slytherin! remus fic- chapter 2
Chapter 2- rivalry in the library
if you want to read the chapter on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24439636/chapters/95738278
Sirius
“Sirius, I am begging you to leave this library. A marauders meeting was scheduled for today, and we are twenty minutes late. What’s Peter going to think, hmm?”
“James, I already said no. Pete has the map for a reason, and Remus hasn’t left the library yet so I can’t either.”
“What if I go and get Peter to come here and make it look like we’re studying?”
“...Fine.”
Sirius watched James’ departing figure with distracted interest, smiling mindlessly at the way James bumped into various bookshelves in his haste, and at one point having to stop to help a first-year pick up the books he had accidentally knocked out of her hands.
James Potter was a hurricane made of sunshine.
A faint tapping noise to his right made Sirius turn, his eyes inevitably landing on the source of his frustration, the reason he was refusing to leave the library: Remus John Lupin, tapping his biro against the wooden table while he leafed through a particularly hefty-looking textbook. After looking back at his own pile of textbooks and deciding they looked inferior compared to Remus’, Sirius quickly stood from his seat and marched over to a bookshelf, pulling out the heftiest tome he could find and making his way back to his seat, taking particular pleasure in the small disturbance of Remus’ notes caused by the swish of his cloak as he breezed nonchalantly passed him.
Remus looked up at him as he passed in absent-minded irritation, sighing deeply and pointedly rearranging his scraps of paper when he laid his eyes on Sirius.
“Should have a better organisation system,” Sirius commented sniffily on his way back to his own chair, letting his eyes linger on his meticulously categorised, bookmarked and colour coordinated (god bless Lily Evans and her sticky notes) own set of notes.
Remus scoffed and rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair and stretching his arms against the desk. He chose this extremely inopportune moment to display his forearms, uncovered by rolled-up shirt sleeves, an occurrence that happened only in the height of summer (which was lucky for Sirius, or else he might actually lose his mind).
“Still beat you in that Divination test though, didn’t I?” he smirked, and Sirius felt his knees go a bit weak. Get a grip.
“That’s only because you’re a good liar- that’s all Divination is. Well-reasoned lying.” Sirius scoffed, dismissing this notion immediately. “I beat you last Potions lesson, and you can’t lie your way through that one.”
“No, but your frequent explosions during the middle of a test can get turned a blind eye to if the teacher happens to be a devout follower and worshipper of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black.” Remus snorted as he rolled his eyes, blind to the way Sirius immediately stiffened, his shoulders hunching as he picked at the cuff of his sweater.
“Fuck you, Lupin,” he said simply, but with more venom than normal, and stormed back to his table. Remus blinked once, twice, then returned to his work.
“Why are you looking at Remus like he flushed your pygmy puff down the toilet?” James asked breezily, slinging his bag over the chair next to Sirius and collapsing into it, quickly followed by a very red-looking Peter.
“My secret pygmy puff won’t be a secret pygmy puff if you announce its existence to the entire library you twat- now what have you done to Pete here?”
Peter exhaled loudly and laid his head on the table, to which James nodded sympathetically along with.
“If you just told your mum you already have a pygmy puff, I’m sure she’d just give in and let you keep it. And he had to witness Frank and Alice having- let’s just say a good time- it was too much for his delicate self.” James snorted, giving Peter an understanding pat on the back.
“Why were you watching Frank and Alice going at it?” Sirius asked with a wrinkled nose, deciding to ignore James’ comments about his pygmy puff. He didn’t know how many times he’d have to tell James that Blacks were not allowed pets, but he didn’t fancy adding another one to the list at that moment in time. “Frank moved into the girl’s dorm last year, how come you saw her?”
Peter let out another groan into the desk, and Sirius took his turn in rubbing his back sympathetically.
“Well, we just happened to by chance-”
“No. That is a blatant lie, James Fleamont Potter,” Peter said sternly, rising from the table and fixing Sirius with an imploring stare. “Don’t listen to anything this twat says- he’d bought Lily a singing frog and was standing at the bottom of the stairs serenading her with it.”
