arms around his neck, and their embrace is warm, and Reverie melts just a little.

"I missed you," she whispers into his sweater.

Oliver smiles into her hair. "I missed you too, Rev."

The reverberations of his words travel through her spine, and she holds him closer to her, and his heart beats fast but her heart calms for what feels like the first time in weeks, and she wonders if it could always be this easy, this gentle, this soft, and she doesn't feel Lupin's burning gaze on her, and perhaps it's better this way.

—

Reverie and Oliver spend the rest of their last few days of holiday together, skipping dinner and laughing and sharing stories on the couch in the common room until midnight falls.

As she looks out the stained glass windows to the left of the fireplace, Reverie watches as the clouds move apart, uncovering the brightness of the night's full moon, and Reverie swears that she hears a howl from the woods, before it's abruptly cut off.

"Did you hear that?" She says, turning back to Oliver.

Oliver, with his gaze trained on the flames in the fireplace, doesn't look at her. "Hear what?"

"The howl. I think it was a werewolf cry."

Oliver glances towards the windows before looking at Reverie. "I didn't hear anything. Besides, there shouldn't be any werewolves in the Forbidden Forest."

Reverie stands up and walks to the window. "I don't know... what if there are?" she whispers.

—

On the first day of classes, Reverie approaches the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, intensely dreading having to interact with Lupin around so many people.

Reverie, however, quickly realizes she was wrong to dread anything. Lupin speaks like he usually speaks, he teaches like he usually teaches, he doesn't spare her a glance, and she can't even tell herself that something is wrong with him because he's acting so normal and he's left her anything but. She can hardly look at him and so she focuses on her textbook until Oliver nudges her side.

"Rev, hey, look at his face," he whispers to her, and she turns her head briskly to look at Oliver with wide eyes.

"What gives you the impression that I want to look at his face?" She whispers, almost defensively.

"Just look," he says, and then looks down at his own book as Reverie looks up. She doesn't notice at first, now that she'd dared to sit in the back with Oliver. But, upon closer inspection, she sees the unmistakable red slashes across his cheek and a starkly similar one along his neck.

Her brows furrow together, laced with what Oliver quickly realizes is worry. She's filled with questions, but Lupin turns towards their side of the room and she forces her eyes back down to the book in front of her. For barely a second, Reverie could swear she feels his eyes on her, searing through her skin, but before she decides to look up, the bell rings, and the rustling of students getting up and packing their books distracts her.

"Don't forget the 6 inches on Manticores by the end of this week!" He says loudly over the bustle, and he goes around to the other side of his desk, leans forwards against his hands on the side of the desk, and busies himself with reading whatever paper was sitting before him.

Reverie slowly packs her things in her bag, as more and more students empty the classroom. Oliver, however, is still standing beside her.

There are only 4 students left in the room now, and Oliver nudges her.

"Come on, Rev – remember the Quidditch pitch?"

Only then does she remember that she promised Oliver to go down with him to the pitch for his practice, and she looks up to see Lupin still in the same position as before. She wonders if he's actually reading anything. Her hand aches with the urge to heal the red scars outlining his face. She watches as his head faintly drops as his shoulders ever so slightly slag, and she's jolted back to reality as Oliver places her pen in her bag.

"Right," she forces out. "Yes, of course." She shoulders her bag, and she follows Oliver as he leaves the classroom. At the door, she glances back at Lupin, who still hasn't looked away from his desk, with his arms almost tantalizingly big and strong, tensed as he holds himself up. She feels heat jolt through her stomach at the thought of his arms around her, and she forces herself to look away and close the door behind her.

At the sound of the door shutting, Lupin all but collapses into his chair and drags a hand across his face. His leg is killing him and his face is still burning, but somehow the sight and sound of Reverie and Wood together was more excruciating, and he isn't sure how much more he can handle.

He's paling, and his barely two days of recovery was clearly not enough. His fingers itch for a cigarette, but he can't bear the possibility of going outside just to see her with the Wood boy walking hand in hand, so he stays inside.

Lupin skips dinner, but even as night falls, he isn't remotely tired. Unbeknownst to him, neither is Reverie.

—

In the common room, which has once again turned into a safe haven from the storm outside, Reverie says goodnight to Oliver, and, from beneath the couch cushion, she pulls out The Count of Monte Cristo, which she'd hidden earlier in the night to prevent any questions from Oliver about its source. She's been avoiding reading it, but it's presence on her nightstand since that night has finally become too much to bear.

As she opens the front cover, her heart trips over itself at the familiar script on the page, writing out R.J.Lupin on the top left corner. Her finger traces over the letters. The fire crackles, the lightning strikes, the rain pours, and she turns to the first page.

She begins reading with a full and timid heart, and she quickly falls into the story, but on the second page of chapter three, she is sure her heart has stopped, for one single line of text is underlined with the lightest yet deepest stroke of ink she's sure to have ever seen, and it reads so simply, but it is the only thing underlined throughout the whole first three chapters. She feels cold but her insides are blazing, and she sees him in her mind's eye looking above the cover of this book at her that night in detention, alone in that big empty room in the middle of a storm like the one tonight.

She reads the seven words over and over again, until they burn brightly behind her eyes, until she's sure she can recite them in her sleep, until she rises from her seat and climbs through the portrait hole, out into the depths of the castle. She doesn't even hear her own footsteps along the stone – all she hears are the seven words, echoing and echoing and echoing, all the way to the big oak doors.

"beloved by you, I would tempt fortune"

———

A/N: How exciting! Next chapter soon!