BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE - REMUS LUPIN

49 - "HEAT"

"Sirius invited him because he thought that him and Remus would like each other due to the fact that they both read," Lily told Hollis with an amused tone. "As if that would be that they had the same personalities."

Hollis laughed. From across the room, Lily hadn't been the only person to follow Hollis's hand to where, or who, Rosier was looking at. Ever since Sirius had pinned the way that Remus felt when Hollis was with other guys, Lupin had been starting to feel jealous even more.

"It's okay, mate," said James told Remus, watching him look between Hollis and the Ravenclaw. "All she's doing is looking."

James hadn't told Remus, but he had seen Hollis look at Remus the same way earlier that night.

"Yea, I know," Remus muttered, obviously not being fully truthful.

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After Remus had opened all of his gifts, the sixty or so people in the room had mainly split up into groups of two or three and started talking. His green eyes scanned the room for Hollis, and he frowned when they landed.

Hollis and the sixth year Ravenclaw boy, who Sirius had identified as Chris Fink, were leaning against the wall together and having an animated conversation.

The common sense in Remus's head told him that there was nothing going on between the two of them, just a friendly conversation. However, the more emotional part of Remus was telling him to go over there and get Hollis away from that idiot that knew nothing about her.

Not like he did.

"Excuse me," Remus muttered, moving away from Marlene and James and towards where Hollis and Fink were standing.

James and Marlene exchanged a nervous glance; neither of them wanted for him to do anything rash. Hollis looked up and smiled as she saw Remus walking over.

"Hold that thought," she said to Fink, walking forward to meed Remus. Once she was standing near the doorway with the Gryffindor, she took a better look at his expression. Her eyes flickered from content to concern at the severity of his features, but didn't get a chance to act before he told her.

"What's that dick's deal?" Remus asked Hollis, more harshly and loudly than he intended to.

Hollis's eyes widened and she pulled Remus by his loose sleeve through the square door and outside into the hallway. The air was significantly cooler out there than in the stuffy, warm room heated by people.

"You can't just say things like that loudly!" Hollis exclaimed to Remus angrily, her voice slightly hoarse from having to raise it over the music for the past few hours.

"He was like an inch away from you against the wall," Remus told Hollis dubiously, as if this changed everything. "What am I supposed to think?"

Hollis rolled her tongue against the roof of her mouth and crossed her arms over her purple dress in exasperation.

"I dunno, maybe that I had just never talked to him before and that I wanted to get to know him," Hollis said to Remus with a defensive tone. "That I wanted to be friends. You know, now that I can actually do that without getting hounded by those Slytherins, it would be lovely to expand my horizons."

"Well that's certainly not what it seemed like," said Remus, his annoyance rising at the Ravenclaw.

Hollis shook her head, making a few strands fall out of her half put up black hair.

"I can't believe you. And remind me exactly why you care so much that I was just talking to a guy?" Hollis asked Remus fiercely, stepping forward across the stone floor to him, demanding an explanation.

Remus didn't know how to explain it, or at least not in a way that would make his case strongly enough. These emotions that had been running through him since the first day on that train car, that curiosity that had built to care, then care, then concern, and now all of them with something much more powerful overarching- it was too much to explain with any words, even if he had every single book in the library on hand.

And so, after months of wanting to without realizing it, Remus grabbed Hollis's chin and kissed her.

There were no thoughts in his mind of the consequences or effects that this could have on him or her or the other Marauders. The only thing that Remus was thinking of was Hollis and their hundreds of memories together.

How she always put others before herself, throwing her grandmother's ring in the lake as if it would get rid of her family even as she wore that necklace forced on her by her mother. How she was so eager to be there during that transformation, how she knew what he was and didn't shy away the slightest bit.

How she would be so brave in the face of problems that she wouldn't let anyone know about. Finding her bloody in their compartment. Running to her on the field. How she picked up on the smallest details in everything, invisible to a slightly less watchful eye. Holding her back from hitting Lucius.

How much he liked her.

The second their lips met, Remus instantly noticed how Hollis tasted just like the pink and green watermelon taffy she always had a bowl of nearby.

Heat swooped down her center, his heart pounding so hard he became acutely aware of it's intensity in every part of his body. He pulled her bottom lip into his mouth, his blood rushing like a scalding waterful as she exhaled gently onto his tongue. Something dark and vicious curled low in her stomach, a thrill going through her, delicious and shocking-

As quickly as their kiss had started, it stopped.

Rosier inhaled sharply as she fell back down onto the balls of her feet from going on her toes to return the kiss, his back straightening in turn. That heat went cold as Lupin watched her freeze, a horrible, dreadful feeling reclaiming his nerves with stabbing jolts of ice.

What the hell did I just do?

For the first time, Remus couldn't read Hollis's brown eyes as she turned around and walked down the torchlit corridor away from him.

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