Stumble Upon It

Part 3 . The Closet, Part I

Scotland, spared that winter from the bitter cold, slogged instead through a steady, sodden monotony of days. Remus did the same, tripping through the ankle-deep mantle of half-hearted, melting snow that covered Hogwarts' sloping grounds. There was only one thing this sort of snow was good for and a number of people aimed to take full advantage of it; Remus bent and dug a sticky handful from the dead grass, packed it hard into an icy wad, and flung it vehemently at Sirius. It caught him square on the ear, already red from exposure.

"Gah! Fuck me blind, that hurt!"

Remus dodged retaliation only to be struck on the shoulder by a snowball courtesy of Klaus Otterburn, a sixth year Hufflepuff and an overall good bloke with whom they sometimes spent time. His hasty vengeance missed Otterburn, however.

"Sorry, Charlotte!" he called as she brushed the remnants of his ill-aimed missile from her cloak. The tall girl, a feisty Quidditch player, grinned toothily and twitched her wand-- like a tablecloth sharply shaken, a miniature tsunami of snow from her to Remus billowed up and enveloped him as the rest tumbled into a loose pile around his knees.

"Hey, that's cheating. That completely is cheating!" protested Sirius even as he imitated her and again deposited some yards of snow on Remus.

"I hate you all," said Remus genially, expelling the snow from his hair like a dog.

"Lying is such a foul habit, Remus; everyone knows you love me," countered Sirius, letting himself fall backwards comically on the lawn where he proceeded to make a messy snow-angel. Charlotte and Otterburn laughed but Remus flinched as though cuffed-- Sirius had made a custom of saying things like that in an offhanded manner in the past week or so and Remus found himself increasingly more sensitive to their careless tone. No one yet knew of the boys' encounter before Christmas (or the couple of almost equally spontaneous and bewildering incidents since then) and Remus, who all but included himself among those in the dark, was becoming progressively more uneasy about Sirius' attitude toward the issue. To their discredit, Remus thought, they'd barely talked about it.

º

"It's getting dark," said Otterburn, pulling up his hood against the crisp wind skating across the lake. "I'm going to head in-- you lot coming?"

"Mm, no. The train'll be here any minute; I'm going to wait," answered Sirius as he sat up. He and Remus waved to Charlotte and Otterburn as they trudged toward the front doors along with a couple of third years who had been running about nearby but who'd also been cowed by the January twilight.

"We can't wait in the Entrance Hall?" suggested Remus.

"We could, but then there wouldn't be any element of surprise at all," returned Sirius, strolling away toward a large spruce behind which he began to stockpile a small arsenal of snowballs.

"You're going to ambush Snape, aren't you." He didn't bother making it a question.

"And Prongs. This here is the 'Welcome-Home-Long-Lost-Best-Friend' snowball reserve and that there is the 'Rot-In-The-Deepest-Sewers-Of-Hell' snowball reserve. There's a difference."

"In that one sort is full of sherbet and the other with hydrochloric acid and brimstone?"

Sirius made a small clicking, McGonagall-ish noise with his tongue. "No. In that one sort is thrown in the spirit of fraternal goodwill and the other--"

"I can see the carriages," interrupted Remus, indeed spying a few bobbing, shivering flecks of yellow light in the distance. He squinted through the purple gloaming and rubbed his gloved hands together to encourage some circulation in his chilled fingers.

"-- really, Moony, not even I would chuck acid at Snivellus more than, say, once a term," continued Sirius, heedless of the disruption. He paused and smiled to himself, as though recalling a particularly delicious memory.

As the returning students rounded the shore and approached the castle, lanterns could be seen swinging precariously from the sides of the stagecoaches and dim, ghostly faces swam in the old, rippled glass windows. To Remus' untainted eyes, they were horseless, but he trusted those who swore by the presence of thestrals and could now even see for himself the ethereal hoof-prints in the frost. The feeling this scene inspired might have amounted to sinister had it not been for the muffled laughter issuing from the carriages.

Sirius finished arming himself and stood; he fleetingly and flirtatiously traced one finger down Remus' back.

"Are we going to... er, tell them?" Remus inquired softly. "James and Peter?"

"Oh. Right. I don't know," said Sirius after a perturbing quiet. And kept his hands to himself.

