Paige really was beginning to feel as though this whole thing was pointless. She did not know anyone here besides Adam, and he had long since disappeared with some pretty redhead into some dark corner, and Paige certainly was not about to go in after them. Matters were really not aided by the fact that everyone was wearing a mask. She remembered a time not too long ago when she would have loved to attend a masquerade and just lose herself in the masses. However, now that she was here, supposedly working on a case, all the fun had been neatly siphoned off in an instant. How was she supposed to recognize someone she had never met while he was wearing a mask?

"This is silly," she muttered to herself. Adam was not even attending to his responsibilities. Unless his responsibilities now included examining the undergarments of redheaded women.

Paige gathered her skirts and pushed her way through the crowd to the bar. Maybe a little wine would make the evening pass more smoothly, she thought as she listened to the lush rustling of her gown. Good Lord, this gown must have cost Adam a fortune.

"Best glass of red you've got," she ordered as she reached the bar, momentarily letting her accent slip.

A man to her right turned about suddenly. He took one glance at her in shock before he turned to the bartender. "Let that glass of red be on me."

"Thank you," Paige said, remembering her accent, "but I'm afraid I don't know you at all, and I'm here with a friend anyway. A man friend. Big. Large. Not the sort you would want to mess with."

"But I do know you. And you know me. You let your accent slip just now, Meadowes."

Paige was fairly lucky to have a barstool handy before her or she might have simply slumped to the floor in disbelief. "Reems?"

"I notice you really weren't joking about the hair," he said by way of conformation.

Paige jumped on him and crushed him in a hug. "What on Earth are you doing in California?"

Remus ignored her questions as he looked her over. "My God, Paige, you are absolutely gorgeous. You've hardly ever looked more beautiful."

"Well, thanks, but I asked you—"

Remus snapped his eyes back up to her face. "Right. Well, I would imagine I'm here for the same reason that you are."

"And?"

"Absolutely no luck. Not that I'm of any use in these party settings anyway. I'm rubbish at social settings. Prongs and Pads are the men for that."

Paige gnawed compulsively at her bottom lip. "Right. Those two doing well?"

Remus leveled a gaze at her through his well-crafted mask. "They've been better."

"Is he still bad?" she asked, wrinkling her nose as if to prepare for the worst.

"Yeah." A pause. "Well, he'll get over it. He's being a big idiot about it, really."

Paige sipped her wine. "That sounds like him."

Remus gazed at her again. "You really are pretty tonight, Paige."

"Thank you, old friend," she said and planted a kiss on his cheek. She pulled herself fully onto the barstool and began to sip her wine more earnestly now. After a few minutes, she spoke again. "I don't suppose you've seen Adam anywhere, have you?"

"I haven't the faintest who that is," he replied and pushed away his empty glass. "Now, I'm going to ask you to do something that is completely uncharacteristic, and I'm going to ask you to dance."

Paige set down her wine glass firmly. "Oh, come off it. I danced with you at Halloween seventh year, and at almost every subsequent gathering with music, friends, and slightly inebriated guests."

Remus smiled. "Is that so? Well, in that case, let me ask you this," he said as he took her hand, "How many times have I asked you to dance compared to how many times we've danced together?"

Paige thought about this. "That's a rather low ratio, isn't it?"

Remus nodded and placed his free hand on Paige's waist. She moved closer to him with a wink and a smile. He tried to repress a nervous gulp, but he couldn't help himself; he only hoped Paige hadn't noticed. The whole ordeal, of him being sent out to California by Dumbledore as backup for an American scout, and then just happening to run into Paige who just happened to be the scout… well, it was simply too surreal, and frankly, too suspect. And yet, here she was, the first woman he had ever loved, dancing in his arms and looking more beautiful than ever.

"Remus?"

"Er, yes?"

"You're looking at me funny."

"Am I? I'm sorry."

"What are you thinking?"

"Nothing, really. Well, I mean, I was sort of thinking about you."

"You were?" Paige seemed absolutely thrilled by the idea. "And what were you thinking about me?"

"Well, how nice it is to see you in person again. And how pretty you look. And about those months when we were dating." Which was essentially true, he told himself.

"Oh." Remus could have sworn her cheeks colored just a bit. "Yeah, those were good times, weren't they?"

