Disclaimer: I am not the owner of Remus Lupin. Balcony girl is mine, and all other characters mentioned are too. Astrology is not mine. French is not mine. The idea that Remus gives a damn about either is, though. And JKR says his DOB is 10 March, so that I didn’t make up- the Lupin boy is a Pisces. Three originals mentioned I've played in RPGs--in a Mary Sue group, which is loads of self-indulgent fun, Andrew Viscomte is my vampire character (he's not hear though). The balcony chick is mine from many groups. And the Hetty chick mentioned as a friend of Narcissa's is. September does have a falling-out with Hetty and Narcissa in a group.

“Tell me your name, tell me your story/ ‘Cause I’m into it/ Runnin’ through life, like a misfit”

-‘Misfit’, Elefant

And so Mars is…how many degrees, and…God, I hate math. Remus had almost forgotten how much math was involved in everyday life, and it had never been one of his strongest points. He put his head in his hands, sighing, trying to ease the bad headache the calculations gave him, and put his quill down. He still had a week to finish before the Wizarding magazine put out its next issue, so the column didn’t have to completed just then. Still, he liked to get things done as quickly as he could. Just yesterday, James had had a party at his house, and it had ended fairly abruptly when some of the guests, a little drunk, had broken a few of the windows and gotten glass in the swimming pool. They’d been cleaning it for two hours, albeit with several breaks in between, so it wasn’t that much work- but it was still fairly difficult. The biggest problem was that they weren’t sure how to get glass out of the pool without messing up the water. Sirius had figured it out in the end. Of course, after they had cleaned up, Peter had fallen into the swimming pool. And then, while James and Sirius were laughing over the timing, Remus had leaned over to help him up, but when Peter grabbed him he had fallen off balance and fallen in himself. Of course, Sirius and James found that incredibly funny, too. Remus was rueful as he looked back on the memory. It wasn’t their fault, but it was still annoying, and rather thoughtless of them.

Then again, perhaps he was being unfair to them. It wasn’t right of him to get upset. If he’d told them to leave him alone, that would be something; but they didn’t know it bothered him. Remus never told them something bothered him. Maybe if they knew just how much really got on his nerves, they wouldn’t speak with him so much anymore. With a sigh, he shuffled his papers and put them away into a folder. He was going to another social gathering sort of thing later in the afternoon, not that he wanted to. Peter (who no one had thought to put a drying spell on the previous night) had gotten a cold, and so he wasn’t going; Remus had already dropped by with a card and some conversation, and James and Sirius had gone to visit him an hour ago. When they were done visiting, they’d drop by his house, and then the three of them would go down to a gathering. Some local bands were playing, and people just went and mingled. That was what summer was for, anyway. Remus sighed and leaned back in his seat. Summer had never been of much interest to him. Without the distraction of books and the like, it was hard to pretend he had reasons for remaining behind all the time. He wasn’t sure he was missing out on anything- usually nothing ever happened that would make him think he was- but still, there was always the chance something might happen to him. He didn’t think that was reason to go to one social event after another, not when he’d rather stay home and read. In fact, Remus resolved, when James and Sirius came, that was just what he’d tell them- that he wasn’t going to go with them, that he’d thought about it but wasn’t going to, and nothing they said would make him. Sirius would mention girls, and Remus would get upset- and James would finally tell Sirius that it would be better if they didn’t. Yeah, that would work…Remus’ train of thought was interrupted by the sound of someone knocking loudly on the door in the hall. He heard his mother open it, as his father was at work, and she exclaimed, “James! Sirius! Come to take Remus away so soon?”

“Yes, ma’am,” came Sirius’s voice in response, in an amiable tone. Remus sighed and muttered a curse at his friend’s charisma and stood up from his desk chair. It was very, very warm out, so he didn’t need a jacket, but he thought he’d bring one anyway. Underneath that he wore a normal outfit, and his hair was a little scruffy in the front- he had been in his room all day, aside from breakfast and lunch, and hadn’t combed his hair very well. He walked past his bed, which he realised too late that he hadn’t made, and walked to the door. He heard Sirius and James conversing with his mother, and figured he had a little time before they told him to hurry up. Pausing before the oval mirror on the wall, he smoothed his light brown hair over his forehead, noticing he still looked a little ill himself. His skin was almost clay-like in its pallor, and only his eyes glittered amber, like an animal’s. He shivered, then left the room.

“It’s so nice of you to bring Remus along to these things,” his mother was saying as she and the two boys came into view as he walked down the hallway. “He’d never go by himself.”

“It’s hard enough to get him to go with us!” James laughed, then caught sight of him. “Oy, Moony!”

