CHAPTER TWENTY
"THIS NEEDS TO STOP."
He pulled his lips away from hers. His hands moving from their position on her waist to her hands that cupped his face and then pulling them away.
Diana stared up at Remus with a confused doe-eyed look. "What?" She said brows furrowed in confusion as their kiss had come to an abrupt end.
"I shouldn't have done that." His hands dropped Diana's and they fell to her side, just as rejected as the rest of her felt. "It was a mistake."
He was running his hand through his hair nervously, almost seeming to peer around the room as if someone was about to appear out nowhere and catch them. His face looked guilty and ashamed.
"Are you serious?" Diana exclaimed angrily. "You can't just kiss me like that and then say it was a mistake."
She could still feel the reminiscence of his touch on her own. Her lips were red and swollen and the pit of her stomach an eruption of heat. She supposed she shouldn't have expected anything more from Remus, he had always been like this. Hesitant and worried about the consequences. Though this time Diana had thought he had finally overcome that, because that kiss had been a longtime coming.
"I'm your teacher." He hissed and Diana rolled her eyes at the same old excuse. "Yeah, I've heard that one before." She remarked, annoyed at the repetitiveness.
And then the same old sigh left Remus' lips and he finally looked at her properly again. "Right now I think it would be best if you left..."
Diana felt her stomach drop. "And then what?" She asked. Things could hardly be normal again. Though no words were shared, the kiss had been the admittance of their feelings towards one another.
"I don't know." He answered. "I need time to think."
He looked away from her, unable to meet her gaze in shame and that was the only answer Diana needed. "Whatever." She mumbled in anger. "I'll leave you to think alone, but like I told you before, I'm not some silly girl with a stupid crush on her Professor, and I won't be here waiting around for you."
So she stormed out the office, heart and lips equally exposed.
.·:·.☽✧ ✦ ✧☾.·:·.
"Diana?"
Olivia sat crossed-leg on her bed, watching Diana who had been staring into space for a number of minutes, and working to get her attention. "I think that owl is knocking for you."
Diana then heard the tapping on the dorm window behind her and leant over her bed headboard to open it and collect the letter from the beak of the owl. Her name was written on the front and she recognised the messy handwriting immediately.
Diana,
I thank you kindly for all your help this school year but your assistance, though greatly appreciated, is no longer needed. I am writing to confirm the end of your position as my assistant and our weekly meetings.
I have informed Dumbledore of all your hard work and extra credit has been awarded.
Regards,
Professor R.J. Lupin.
The parchment folded in Diana's fist as she finished reading the letter that left a sadness in her chest and rage almost everywhere else. She stormed off the bed, leaving Olivia in her wake, who was only able to watch Diana once again march out their dorm in anger.
She charged across the castle furiously, the heels to her patent shoes violently tapping against the stone in time with her equally as mad beating heart. When she reached the first of the Defence Against the Dark Arts classrooms, she barged in, marching straight over to Remus and ignoring the sickly pale third-year who was cautiously nibbling a bar of Honeydukes chocolate.
"What the fuck is this?" She demanded, shoving the letter into Lupin's grasp. His mouth parted agape in shock and looked sheepishly over to the other student in the room. Diana followed his gaze to Harry Potter who was staring across at Diana with an equally scared and startled expression.
"What are you looking at, specs?" She spat viciously and he quickly looked away.
"Diana, five points from Slytherin for foul language." Remus said disappointedly, causing Diana's focus to snap back to him. Had he seriously just deducted house points from her at a time like this? "Though you best be off Harry. You made good progress today."
"Thanks, Sir." Harry replied and scrambled across the room to collect his wand, doing his very best to avoid eye contact with Diana who glared at him as he moved.
When the boy had left the room Diana crossed her arms demandingly over her chest and impatiently watched Remus as she waited for his answer. When he did nothing but fiddle with the items on the cabinet next to him she couldn't stop herself from exploding. "Say something!" She screamed, throat instantly hurting from the ferocity of yesterday's argument that had now left it raw and scratchy.
Remus looked down to the letter that was still in his hands and then back up to Diana. "You've been a great help this year but I no longer see a need for your assistance and thought it only necessary to cease the arrangement."
She thought he would have at least had the decency or courage to be honest with her, but it seemed he had not, and her hurt propelled forward as anger. "So that's it then? Six months of meetings to end in nothing. Everything we shared gone in an instant?"
He sighed in defeat, hands rubbing over his face in stress. "I can't allow it. I fear we've already allowed this thing between us to go on for too long. I can't enable it any longer."
"Why?" She demanded. She couldn't understand why he would throw away everything they had. "I know you want me, okay! I'm not a fool, I haven't imagined the last six months. We have something and if this is what we want and how we feel, then why can't it happen?"
"Because I'm your teacher, and you're my student!" He hissed, body lurching forward. It was enough to make Diana want to scream. "Those are nothing but empty titles. It means nothing!" She argued back.
