Chocolate Covered Strawberries [Remus Lupin]

𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚑𝚞𝚗𝚍𝚛𝚎𝚍 𝚜𝚒𝚡𝚝𝚎𝚎𝚗

"I don't know, a few days ago at breakfast."

"Can you pass the butter is not talking, Robyn. I was there." Jasmine's lips stretched into a smug smile.

"When was the last time you talked to him?" Lily emphasised.

It must have been last year sometime when Robyn broke things off with him in the fastest way possible. It was clear she felt bad for it, even now still. She had no idea what she was doing at that time, and what she did to Caspar was never fair. He was kind even when she told him she was breaking up with him and he was kind even after that, although they never exchanged much more words. Maybe it was finally time to talk.

"Go on." Jasmine nudged her again.

"What am I supposed to say?" Robyn widened her eyes.

"Maybe apologise for a start. See where things go from there." Suggested Lily.

Robyn propped herself up and then immediately slouched her shoulders again. "I can't. He's surrounded by friends. I can't now."

The once boy-confident Robyn with no embarrassment whatsoever changed in the last year a lot. The way she approached Sirius at the beginning of their sixth year, the way she later approached Caspar or even seduced Rosier was like day and night to how she acted now. Robyn matured and Jasmine was proud of her immensely.

"One of those friends is also Sophie, the one and only girl we have shared a dorm with for the past seven years. And you can easily say you want to talk privately." Jasmine encouraged more.

"I think it's worth adding he has glanced at this table at least three times since we started talking." Lily wiggled her eyebrows at Robyn.

The brunette finally sighed, drank the last of her butterbeer and painfully slowly stood up. Lily and Jasmine huddled together and watched as she approached the table of Hufflepuffs and addressed Caspar. The way his lips stretched into a smile after the initial shock of Robyn talking to him, made the girls giggle and quietly cheer their friend on. Caspar stood up and apologised to his friends before he left The Three Broomsticks with Robyn to talk privately outside.

The moment the door to the bar opened, a brown owl swooped in, carrying a letter in its beak. It headed straight towards the table and dropped the letter down in the middle. The group leaned in and saw the letter was addressed to Sirius. They all quieted down and waited for him to open it. The continuously changing emotion on his face had part of the group curious and the other part scared. In the end, he was just horrified.

"What is it?" asked James eagerly.

Sirius flattened the parchment on the table so everyone could see. And it read:

Dear Sirius Orion Black,

you are kindly invited to the rehearsal dinner to celebrate the engagement between Gabriel Fawley and Jasmine Pearson, future Mr and Mrs Fawley, this Saturday at the Pearson residence.

The signature was just a messy scrawl which only Jasmine could decipher. It was her father's. All eyes then turned on Jasmine in anticipation. She felt like her heart dropped down to her stomach. She felt physically sick as if she was about to throw up all the butterbeer she previously drank.

"I thought the engagement was off." Lily's voice was quiet. Like the whole group, she had forgotten about it entirely, well until now.

"I thought you said you were handling it." Remus glared at Sirius.

"I was. The lawyer I contacted should have drawn the papers by now." The raven-haired boy defended with panic.

His shock still hadn't diminished as he stared at the letter in front of him. His eyes fluttered to the envelope when he noticed something else sticking out. He grabbed for it and an even more devastated expression settled on his face as he read what the little cutout piece of newspaper said.

"What?" Everyone was confused. 

"It's an obituary of said lawyer."

Lily let out an audible gasp. Remus sighed and slid down his chair in disbelief. Jasmine merely stared blankly at the top of the table. Her brain could not process what was happening. The one hope they had of calling the engagement off was the loophole with Jasmine's age and the lawyer, who was prepared to actually see the justice being done. And that now lies underground.

"I think it's quite simple though," James piped up after a long deafening silence, "just don't go."

Lily tried to hit his arm for his stupidity but the situation didn't let her at the moment.

"Not go?" Remus raised his voice. "We just learned what her father is capable of doing if someone interferes with the engagement. She can't not go." His voice reached desperation at the end. He was probably the person least liking what was happening, right next to Jasmine.

"We'll both go." Sirius determined. "Even if it means spending an evening in a suffocating room full of pureblood supremacists, my family including. I'll be there, for Jasmine, in case things go south."

If his words were meant to calm anyone down, they didn't work on Remus. Despite the recent weeks, Remus still didn't trust Sirius, no matter how many apologies were made. He still didn't trust him around Jasmine. Yet now he was the only hope Jasmine had at surviving the dreadful dinner.

"It's not just the dinner." Jasmine finally spoke up. The whole group turned their heads to her. She still stared at the same spot, as if her eyes were empty."It's what the dinner is leading up to. Nothing seems to work to change my father's mind."

"Telling him you're not pureblood and that he married a muggle-born might," Lily suggested.

Jasmine scoffed. "And you think he'll believe me? Not in a million years."

Someone cleared his throat behind Jasmine right after she said that. She turned around and laid eyes on Smirnitsky, who was standing next to her mother and Isla.

"He'll believe us."

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