His mother frowned deeply at that; Remus wished James hadn’t called him the nickname in front of her. It sounded too much like they were teasing him, which his mother wouldn’t approve of at all. And if they told her that they all had nicknames to cheer her up, she’d wonder what they were, and of course she could not know the others were unregistered Animagi. He felt very ashamed of letting his friends do something illegal on his behalf, something dangerous, and of running around as a werewolf on school grounds. He could have killed someone- had come close to contact with humans on several times. Remus shook thoughts of this from his head. He didn’t want to be thinking about his friends’ poor judgement when he was about to go out with them for the second time that week.

“It’s okay,” he told her as he reached them. “I don’t mind.” But when she turned to James he shot them both a warning glance.

“Yeah, we don’t mind about Remus’ furry little problem,” James said with a grin. “It makes for such a devious mind in him.”

She was still frowning.

“It’s fine, really,” Remus repeated to her, starting to feel a little embarrassed as he thought about what she was picturing: that her only child’s only friends tormented him constantly about his lycanthropy, etc., etc. He had always been lucky to have such a loyal mother, but didn’t want her to worry about him. If you hadn’t been a werewolf, maybe you’d sound less like a Virgo and more like a Pisces, he thought to himself, almost stubbornly.

“C’mon, Remus,” said Sirius, taking the hint, “we should be going if we’re going to be fashionably late.”

“We should get going if we’re going to be late?” repeated James, stepping out the door, then snickering. “What’s that all about?”

“Well, we don’t want to be unfashionably late,” Sirius replied smoothly, taking Remus’ arm so he couldn’t hesitate, and pulling him out the door. Remus let himself be pulled, waving goodbye to his mother. In earlier years he would have kissed her on the cheek, to let her know she was still his mother, but it seemed something had grown up between them during the last few years of his life, and so he just waved somewhat lamely as she slowly shut the door. Sirius let his arm go and they began to walk down the street together, just the three of them.

“And what, Padfoot,” asked James, grinning, “is the difference, exactly, between being fashionably late and being unfashionably late?”

“That, my friend, is something I would never expect a clown like you to learn,” replied Sirius smoothly, and James tackled him, and the three paused in the street while the two boys shoved eachother. Older passers-by glared at them slightly and made wide circles around them on the sidewalk, and Remus began to feel uncomfortable being looked at, and tugged James by his shirt-sleeve. “Can’t we just go down already?” he muttered. “You two look like you’re flirting or something.” Neither Sirius nor James had a large problem with homosexuality, but having people think they were lovers bothered both of them, and Remus knew it—partly because he knew people, and partly based on their responses to the remark.

“Oh, Merlin, that is just not even right,” Sirius murmured to himself, stepping around onto the other side of Remus.

“Not even,” echoed James in fervent agreement.

“My men are so much better.”

James’ head began to nod, then he put his hand on Remus’ shoulder and pushed him aside, making to pounce on Sirius, who took a step back automatically and grinned at him. Remus put his hand on his chest.

“Now, will you quit it? Both of you?” he asked, fixing each of them with what he hoped was a stern, annoyed look, though a grin was breaking across his face. Sirius sniggered, and nodded for James to continue walking, and the three continued.

“Besides,” Remus added in a low voice as they turned the corner, preparing once again to sacrifice pride to amuse his friends, a grin absolutely unmistakable now, “if anyone here’s going to get the beautiful blokes, it’s me.”

All three started laughing immediately, with Sirius attempting very hard to look highly affronted, as he protested over the laughter, “Now, wait just one minute—you can’t say you’ve had better ones than me!”

The laughter grew as they approached the way to Diagon Alley, where, at some pureblood boy’s house, there was a house party. The live local bands were mostly kids from school, or ones that had just graduated, but one of the groups had graduated a few years previously and were looking to get signed, and were selling autographed copies of their EP. Apparently they weren’t having a great time of it. Their look was great, he’d heard, and their music popular; but only to people who’d heard it. They had a cult following, but it was small…he couldn’t quite remember their name.

He was still thinking about the party they’d be going to after they’d passed into Diagon Alley—he’d thought a good deal of the way and James and Sirius had both started debating whether Quidditch or Lily Evans was a better thing to pursue in 7th year.

“Wouldn’t hurt to pursue decent NEWT scores, would it?” Remus spoke up finally, noticing some other, and better dressed (as compared to him) teenagers ahead, apparently headed to the same place the Marauders were.

“He speaks!” James cried, pressing his hand against his chest in mock alarm and awe.