He nodded.

Paige tilted her head to the side. "You know, I never meant to hurt you. I cared about you very, very much. I was just so afraid of how you felt, and of how I felt. I'm really ashamed of how I acted now."

"That was years ago. No harm done, love." Uh oh. Remus knew this feeling, and he knew it well. This was a Dangerous Feeling. This was Infatuation. And if Remus knew anything about Infatuation, he knew that, often in his case, it was quickly followed by Madly in Love. But that didn't stop him from letting Paige rest her head on his shoulder. In fact, he was hardly surprised when he noticed that he was instinctively wrapping his arms further around her waist. It's being done in a protective, older brother fashion, he told himself sternly. Paige is Off-Limits. With a capital O and a capital L. That meant it was doubly important that he stayed away.

"Oh, Remus, why did I ever let you slip away?" Paige sighed.

"I don't think I slipped away. I think I was rather shoved off a cliff."

Paige laughed and pushed herself back. "I thought there were no hard feelings about that."

"There aren't," he replied and found his self-control once more now that Paige was no longer quite so close.

Paige was not doing much better. She was absurdly close to unabashedly flirting with Remus in an utterly unprofessional manner. And while on the job, too. She did not understand in the least what she was doing, or why she was doing it, but somehow it just felt right.

How exactly Paige found herself kissing Remus in her room remained a mystery until her dying day. She remembered inviting him back to her room for a drink after a truthfully unsuccessful mission. She remembered pouring the drinks. She remembered his sudden presence behind her as she was doing so. She remembered how he called her by her real name.

And she supposed that that one word had been her undoing.

"Cassy," he said softly.

She closed her eyes and gripped the edge of the table to steady herself. It had been so long since anyone had called her by her real name.

He reached out and with the tips of his fingers touched her bare arm, just below the sleeve of her gown. It was almost as though she could feel the individual nerve cells in her body relaying that touch to her brain before it reverberated throughout her body. She turned around cautiously.

Remus took hold of her face in his hands and smiled. Cassy waited.

And then, Remus, with his heart beating a million beats a minute, leaned in and gave Cassy the purest, loveliest kiss she had ever been given.

In reply, Cassy led Remus to the bedroom and sat him down on the edge of the bed before she took her seat next to him and returned his kiss, this time with feeling. He was about as surprised by her actions as he had been when he had first spotted her at the gala a few hours ago. He reached out and grasped her bare arm, and that smallest of touches erupted and echoed throughout his body until he wanted to feel his entire body pressed against hers. She responded by lacing her fingers with his and squeezing tightly, savoring the feeling of the rough skin of his palm against hers.

Remus's hand swept up to the neckline of her desk and tugged one sleeve down over her shoulder as he leaned in to plant a kiss in the hollow formed above her collarbone. The sensation sent shivers dancing down Cassy's spine until she could bear it no longer. She wanted him so much she feared she would start to cry. Reaching up, she slid her arms into his jacket and pushed it off with a fluid motion. He shrugged the jacket to the floor and loosened his tie. Cassy then wasted no time in unbuttoning his shirt. As she reached the final button, however, Remus let out a hiss and jerked back from where he had been engaging in a lovely lip-lock with his friend.

"I'm sorry," Cassy said immediately. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Cassy…"

"Oh, no, don't you dare try to act righteous with me, Remus Lupin!" she cut him off indignantly, for she knew him all too well. "We are here because we are adults who very much want to be here, so don't you dare start asking me what we're doing here because that will thoroughly ruin the mood!"

"It's just… Are you sure you want to do this?" he wondered aloud, reaching out to touch Cassy's cheek. There were tears in her eyes. "That you want to be with me tonight?"

She inched even closer, chest heaving as though she were holding back a flood of raw emotion that was threatening to overtake any sense of composure she still maintained. "There is absolutely no other place on this planet I would rather be than with you."

Remus sighed and pulled Cassy into a kiss. She reached for his belt buckle, but he stopped her again, and now, a flicker of a smile was creeping into the corners of his mouth. "No. My turn, if you insist on spending time with me."