Remus found this response to be irredeemably inadequate, especially when Sirius failed to elaborate, and turned to look at him-- his face, however, was artfully unreadable. Unable to think of anything to say which might encourage clarification, Remus sighed and contented himself with watching the first of the pupils disembarking.

"There you are, my pretty," murmured Sirius ominously as he crouched down more guardedly behind the spruce and scooped up a snowball-- Remus followed his friend's predatory gaze. Severus Snape was walking, head bowed, to the other side of Evan Rosier and Silas Avery.

"Come on, you wankers, give me a clear shot..." Sirius said exasperatedly before abandoning all pretense, swishing his wand and endowing the snowball with seek-and-destroy capabilities. When it left his fingertips, it sped headlong toward the trio of Slytherins, made a sharp turn around the two larger boys and slammed viciously into the back of Snape's exposed neck. Snape naturally jerked his head about to look directly behind him where his eyes fell on--oh, damn-- Peter.

From this distance, at least, the Slytherins appeared more disgusted than anything. Before either Sirius or Remus could blink, Snape moved his wand indolently and Peter was catapulted backward like a cast-off toy into a small flock of shrieking girls. Rosier flipped him an obligatory finger and the three of them moved on without, apparently, even saying a word.

On their way to rescue Peter from his puzzlement and the girls' sneers of annoyance, Sirius said, "You know, I think Snape might just be getting bored with this kind of shit lately."

"Either he thinks not caring will make us leave him alone or-- well-- he thinks he's above it," observed Remus. "I hate to think what things he's doing with his free time if not plotting to destroy us," he continued lightly and with a lopsided grin though he privately knew that it wasn't funny at all. The spidery boy they'd taunted hundreds of times had now, at seventeen, evolved into a person significantly more dangerous than most experienced adult wizards. There'd been a time when Remus had felt guilty about his friends' treatment of this outcast, but recently he didn't know what to think about Severus Snape.

"Exactly. Which is why we should distract him more," said Sirius. "For his own good, you know. Alright there, Wormtail?"

Peter Pettigrew, irritably righting his robes, answered, "Really great. Being thrown on my arse is just how I'd hoped to start this term."

"Yeah, sorry. The snowball was me-- didn't mean it to work like that."

"S'okay." He turned his plump, flushed face up to them and gestured over his shoulder. "James might be awhile."

"What? No, he's got his own snowballs waiting for him," complained Sirius.

"Please shut up about snowballs already," groaned Remus, dragging his hand over his face dramatically. "What are you, ten?"

"Yes, give or take eight years." It was true, too. Remus wondered if Sirius would ever really seem grown-up. He tried to visualize him middle-aged and found he simply couldn't.

º

The three of them reached the massive oak doors and Remus shed his wet scarf and snow-encrusted cloak with relief, basking in the warm glow of the school. Yet everything felt strange now that the building was filled again with hosts of loud people; the privacy of the holidays was rapidly dissolving into a dream, a thing which didn't seem like it could possibly have room to... breathe in this environment. Remus regarded the dozens of happy faces around him, and suddenly each one of them seemed to pose a potential threat; everything that had happened while they were absent now felt somehow inappropriate if not exactly incorrect.

Platters, as yet untouched, had just appeared in steaming rows along the five heavy tables; they selected seats rather near the door. Persisting in his look of sullenness, Peter took an enormous bite of Cornish pasty. When he'd swallowed, he asked how Sirius and Remus' Christmas had gone.

"Alright," Remus murmured vaguely.

"What'd you do?"
"Oh, this and that, you know," said Sirius, waving a hand dismissively. Remus' insides squirmed weirdly at the thought of outright telling Peter what they'd actually done. He tried relegating his jittering nervousness to the back of his mind, with moderate success.

Quick to shift the spotlight off of himself and Sirius, he asked, "So, you get anything decent for Christmas, Wormtail?"
"Yeah, I did!" chirped Peter, shaking off his former glumness. "My sister gave me a wireless! We can listen to all the pro Quidditch games live now!"

"Excellent. Prongs'll be right thrilled, you know," said Sirius, grinning maniacally.

"What are you saying?" hissed Remus, mockingly scandalized. "You know perfectly well wierelesses were banned three years ago. Being the good Head Boy that he is, James will simply have to turn that in, Peter."