“Wouldn’t hurt? He’d be maimed,” Sirius said, staring at Remus as though he had just told him that the sky looked like it would be raining mushrooms. “Look at him—he’s in pain from the very thought!” James had only just pressed his hand against his chest to tease Remus, but he caught on very quickly and pretended to sway a little, pressing further as though to stop the flow of blood from an imaginary wound.

“Oh, quit it, Prongs,” Remus said with mild irritation, finding it more funny than annoying, and turning to Sirius. “So, are you hoping to meet anyone here?”

“I meet people everywhere,” was the characteristic response. “I’m hot like that.”

“Anyone in particular?” Remus pressed, to fill up the silence more than anything. Big gatherings, especially if they were going to have fashionable people around, made him slightly apprehensive and painfully aware of everything that was wrong with him, from his condition to his pallor to his painfully normal and mundane clothes, and his lack of charming conversation.

Sirius glanced at him. “James is the one who tries to ruin the fun by running into the same girl all the time,” he said, James shoving him at this. “Who’d I want to meet?”

“Dunno,” Remus admitted, then thought back to the previous night. “Macy Sherwood?”

James and Sirius both looked faintly impressed by his knowledge of the girl’s name. What had the Slytherin girl said earlier? That it was exclusively girl knowledge? Perhaps it wasn’t…or perhaps they thought…no, they wouldn’t think that…

“Since when do you know her?” James said, definitely sounding awed. Suddenly twin grins spread across James and Sirius’ faces.

“Oh, Moony,” James said, waggling his eyebrows. “My, my, my…”

“It’s not that,” Remus said, irritated. “It’s just that…well, I knew you were with her last night, and…”

“How’d you know who it was?” Sirius asked with a slight frown. “Was she ever a study partner or something?”

“All those quiet evenings in the library, we should have known,” James said, with a playful smirk.

“Well, I didn’t,” Remus admitted. “Someone told me who she was last night, at the party.” He looked away; he hadn’t mentioned the girl, and didn’t want to. She was a Slytherin, and truthfully, he hadn’t felt all that comfortable with her.

James pretended to look disappointed while stifling an even bigger smirk and Sirius frowned even more deeply. “Who told you?”

“Just some person who knew her. We talked only in passing, on the way up to the balcony.”

Sirius’ eyebrows shot up. “You went up to the balcony with someone? What’d you two do up there?”

Remus flushed, and hastened to say, flustered, “I passed them on the way to the balcony. That’s all. My—my grammar came out wrong.”

“Your grammar never comes out wrong,” James mentioned, now looking distinctly curious, glancing over at him and ruffling his hair absent-mindedly.

“It does when I’m nervous,” Remus mumbled, face heating up.

“You’re nervous? So you don’t want to tell us any more about the balcony incident?” James didn’t look upset about thinking his friend had lied, but very, very curious, and a little happy, for whatever reason.

“No! Nervous about the party,” Remus said, voice fading quickly, glancing down. He felt horrible every time he lied, especially to one of his friends, and he couldn’t understand why he was lying, either. He supposed it was because he hadn’t found anything interesting about the girl, though her conversation was not altogether bad. It was just that…they’d get their hopes up about what had happened, when he didn’t want them to.

“I’ll introduce you to some people,” Sirius said. “You’ll be fine. You’re with me, remember?”

“Yeah, Sirius Stud without Self-Control,” James said, sniggering, and Sirius snapped the back of his neck with his fingers.

“Would those people be females, by any chance?” Remus asked, looking up at Sirius.

“Why, they would. Interested?” Sirius asked with a grin.

“No, just testing to see if you’re as predictable as I thought,” Remus remarked nonchalantly as his companions slowed down before another house. He’d seen the other teens go into it, so he figured that was the spot. “And you are, by the way.”

“Hmph,” was all Sirius could say at the moment, and he went up to the door and turned the knob, walking in, motioning for the other two to follow him. James did, and then gestured for Remus to come in.

“Here goes,” he said under his breath, and entered, as Sirius closed the door behind him.

It was all dark in the cloakroom save for magical lettering on a door opposite them, which said, “Enter after closing front door”. Sirius was a step ahead of the other two, already walking towards it. The moment he opened it, party sounds filled their ears—laughter, loud music, people, the works. Remus couldn’t help but be impressed with the magic.

“Ladies?” Sirius asked, gesturing. James put on a pose and waltzed over to the door, performing a curtsey and a pirouette for Sirius. Remus was hardly such a sport, being a little boring as he didn’t do anything.

This room was well-lit and a large screen door was pushed aside, showing the backyard, with the band on a platform and teens dancing and mingling all around, getting drinks in the room.

