For as long as Remus can remember he's had a hard life. Constant monthly mutilations of his skin, a absent father, and the trepidation of his blush inducing crush on Anastasia Fox. Anastasia Fox, who flirts with everyone, has matching fainter scars...
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CHAPTER 7 (part two) CHERRY WINE
"Come here." She whispered and so he did, moving to climb onto the trampoline. "Nooo take off your shoes first." And he did, fumbled with the laces of the muggle sneakers placing them next to her toppled over ones and a straight line.
Anastasia leaned over stretching her arm out to help him on, though he didn't need it. Maybe it was her way of telling him to sit closer not wanting to say it, to speak her want of his proximity into words.
They sat in silence, legs crossed. The silence was not deafening for Remus; it was more comforting the room, her presence surprisingly and the domestic feeling of it all. For Anastasia it compelled her to think to speak once more.
"It's my fathers birthday today." She was surprised herself she admitted it. It sounded so normal without context, a positive connotation of the words that depressed her greatly.
"Oh." Remus was confused again. Did she miss him alot or something?
"How are your parents?" Was this the reply he should have given he didn't know but judging by the fast movement of Anastasia head turning to look at him it was not.
"My parents are dead, Lupin." She said it in a way as if she felt bad for him and not herself, like she was not the victim but the bearer of bad news. Oh something.
"I'm so sor-" He looked horrified but she cut him off before he could say the words she had heard far too many times.
"It's alright. I just... thought everyone knew. Especially you." Of course Anastasia had assumed he knew, she had seen him the day of, hell he had been a house down from it. Remus lowered his head in guilt.
He remembered her parents well, his own stories of Anastasia's father and him. A man he had seen in all his dazzling glory and a shiny picture of him etched into his mind. Her mother a scary woman in her natural intimidation only to reveal her kind nature. He remembers looking at the couple and imagining himself having that kind of love, no burden son to take care of, or unspoken problems, just pure love.
"It's kind of nice to know that's not what everyone thinks of me." Anastasia whispered. It was nice, she knew the pitiful stares and the apologies.
She remembers her first year well, her scars much more striking. She remembers her eleven year old self theorizing all the possibilities into why Remus didn't want to be her friend anymore, at first it was because he had boy friends now and was embarrassed, and then it was that he no longer recognized her because of the scars now but that was quickly ruled out in her name have been called in the hat ceremony. And then she settled on that he had known what had happened that night and feared her.
Anastasia stood up beckoning him up and holding out her hands which he took kindly. Anastasia started first but with their bound hands Remus followed in suit. The sight was childish for the tall teen and the grown girl. Flying in the air and a plunge into the fluid fabric. The room was loud now, heaving breaths, metal springs contracting, giggles from the two when they would fall into each other or slip with the smoothness of their socks, and the loudest of all their heartbeats.