At this Sirius threw his head back and collapsed into laughter, with Peter glaring at him for a second and then joining him.
“Look, mates, it’s not funny- if she doesn’t love me after I buy her a singing frog, when will she?” James said desperately, tugging a hand through his hair and groaning.
Peter started making some soothing comment about how Lily would surely come around eventually and maybe if James pulled his head out of his arse then she would actually like him, but Sirius was distracted by a sudden feeling that someone was watching him.
He looked to his right sharply to meet the slightly surprised eyes of one Remus Lupin, the alleged pygmy puff flusher, and huffed out a sigh.
“Am I distracting you with my joy?” he called, cross that Remus would think he wasn’t taking his work seriously and wasn’t going to absolutely thrash him in the upcoming Transfiguration test.
“You call that grating laugh joy?” Remus snorted, shaking his head and turning back to his work. “Libraries are meant to be quiet, did you know that? Clearly you don’t spend enough time in any to actually know-”
“Just because I enjoy spending time with actual other human beings doesn’t mean-” Sirius snapped back, rising to the challenge, before Remus interrupted him.
“None of those human beings that you so enjoy spending time with seem to be your fiance though, do they? Isn’t that weird? I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to spend your every waking hour with the oh so lovely Miss Greengrass,” Remus smirked, his eyes daring Sirius to take the bait.
Sirius gaped at him for a second before his eyes flashed with fury and he shoved his books aside, heading over to Remus’ table.
“Now you listen here, Lupin-”
“And we will be off!” James sang, swinging by Remus’ table and dragging Sirius along with him under his arm. “A pleasure to see you as always, I cannot wait until we meet again! Pete, grab his books, will you?” And with that, James Potter and Sirius Black had exited the library.
Peter shook his head in amusement, looking at the teetering stack of books that Sirius had managed to accumulate over the past few hours. “D’ya really think he needs all these?” he asked Remus doubtfully, to which Remus blinked in surprise at having been asked for his opinion.
“Well- no. No, he doesn’t. I suspect he just wanted it to seem like he was buried in his work.” Remus huffed, looking at the Twenty Ways to Seduce a Troll cover in annoyance- he actually had believed Sirius was working harder than him, and it had motivated him to work too.
“Why’d you two like riling each other up all the time?” Peter asked, swinging Sirius’ satchel onto his shoulder and facing Remus.
Remus was lost for words for a second, blinking dumbly at Peter.
“Oh- I dunno, I mean- he started it,” he blurted out, and although it sounded childish, it was true. After James and Sirius’ snub at their Sorting Ceremony all those years ago, Remus had done his level best to ignore them, despite their obviously false attempts at forming a friendship. It was clear to Remus what he was to them- a joke. Just someone to prank. So he’d stopped responding and ignored them right back, and it was then that Sirius had gotten it into his head that every little thing had to be a competition between them, and from there a five-year rivalry was born.
Remus blinked back into reality with a small shake of his head, looking down at Sirius’ notes that Peter was shovelling into his satchel. “He’ll get pissed off if you do that- he likes his notes to be organised,” he couldn’t help but say.
“Mmm, he’s the same with our dorm room too, always telling James off when he leaves his ties lying around…” Peter nodded, shuffling the notes around with slightly more care. “How did you know that?” he asked abruptly, fixing Remus with a scrutinising stare.
Remus was caught off guard for a moment- but only a moment- as his mind desperately searched for something to say.
“Well, I- he makes a big fuss of it, doesn’t he? Has about a million highlighters in every class, thanks to Lily introducing them to him that is, and doesn’t fret about the annoying noise they make every time he pops a lid on or off,” he huffed, certain that his show of agitation would fool Peter.
Peter raised a disbelieving eyebrow at him, and patted his hand gently. “If you say so, mate. We’ll see you around, yeah?” he hummed, picking up Sirius’ Transfiguration books and hauling them off the table.
Remus sat down at his seat again, staring at his messy notes with a strange feeling of quiet dissatisfaction that wasn’t there before Sirius had stormed out. Probably just because Sirius had been too easy to beat that day. Yes, that was it.
