“You will only have two hours,” Professor Tofty informs them, his voice crisp and strict. “Position your telescopes and begin...now.”
Remus looks over his blank star chart, the one he is going to have to fill with the position of every star in the sky tonight before he can go back inside the warmth of the castle...and to Sirius. He resists the urge to roll his eyes and braces himself, putting his eye to the telescope. He manages to get through the moon, Orion and a few of the planets before the lense of his telescope falls on a certain constellation and he feels a warm flush fill him.
Sirius.
He picks his head up just enough to steal a glance at his friend. Sirius’s black bangs are hanging over his eyes, and he is bent over his own telescope in concentration, the quill in his hand scribbling on the piece of paper blindly. Remus smiles, putting his eye to the sky again.
But he can’t concentrate anymore. For there, right in front of him is the symbol of their friendship...and what is turning into more. It was just a few months ago that Sirius, James and Peter had finally learned to become Animagi. It had been a surprise to see the forms that they had taken, but oddly...familiar. James had taken on the body of a stag, ever noble. Peter transformed into a rat, which Remus was sure must have been disappointing to him, but it was fitting; there were certainly rat-like tendencies that he had, after all.
And Sirius. Sirius who took on the form of a huge black dog, giving a physical expression to his loyalty, protectiveness and, Remus was slowly learning, playfulness. Remus knew that Sirius had been slightly disappointed as well by this, snorting at how boring and typical it was, almost like it was a bad joke: Sirius turning into a dog, just like the constellation in the sky. How unoriginal and conventional. How stupid.
Remus had spent quite some time convincing Sirius that it was actually a good thing.
“Haven’t you always known?” he'd commented shyly.
“No. What do you mean?” Sirius had asked, looking barely tolerant of the subject. It had become quite a sore one; he felt horribly threatened, though he wouldn’t admit it, by the majesty of James’s stag. He’d wanted to be something ferocious and terrifying...and manly. The fact that he became little more than a puppy was driving him, and by association, the rest of them, insane.
“That you were going to be a dog? Or with one?”
Sirius broke out into a grin. “You’re kidding, right?”
Remus had shook his head, ploughing on. “It’s written in the night sky after all, isn’t it? And we have certain Professors who swear by Divination and Astronomy, don’t we? You can’t fight destiny, Sirius,” he’d teased. And that had seemed to become the breaking point, the moment when Sirius had finally begun to see the positives about his Animagi form, for all that he thought it was unoriginal.
And there were quite a few other advantages to the form as well, once they had started to think about it that way. Werewolves and dogs were both canines, after all....
He steals another glance up at Sirius and starts when he sees Sirius’s eyes already on him. He is thankful for the darkness and clouds that had before seemed such a pain in the way of plotting the stars correctly; it affords him a blanket and a shield to hide his blush. Sirius grins at him, a perfect white-toothed smile and Remus finds himself clutching his telescope just a little bit harder to steady himself. When he realizes what he’d done, and how someone else might read the simple reaction, he blushes again. It is a very Sirius-like thought, he notes. He never would have even noticed what he had done a few months ago. But now, now everything had a deeper meaning, a deeper memory of a private moment between the two of them.
Sirius points up at the sky, somewhere in the vague direction of his constellation“funny how they had started calling it that, just between the two of them“ and Remus ducks his head just a little bit, just enough to acknowledge it, to let his friend know that he knows about it already.
Sirius grins again, turning back to his telescope as the proctor heads in their direction once more and, reluctantly, Remus turns his eyes back to the sky, reaching his hand forward to clear the condensation and fog from the lens. He sighs, knowing that after Sirius, the sky and stars will have lost their shining brightness.
The exam seems to take ages and when Tofty finally calls ‘Quills down!’ Remus is shocked; he refuses to believe that it has only been two hours.
He stands at the edge of the parapet once the papers are collected and they are dismissed, his hands on the ledge, looking over the Hogwarts grounds.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he asks, when Sirius comes to join him moments later, resting his own arms on the wall and leaning forward.
Sirius nods. “Wish it wasn’t so cloudy though. Could hardly see a thing.” He groans, stretching his arms up and over his head, his body more catlike and feline in the moment than feral. And then he slouches forward again, slumping on the parapet, exhaustion seeping from him. “What time is it?”
“A bit after one.”
He groans again. “That’s all? I feel like I’ve been up for forever.”
“No one told you it would be a smart idea to go haunting the grounds till four in the morning the day before your Astronomy practical,” Remus chides.
Sirius stretches back. “I know. No one’s fault but my own.” He grins at Remus suddenly, wolfishly. “But it was worth it. You won’t believe what I’ve found ”
Remus grins back, tired, and they walk together back down from the tower and to their dormitory as Sirius regales him with the tale of his new discovery, exuberant even at this early hour. He is exactly like a puppy, Remus thinks, always eager and...bouncing. There is no other word for it. Sirius simply doesn’t stop moving.
He yawns as he finally crawls into bed to sleep sometime after three. He can not believe that he’s allowed Sirius to keep him up this late the day before their Defense Against the Dark Arts test. But puppies were like that. Tell them to go away and they just looked at you, sad, and you couldn’t say no....
A/N: On the Wolfstar thread at Madam Puddifoot's on the forums, there is a post of the one hundred reasons why the Wolfstar ship rules the seas. The bunnies struck and I've written something to do with nearly half of them. This is number eight on the Wolfstar thread list: “Because it is written in the night sky.” If you'd like to see the whole list, check it out on the thread.