Black’s departure from the blackboard was accompanied by a polite, little applause, the four students in the audience all equally exhausted at the notion of just how much work laid ahead for them to get to that point themselves.<br/>Mercifully released by his own trance, Remus was finally able to tear his gaze off of Black, instead straightening his posture, aimlessly preparing for class to begin.<br/>It shouldn’t have surprised him that no such grace would ever be bestowed upon him, finding that he really hadn’t done anything deserving of absolution.<br/>Glancing up at the movement in his peripheral vision, there was a brief moment of exhaustion visible in his gaze before he composed himself, drawing his work closer to allow Black space to settle himself.<br/>“Well done,” he muttered below the sound of Mulligan unraveling Black’s equations at the board, restating which parts were original to Black’s thesis and which built atop of other scientists’s work, speaking of him with high praise.<br/>Remus didn’t need to have paid much attention to the subject matter Black had presented to know it was spectacularly clever, no matter how annoying it might be to admit.