Marauder Rare Pairs ♦ Fic: The Moon So High
Title: The Moon So High
Author: pavlablack
Pairing: Remus/Lily (with mention of a past Remus/Sirius encounter)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1436
Prompt: 8: They meet in the library. Sometimes they do homework. Sometimes they don't.
Warnings: Some sexual content, het and slash.
Summary: When Remus and Lily return to Hogwarts from the worst Christmas ever, they find solace in each other.
Author's Notes: All characters and references you recognize belong to J.K. Rowling, not me. Many thanks to The Harry Potter Lexicon, which served as my fact-checker. And thanks most of all to E, who was a wonderful beta and offered suggestions that made this piece much better than it would have been otherwise.
In the winter of his fifth year at Hogwarts, Remus Lupin comes to grasp one very important fact that his Astronomy professor has spent years attempting to drum into his head: sometimes the stars will align themselves in just the right (or wrong) way so that certain things that would never happen under ordinary circumstances happen.
Things like kissing Lily Evans in a darkened corner of the Restricted Section of the library.
When the kiss finally ends (Remus isn't sure which one of them pulls away first, perhaps both at the same time), Lily sinks her shaking body against his chest and he uneasily strokes her soft hair. He looks to the nearest window, searching for more than light-seeking reason, sanity, anything to explain what has landed him here.
Things like, what if he hadn't been so pants at Potions that Professor Slughorn had to persuade Lily to begin tutoring him the previous autumn, despite her hatred for all people and things having to do with "that arrogant, bullying toerag James Potter"? What if Sirius, James, and Peter (but most especially Sirius) hadn't been steadily drawing away from him since the beginning of term? What if Remus and Lily hadn't both returned two days early from the Christmas holidays and decided to get a head start on studying for their Charms O.W.L.?
Remus suspects this last circumstance is the real reason Lily is clutching at his robes, or at least the most relevant at the moment. They've both been so shaken from their time home over the holidays that instead of researching protective enchantments in Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes, they've found a quiet corner to commiserate. Lily is heartbroken over her sister's latest refusal to sleep, eat, or breathe in the same room as "that spoiled little freak," and Remus feels reckless and still a little disoriented from his transformation two nights prior, made worse by the fact that his mum and dad had thought an acceptable post-Christmas gift was to try out the latest experimental potion meant to tame the wolf inside him. It's yet another endless reminder that the two people in the world who are supposed to love him unconditionally will never be able to do so, because the Thing he becomes one night a month is enough to erase the boy he is the other twenty-nine or thirty. And if his own parents can't love him, probably no one else can either.
"I guess we’re both freaks then," he'd said bitterly, grabbing Lily's wrist and pulling her to him in one harsh movement, though she had come willingly. Her face was suddenly so close that he had pressed his lips to hers, his Charms notes scattering to the floor in a flurry of good intentions gone awry.
And now, here they are. Remus can still taste Lily, knows that if he looks at her, her mouth will still be swollen with his kiss. He doesn't look though. He can't. Instead, he searches the night sky through that tiny, high set window, looking for something recognizable-naming the constellations he can see and daring to look at the waning moon.
Remus has always found a twisted sort of comfort in the night sky, perhaps because it alone has held all the answers to his life since that terrible night so long ago when he was bitten. Even as a young boy he had understood and come to accept the power the moon would forever hold over him, transforming boy into monster with its inevitable pull, month after month, year after year. Yet since coming to Hogwarts, and especially over the last year, he has come to realize something new. The moon that has cursed him to years of secrecy and solitude, confusion and regret, pain and paralysis, cannot compete with the pull of another celestial being that has an even greater power to wound and manipulate and thrill until sometimes Remus can no longer recognize himself. Though Remus doubts he will ever find confirmation of it in his Astronomy text, he knows that even the moon pales in comparison to the brightest star in the sky. Sirius.
"What?" Lily pulls back, tears still glistening in her eyes from recalling her sister's cruel words.
"Sorry," he whispers, pulling his arms from around her. He runs his thumbs over her wet cheeks before dropping his hands to his sides, embarrassed. He hadn't meant to say it aloud.
"It's all right," she whispers back, and this time she kisses him, just once but fiercely, placing her hands on either side of his face. She looks him hard in the eyes, searching.
It's easy, suddenly, to disregard the guilt that had been nagging at Remus because he knows how James feels about Lily. It's less of a betrayal, if it could even be called that, he tells himself, when Lily hasn't let James near enough to warrant any feelings other than the kind that likely originate from a much lower place in James's body than his heart. And easier still for Remus to dismiss his own feelings for Sirius, though he can't help but think back to that night last spring when he admitted everything, moaning into Sirius's neck after they shared a dizzying, drunken snog. Sirius seemed to reciprocate at the time, pulling Remus into another long, slow kiss, but Remus realizes now that Sirius's enthusiasm had more to do with an abundance of firewhisky and general teenage boy randiness than anything reserved specifically for Remus.