“Hey, it’s Lily,” James said suddenly, perking up and ruffling up his hair unconsciously. “Shall I…just, excuse myself, then…”

Sirius stared after him as James strutted over in Lily’s direction, and then shook his head as she started to shout at him.

“He’s really a mess,” Sirius said, in utter disbelief. “Come on. I have some girls you should meet.”

Remus didn’t like the wording—I have some girls—but decided to follow Sirius outside to be nice. The band whose name he couldn’t remember were finishing up a song as Sirius lead Remus up to a group of giggling girls standing around waiting for the band to get off-stage.

“Greta, hey!” Sirius called as they approached, then put his arm around the shoulders of a very attractive strawberry blonde. Her buxom brunette friend, with pretty blue eyes, batted her eyelashes at Sirius, but another girl, with short black hair, simply glared at him. The girl next to her, slim and with a nice figure, but not exceptionally lovely in face, was eyeing Sirius’ outfit with satisfaction. Remus felt like the fifth wheel.

“Sirius, the boy who can’t get serious to save his life,” she said, looping her finger around a belt loop in his jeans, and they all giggled, but the black-haired girl.

Sirius laughed. “Lucky you, ‘cause you know you can get Sirius whenever you want him,” he said, with a wink. “Right, Karen?”

The black-haired girl stormed off.

“What’s her deal?” asked the brunette, walking around Greta to Sirius’ other side. Remus knew Sirius was being quite a rogue, but it wasn’t exactly his fault—if this was how the girls acted, they brought things down upon themselves.

“Must be jealousy,” said Macy, who then glanced over at Remus. “Who’s your friend?”

Remus suddenly looked her right in the eye, and blushed as he realized he did know Macy Sherwood from a study group at school. She was very studious, and the thought that she might have such a different personality at night was unnerving.

But then, who are you to say anything about different personalities at night? Remus shrugged the thought away uncomfortably as Sirius said, “Remus Lupin, he’s a friend. You’ve heard of him, surely?”

The girls all murmured affirmation coyly as the music stopped, and another band, this one not as good, began to play. The other band was coming down, and Greta and Sirius started to snog as Macy and the busty brunette ran over to the lead singer cooing, holding out their copies of the EP—which said The Norns on it, and with a jolt the name clicked with Remus—for autographs, which he gave quickly, walking back behind the platform, and they moved onto the next band member, flirtacious and giggling the whole time.

Remus was about to turn around and find James, Sirius or no, when he heard voices growing louder, coming from behind the platform, someone conversing with the lead singer.

“…saying is that while you’re good and everything, it’s the name that needs changing.” The tone of voice was flat and uninterested, but not insincere in the slightest.

“Yeah, well,” the lead singer replied, “I know what you mean, but it being based on the old Nordic myth of the three women in charge of fate is important. Like the Greeks had the Fates, the Norse—“

“Had the Norns, right. They were in charge of Wyrd, of fate. But they had other names, too. Like, The Weird Sisters? Because the word ‘weird’ comes from ‘wyrd’…”

Remus suddenly remembered where that flat tone of voice, erudition in every syllable, came from, and found himself staring at the girl from the balcony as she and the lead singer walked by. He was tall, a little more so than Remus, but she was still fairly tall herself, and she was once again wearing black: skinny jeans and a small, tightly-fitted black tee. Her long, blonde hair was still loose and flowing.

“The Weird Sisters…” the lead singer repeated, thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Maybe. We really like ‘The Norns’, though.”

“It was just a suggestion, not meant to be regarded as dogma,” she said, with a twist of her head that made her hair cascade down her back, fixing her eyes on the singer’s own in the uncommonly intense stare of a Scorpio, which she probably wasn’t aware she possessed. Most of them weren’t. Then again, Slytherins tried to know whatever they could and use knowledge like that to their advantages…

The vocalist, however, laughed at her words, but was pulled away by a group of girls who spoke to him in hushed squeals.

Remus made his mind up then, and was going to leave, when a dark-haired boy jumped into the picture, only about the girl’s height, which was not too tall for a boy, and slid a lightly-tanned arm around her waist. Remus was a little shocked, and probably stared, as he realized afterwards, at his attire: a small tee shirt and jeans that were just as tight as the girl’s.

“Oh, look,” she said, with faint sarcasm. “Who could you be?”

He laughed and put out his other arm, letting his hand go limp at the wrist in a gesture too feminine for most girls. “Only your most fab of fantasies, Miss Pretty!”

“I’ll pass.”

