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"Would you eat, please?" Lily asked shortly, dropping into the stiff white chair beside Remus with a roll of bread.
Remus shrugged her off. He wasn't hungry.
Well, maybe that wasn't true.
But he had no appetite. That was true.
"Remus," Lily sighed, seeming very fed up. "Dying of starvation is a real thing, you know."
"Maybe the sleep deprivation is giving him hallucinations of eating," James said dryly, slipping under the covers of a bed across the room.
"You should at least drink water," Alice said lightly from the bed behind him.
"I had some," Remus lied.
"Yeah?" Lily asked. "When we all had shut our eyes?"
"Yeah, actually," Remus replied. Lily was not amused.
"I thought the photos might have helped you," she said, glancing over at Sydney's scrapbook that Peter had dug up.
"They did," Remus said. "Brought her back, yeah?"
Lily scoffed pitifully and threw out her hands.
"Hopeless," she said. "You're hopeless." And she shoved the bread roll, now crumpled from her fist, into his hand and stood to leave.
"Night," Remus muttered sardonically, chucking the bread into the ever filling bin.
Someone switched off the lights.
The pictures did help, if Remus was being honest.
It helped to see her smile, see her with cucumbers over her eyes, fear on her broom. It helped to see her happy.
He missed it. He missed hearing her laughing at her own jokes at dinner and making sarcastic comments in class and belting bad lyrics to songs in his dorm. He missed her.
She was here and yet she wasn't. Her hand was in his and her chest rose and fell but she did not laugh, she did not talk, she did not sing. She wasn't living the way she used to.
All Remus wanted was for that to come back. He didn't need food or water. The only thing that would save him was her.
And maybe some sleep. He was a bit tired.
Remus readjusted his hand in Sydney's, looking only for a second more at her still and almost porcelain face. He supposed she wouldn't think he was leaving if he only closed his eyes for a second.
When he did close his eyes, Remus could see her again, at dinner, in class, in his dorm. Her head fell back in a laugh and her lips barely moved as she insulted Binns and she held a hair brush to her mouth as Queen spun on a record player behind her.
Remus felt himself slipping from the white and stiff world and into the cascading golden waves of Sydney's laugh and he was ready to let go and fall away.
And then something squeezed his hand.
Remus lifted his head immediately. The golden glow still rested in the back of his head and he couldn't tell if he was dreaming or hallucinating or if she was really awake and smiling at him.
"Sydney," he breathed, willing this to not be a dream.
"Hey, bitch baby," she said back. She reached out a hand and her fingertips brushed softly across his forehead and then slid to hold the side of his face. Remus fell into the warm realness of her hand. "Have you slept?"
Remus shook his head and Sydney narrowed her eyes at him, falsely angry. She pulled her hand away and pushed herself to the far side of the small white bed.
"Come on," she said.
Remus smiled and escaped the stiff chair to slide into her arms. He wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his head on her rising and falling chest and her arms lifted slightly, the '¼' scar standing out a bit in the shadows.
"Oh," he said suddenly, lifting his head up and loosening his hold. "Sorry, does that hurt?"
"Nah, you're not that strong," Sydney insisted with a grin. Remus smiled, too, falling back to where he had been before.
His arms wrapped all the way around her waist and back so he could hold the fabric of his - her - jumper in his fists. Her hands moved to run through his hair and trace delicate lines over his face and everything felt golden and warm and right.
And he finally fell asleep, focused on her and only thinking: you and me.
________
A/N
SONG CHAPTERS YAYAYAY
song: come home - one republic
how it applies: remus wishing she'd come back🥲
also i fr feel like that one time when i updated swim like 6x in a day LOL brb starting the next chapter 🏃♀️🏃♀️🏃♀️🏃♀️
