Serendipity (S. Black)

TWENTY-THREE

"i think i might be accidentally falling in love with you. maybe."

*

The rest of the break passed by quickly, too quickly for everyone's taste. Peter joined them a day after Remus revealed his secret, and they had great fun together for the last few days. Even Lily made a last-minute appearance the day before they were due back to school, which led to a massive snowball fight in the backyard. It ended only when Mrs. Potter came out to call them in and received a snowball to the face. Everyone was dragged inside shortly thereafter, with James swearing it was Lily the entire time.

As always, though, the holidays came to an end, and the group found themselves back on Platform 9 & 3/4 before they really knew what hit them. Sirius seemed slightly down, but he was back to his old self enough to drag race trolleys across the platform, which is how he and Lily ended up running over a few poor first years while James and Eva soared past, victorious.

While Peter helped all of the kids up and made sure no one was injured, Remus leaned on a brick column and watched with a small smile on his face, a smile that only widened when he saw a familiar Ravenclaw girl carrying a small white kitten walk by. She wore jeans and a soft-looking blue sweater, with her pin-straight chestnut hair falling into her face.

"Kriss!" The boy stumbled over his words briefly as he ran up to her. Never before had he gathered the courage to talk to her outside of Prefect meetings, but he was so sick of feeling scared of life. Remus, like Eva, like Sirius, like the rest of his friends and the rest of the world, knew a war was coming. It hung on the horizon like the full moon, closing in every day as a warning sign.

More than anything, if war came down to death, he wanted to live a little first.

Kriss spun around, flustered but pleased. "Oh, Remus, hi!" The cat tried to wiggle out of her arms, and she giggled while trying to adjust her arms. "She's always squirming around, sorry about her. I think she likes you."

"What's her name?" Remus realized that he had no actual topic of conversation to bring up and gladly jumped on the first opportunity he found. He had no interest in cats, although over the years he learned that animals took a liking to him. The kitten kept trying to jump out of Kriss' arms and towards him.

"Gray. For the Gray Lady." Kriss smiled bashfully and glanced down, pulling her hands into her sweater sleeves. As she spoke, Remus fell in love with her voice: soft, dreamy, and sweet like chocolate. "It's kind of nerdy, I know."

"No, I like it," he said. His fingers tapped nervously on his leg until he shoved his hands into his pockets to hide it. "I had a goldfish when I was a kid and I named it Dumbledore."

When she laughed, her light blue eyes lit up. "That's so cute!"

"Moony, you coming?" James yelled obnoxiously from the other end of the platform. Remus opened his mouth to answer, blushing furiously, but then he heard, "Ow, Blondie, easy!"

"Leave him alone, James!"

Remus rolled his eyes, hoping that his friends wouldn't embarrass him further, but he figured that Eva had him covered, so he turned back to Kriss. "Do you want to head to the Prefect compartments, then?"

"Yeah, okay," she said, a faint blush tinting her cheeks. He followed her into the train, feeling oddly proud of himself.

From across the platform, Eva shoved James onto the train. "You're the world's biggest third wheel, you know that?"