He laughed again, and Remus supposed that either he knew she was sarcastic in a funny, teasing, or unpleasant way, or just had a very well-developed sense of humour, as the boy let go of her strangely thin waist, and smoothed his tee-shirt. The pair of them started walking, and Remus noticed, paralyzed for the moment, numbed by the absolute reality of painful social settings, that they were walking towards him, though hadn’t noticed him yet.

The pair almost reached him when a hand fell on Remus’ shoulder and Sirius’ voice, sounding very cocky and smooth, was heard in his ear.

“I think Greta forgives me for last night with Macy,” his friend said, walking up beside him, and then at that moment his eyes fell on the girl and her friend, who both, at the same moment, looked at Remus and Sirius. The former held his breath and waited. He didn’t have to wait long.

“Snow,” he breathed, the single syllable filled with a large amount of venomous loathing.

“Black,” she answered, though her eyes—hair fell into them and obscured the colour from Remus once again—fell on Remus himself, and she looked almost vaguely interested now that she’d seen him again. Paranoid, he felt that she was trying to read his mind, then remembered that Occlumency was very difficult for people…still, wouldn’t intuitive water signs, especially serious fixed ones like Scorpio, be intrigued by it at an early age?

The boy that was with her blinked, then elbowed her in her ribs and nodded in Sirius’ direction with a sly grin. “Hey, Snakey Princess, you going to introduce me or what?”

Sirius blinked in surprise and Remus heard himself say automatically, “Well, wasn’t it you saying you got more blokes than me on the way here?”

There was a charged, stunned silence for several seconds, all three staring at Remus with utter surprise that he’d said anything—though, Remus thought defensively, the boy had never met him, the girl barely knew him, and Sirius should have learned by now that Remus really was Marauder material. Then the boy laughed and cast him a brilliant smile which would have, Remus knew, made him blush and smile in an instant if he were even remotely interested in men.

“Aw, dollface, you’re a sweetheart,” he said, practically purring as he batted his eyelashes.

“Go find your entourage and shut your face, will you? I think the ‘Bisexual Queens’ are supposed to be playing next, anyway,” the girl said, turning to him, looking unmoved by his campy display of affected affection.

“He’s just bisexual?” Remus asked before tall, agile boylaughed again and said, before Remus could explain that he hadn’t meant that to sound disappointed or anything.

“Don’t worry. I’ve been saving myself for someone like you.” There with the batting of the lashes again and Remus flushed, starting to get embarrassed, and getting more so when the boy cried, “Aw, he’s blushing! He must like me, or at least my pants—I should borrow Allison’s clothes more often—“

“Quit being so gay, Andrew, and piss off,” she said, flicking him in the nose. “Or go get me a drink or something else useful.”

“Nah, I think I’ll just piss off and find other laddies to scare,” he said nonchalantly, sashaying off after he’d pinched her side kittenishly. Remus stared after him, absolutely amazed that he hadn’t noticed this Andrew Viscomte figure earlier in his school days—it seemed impossible to miss…

“Sorry about Andrew. He’s usually a little more like a guy, but a friend of ours—straight, not that it matters; Jethro Ellis, his name—dared him to wear Jethro’s sister’s clothes out here, and now he thinks he’ll beat out Macy Sherwood in summer transformations.” She sounded supremely uninterested in anything she was saying, though Remus detected a snort in her voice as she spoke of Macy.

“I transform better than he does,” Remus said automatically in a mumble, but she only cocked her head, blinking slightly, frowning: she hadn’t heard him. Sirius didn’t seem to have, either; he was staring at this girl as though he really resented her, God knew why.

“What do you know about Macy?” he asked, narrowing his grey eyes to slits.

“Only that she’s over there talking to some Hufflepuff girl about how muggle women have to get surgical implants to improve their bust sizes,” she responded coolly, not noticing the absolutely shocked look on Remus’ face.

“You should try them,” Sirius retorted. “Or would that not be to dear Mum’s liking?”

“Are you suggesting that it’d be to yours?” the girl asked back, now sounding slightly aroused into anger, not listless any longer.

Remus elbowed Sirius in the ribs before the conversation could continue and it would become obvious that Remus had talked to her on the balcony the night before at James’ house party.

“Hey, come on, we don’t know her…let’s go find Prongs—“ he began, and then Sirius shook his head.

“He’s by the drinks, talking to Nell Parker, who’s flirting like mad with him while he throws moon eyes at Lily.”

At the mention of the word ‘moon’, Remus was painfully reminded of the conversation with the Slytherin girl standing by them, and glanced at her automatically. She raised her eyebrows only slightly, and he suddenly remembered he’d said ‘we don’t know her’…which must have sounded to her like he was trying to play it off like they’d never met, which he himself knew was exactly what he was doing.

