The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part One

VIII: 1 September, 1993

He hadn't been able to go back to the compartment after leaving it.

Remus Lupin had spent the remaining time on board the Express finding any and every excuse he possibly could to keep himself busy elsewhere. He forced himself to think of other things, things besides the likeness of the messy haired boy back in that compartment. Just seeing him there had made the world spin around Remus with a sickening rush. More than once he's caught himself against the wall, trying to steady himself from the dizziness more than the inertia of the moving train.

Now, stepping out onto the platform in Hogsmeade, he stood, clutching the handle of his briefcase, staring across the lake at the pointed silhouette of the castle. The smells had scarcely changed - the mildew and musk of the forest, the nip of the lake air blowing soft tendrils of floral and grassy smells from the far shore... With closed eyes, Remus could have sworn it was over a decade prior, that he wasn't alone, standing here on the wooden platform; he could almost hear James and Sirius goofing off, laughing and joking about... could almost feel --

Someone brushed roughly by him, shoving him ever so slightly so that he stumbled and the handle on his briefcase once again came clean off. He flushed as he ducked down to fetch it from the ground, and looked up to see who'd bumped into him.

A pale boy with a pinched face, flanked by two others who wore scowls and vacant expressions, sneered at Remus with an upturned lip. The white-blonde hair and features were far too easy to recognize, and Remus felt the muscles in his wand hand twitch.

"Malfoy," he whispered, voice barely a breath.

The boy raised an eyebrow, his glance sizing Remus up, taking in his appearance. He dismissed Remus without even a second look, not a word spoken to him. Instead, the boy shoved 'round and continued across the platform, followed by the two lemmings that shadowed him. "Dumbledore's latest appointee, I suppose," he said, loudly enough that Remus clearly heard every word as he walked away. "Looks as though he's taken to plucking them up out of rubbish bins now!"

Remus felt his throat tighten and he hugged the briefcase to his chest,  taking a deep breath and trying to remind himself that whatever illusion the return to Hogwarts had given him, he was not eleven years old, and these children were not his peers. He was a teacher, for Merlin's sake! The token sneer of a little twit like that ought not to pierce him as it once did in the days when he was here at Hogwarts!

Sirius would never have allowed the boy to walk away, he thought. Sirius would've ended up with one of his signature pre-term detentions after walloping that little bugger clear across the platform and performing some terrible spell to turn him into a cockroach.

Remus smirked at the thought of it.

But nearly as quickly as the thought cheered him, he felt his heart seize up within his chest. It was precisely that vengeful, brash side of Sirius which had drawn him into the shadows that tore them apart... that had landed Sirius in a cell in Azkaban.

Which he had somehow escaped from.

Remus bristled and glanced about the platform, half expecting to see the shining eyes of the dog peering from the woods, or else to hear that barking, crazy laugh... But there was no one on the fringe of the trees, no one watching him. In fact, aside from the sneer of the Malfoy boy, Remus seemed entirely invisible among the bustling students.

He rather preferred it that way.