RHEA | I | ↠ S. BLACK (o.h)

TWO

【  SEPTEMBER  】

【 1971 】

【  TWELVE YEARS BEFORE  】

1 1 : 0 3

"HULLO! CAN I SIT HERE?"

A boy with scathed pale skin and neatly combed brown hair looked up from his book. The edges of his lips were slightly tugged down to a small frown, as were the shadows underneath his eyes—dark, baggy, dragging the upper lids down to gently lull him to a nap. His eyes, however, snapped away from the inked cursive on the novel and instead rested on a girl who was waiting by the doorway of the carriage he had once claimed for himself.

"S-sure," he muttered, quickly shoving his feet off the seats in front of him and fumbled with the bag beside him, not knowing whether the girl would like to sit where his belongings were sitting on or where his legs had been propped on not a moment before.

He stopped with his rapid thinking when he heard the girl laugh. "It's okay, please don't fret. I'll sit here," she said carefully, lowering her bag onto the seat beside the wall before she sat down. She looked up at him not long after, her green eyes meeting his. "Thank you, by the way, for letting me in. My brother decided to abandon me as soon as we hopped onto the train, and every other carriage was full, so I don't know what I would've done if you said no," she chuckled.

The brunet boy wanted to laugh so it wouldn't be awkward, but he couldn't relate. He had arrived at King's Cross two hours early with his parents so that he would have more time to mentally prepare himself. By then, only a number of students had occupied the carriages and the seats across the train, but not enough so that there were plenty of empty carriages to choose from. "Y-you're welcome," he chose to answer instead, a shy smile replacing his frown.

Seemingly aware of his once peaceful and concentrated state before she arrived, she took out a novel from her bag and placed it onto her lap, the title on the front incomprehensible to the boy before her as it was written in another language. She looked back up at him. "I'm sorry to distract you from your reading. I know how annoying it is when someone tries to talk to you when all you want to do is ignore them and read. Please don't mind me and continue from where you left off, just pretend that I'm not here. My name is Harriet Potter, by the way, but you can call me Rhea."

"Remus Lupin," he introduced himself, which was followed by a polite nod before she opened her novel and started to read.

He knew that he was supposed to do what she said— read, ignore her, continue on like she never arrived, don't make it awkward for yourself, even though she never said the latter, Remus had thought that she was hinting at it. With a muffled sigh, he looked down at his book and continued to read.

But as the seconds ticked by, he couldn't find himself focusing on a single word. His thoughts remained on the girl in front of him, Rhea, as she insisted he called her, sneaking glances at her when he thought she wasn't looking.

It wasn't because he thought she looked pretty, which she was, she really was, he noted to himself, with her silky golden hair that dripped down to the middle of her upper arms and her wide, bluish-green eyes that pierced through his dimmer ones, it was because she was the first potential friend he's had in years.