"I could get fired, you could get expelled!" Remus retaliated and pinched the bridge of his nose in annoyance. "That wouldn't happen." Diana pleaded. "We wouldn't tell anyone, it'd be our secret. Merlin knows we're already good enough at keeping them!"
"You deserve better than me, better than that. I won't hold you back and make you hide your life. That's no way to live." His voice came out softer now. The shame of letting himself get too fond and too close plastered across his face.
The despair and desperation. The honesty and vulnerability. Diana had not felt or acted quite like it before. It was strange and painful, as if they were someone else's words and her body controlled by some other being, but she couldn't stop it nonetheless.
"I didn't live before you, Remus!" She exclaimed, voice laced with anguish. "The only time I'm truly myself, when I'm truly living, is when I'm with you!"
She could realise it now. How every moment of her existence prior to meeting Remus was worthless. And it wasn't because of some desperate attachment to him where her entire life depended on him or even revolved around him, but because only with him had Diana finally been able to find out who she was. Do things she had never done before, as simple as laughing and enjoying the company of another person. As simple as being happy.
Never realising how frozen she was until he started to melt her ice. How much she had to give and how much she had desperately wanted to be able to.
She couldn't deny it anymore. She liked him. She cared for him. In fact it was way more than that. Not only was he the one person in the whole world that allowed her to be herself, but he was the only person she wanted to be that for.
He was shaking his head, as if that would make her words suddenly meaningless "That's not true." He insisted, though they both knew he was the one lying. "You're more than capable of changing with or without me."
"Maybe that's true." She reasoned. "But that's only possible because of you and I just, - I don't want this to end. Please..."
All hope seemed to be slipping away when he breathed out slowly, looking at Diana with a heartbroken expression. "This would never work. I'm too old, too poor. A half-breed for Merlin's sake! We couldn't be more different if we tried."
"I don't care about any of those things!" She exclaimed desperately, praying to grab onto anything to bring him back to her. Maybe their lives were worlds apart. One with wealth, one with poverty. One heart too full with love, the other with far too little. But they both knew pain and the feeling of having to hide who they were, of being forced to live a certain way and to be miserable. Diana wanted to scream these things at him but all Remus could focus on were their differences.
"No, this has gone too far. It was a mistake. All of it was a mistake."
At that exact moment Diana could feel her heartbreak. It was as if every tendon, every vein was cracking and crumbling so that she could feel every tiny sensation. It felt like a slap across the face. Like someone had got a knife and plunged it straight into her chest and back out again.
"All of it?" She repeated dejectedly. She thought back to every meeting, every moment. All the biscuits and tea. Every book they read and discussed. Every laugh they shared over a poor piece of work. The subtle flirting, the outright flirting. The small, doting glances. All the times they had basked in each other's companies. Lost themselves in the other's presence or the comfortable silences as they worked in perfect harmony. How though they said nothing, both secretly knew they had never been happier than when they were with each other.
"Everything?" She asked again.
Time paused.
"Yes."
She could feel her bottom lip begin to quiver and she bit down hard on the inside of her cheek as an attempt to stop it, but all that happened was the metallic taste of blood swirling in her mouth. How could he do this to her?
"You're a coward." She stammered accusingly, pointing her finger at him. "You're a damn coward, Remus Lupin, whose too scared to go for what he really wants."
She tried to mask her pain but a lump rose in Diana's throat and her eyes stung with the familiar hot tears. "And you're right this was a mistake." She continued, voice shaking with sadness. "It was a mistake ever getting to know you!"
Remus swallowed back his emotions, said nothing, just watched riddled with guilt. Diana felt the first warm tear escape the corner of her eye and travel down her cheek. She wiped furiously at her face with the sleeve of her house cardigan. She never cried. She couldn't cry in front of him.
Diana had no intention of hanging around to see what would happen next, to break down in front of him, so she turned on her heel to leave and rushed out the room.
On the other side of the door she halted, waiting to see if Remus was to follow but no movement came from the room and her body finally gave up on her. The aching in her chest moved to every one of her muscles and with her eye sight becoming increasingly blurred, it was too much to handle and up against the cold wall she slid down it to the floor.
A sob rose in her throat. She had done the one thing she swore she would never do. That she had always been scared of. Put herself out there. Open up. She put her heart on the line to only have it rejected and thrown back in her face.
She had never felt pain like it.
If this is what love was, Diana wanted nothing to do with it.
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*
You didn't think that just because they finally kissed everything would be perfect, did you!? That they'd finally admit their feelings and get together? No no no, I'm going to torture you for just a little bit longer!
I'm sorry!!! But this is Diana and Remus we're talking about, nothing is ever easy. Although all I want to do is reach into my screen and give Diana a hug! Damn Remus being too scared.
Happy Easter everyone!!