“Speaking of drinks, would you like one?” she asked, sounding bored, but not really letting her guard down, as he could tell from her eyes, boring into his. “I’m going to get one.”

Sirius stared at her and opened his mouth to speak, but Remus’ automatic response was, “Sure.”

She flipped her hair over her shoulder deftly, more in a matter-of-fact manner than a flirtacious one, which it didn’t seem to be at all. “Be back,” she said flatly, and walked off to the house to get drinks, he supposed.

Sirius stared after her and Remus looked up at him, remembering that he wasn’t supposed to know her, her house, or anything about her.

“Hey, what’d she do, reject you? I mean, you don’t usually hate girls, and she’s not so bad looking or anything, though you’re right, I mean, she is lacking…up…top…” he finished lamely, looking down at the ground. Trying to play it off like he didn’t know her at all was not working for him. Sirius, fortunately, didn’t notice.

“Okay, you want to know her? She’s September Snow, only child of the once-affluent Snow family, pureblood, Slytherin, you name it. All of it.”

Remus blinked. “Well, is she…? Like, the sort who says the ‘M’ word and all that?”

Sirius shrugged and kicked a rock sulkily. Remus was surprised at the change in his attitude. “No, I don’t think so…well…it’s just that my family knew her family and so I’ve seen her since I was a kid, and she just does whatever her mother tells her to do, and doesn’t ever say anything, and…” He stared furiously at the sky, and Remus suddenly understood: he didn’t have anything against this girl, this…September Snow, of all the weird names. It was what she made him think of that he hated, and so he hated her, as he hated all Slytherins. “Before I fell out with the family, her mother was trying to arrange a marriage with me to her.”

“What?” Remus said incredulously, staring at Sirius and trying to see him arranged to marry anyone.

“To my knowledge they’ve tried to get her with everyone from Rabastan Lestrange, to Bartemius Crouch, Jr., to my younger brother Regulus, and even to Snivellus, when they got desperate.” Sirius sounded fairly disgusted. “They talk about getting her married off at parties, and she doesn’t even do anything, or at least, she didn’t when I still went to them, at 14 or so. She only ever just sat there and straightened out her napkin and made circles in her food with her proper silverware and whatever.”

Remus felt that, as a Scorpio, she wouldn’t ever say anything, and as a Slytherin, never in front of her family and pureblood guests, but Sirius had never liked that sort of attitude at all. Remus knew Sirius had brought up the attempted betrothals as evidence of her unpleasantness, but Remus asked, somewhat recklessly, in curiosity, “Why did all the betrothals fall through? I mean, what was wrong?”

“Well, with me, I turned out to be the problem,” Sirius said with a shrug. “Thank Merlin. I think Rabastan Lestrange ended up dating her cousin Deirdre, who goes—“

“To Durmstrang,” Remus finished without thinking. She’d mentioned it on the balcony. Then he winced and added, “Am I right, or…?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Sirius told him, and Remus was glad he seemed so wrapped up in talking. “Crouch is against all those old pureblood things, and didn’t want to get his son engaged off…you know that Snivelly’s dad was a muggle? Well, his last name isn’t pureblood, at any rate, so they didn’t like the idea of her not having a pureblood name…”

“Picky family,” Remus said without thinking again.

“Yeah, the Snows are ridiculous. Pure as snow, you know, while the Black family motto is French for ‘always pure’…And I don’t know what happened with Regulus. He prolly likes blokes better.”

Remus knew Sirius’ little brother was a bit of a sycophant as far as older Slytherin boys went, and that he’d always been a little feminine in appearance and concern about appearance.

“Well, maybe Snakey Princess likes blokes who like blokes better…better,” Remus remarked, and Sirius started to laugh.

“Actually, though, I think all her friends are Ravenclaw guys,” he said. “That I’ve seen at parties and stuff, she always goes with them, usually the shy ones and the gay ones. She used to be friends with Narcissa, though, and Narcissa’s gossipy stupid friend Hetty something-or-other. Don’t remember why they stopped talking…I wasn’t with the family at that point.” Sirius fell silent and moody, toeing the grass with his shoe.

“Are there that many gay Ravenclaws?” Remus asked. Sirius laughed once again.

“Interested?” He laughed harder.

“That’s not what I meant,” Remus added hastily.