A second of silence before their momentarily straight faces crumpled and they fell about laughing. Peter pressed a napkin to his face, looking for a moment like he might expel pumpkin juice from his nose. James' status as a model pupil for the student body was a source of endless ironic amusement for Sirius, Peter and especially Remus, who was glad that his rank as prefect was no longer most frequently targeted for ridicule. The idea of James ever actually confiscating prohibited objects from anyone (besides the occasional Slytherin) was pretty absurd, after all.

The dregs of the recent arrivals straggled in, and Remus had just started to wonder where James had got to when he appeared in the arched entrance framed by two girls: Lorna Newbottle and--much more significantly--Lily Evans. Between them, he appeared taller than usual, and he gave off a confident air which was slightly more adult in nature than his customary adolescent egotism. Remus gaped at the sight of Lily walking amiably beside his friend and not, as was not exactly atypical, hexing or shouting at him.

Sirius let out a low whistle of surprise. "Would you look at that."

"I see it. I'm not sure what it is, but I see it," answered Remus distractedly.

Parting from James, Lily settled herself further up the table with Lorna and a small horde of other girls. With a blithe "Hi," James sank down on the bench across from them.

"What--was--that?" solicited Sirius immediately, dragging a sleeve through a tureen of soup to reach across and punch James in the shoulder.

"Hm?" James nonchalantly raised one dark eyebrow.

In severe--and amusing--agitation, Sirius pointed at a visible shock of red hair some way down the table.

"Oh, well, that is Lily Evans. Lily is one of those things sometimes referred to as a 'girl,' and--"

"Shut up, you know what I mean."

"I most certainly do not. I can't carry on a civil conversation with a fellow student without harassment and abuse now, is that it?" He rubbed the shoulder where Sirius had hit him, and put on his best victimized face.

"Come off it, mate. Are you dating her or what?" said Peter exasperatedly.

James finally abandoned his farce of innocence. "Nah, not dating. But--I think she's beginning to, er, see the light, if you will. What with her being Head Girl and all, we share a train compartment and we got to talking. I think that if I'm less forward with her--"

"If you stop stalking her, you mean," interrupted Remus.

"--yes, if I stop stalking her--I bet I'll have a serious chance."

"Wow. Never thought I'd see the day. That is something that I believe deserves a toast," proposed Sirius, raising his goblet invitingly. "To James. To James and Miss Elusive," The others clinked their glasses against his and drank deeply.

º

The remainder of the dinner was spent conjuring semi-malicious Marauder plots. They were halfway through pudding and James was nearly finished explaining that Winter would mainly serve to set the stage for Spring, at which time they would launch their most prodigious pranks yet. They were epically entertaining in nature, but relieved Remus' increasing nerves only minimally. With a few last mouthfuls of cake, the four trooped out of the Great Hall and up to the seventh floor. Remus had grown more and more laconic throughout the meal, and now lagged behind his friends, thoughtful.

Winding through the congested common room, they all decided to head up to their dormitory early that night. Lily tossed a casual, demonstrative smile in their direction--something which caused James to trip up the stairs and then pretend he'd meant to do so. A few card games, a small feast of Christmas candy courtesy of Peter's mother, and a bout of Fanged Frisbee throwing (which resulted in the shredding of one of Sirius' bed's drapes) later, it was past midnight and Remus was yawning widely.

"I don't know about you lot, but I'm going to bed," he said. The frisbee collided with his stomach and tried to gnaw away at his shirt. Remus pitched it carelessly across the room where it might have made contact with James' general groin area--he yelled a lot at any rate.

Remus went round to the other side of his bed, removed his shirt and sloppily donned a pair of pajama pants. Creeping under the quilts, he wanted nothing but to sleep so that he could stop worrying about himself and Sirius, but the others continued talking and it was notably chilly in their tower that night. Some minutes later, he heard Peter suddenly exclaim in frustration, "For God's sake, has everyone found a girl over the holidays but me?"

Remus rolled over, listening through the curtains.

"What are you on about, Wormtail?" asked James quizzically.

"You've practically got Lily, Prongs. And then you, Padfoot--well, there couldn't have been more than a handful of non-Slytherin girls over fourteen in the entire castle while you were here, but you still found somebody to snog."

