Midnight English Time
My dearest darling kelleypen. I hope you have a fabulous day and a joyful year.
And in honour of your birthday,
Title: The One That Got Away
Word Count: 2,030
Warning: Kelley-Sue
This was meant to be a Sirius fic, but then Remus barged in and ... I just can't say no to Remus!
Remus leant back in his chair and brushed the feather of his quill over his chin. Then he looked down at the blank parchment and frowned. It was stupid. He’d thought of this letter quite a lot in the few weeks it had taken to save the money for an international owl. He’d planned out what he was going to write over and over again and now he could think of nothing to say. Or rather, there was far too much to say, and he didn’t know how to go about it.
It was something that had to be done, though, and done properly. She was owed that much. Remus could picture her now, aged a little and yet in essence the same. She would look puzzled when she got the letter. She would weep over it. She would feel sadder and happier having read it. Above all, she would think well of Sirius. And knowing what weight his words would have, Remus couldn’t bring himself to start.
He put down his quill and tried to remember.
He barely had any memories of her before their sixth year at Hogwarts. There were fleeting visions of a small figure, dark hair, a big smile when a piece of homework came back with an O grade, a cheering form swathed in blue in the stands of a Quidditch game, a regular presence in the library during the OWL period. She’d been a Ravenclaw in their year, completely unnoticed by the four of them, dismissed, maybe, as a clever, quiet girl, with nothing to take exception to. One of the hundreds of non-entities at Hogwarts, who weren’t worth playing jokes on and who weren’t worth more than the occasional smile and shrug in the corridors.
Remus smiled slightly at the callous attitude of teenaged boyhood. They had been so quick to decide who was to be bothered with and who wasn’t. Sirius and James had paid more attention to the boys (and sometimes girls) in other houses who played Quidditch, and to the girls who were pretty and likely to go out with them. Neither of them had asked her out back then, though. By their fifth year, James was hooked on Lily Evans, and Sirius was busy faffing about with Marlene McKinnon, then a good-looking Hufflepuff, a Ravenclaw, Marlene again. Schoolboy relationships which had been superficial and short-lived. Nothing to the bond the four Marauders had, and with none of the devotion which James began to display for Lily.
So it was that the four of them reached their sixth year at Hogwarts, and in particular came to the Care of Magical Creatures lesson which first directed their full attention to a girl named Kelley or, as Sirius termed her, The One That Got Away.
The assorted group made their way to the usual paddock where Professor Kettleburn introduced them to new and increasingly-dangerous magical creatures. As they approached, Remus made out a large purple blob at the far end and gave a low whistle.
“A graphorn,” he said.
“This should be interesting,” said Sirius.
“I don’t like it when you say interesting,” Peter complained. “Interesting usually means painful.”
James, whose eyes had been fixed on Lily Evans’s back, looked up and pushed his glasses up his nose.
“Looks like fun,” he said.
Remus wasn’t entirely sure whether he meant the graphorn or Lily Evans’s bottom.
“That rope really doesn’t look very secure,” Peter said.
The creature was roaring and straining against the rope binding it to a tree which stood in the corner of the paddock. Remus watched closely as a particularly violent tug made the knot give a little.
“Professor?”
Kettleburn, who had been chatting to Lily and a Ravenclaw girl, span round on his wooden leg and turned to Remus. The sunlight bounced off his shiny bald head and made Remus blink.
“Professor, I think that rope’s working loose.”
“Nonsense, Lupin, nonsense.” Professor Kettleburn looked rather disappointed. “I didn’t think you’d be worried about a little graphorn.”
As if in answer, the graphorn lunged again. The students nearest it edged backwards.
Professor Kettleburn stomped up to the front, leaning off to the right to pull his left leg from the mud each time.
“Right then,” he said happily, seemingly oblivious to the murderous looks the monster was giving him. “Who can tell me what this fine beast is called?”
Several hands rose into the air, but before Kettleburn had the chance to call on anyone, the graphorn lurched forwards and the Knotting Spell gave way. In a split second, all was pandemonium. Students turned and fled, people were screaming, the monster bellowed in anger, its two massive horns were angled downwards as it charged …
… right towards Professor Kettleburn, whose wooden leg meant that he was unable to flee.
Remus’s wand was already in his hand and he was already running forward by the time his brain caught up. James and Sirius were with him, and he looked over his shoulder to see Peter pelting after them. Behind them, the rest of the class was racing for the gate.
“Aim for its stomach,” he shouted. “Or its eye.” Their spells bounced off the creature’s tough skin.
The graphorn reached Kettleburn first. It scooped him up with its horns and flung him in the air as though he were a rag doll.
“I’ve got him!” came a voice. Remus looked to his right and saw Lily Evans with her wand pointed firmly at Professor Kettleburn, who was hovering in mid-air.
James froze, until Sirius pushed him. The graphorn wheeled round and bellowed again.
“Impedimenta!” a new voice said.
Remus pulled Peter back as the graphorn made for them.
“Stupefy!” he yelled, trying to aim for the stomach.
The monster stopped short, blinked, and started to charge again.
“Get behind it. It’s slow on the turn.”
Remus found himself next to James, Sirius and Peter and another girl. The five of them ran from side to side, trying to make sure they stayed behind the beast.
Then: “Lily,” James shouted. Lily had been trying to levitate Kettleburn into the tree. Her wand arm was shaking, and the graphorn was making for her.
