The Stars and Forbidden Cigarettes | Professor Remus Lupin

Consequences

"We weren't mingling, Professor," Oliver says for her, and Reverie shuts her eyes briefly. "Rev wasn't feeling well and I stopped to help her."

Lupin drags his eyes away from Reverie, resting on Oliver with indignation that Oliver doesn't understand.

"Helping her and using Hogwarts' empty hallways to snog her are two very different things, Wood."

Lupin's eyes flicker to Reverie against his will, a subconscious need to see her reaction, to see if he's right. Her chest heaves in anger, and so does his, but her cheeks are burning red, and he's suddenly overcome by an urge to take her back to his classroom, lock the door, push her against the wall, and make her moan into his lips until that blush becomes his, her cheeks red because of him.

He turns his head away quickly, and that's when Oliver sees it. The way Lupin looks at Reverie with a need to see her eyes on him. The way Lupin's breathing quickens when she looks at him. The way the sight of Oliver and her together is tormenting him.

He feels Oliver's eyes analyzing him and points to the Great Hall.

"Go. Now."

Watching Lupin, Oliver takes Reverie's hand, and Lupin's hand twitches again. But when Oliver begins pulling her after him, she pulls her hand from his grasp.

"I'm not hungry anymore, Oliver," she says, without tearing her fiery gaze away from Lupin. "If you'll excuse me, Professor, I'm going to go back to my dormitory."

Lupin and Oliver watch her go, but when Oliver turns towards Lupin with the intention of speaking, Lupin turns around and walks back to his office, the echo of his footsteps in one direction mixing with Reverie's in the other drowning out anything Oliver had to say.

~~~~~~

Lupin slams the door to his office with enough force to shake the skulls on his shelf, and he walks directly towards his bottle of firewhisky, pouring himself a healthy glass-full and tipping it all back down his throat, wincing as it goes down. The pain erases the thoughts of her lips on this glass, her lips on his.

But it doesn't erase his anguish at the idea of someone else holding her face between their hands, kissing her, feeling her. Lupin leans against the table, his arms holding his weight, his head down, his fingers tapping mindlessly against the wood.

Crooking his head, he eyes the map on his desk, a new addition to the mess around it, and he turns away as he pours himself a new glass and walks over to the window.

He watches the lake below, rippling, reflecting the starry night sky, and he starts to feel restless, realizing that everywhere he looks, he sees her.

The flask of wolfsbane stares at him tauntingly from the windowsill, and he remembers the night she had figured him out, the night she had come to him, the reason why he pushed her away.

He forces himself to look away, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands.

He and McGonagall had been at the Ministry for a week, and they'd discovered an intercepted letter from Reverie's grandmother, traced with poison. He knows it'll break her, knowing that the Ministry had gotten hold of her grandmother's information. Lupin knows it's nothing less than a threat, a warning sign, to get her to stop searching, stop writing, stop digging, and it's killing him, not being able to tell her, not being able to get close to her.

But what he hates the most is that there's no telling that he'll stop the next one, and the wrenching pain in his chest at the thought of Reverie hurt—or dead—scares him more than anything ever has.

He grabs the map off of his desk and opens it, muttering "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," and scans it to see her name. He finds her, pacing the Gryffindor common room, but when he sees Wood's name written just next to hers, his eyes darken.

He can almost picture them together, Reverie letting Wood take her hand, letting him kiss her, letting him hold her.

How could he possibly justify being jealous of a student? He knows it was reckless of him to abandon her like he did and then expect her to stay, waiting for him to get his act together. He hates himself for looking at Wood's name with such anger.

But when their names get closer and he swears they blend into one, he drops the map onto his desk, grabs his long forgotten box of cigarettes, and goes outside.

Refusing to look at the lake, the sky, or the trees, blind to everything but the terrible feeling of the nicotine filling his lungs, he realizes that he was somewhat right, that night so many months ago. Reverie truly would be the only credible orchestrator to his slow and torturous death, but only from a distance, for he'd never felt more alive than he'd felt alone with her.