"What makes you say that?" inquired Sirius, ignoring Peter's last question.

"Pfft. Right there. Don't tell me you haven't."

Abruptly, Remus recalled the little trail of darkly dappled love-bites he'd left down one side of Sirius' neck the evening before. His eyes widened in the dimness of his shrouded four-poster, and he couldn't suppress a shiver. Sirius wouldn't reveal their secret without consulting him, would he? Then again, would that be any worse than having him just joke about it again? Remus' palms sheathed themselves in a cold film of sweat.

"Oh, that. Yes, well, you know how it is," came Sirius' voice after a quiet gap. "Anyway--" he tried to proceed.

"No. No, I don't. That was my point."

James laughed. "You shark. Who'd you charm to pieces this time? Let's see, Roma Molineux was here, wasn't she? Hah! I saw that look! It was her, wasn't it?"

"No." Sirius sounded a little put upon. Remus quietly sat up, chewing on his lip. "It doesn't matter who it was."

Sounds of a little scuffle. "Aw, I reckon you're just saying that 'cause she wasn't up to your usual standards. We won't make fun even if she's a bit of a troll, will we, Peter?"

"Absolutely not," chuckled Peter.

"Wait, that Hufflepuff Quidditch girl! What's-her-face... er, Charlotte Cresswell. You talk to her, don't you? She might not win any beauty pageants, but I've heard she's cool--"

"I--" A tongue-tied Sirius was a rare event. Remus hesitantly pulled aside a corner of his bed's scarlet curtain.

In the inconsistent candlelight, he could see that James was hanging histrionically on Sirius' shoulder. "Tell me," he said, drawing out the words so it seemed that they contained several syllables each. Denying James anything usually lead to this type of exceedingly melodramatic behavior; the more you withheld, the more he demanded, even if he didn't actually give two shits about the answer. Peter was observing and popping toffees into his mouth like popcorn at the cinema.

"No," returned Sirius curtly. He pried James' fingers from his collar, and snatched a toffee from Peter.

"Damn it, Padfoot-- you're such a stubborn whore." James' shoulders slumped.

"Your mother's a stubborn whore," mimicked Sirius, regaining a bit of wit.

"You love my mother and you know it."

"Yes, James. Yes, I do." He ate the toffee before adding, "Even though she's a slag."

"Mark my words: you will tell."

"God, you're such a whiny bastard. Fine. Fine, it was Charlotte. There you go."

If Remus heard the rest of the conversation, it didn't register with his brain. Slumping back against his pillow, he felt his eyes prickle with tears that he would feel beyond stupid for spilling, so he dragged the back of his hand roughly across his face, wiping them away. The back of his throat seemed to constrict and burn with whatever warped sort of anger this was.

It hadn't even occurred to him that Sirius might lie about it. Did that make Remus naïve? Regardless, he felt that it was cowardly of Sirius. Cowardly of Sirius. Along with James, Sirius was the least cowardly person he knew. And that only made it hurt all the more... was he, Remus, such a horrible thing to admit to being attracted to that even Sirius would take the gutless way out?

º

By 7:30 the next morning all the self-effacing thoughts of the night before sounded juvenile and unfounded. It wasn't him that had done anything to compromise the relationship--or whatever it was. It wasn't him that had refused to talk about it. It wasn't even him that had started it, really.

Remus tightened his tie, snatched up a tidy stack of textbooks and walked briskly out of the dormitory before Sirius or anyone else had even gotten past the eye-rubbing and complaining stage of the morning. He added a terse "See you in Transfiguration later."

He only choked down a piece of toast and drank a half cup of tremendously strong tea before retiring to the entirely deserted library. Transfiguration didn't begin until 9:00, so he took time to merely sit at the end of an arbitrary aisle and stare out the window. Hogwarts angled itself in such a way that, from his position, Remus could observe a sliver of the great blue window out of which Sirius and he had flown not so very long ago. He would make Sirius talk about it. And if he wouldn't, or if it became clear that they really were less compatible than he'd thought, then Remus would just have to get over it. He'd learned that his attraction to men wasn't the source of his weakness, but if he allowed himself to be torn apart by something he'd frankly expected might tear him apart, then he felt that he'd be weaker than ever.