Kettleburn grabbed hold of a branch and Lily let her arm fall.
“Get into the tree!”
Remus wasn’t sure who had shouted. They were all running towards the seemingly-petrified Lily now. He held out his wand and muttered ‘mobilicorpus’. Someone else had had the same idea, though, for Lily was catapulted into the branches with the force of several spells.
The graphorn lowered its head and charged at the tree. It shook and Remus felt his stomach lurch as he prayed the trunk would hold.
“All of us need to get it together,” the girl shouted, her accent thick with adrenalin.
“As it charges, everyone get down and aim for the stomach,” Sirius yelled.
“GO!”
On James’s word, five red rays of light burst over the beast. It teetered and fell onto the muddy ground.
“Quick,” Kettleburn said from the tree, his voice croaky and weak. “Hex it in the eye while it’s Stunned.”
He and Lily clambered down. Lily was blanched white and the other girl went over to give her a hug, while James looked on with a pained expression.
“Are you all right, sir?” Peter asked.
Kettleburn was panting and rubbing his shoulder. Blood was seeping from between his fingers.
Having placed a Body Bind on the graphorn, Remus conjured a stretcher for Professor Kettleburn. James conjured another for Lily, who gave him a dirty look.
“Potter, I’m all right,” she said, not sounding it.
Sirius turned to the girl who had stayed behind.
“You should have been in Gryffindor,” he said.
Remus grinned, knowing how big a compliment this was from Sirius. The girl - Kelley - gave a small shrug.
“The Sorting Hat considered it,” she said, her Irish accent more of a lilt now she was calmer, “but I thought I could still try and have courage no matter what House I’m put in.”
“Well, yeah, but …” Sirius looked nonplussed. “Why would you choose not to be in Gryffindor? You were amazing back there.”
Kelley blushed. “Not really. I think I just ran and screamed.”
They got Kettleburn back to the castle, and Lily conceded to take James’s arm, much to his delight. Remus, Peter and Sirius walked back with Kelley until they came to the Entrance Hall.
“Ravenclaw’s this way,” she said, motioning behind her. “I’ll see you about.”
“Yeah,” Sirius said, and he watched her walk away.
“I think we’ve lost him, Moony,” Peter said.
Remus looked over at James, still nose to nose with Lily, while Kettleburn’s stretcher floated lazily ahead.
“Good grief,” he said.
They didn’t really lose Sirius. In fact, they gained Kelley. She was now worth chatting to, worth sitting with in the library, where she often worked with her purring cat curled in her lap. She and Sirius teased each other about the Quidditch Cup; Ravenclaw and Gryffindor were shaping up for the final. Sirius tried to persuade her that since she should have been a Gryffindor, she should support them instead. It didn’t work.
Remus supposed that Sirius had asked her out at some point. He went to Hogsmeade with her, although not to the awful place he’d used to take Marlene. In their seventh year, when Lily finally gave in, and discovered that James really wasn’t bad as she’d thought, and Remus spent as much time revising as he could, Sirius saw quite a lot of Kelley. He rarely talked about her, though. There was no boasting like there had been with the others. Just a grin and a shrug and the words ‘we’re just mates’.
And when she was offered a place in the International Choral School in America, Sirius’s only public reaction was, ‘at least she’ll be safe there.’
So at the end of their seventh year, Kelley left for America, and James, Sirius, Remus, Peter and Lily threw themselves body and soul into the Order of the Phoenix. An owl came for Sirius once. They found it after they dragged themselves home, aching from a fight. He opened the letter, raised his eyebrows and grinned.
“From The One That Got Away,” he said.
“I know what I was going to ask you, Moony,” Sirius said in a suspiciously carefree voice one wintry evening in Grimmauld Place. “D’you ever hear from Kelley at all?”
Remus was tempted to say no. It would be easy to shake his head, make a joke and change the subject. Sirius would only brood. And Sirius had been brooding so much recently, frequently accompanied by a bottle of Ogden’s.
“She wrote to me once,” he admitted. “Just after you were - ”
“Locked up without a trial,” Sirius said. “You can mention it, Remus. I promise I won’t cry.”
Remus held back a sigh. “After you were arrested, she wrote. She asked me if there was any way it could have been a mistake.”
“And you said no.”
“I said no.” Well what else could he have believed? The others hadn’t told him of the plan. It had been with a sort of savage sorrow that he’d killed her hope as his had been killed the day after Lily and James’s deaths.
Sirius shrugged. “It’s what everybody thought. Harry first heard of me as a murderer. Bar about a dozen people, the whole world still thinks I am.”
“You’re not, though. That’s what matters.”
Sirius waved his hand impatiently. “Spare me, Moony. So did she mention anything about herself in the letter? Kelley?”
Remus did sigh now. “She said she stayed in America. Married there. Children.”
“Good,” Sirius said in a softer voice. “I’m glad things worked out all right for her. At least she got away.”
Then he Summoned a bottle of firewhiskey, and Remus closed his eyes.
Remus opened his eyes now, and picked up the quill. It had to be done and he might as well get it over with. At least she’d know that Sirius had been who they’d all thought he’d been. At least she’d know the truth. Sirius would have liked that.
Dear Kelley, he began.
I'm off home until a week on Sunday. I hope you all have a good week!