Cassy raised one eyebrow and smirked delightedly as Remus pulled her to her feet. Gently, he spun her around until he was facing her back. His hands ran down the back of her neck, her shoulders, and down her sides before he decided that exposed skin where neck met shoulder was in dire need of a kiss. As Cassy noticeably trembled under Remus's lips, he glided his hands back to the zipper that ran down the center of the dress. Slowly, he slid the zipper down, trying to stretch the time they had together. Once he had managed to fully unzip the gown, he took his time pushing the rich folds of fabric off her arms and past her hips. She stood still, and he knew it was because she feared (as did he) that if she moved, that if he moved any faster, the spell would be broken.

"Step back, towards me," he instructed and held her hand to guide her. She obeyed, stepping cautiously out of the mound of fabric on the floor. Now, she turned around to face him.

"I do believe we are equal now."

"Not quite," he said. "Exactly how many skirts are you wearing?"

"Just the one petticoat, Reems; you can be so clueless sometimes," she sighed in a joking manner and slipped out of the petticoat. Remus gazed at her long legs enclosed in tights and a fancy garter belt he knew would give him trouble later on as she discarded the petticoat on top of her gown. "Now," she stated, "It's my turn."

"Now, I will agree with you," he said and smiled.

Cassy focused intently on the task at hand and (perhaps a little too expertly) pulled his unbuckled belt free of his pants and allowed it to fall free from her grasp. With delicate fingers, she steadily unbuttoned and unzipped his dress pants and let them too slide to the floor. He took this as his cue to kick off his dress shoes and his pants simultaneously and was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly he was able to do so.

Suddenly, she darted forward, closing what space was left between them and enfolding Remus in a tight embrace. With an unsettling shock, he came to the realization that she could feel him hard against her, but when she did not recoil, he forced himself to relax ever so slightly. Finally she looked up into his eyes.

"Please don't smile at me with such sad eyes," she said in something resembling a whisper.

Oh dear, how was he supposed to respond to that? At a loss for any words that made sense when strung together, he decided that a kiss would be the best reply he could think of. He pressed his lips to hers a little harder than before as if to assure her that he would try his best. After a long moment (Minutes? Hours? Did he care?), Cassy broke the kiss and hugged him again.

Tenderly, she whispered into his ear. "I want you, Remus. Please."

This woman would be his undoing, Remus knew. He walked around Cassy and reached for the ties that laced Cassy into her corset.

"I cannot believe that you are actually wearing one of these things," he noted quietly.

"It's the same one I was wearing to the Halloween ball our seventh year," she informed him and glanced over her shoulder at him as memories of that night flooded his mind.

"That feels like a very long time ago," he murmured and began the long process of unlacing the corset. Finally, he freed her from the complicated garment and was staring at her bare back. She spun around and revealed herself to him. He thought he had never seen anything lovelier. He knelt down so that his eyes were level with the top of her legs and rubbed his arms over the sides of her legs as an excuse to examine how exactly her garter belt worked. When he discovered that it was nothing more than a few simple clasps, he set to work and soon hooked his fingers into the tops of her tights and slid them down, leaving behind a trail of kisses as he undressed her legs.

As soon as her feet were free, Cassy pulled Remus back into a standing position and crushed her mouth to his. With less grace and more unadulterated passion now, she pulled him forward and on top of her as she fell back onto the bed. They continued to kiss for heaven knows how long, and soon, it felt less like the interlocking of lips and more like the entwining of kindred spirits. Remus had forgotten how lovely Cassy tasted, just as Cassy had forgotten just affectionate Remus really was. And soon, the pair was ready to admit to one another that they could stay like that, lying in each other's arms for eternity. But then something stirred deep within Cassy—a new desire—and she allowed her fingertips to slip under the elastic of Remus's boxers.

And suddenly all bets were off. And soon they lay completely exposed to one another. Hands roamed over smooth curves and old scars, discovering new features of old friends. Lips met, tongues battled, and the bodies of the two friends – and now lovers – pressed together with an urgent need to feel one another. And soon they were sweating and breathing hard and twisting and tangling the sheets around them and whispering and shouting and murmuring each other's name. Cassy felt as though every nerve ending were trembling with sensations she had never felt before. Remus could only smile when he saw how he could make Cassy feel. And soon they were satisfied and full and encircled in the other's loving embrace. There was nothing more to say now that they had found one another again. And soon Cassy was asleep while Remus watched over her until he, too, drifted off to sleep.