“I know. No, actually, I think Andrew Viscomte is the only one, and he’s bisexual. He has mostly girlfriends, but a lot of female friends who like him, mostly other Ravenclaws. They’re always hanging around him and flirting with him or asking for love advice or something…he’s not too bad, though. Like Snow said, he’s playing dress-up today. The gayest thing he does usually is braid hair, and it’s never his own.”

“Oh,” Remus said, then added at the look on his friend’s face, “That’s not disappointment.” There was silence. “Would the girls you mentioned be the entourage she—Snow—mentioned?”

“I think so.” Sirius didn’t seem comfortable, but Remus pressed one more question.

“Why don’t you ever call her—whatever her first name is?”

Sirius shrugged and looked up towards the house. “September? I don’t know. I had to call her Miss Snow from age six up and when I started to stop saying Miss and Mister and that, it was just her surname. And she always calls me Black…anyway, she’s coming back with—“ he snorted, “your drink. And I’d rather go…”

“Snog Macy Sherwood?” Remus asked quietly, with a small grin on his face.

“Better than some Slytherin girl, “Sirius said, giving one last kick to the ground, which was now dirt.

“I wouldn’t snog her,” Remus argued. “She just…got me a drink. That’s all.”

“Yeah,” Sirius said, with a short, bark-like laugh. “Sure.”

Remus glared at his cynical friend’s back, then felt an arm brush his side and spun around. It was Snow…September. She held a drink in each hand.

“Hey.” She held one out to him. He looked down at it, and without taking it, asked immediately, “Why’d you brush me with your arm?”

“Because my hands were full and couldn’t tap your shoulder…obviously,” she said, in that same flat tone. “And if you didn’t really want a drink, you shouldn’t have let me get you one.”

“Wha--? Oh, no, sorry,” he said, and took it, holding it aimlessly. She wasn’t drinking hers either, and he wondered if she’d slipped something into it, waiting for him to take the first sip. Then he felt bad, and felt doubly bad: he was accusing her of things in his head, and he was not drinking the thing she’d brought him, so he put it to his lips and took a drink. It didn’t taste of alcohol, thankfully.

She watched him, and he felt very self-conscious, then asked, surprising himself, “And you didn’t really want to get me a drink, did you? You just wanted to get me to stop acting like I hadn’t seen you.”

“It occurred to me.” There was a pause, and he blushed as he realized how forward he’d been in admitting that.

“I’m sorry about that, by the way.”

“No, it’s fine. Sirius Black just doesn’t like me; that’s all.”

There was a silence, and she took a drink of hers and jerked her head to some chairs over by a few tables, a little farther away from the platform. It seemed anyone who didn’t want to dance sat there; so it was mostly empty.

“Sit?”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

They walked over, neither acting as though they were really interested in either their drinks, sitting, the music, or eachother, and sat.

Remus took another sip, then set his drink down.

“If you don’t like parties, what do you come to them for?” he asked her, remembering how she’d mentioned the previous night that parties would be better if they were anything but parties.

“If you don’t like them, then why are you here?” she asked, looking up at him with that unreadable expression. He blinked, then looked into the depths of his own cup. He’d forgotten how she answered questions with questions.

After a pause, he said, “Why do you answer questions with questions?”

“If you don’t like that, then why’d you ask a question in response to mine?”

He stared at her, and she sipped her drink maturely, making him feel big and awkward as she flipped her hair back again. “Your question was off the topic, by the way.”

“Sirius brought me. I guess I…”

“…thought something would happen. It’s why you went to James Potter’s last night.”

Remus opened his mouth to speak, then shut it and nodded. “Was that the same Andrew you went with last night?” He wished he hadn’t said it the moment the words left his lips; it was a very stupid question.

“Obviously.” He still couldn’t tell what her emotions were, and leaned forward suddenly, looking at her. She leaned back sharply and automatically, eyes staring back at his, confused.

“It’s okay. I just wondered what colour your eyes were,” he asked, then felt really stupid—more so than he had seconds before.

“Oh.” From her bewildered stare, he felt only slightly proud of himself—if he felt stupid, it appeared that she didn’t feel particularly brilliant either, and he looked. He couldn’t tell; she was slightly in the shade. Remus reached up a hand and brushed some long blonde strands from her eyes, then tilted her face into the sunlight slightly. She squinted as the light hit her eyes.

“Sorry. Amber.”

She shook her head once and her hair fell back into place, then shook her head as though to say no to something.

“September. Not Amber.”

He stared at her, then realized what she was referring to and laughed suddenly, which also seemed to throw her off—he felt a twinge of pride again in spite of himself.

“Your eyes.”

