𝗰𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗸, remus lupin

˗ˋ 25

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
✧
-: sixth year :-

── IN WHICH HE'S AT A
LOSS FOR WORDS

. . .

"So, now that our date is over, are you planning on walking me back to the castle?" As always, Pandora was blunt and didn't seem to hold back anything.

Remus, who had been walking alongside her, stopped in his tracks, hazel eyes widening as he turned towards her. "What does that mean?" He asked, finding it a little harder than usual to keep his voice steady. 

"Well unless everything my mother ever taught me about manners is all a lie, and I permit you to correct me if I'm wrong, but once a date has ended, is it not the gentlemanly thing to do to walk your date home?" Pandora stopped as well, boots leaving twisting snake imprints in the soft ground below. 

"No.. you're right." Remus didn't know whether he should question it, but sneaking the serpentine markings only made him think of how it could - or how it should be butterflies, the dangerous, magically created creatures that could appear in seconds. So instead, he walked a few paces before stopping, changing his mind.

If everything that Pandora ever said to him was true, then that all added up to the reality of her not wanting to hurt him, so he could only trust his small amount of faith in her that she wasn't going to harm him in the process of his confusion.

Pandora had turned to follow him, but seeing him stop made her copy, both feet rooted to the ground as she looked up at him, a perfectly curled strand of hair straying from where it had been tucked behind her ear. That seemed to be the only messy part of her, everything else was so incredibly neat and put together. 

"I never said it was a date." Remus winced at what he was saying, seeing the almost smile dropping from the Rosier girl's face in an instance. 

"Pardon?" 

"I never said it was a date." Remus repeated, pretending that his heart wasn't echoing in his ears. But Pandora wouldn't hurt him. He knew that. Or at least he had convinced himself that he knew it.

"It was the two of us, alone. In a place whjere other people go on dates. There was a Ravenclaw named Khaliya and a Slytherin named Ferelith beside us. They were holding hands." Pandora took a step towards him, arms crossed over her stomach. "They were doing the same things we were doing. We were talking, we were laughing and you blushed."

"That doesn't mean we were on a date I didn't even.." Remus cut himself off, catching himself before he lied. "Ask you.. but I did ask you." 

"Yes, you did. You asked me if I had ever had Butterbeer, implying that either way I answered,  you would have done the same thing; taken me to have Butterbeer." Pandora took another step, and then another, looking up at him with the sort of look in her eyes that made him almost uneasy. 

"I guess.. I did." 

"But you did not take it as a date." Pandora's confidence broke just a little, uncertainty wavering in her eyes. She didn't say anything for a few moments, and Remus didn't dare to look away. "Ah, you ungrateful bastard." 

Pandora turned on her heel and stomped off in the other direction, snakes imprinted into the ground behind her, marking her path. Remus watched as she left, something ever so strange squeezing in his chest.

"Pandora - hey Pandora! Wait." He didn't even know what pushed him forward after her, and a hundred or so yards behind him the three boys tailing the couple seemed to be at a loss for words. 

"Pandora!" Remus repeated, almost stumbling over a stone jutting out of the path as he followed her. He just suddenly felt like something was so wrong, and he knew that he shouldn't have mentioned it not being a date, he should have just let it go.

But all of a sudden his gut had told him otherwise and that he just needed Pandora to stop running away from him. It seemed she was more than just angry; little bursts of butterflies appeared under her stomped footstep, surrounding the snake in magical beauty. 

"Pandora!" He repeated for the third time, still hurrying after her. 

"If you don't want it to have been a date, just say so." All of a sudden she wasn't moving and she had stopped, turning back to him and curling her fists. "But next time you ask someone to have Butterbeer with you you might want to brush up on your social skills when it comes to conveying-"

"That's rich, coming from you." Remus blurted out as he managed to catch up with her. "You can't tell me about my social skills when you don't fucking have any." 

Pandora stared at him. 

She just stared at him.

Almost like she was proving his point, not a single word was uttered. But by Merlin that was far more scary than her shouting at him. 

"You're too pretty to be suck a pretentious git." The word was oh-so unlike her, but spoken in the exact same manner. "But oh well."

And then something in his mind exploded and a shattering, sudden pain brought him to his knees. Behind him, Sirius, James and Peter sped up to a run, coming to a stop beside him. 

The pain had only lasted for a moment, but when Remus came to his senses, Pandora was long gone.

✧

a/n
sorry this is up late
there was a storm