Now, all is lost somewhere in the sight and scent of Lily-the smell of peppermint sweets on her breath, her shiny red hair falling against her face, her misty green eyes staring intently into his-all of which make Remus long for a different kind of Christmas. One where he doesn't miss his best mates. One where his parents look at him as worthy, instead of something ruined that must be pitied or fixed.
This time, Remus and Lily lean in together, and somehow the kiss they share is the one that truly matters because they're both giving in to it, saying without words I trust you and I want this and you are the only one who understands me right now.
This time, it isn't Remus kissing Lily or Lily kissing Remus, but the two of them kissing each other. It is more tentative and more certain all at once. And while Remus was too shocked, first by his own behavior and then at hers, to observe much during the first and second kiss, this time he pays full attention.
Lily's mouth feels different from Sirius's, soft where Sirius's had been hard, lips smooth where Sirius's had been chapped from biting them. But her arms around his neck are strong, and when she presses her breasts against his chest, his breath catches and he feels a little like he felt when Sirius's erection pressed against his thigh for the first time. He was aroused then, too, but this is different, the way he isn't afraid to touch back. He pulls Lily closer and fits their hips together, placing one hand against the curve of her back, the other on her side, marveling at how her fragility makes him feel stronger, more himself-more human than he has felt in a long time. He wants to protect her, though only a few hours ago he would have said he's never known anyone less in need of protection. Lily can cast a mean hex when provoked, which James has found out on more than one occasion, and which Remus came to know firsthand when Lily would charm his notes to rearrange themselves into nonsense every time he tried to say a good word on James's behalf as they studied.
But they've moved far beyond studying now, and Remus is starting to wonder, anyway, if his loyalty to James has been misplaced, starting to fear that his friendships with the others have been borne of proximity and convenience rather than fate. As their kiss deepens, he lets his hands drift up and down Lily's body, gently pushing her robes aside so he can touch her in more intimate places. And as her fingers dig into his back and tug at his robes, finally slipping beneath, he shudders and gives in, lets himself get lost inside her. He permits himself to believe, at last, that the night sky might not hold all the answers to his life after all, if the pull of Sirius Black is something that can be eradicated by Lily's soft, firm body pressed against his own.
Author: pavlablack
Pairing: Remus/Lily (with mention of a past Remus/Sirius encounter)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1436
Prompt: 8: They meet in the library. Sometimes they do homework. Sometimes they don't.
Warnings: Some sexual content, het and slash.
Summary: When Remus and Lily return to Hogwarts from the worst Christmas ever, they find solace in each other.
Author's Notes: All characters and references you recognize belong to J.K. Rowling, not me. Many thanks to The Harry Potter Lexicon, which served as my fact-checker. And thanks most of all to E, who was a wonderful beta and offered suggestions that made this piece much better than it would have been otherwise.
In the winter of his fifth year at Hogwarts, Remus Lupin comes to grasp one very important fact that his Astronomy professor has spent years attempting to drum into his head: sometimes the stars will align themselves in just the right (or wrong) way so that certain things that would never happen under ordinary circumstances happen.
Things like kissing Lily Evans in a darkened corner of the Restricted Section of the library.
When the kiss finally ends (Remus isn't sure which one of them pulls away first, perhaps both at the same time), Lily sinks her shaking body against his chest and he uneasily strokes her soft hair. He looks to the nearest window, searching for more than light-seeking reason, sanity, anything to explain what has landed him here.
Things like, what if he hadn't been so pants at Potions that Professor Slughorn had to persuade Lily to begin tutoring him the previous autumn, despite her hatred for all people and things having to do with "that arrogant, bullying toerag James Potter"? What if Sirius, James, and Peter (but most especially Sirius) hadn't been steadily drawing away from him since the beginning of term? What if Remus and Lily hadn't both returned two days early from the Christmas holidays and decided to get a head start on studying for their Charms O.W.L.?
Remus suspects this last circumstance is the real reason Lily is clutching at his robes, or at least the most relevant at the moment. They've both been so shaken from their time home over the holidays that instead of researching protective enchantments in Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes, they've found a quiet corner to commiserate. Lily is heartbroken over her sister's latest refusal to sleep, eat, or breathe in the same room as "that spoiled little freak," and Remus feels reckless and still a little disoriented from his transformation two nights prior, made worse by the fact that his mum and dad had thought an acceptable post-Christmas gift was to try out the latest experimental potion meant to tame the wolf inside him. It's yet another endless reminder that the two people in the world who are supposed to love him unconditionally will never be able to do so, because the Thing he becomes one night a month is enough to erase the boy he is the other twenty-nine or thirty. And if his own parents can't love him, probably no one else can either.
