damnation - r.j.lupin

last days of summer

lovers rock - TV girl 

☆☾

The sun's rays play with Olivia's brown hair. She shyly opens her eyes and observes her empty room in silence. She didn't sleep much and spent the vast majority of the night reading her new novel by the fireplace. Proust. In French. Olivia loves to imagine experiencing the fallen love between Gilberte and the narrator or being transported to the famous seaside resort Balbec.

The soft summer morning light plunges the room into a delectable calm. Olivia wraps herself in the cotton-smelling sheets. She sighs, staring at the ceiling.

The intense gaze of the man from last night, the green of his eyes, his messy hair, his mysterious side return to Olivia's head and seem to want to settle there for good. The contact of the frozen ground on her two bare feet brings her back to reality and she finishes preparing for the first day of classes.

She joins Davies in the corridors. They got into the habit of having breakfast together. It's probably the only time they actually spend together. The rest of the day, Davies spends it with the Quidditch team or his Ravenclaw friends. They are not in the same classes this year.

Olivia sits down, grabs a banana and some toast.

"When does Quidditch start?" Asks Olivia.

Davies looks into hers with his chocolate eyes and the corner of his lips tugs into a smile.

"What? Is Olivia Marrat interested in something other than books and classes? Pinch me please!" jokes Roger. She rolls her eyes.

"Fuck off, Davies."

He chuckles and searches for her gaze.

"What? Are you finally going to come see me at the game with a sweater embroidered with my name?" he asks playfully. Her red lips show a grin and she shakes her head.

"You wish, Davies," she said before continuing. "What's your first class ?"

"Divination," he replies, biting into an apple. "Kill me please."

She chuckles and gets up. She catches the eye of Mona at the Slytherin table who winks at her. She smiles and walks through the doors.

For her last class of the day, Olivia goes to classroom 3C, better known as the DADA classroom. As always, she chooses the row and the place furthest from the back of the room, to be sure of becoming invisible and being able to immerse herself in her latest readings without being disturbed. Already feeling tired and mostly bored from the first day, she slumps down on her desk, takes out her novel and starts reading.

Olivia was immersed in the adventures of the Swanns, until her book was violently closed with wandless magic. She jumps and raises her head instinctively, only to find herself face to face with the same man as last night. Turns out he's the new teacher. Of course it had to be. Fuck.

He was leaning against the desk in front of her, arms crossed, smirking. He has swapped his old suit for a vest that looks just as worn. His hair is still messy. Olivia catches her heart beating faster. She wonders what it would feel like on her hands if she ran them through his hair.

"Well, I should tell you that Zola is much better than Proust, but that's not the point, is it, Miss... ?"

"Marat", she responded. She expected to be reprimanded, and her eyebrows furrowed at his words. He almost seems to be challenging her. "And actually, I don't agree with you. Proust is way more poetic. I adore Zola, don't get me wrong, but he is more of what we can call a sociologist. He romanticizes real life. Real life is boring."

She finishes her sentence and the entire room falls into silence. All the students glance at each other, actually surprised to hear the sound of her voice. Olivia realizes that she probably went too far, that she should have just apologized and put her book away instead of starting a theory about the French author. But she had the impression that this was the answer the teacher was waiting for, judging by his widening smirk and the way he bit his lower lip. Her breathing stops, waiting for the answer.

"You seem to know a lot of things, Miss Marat. Maybe it would be a good idea to use all of this during my class. What do you know about the Bombarda Maxima spell?"

He was already leaving to go back to the front of the class.

"It's in the program of this year, I guess." She swears she heard him lightly chuckled.

"It is, indeed. Well, everyone, let's get going and open your books page 45", the professor added, a smile still on his lips, looking straight into her eyes.

☆☾

The last rays of the September sun shine on Mona and Olivia, sitting against a tree. The water of the lake shines under the star of Helios and the grass around it has never seemed so green to Olivia's eyes. The two witches are enjoying the last moments of respite under the sun before this year which promises to be very busy. Well, Mona, especially. Olivia enjoys it because it's what she does every day since first year.

"How was your first week ?" asked the blond, finishing a little sketch of the view.

"Alright, I guess." Olivia pauses and closes her book. She wonders if she should tell Mona about the interaction with Professor Lupin. "Something happened in DADA class on Monday, though."

Mona stops and raises her head. Olivia wasn't the type to talk about her life in detail or gossip, so when her sentence started like that, there really was something to talk about.

"There's this new teacher, you know ?"

"Yeah. Hot." Olivia quickly nods in approval.

"Well, I was reading in class as usual, and instead of sending me to detention like Snape would do, we talked about literature. Proust, for fuck's sake. It was the sexiest talk I've ever had with a guy."

Mona's eyebrows betray her incomprehension at the end of the sentence and her friend's enthusiasm. She rolled her eyes.

"We definitely don't have the same definition of sex-talk, babe", Mona retorts. "And what about last year with this Gryffindor guy ? You guys shagged, right ?"

"I warmly thank you for bringing back to me this atrocious memory that I had decided to bury permanently" Olivia responds, and straightens up before adding. "And I don't call it shagging when a guy watches you all evening and finally gathers the fucking balls to come up to you, dead drunk, saying a quick "hey baby" that made me want to throw up and kiss me with his drool-filled tongue like a dog."

"Fair. But remind me why you kissed him, anyway?" asked the blond.

"No fucking idea. I guess I needed to feel alive or something. A shitty thing, that's it." Mona stands up and grabs the bottle of white wine propped against the trunk of the tree.

"Well my friend, cheers to shitty things !"

"And cheers to drooling Frenchkiss!"

Mona and Olivia spend the rest of the evening at the lake. The sunset bathes them in an orange halo and adds a certain fullness. They discuss, they giggle, they drink.

Recklessness.

At the castle, from his office window, Remus Lupin is leaning on the sill, a cigarette in his hand. As he exhales, the smoke evaporates into the fiery sky. He takes one last puff before throwing away his cigarette.

Retracing his steps, he grabs the book that came out of his library a few minutes earlier and sits in front of the fireplace.

As his eyes wander over the cover and his fingers caress the rough pages, Remus finds himself smiling. Proust. He thinks of that girl, her ash-brown hair and her red lips. He thinks about the way she bit her lower lip while reading, focused. He remembers her long legs, crossed under the table and her black heeled shoes straight out of the sixties.

He becomes aware of the way he is thinking about a student and frowns, suddenly closing the book after reading the first sentences which he no longer remembers as his thoughts were completely elsewhere.

Remus Lupin sighs, grabs another cigarette and approaches the window, the sky now black.