9:00 arrived, and Remus was the first in the classroom save Professor McGonagall.

"Morning, Lupin," she greeted him brusquely.

"Good morning, Professor." The early daylight peeked into the lecture hall and illuminated all the little dancing eddies of dust motes in the air. Remus had always liked that effect, and it distracted him briefly.

"Mr. Lupin, are you quite alright?" asked McGonagall unexpectedly, examining him over the rim of her spectacles. "You don't look very well."

"Hm? Oh, I assure you there's nothing the matter." Remus opened his textbook, placed his wand on the desk, and rustled his notes around in an official sort of way to emphasize that he was perfectly well and ready to learn. Nothing wrong in the slightest.

McGonagall continued to eye him suspiciously so that he began to wonder whether he really did appear ill. Other N.E.W.T. level students trickled in one by one, and though Sirius took a seat directly next to him, Remus failed to greet him. A half-hour later when Sirius asked to see his notes, Remus slid them over, but continued attempting to animate his chair.

"As you will have noticed, it is fairly simple to induce basic movement in a still object, but immeasurably more challenging to grant the object with, for lack of a better term, artificial intelligence. I want those chairs moving of their own volition, not yours, by the time we're finished. I shall know if you're cheating," projected Professor McGonagall over the students' murmured complaints.

Remus only realized how truly distracted he must have been when he looked up at 10:30 from his feebly twitching chair to see most of the classes' trotting and clattering about the room like spindly wooden colts.

"Disappointing, Mr. Lupin. You're not up to your usual game today," sighed McGonagall, making her rounds. Somehow, he didn't care very much, and left the classroom behind James and Sirius. The moment James stopped in the corridor to talk to one of the Gryffindor team's Beaters about an upcoming practice, Remus grabbed hold of the back of Sirius' collar and marched him into an empty classroom, closing the door firmly behind him.

"What are you doing?" said Sirius, perplexed. He spun around and faced Remus. "You ignored me all through Transfiguration. What's up?"

Remus glowered at him. "You're going to talk to me, and you're going to be serious about it."

"You mean about..." Sirius crossed his arms and leaned back against the dusty, scarred blackboard.

"Yeah. You told James and Peter last night that it was Charlotte you snogged. And you've been refusing to discuss anything since this started. Things are not going to work like that." Remus did his best to sound secure and resolute.

"What was I supposed to tell them, eh? You know James would have made it into a bigger and bigger deal every second I didn't give him an answer. What, do you want to tell them? That would be a huge thing, Remus." Sirius responded quickly and decisively, but did not look him quite in the eye.

"It's a huge thing now, Sirius. You can't just ignore it ninety percent of the time and then expect me to be thrilled when you happen to feel like fucking in a broom closet or whatever it is that's going to come next."

Sirius' mouth opened and closed in surprise. Remus knew he was stepping out the bounds of his normal behavior, and Sirius didn't tend to understand anything involving him being told what he could and could not do.

"Look. Maybe I just don't want to go telling James about something this... out of the ordinary... when it's not even been going on that long. Maybe--"

"Alright, but what if it goes on another month or another year. Then? And are you just going to, what, pretend as if you've randomly stopped liking girls all that time? Or do you intend to keep on as usual with that?" Remus knew he was losing his composure, slipping into accusations...

"No," answered Sirius defensively. "But all I'm saying is that people think of me a certain way--James thinks of me a certain way--and if I go around flaunting--"

"You're scared of people thinking you're different?" said Remus, his voice rising.

"I'm not scared," barked Sirius, turning a frosty eye on him and standing up straight.

"I'm just asking: do you want me or not?" growled Remus.

"I don't know, alright!" he snarled back loudly. The argument was sounding more and more clipped, more and more stupid, more and more canine to Remus' ears.

"Just--"

"I REALLY LIKE YOU, OKAY?" shouted Sirius suddenly, looking alarmed with himself.

Remus jumped. "WELL I REALLY LIKE YOU TOO."

"FINE."

"FINE."

In the ringing silence that followed the row, Sirius scrabbled up his books and slammed his way through the door, running over his young brother, Regulus, who happened to be passing. He looked murderously at the Fourth Year Slytherin before stalking away without a backward glance.