"I guess we’re both freaks then," he'd said bitterly, grabbing Lily's wrist and pulling her to him in one harsh movement, though she had come willingly. Her face was suddenly so close that he had pressed his lips to hers, his Charms notes scattering to the floor in a flurry of good intentions gone awry.
And now, here they are. Remus can still taste Lily, knows that if he looks at her, her mouth will still be swollen with his kiss. He doesn't look though. He can't. Instead, he searches the night sky through that tiny, high set window, looking for something recognizable-naming the constellations he can see and daring to look at the waning moon.
Remus has always found a twisted sort of comfort in the night sky, perhaps because it alone has held all the answers to his life since that terrible night so long ago when he was bitten. Even as a young boy he had understood and come to accept the power the moon would forever hold over him, transforming boy into monster with its inevitable pull, month after month, year after year. Yet since coming to Hogwarts, and especially over the last year, he has come to realize something new. The moon that has cursed him to years of secrecy and solitude, confusion and regret, pain and paralysis, cannot compete with the pull of another celestial being that has an even greater power to wound and manipulate and thrill until sometimes Remus can no longer recognize himself. Though Remus doubts he will ever find confirmation of it in his Astronomy text, he knows that even the moon pales in comparison to the brightest star in the sky. Sirius.
"What?" Lily pulls back, tears still glistening in her eyes from recalling her sister's cruel words.
"Sorry," he whispers, pulling his arms from around her. He runs his thumbs over her wet cheeks before dropping his hands to his sides, embarrassed. He hadn't meant to say it aloud.
"It's all right," she whispers back, and this time she kisses him, just once but fiercely, placing her hands on either side of his face. She looks him hard in the eyes, searching.
It's easy, suddenly, to disregard the guilt that had been nagging at Remus because he knows how James feels about Lily. It's less of a betrayal, if it could even be called that, he tells himself, when Lily hasn't let James near enough to warrant any feelings other than the kind that likely originate from a much lower place in James's body than his heart. And easier still for Remus to dismiss his own feelings for Sirius, though he can't help but think back to that night last spring when he admitted everything, moaning into Sirius's neck after they shared a dizzying, drunken snog. Sirius seemed to reciprocate at the time, pulling Remus into another long, slow kiss, but Remus realizes now that Sirius's enthusiasm had more to do with an abundance of firewhisky and general teenage boy randiness than anything reserved specifically for Remus.
Now, all is lost somewhere in the sight and scent of Lily-the smell of peppermint sweets on her breath, her shiny red hair falling against her face, her misty green eyes staring intently into his-all of which make Remus long for a different kind of Christmas. One where he doesn't miss his best mates. One where his parents look at him as worthy, instead of something ruined that must be pitied or fixed.
This time, Remus and Lily lean in together, and somehow the kiss they share is the one that truly matters because they're both giving in to it, saying without words I trust you and I want this and you are the only one who understands me right now.
This time, it isn't Remus kissing Lily or Lily kissing Remus, but the two of them kissing each other. It is more tentative and more certain all at once. And while Remus was too shocked, first by his own behavior and then at hers, to observe much during the first and second kiss, this time he pays full attention.
Lily's mouth feels different from Sirius's, soft where Sirius's had been hard, lips smooth where Sirius's had been chapped from biting them. But her arms around his neck are strong, and when she presses her breasts against his chest, his breath catches and he feels a little like he felt when Sirius's erection pressed against his thigh for the first time. He was aroused then, too, but this is different, the way he isn't afraid to touch back. He pulls Lily closer and fits their hips together, placing one hand against the curve of her back, the other on her side, marveling at how her fragility makes him feel stronger, more himself-more human than he has felt in a long time. He wants to protect her, though only a few hours ago he would have said he's never known anyone less in need of protection. Lily can cast a mean hex when provoked, which James has found out on more than one occasion, and which Remus came to know firsthand when Lily would charm his notes to rearrange themselves into nonsense every time he tried to say a good word on James's behalf as they studied.
But they've moved far beyond studying now, and Remus is starting to wonder, anyway, if his loyalty to James has been misplaced, starting to fear that his friendships with the others have been borne of proximity and convenience rather than fate. As their kiss deepens, he lets his hands drift up and down Lily's body, gently pushing her robes aside so he can touch her in more intimate places. And as her fingers dig into his back and tug at his robes, finally slipping beneath, he shudders and gives in, lets himself get lost inside her. He permits himself to believe, at last, that the night sky might not hold all the answers to his life after all, if the pull of Sirius Black is something that can be eradicated by Lily's soft, firm body pressed against his own.