stain ☾ remus lupin

TWENTYSEVEN

H E A D B O Y
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It was as if in an instant, her thoughts erupted into a shrill chaos. The rather plain trickle of dreadful pondering at her friends' earlier discovery turned into a thick, heavy downpour of alarm at his words. It clouded her brain and weighed against her previous thoughts. I love you. I love you. I love you.

The idea of commitment was not hard for her, not with the fear of aloneness she held. However, the concept of deciphering her feelings was just the opposite.

She opened her mouth with a complex emotion of want and desire to respond to his disorienting statement. Then she closed it. Freya racked her brain for any sort of thing to say back, but only came up with a conclusion that she looked like a dying fish out of water, opening and closing its mouth. If anyone knew of the crashing waves of ideas that filled up her head — they would easily understand the fish motions, and the difficulty breathing.

Remus's heart sunk, as if it were an anchor inside the very waves she was consumed in.

She could see it on his face and it instantly snapped her away from her confusion, with a sudden click she began to return his words. They began to slip out naturally, as if she'd felt them all along, "I —"

A loud clatter against the glass of the window to her right interrupted whatever statement had begun to slip through her cherry lips. Cerulean eyes flickered in the direction of the opening, only to be met with the sight of a runty, and possibly quite new to the whole delivering business, owl. It propped against the glass with ruffled feathers, still befuddled from the harsh impact.

The clamorous noise on the pane seemed to be louder than they both had thought, because at that moment, Peter curiously wandered into the kitchen with Mrs. Potter closely behind to survey the situation. "Will one of you get that?"

The short boy's eyes strolled between his two friends, and instantly noticed that something was off between the two. Remus looked partially crestfallen, and Freya looked as if she would practically burst if she did not say whatever information she was withholding.

Peter quite honestly wished to dash right back out of the room where he had come from. His foot twitched, body turning towards the exit.

Mrs. Potter coughed. When the boy turned to gaze at her, she stared directly back with one raised eyebrow. Needless to say, his feet turned directly back towards the window, and his chubby fingers unlocked the glass.

A warm breeze immediately drafted into the room as the glass was unsealed. It brushed against Freya's face and made a few of her blonde locks trail slightly behind her. However, airflow was not the only thing that wafted into the room. The runty owl gave a sharp peck to Peter's index finger that had poked it, and a scratch on his nose for good measure, before it spread its wings in flight. The boy backed away from the window with a gasp, which allowed the bird to glide across the kitchen and onto the edge of a jar that held an assortment of cookies.

It seemed to realize what it was perched on top of, for the owl immediately began to peck at the container that sat under it. Mrs. Potter untied the two letters from its clawed leg as they all silently contemplated on how the pitiful little creature managed to carry the envelopes that far. The elderly woman pitied it though, and shifted her hand to open the jar. The bird took the hint and fluttered upwards as she grabbed a treat for it.

As Mrs. Potter backed away from the small animal that dropped crumbs onto the counter as it ate, she skimmed the backsides of the two, sepia envelopes that delicately rested between her index and thumb finger.