The library gave the appearance of being quite deserted, save a small group of older students gathered around a single table. Books, parchment, study charts and quills were spread out in front of them, but more or less forgotten. Their heads were drawn close together as they conducted an urgent conversation in low voices. Every so often, one would glance over their shoulder, as if to ensure that there was nobody nearby.

One tall, strong-jawed young man with broad shoulders but rather uncertain eyes seemed to be leading the discussion. His features were stretched taut with meaning, and his large hands were clenched into fists of unwavering resolve. "All I'm saying," he went on in a slow, deliberate whisper, "is that I know for a fact that he keeps a snake for a pet."

There was a lame silence while his listeners met each others' eyes in turn, then looked back at him, as if awaited further explanation.

"Well, what does that tell you, then?" He leaned even farther forward, eyes widening and lips barely moving.

A girl sitting at the end of the table, who had continued flipping through her book and jotting down notes while these speculations progressed, and, furthermore, remained unconcernedly reclined in her chair, looked up. The movement of her head caught the young man's eye. She smiled archly. "Well, I'm sure we don't know, Artum… My wholly unsubstantiated conclusion would be that he dislikes rats."

Artum looked, for a moment, completely nonplussed, but his expression quickly changed to one of patronizing superiority. "Olivia, I expected more from you… Everyone knows that Voldemort himself can change into a snake at will. He does it whenever he wants to slink around incognito… Anyone who would want one of those things around has got something suspicious about them, no two ways about it." Whenever Artum seemed to feel he had made a particularly inarguable point, he emphasized it with a violent jabbing motion of his thumb, which stuck out, rigid and accusing, over his balled fist.

Olivia, who had followed the thumb's progress with every appearance of rapt attention, lowered her quill and addressed it. "Am I mistaken, or are you quite serious?"

"I'm dead serious."

"Oh, dear," she laughed. "Oh, honestly! I'm all for due diligence, you know, but must we lead the Inquisition? Really, Artum, I think you're taking things a bit far."

Olivia's dismissive remarks had a calming effect on the other members of the group. Their features slackened and a few of them chuckled nervously.

Artum jaw swelled, and when he next spoke, he seemed to have forgotten that their conversation was supposed to be quite private, and his voice rose passionately. "You might think so, Olivia, but these are dark and dangerous times. For your own sake, I wish you'd take things a bit more seriously!"

The rest were utterly silent. Some looked pointedly away, some stared unabashedly. All fidgeted awkwardly in their seats. Olivia remained composed. She put down her quill and shut her book as if she had merely decided that she'd had quite enough studying for one afternoon. As she returned both to her bag, she looked sternly upon Artum. "I take very many things very seriously, witch hunts being chief among them. And, now, if you don't mind, I'll excuse myself. I find that the library has suddenly grown very… uninformative."

As the door shut creakily behind Olivia, a thin young man with an evasive look about him emerged from between two nearby shelves, bearing a large dusty volume to the desk of Madame Pince, the vulture-like librarian, who had been breathing very fiercly through her aquiline nose throughout Artum and Olivia's argument. She entered the boy's book into the log, all the while glaring at him as if he, too, had been partly responsible for the recent disruption. On his way out, the boy cast a curious look at the group, but said nothing.

"Wasn't that Remus Lupin, James Potter's friend?" An anxious looking girl with long blonde hair asked the boy sitting next to her.

"Yeah, sure was… I wonder how much he heard. Do you think he was listening?"

"Don't worry about him. James and his group are fine," Artum said with considerable authority. "Now, if he'd been a Slytherin… And that's just I mean, just what Olivia doesn't get. You never know who's sneaking around, spying on you these days. Why, just today, in Arithmancy, I was…"

Olivia had thought of returning to her room in the east tower, but changed her mind halfway, and descended the stairs to the main floor, thinking she might benefit from a solitary walk across the grounds. If she had to face anyone right now, she thought, in the state she was in, she'd probably do her best to start a screaming match over what was served at lunch. So it was with considerable foreboding that she heard a second pair of footsteps echoing down the marble steps. If that's Artum come to have the last word, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised…she thought. Oh! I'll hex his tongue right out of that big, perpetually flapping jaw on sheer principle!

Stopping at the foot of the stairs and squaring her shoulders (but not going quite so far as to reach for her wand, yet), Olivia took a deep breath and called, "You know, much of wit is in the timing!" But when she spun around, she was met not with a preemptively struck and gloriously defeated Artum, his belated rebuttal lying in pieces on the floor, having come crashing down around him, but a quite stunned looking somebody-else-entirely.

It was Remus Lupin, a Gryffindor in her year, whom she may or may not have spoken to once or twice outside of class in the six-odd years they had attended Hogwarts together.

He smiled and continued down the stairs. "I've always felt that way, too. For instance, if you had turned around before starting in screaming…"

Olivia smiled back. "Then I would have robbed myself of the opportunity to voice what would have been, you must admit, had it reached the ears of its intended target, a terribly cutting remark."

Remus nodded. "I think it would have been, yes. For a moment, before I realized that I'd never argued with you before in my life, I did feel rather routed."

"I wish it had been you I'd argued with earlier," Olivia sighed.

