Tri

Tri

1.

He could have loved Lily Evans.

Sometimes he saw her talking with friends by the common room fire, and the way the firelight got caught in her curls and the pattern of light it cast on those precious inches of skin between her knee-high and her hemline--it made him hurt, at moments like that, to know how much he could have loved Lily Evans.

He could have loved her best for the things she did when she thought no one was looking, these things he could imagine were known just to him. Once, he had been a few yards behind her in an otherwise empty stairwell when she tripped on a trick step and tumbled down a flight of stairs, letting out a stream of curses that made the portraits blush. He had noticed that she liked to furtively pop her knuckles one by one under her desk in class, and never owned up to it if anyone looked around for the source of the annoying sound. And Remus had seen the secret smile that sometimes played around her lips whenever Severus Snape was being subjected to something particularly inspired.

When she did that, half-smiled like that, he was very aware of how badly he wanted to crush her mouth with his kisses.

He could have loved Lily Evans, but James had discovered her first.

2.

She could have loved Sirius Black.

She watched him, all the time; and when she saw him slouched in his chair in class, his tie undone and his hair falling into his eyes, leaning in close to a friend to whisper something to make them both snicker, she would find her mind occupied not with Arithmancy but with all the ways she could have been a bad girl with Sirius Black.

She could have loved him for everything he did that she never dared. He strolled into classes five or ten minutes late, nodding at the professor as he took a last bite of his croissant, unflinchingly licking the flaky remnants from his long, lean fingers as the disapproving professor docked the necessary house points. The night before end of year exams, while every other student studied earnestly in the common room, he sprawled on a couch and concentrated instead on flicking rubber bands off each bowed head. Lily had seen him copy down every answer from James's Transfiguration test onto his own, but she had also seen him transform four second-years into hedgehogs with nothing but a flick of his wand and a smirk.

When he did that, smirked like that, her heart would pound as she envisioned smashing her mouth against his.

She could have loved Sirius Black, but she wasn't bad enough to try.

3.

He could have loved Remus Lupin.

And not just for how obligingly Remus always spread his well-organized notes over the breakfast table when he needed a last minute cram session--because on those occasions, with Remus's warm voice making a doxy's diet sound like poetry in his ear, with Remus constantly leaning over him and brushing so close against him to point out this important date or that vital ingredient, he learned very little except all the things he could have loved about Remus Lupin.

He could have loved him for how deeply he cared, how earnestly he applied himself to his every undertaking. Sirius had lain awake nights in his four-poster, listening to Remus turning textbook pages by wandlight until the first hint of sunrise warmed the sky. When Remus sketched, he never set his pencil down until he had erased every errant line, shadowed every contour. Sirius knew Remus answered test questions faster than anyone, but would sit intently for another hour to read back through his every response, sucking on the end of his quill in his concentration.

When he did that, drew his quill into his mouth like that, Sirius wanted nothing more than to knock the quill away and taste Remus's lips for himself.

He could have loved Remus Lupin, but if he did, he never told a soul.