“Oh.” She twirled a strand of hair around her long, dainty finger. He had a feeling that this sudden demure attitude was a front she was using, possibly because him laughing at her made her feel slightly...intimidated. Scorpios hated laughter at themselves. Then again, so did Pisces. Instead of wincing, which was his first inclination, Remus leaned back slightly and looked at her.

“And what sort of Scorpio is born in September?”

She looked up at him. “None,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “I thought everyone knew that.”

He felt the twinge vanish. The Scorpiowit--sharp, stinging, dry and sarcastic. “Then why the name?”

She shrugged somewhat elegantly. “Ask my mother. I didn’t choose it.”

“What would you have chosen?”

She looked up at him, amber eyes widening slightly. “Why, I think I would have taken…Amber.”

He blinked again, then she shook her head.

“No, probably not. It’s too close to my middle name.”

“What’s that?”

“Bambi.”

He let out a short burst of laughter, then took a drink quickly. September Bambi was staring at him, and he put his drink down. “Sorry. I’m Remus John Lupin, which isn’t so much better.”

“No, not really, now that I think about it. John’s not very original, is it?” She said the last two words in such a manner as though it were a real question and not the typical “is it?”, like the French will sometimes say ‘n’est-ce pas?’.

“I suppose it isn’t. But Bambi’s not very intelligent, is it?”

She tilted her head slightly. “It’s pretty, I think. But Amber Bambi would not be a very decent-sounding name. It sounds like a baby nickname.”

“Don’t let Andrew Viscomte hear it, or he might take to it,” Remus said automatically, connecting the silly-sounding name back to his other nicknames for her, ‘Miss Pretty’ and ‘Snakey Princess’. To his surprise, she laughed, in a low, almost sultry laugh. If he hadn’t known she had a low voice from talking to her, it would have sounded like a flirting move. But she seemed to have more fun being slightly disdainful to him, unless, at rare moments, he seemed to earn her respect.

“He calls me everything. We all like to call him Moon-Boy,” she said, taking a drink and thus not noticing as Remus gave a start unpleasantly, “because he’s always mooning about over someone or other.”

“Ah. My friends call me Moony,” he said, before it occurred to him that it might not be wise to give that piece of information away.

“I can see why,” she said, using the same listless tone of voice. He looked at her, wondering if this was said out of disdain or meant to be teasing in a humourous way. Then he leaned in towards her with a slight frown and lowered his voice.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Didn’t give me much choice, did you?” she murmured into her drink after taking a sip.

“Do you like me even remotely or are you just trying to make Sirius angry?”

She looked up at him. “Do you honestly think I’d waste my time on trying to make him angry?” Her tone of voice was still in that low, sarcastic, bored manner, and he sighed and took a drink. As soon as the liquid hit his lips he heard her add, softly, “Your conversation is decent, and not filled with cries of--" she snorted automatically, pulling on a dramatic tone ofvoice--"‘Oh, fair Snowflake’ every few seconds, and other variations.”

He lowered his drink and looked at her over the top of the glass. She wasn’t looking at him, but into the depths of her own drink as she added, “And maybe Sirius does deserve it.”

He was still looking at her, and she looked up at him, meeting his eyes levelly though he was at least several inches taller. “And you?” she went on. “Do you like me?”

He stared back at her, and then said, after a pause as he organized his thoughts, “Your conversation is decent. Don’t much care for your name, though.”

She laughed, then set down her drink and stood, opening her mouth and saying as he went on, “Do you want to--?”

“Or your house.”

She stopped mid-sentence. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were going to say something,” Remus said, feeling a little uneasy with her standing up and looking down at him while he stood, and realizing that while he’d intended to say the last three words as a joke, they hadn’t sounded like that…and he realized now that it was partly, or rather, mostly because it wasn’t really a joke.

He hastened to put down his drink and get to his feet. He was going to explain that he wasn’t used to her method of conversation when she stepped up towards him, filling in most of the space between them, and placed a single finger beneath his chin, tilting his head slightly to his left.

“Amber,” she said softly, and dropped her hand down to her side. They were standing so close that it was ridiculous; then she walked around him and away.

He turned and looked at her, feeling as though he should call after her, but not sure what he wanted to say. And it was true that he did feel a little uncomfortable around her…he sighed and glanced back at her drink, deciding to leave it there as he walked off to find Sirius and James. He wasn’t sure what she was going to ask what he wanted to do, now that he thought about what she’d started to say, and honestly, he didn’t know that he wanted to know.

He shook his head and walked off, leaving both drinks behind. If anyone wondered, they could just assume that it was a happy Hufflepuff couple with better things to do. Remus didn’t care about what they assumed. He didn’t care about anything just then. Caring was just…just too hard.