Remus frowned. "Why's that?"

"I have a suspicion you would have been a much worthier opponent than the git I thought you were… when I yelled at you, I mean." She grinned. "So, what do you do?" she asked, eyes narrowing. "Follow people around, waiting to catch them in an awkward moment, so you can have a good laugh?"

"No, actually. I was just heading towards the kitchens and an early dinner. You?"

"Nowhere in particular."

"Oh?" Remus said in a conversational sort of way, as though he had visited Nowhere In Particular himself last summer, had an excellent time, and wondered if Olivia had heard about the lovely beaches.

An odd thing happened, then. You've probably experienced something like it. Olivia and Remus had made the mistake of letting their conversation transition from an easy back-and-forth of amusing witticisms to something, oddly, more intimate for its very mundaneness, and, more or less at the same time, they both realized that they really had nothing whatsoever to do with one another.

"Well…" The word rolled heavily off Olivia's tongue. "Thank you for the pleasant exchange. It was quite decent of you not to simply laugh disdainfully and continue on your way, but, instead, afford me an opportunity to redeem myself. My dignity is forever beholden to you."

Remus inclined his head graciously.

"Good bye, then."

"Good bye."

Olivia glanced back over her shoulder as she headed back up the stairs. Remus's back was disappearing down the dark stairwell that led to the basement. She wondered why he couldn't wait until the rest of the school sat down for their evening meal, and felt a bit sorry that she wouldn't see him there. That's a silly way to feel, she told herself quickly, but smiled all the way up to Ravenclaw tower.

When she reached the common room, she found that Artum and the rest had beaten her there. She didn't pause, walking straight past them, and mounted the stairs to her dormitory. She was joined, moments later, by the anxious-looking girl with long, blonde hair. (You might think it funny, to call the girl "anxious-looking" still, when the air of tension surrounding their discussion in the library had passed, but, this unfortunate young person, you see, was of a persistently nervous disposition.)

"Olivia…"

"What is it, Marlene?" Olivia found that her pleasant demeanor was quickly fading upon seeing Artum again, and spoke harshly to her friend.

"I… oh, please don't be angry with me, Olivia!" Marlene wailed, throwing herself onto Olivia's bed. "You know I don't take Artum any more seriously than you do, but I hate all this arguing and yelling and cold-shouldering."

Marlene looked so despondent that Olivia was immediately very sorry for what she had said. She took the other girl's hand. "I didn't mean to snap at you, dear. I'm sorry. I guess I just let that big, puffed-up git get to me."

Marlene smiled. "You should have seen his face when you just got up and walked out like that," she whispered, as though Artum might be pressed against the floor just outside, listening at the crack at the bottom of the door. "He looked stupefied, except his lips kept moving-"

Olivia laughed.

"Until Remus Lupin, you know, that Gryffindor boy, came out from behind a shelf-"

"What?" Olivia suddenly looked stern.

"Well, he – he…" Marlene stammered. "He came out from behind a shelf after you left, and when he did, Artum sort of jumped in his chair, until he realized who it was, and then he said, 'Oh, he's alright,' like someone had asked for his opinion… It was sort of funny, really… What's wrong?"

Olivia shook her head to indicate nothing at all, then, to the added confusion of her friend, smiled a small, secret sort of smile. "He is alright, isn't he, Remus Lupin, I mean?"

Marlene frowned and seemed to consider the question in earnest. "Well, I don't know… We only ever see him in Potions and Charms. I don't think much of his friends," she concluded. "They're always causing trouble, and I guess they think it's awfully funny… Remember, last year, when they transfigured Severus Snape's frog liver into raw beef, and Snape's Euphoria Elixir seized up, then suddenly boiled over, and splattered everyone nearby?"

Olivia nodded. "Yes. That wasn't very funny, was it?"

Marlene shook her head. "No, not at all… It was funny, though, when Lily Evans charmed some of the elixir to fly at Potter. Now, do you want to finish that Ancient Runes translation? Because we never did get to work in the library, and these hieroglyphics are perfectly dreadful! Oh, I'll never pass my N.E.W.T.!"

Olivia gazed dumbly at Marlene for a moment as if she couldn't understand her. "Oh, homework… The hieroglyphics are no harder than the Celtic alphabet. Really, I think they're sort of fun." Olivia took a large roll of parchment and a thick textbook from her bag. "Here, I've already begun…"

Through out dinner, Olivia kept glancing over at Gryffindor table, just in case Remus did turn up. After all, she reasoned, it would be rude not to smile at him, after our talk in the hall… That is, if he notices me and smiles himself. And if he doesn't notice me, or if he doesn't turn up at all, it doesn't matter, really. How could it matter? It couldn't!

But however unimportant Remus's presence at dinner was to Olivia, the fact remained that she was distinctly disappointed when it became clear that he wasn't going to come. And neither, apparently, were James Potter, Sirius Black, or Peter Pettigrew, his three Gryffindor friends.

Olivia puzzled over the matter as she prepared for bed that night. She sat on the windowsill and brushed her hair, staring absentmindedly at the reflection of the full moon on the smooth black surface of the lake and wondered, occasionally reminding herself that whatever the answer was, it couldn't possibly be very interesting, anyway.