➥COMPLETED
Nova Black hadn't thought she would ever set a toe behind those thick castle walls she had fought to forget about during the past thirteen years, but here she was at Plattform 9¾, staring at the scarlet train in front of her with wobbly k...
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CURLED UP in a ball underneath her blanket, Nova ignored the fact that it was already ten a.m.; it was a bloody Saturday and her mind was a bloody mess, so she had every damn right to keep herself hidden in here for the rest of the day.
She turned the ring in her hands; the ring with the crescent moon. The ring she had gotten from Jonathan, the man she had loved, the man she had sworn to love forever, until they would be reunited someday. And yet she was laying here after the lips of another man had caressed hers, but to make it even worse, she had to admit that she had actually enjoyed it.
Guilty pleasure was still shooting through her veins by just the thought of Remus lips against hers; demanding, yet hesitations — as if he had felt just the same guilty pleasure as herself.
Nova had struggled to fall asleep last night, and oh, had her dreams gone wild, after she had finally managed to close her eyes and drift away. Remus had crossed her slumber more than once tonight, and not one single time had he failed to leave a tingling in the pit of her stomach followed by painful stitches of remorse.
"I wish you could tell me what to do", Nova whispered at the ring, while actually she knew exactly what Jonathan would want her to do. It was almost like she could hear him, as in her head echoed the words of Johnathan's forever lost voice, "Goodness, Nova, just try to be happy for once, would you?"
That's what he always wanted her to be, but it was hard to imagine that he could have beared seeing her with another man, not to mention one of his big brother's closest friends. For sure, in death Jonathan would still be noble enough to wish her the happiness they were never able to experience, but would he really want to see her happy with Remus Lupin?
He always liked Remus, a voice in her head was telling her, while an other, a more angry and threatening voice was yelling, But that's why he would never forgive you!
Fair to say, Nova was in two minds, but mainly in denial for those feelings that were fluttering through her stomach more like angry bats than cute little butterflies.
A knock on the door had her sitting up dead straight, eyes widened, as she stared at the door through curtains of her dark hair. Suddenly, she felt like being fifteen again, and her father had just found out about a bad grade in her O.W.L. exams. Her heart was drumming against her ribcage, not even stopping when she reminded herself that this was Hogwarts, not her room at Grimmauld Place, and her father and her mother had died long ago, no longer being able to lay hands on her.
With bare feet, she slipped out of bed and crossed the room, pulling the night gown closer around her body. She pulled the door open with her fingers still trembling, only wide enough to have a glimpse at the person outside.
Cheeks enflaming immediately, Nova wished she would at least have thought of pulling on pants. Her eyes locked with this pare of wellbeknownst jade green and the bats in her stomach suffered from sudden death and seemed to fall into an endless abyss now.
"Remus!", she gasped, hand still on the door knob, ready to slam it shut.
"I didn't see you at breakfast", said Remus, as if that was an unusual occurrence, while instead it happened literally daily. Only that unlike other days, Nova hadn't gotten up to eat something before the other castle residents would awake and the Great Hall would fill. Had he been there this early to wait for her? "I had a suggestion that you might are trying to lock yourself up in here again, trying to hide from me."
"N-no no, I didn't feel well this morning", Nova quickly lied, cursing herself for her childish stammering.
"Can I come in?", he asked, cocking an eyebrow.
Desperately thinking of a reason to deny his bid, Nova hear herself saying, "Yes, of course", before she could hold her tongue. Silently sighing, she stepped aside and fully opened the door for Remus.
"I came here to talk to you", he said as soon as the door closed behind his back, before he turned around to Nova, who felt awfully exposed in her nightgown. "About yesterday", added Remus, his eyes fixating Nova's, not even flickering for a second. "And I'd prefer if you wouldn't run away this time."
She watched the corners of his mouth twitching, as she nodded, but all she really did instead of listening to his voice, was to imagine what those lips were able to make her feel ...
"— know it's confusing", she suddenly heard him say, snapping her back to reality. "At least to me it is, and I only can imagine that you must struggling equally."
Confusion, in fact, was an abysmal understatement. Urging to feel his lips back on hers, Nova leaned against the table behind her to steady her shaking legs.
"I have thought about it the whole night", he said, running his fingers through his hair, "didn't close my eyes for anything longer than a blink. Maybe what I did yesterday had been a mistake, I don't kno—"
Forgive me, Jon, Nova thought, before she found herself stepping forward, her scantly clad body pressing against Remus', as she flung her arms around his neck and pulled his lips onto hers.
Maybe Remus was right; maybe all of this was a big mistake. Nova didn't know.
What she did know, though, was that Remus made her feel; he made her feel things that she hadn't felt in years, and some of them she had never felt at all. As his arms closed around her, safety and comfort that Jonathan could have never offered her in those dark times of their love, crushed over her like waves.
And maybe it was this safety and comfort that caused this scene to grow so much more intense, so deeply passionate, that she didn't mind Remus hands traveling down her spine and leaving the covered parts of her body to meet her naked skin, that had never felt so warm and whole, as if nothing could break her.
What happened between them might wasn't a happy ever after, but in this very moment, for Nova a second of bliss was more than enough.
