A/N: Remus's POV

Tuesday morning was Herbology. Typically, I wasn't thrilled with morning classes in general, especially Herbology, but for some reason thinking of the way Susanna had smiled at me at breakfast when she asked me to pass the toast left me thinking as I made my way down to the greenhouses with James and Sirius that Herbology and mornings were two of the best things in the world.

"Have you asked Leah yet?"

"Not outright, no," Sirius said, as though his not asking wasn't at all problematic in any way.

Did he not understand my desperation, my absolute need to know the truth of the matter?

"What do you mean, no outright? Why not?" I hissed.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Sirius said sarcastically, "I should have just gone up to one of my best friends and said, 'Hey, Leah, is your baby sister a werewolf? The boy who's madly in love with her but doesn't have the bollocks to do anything about it wants to know.' That would have gone over well."

"Actually, it's Leah," James said reasonably. "It might have."

Sirius just rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"Look, I'm going to work on her, but you have to be patient, Moony," Sirius said testily. "Things like this don't happen overnight."

"If we're being straightforward," James said with a frown, "why don't you just ask her yourself?"

I blanched at the thought of going up to Susanna and asking her, of all things, if she, like me, turned into a monstrous beast once a month because… what if I was wrong?

But what if I was right? Maybe… maybe if we found out about each other and she realized we were the same… maybe she would kiss me. I shuddered a little bit, imagining the feel of her lips on mine….

"Earth to Remus."

I blinked and realized Leah was snapping her fingers in front of my face.

"Sirius arranged it so that we'd be partners for whatever reason. Get your gloves on before the Snargaluff eats one of your fingers."

I turned and glared at Sirius as I put on my dragonhide gloves. Sirius, of course, pretended he didn't see me. I realized suddenly why Sirius hadn't asked her right off about Susanna: He was trying to back me into a corner where I had to ask. Well, two could play this game and I wasn't going to be the first to crack for once.

"How are you this morning, Leah?" I said casually as I fished around for a set of goggles.

"Sirius said you needed to ask me about something," she said, not even attempting to let me beat around the bush. She and Susanna had that in common, I'd noticed, although Susanna was much more forgiving with me, just as Leah was more forgiving with Sirius….

Oh, no, Susanna and I would end up like Leah and Sirius, the most platonic people on the planet.

My love life was doomed for the rest of time.

"Remus?" she demanded. "Just come out with it. I'm not going to judge you, you know that."

"I had a thought," I said softly, "it's probably stupid."

Leah sighed.

"Remus, you can be accused of many things, but stupidity is most definitely not one of them. Now come on, out with it."

I frowned. What was I able to be accused of, then? Over-tolerance, perhaps, where Sirius and James were concerned, ultra-hesitation where Susanna was concerned…. But sitting around making a list wasn't making progress, I realized, and she was still looking at me, exasperated.

"Susanna's got quite bad health," I remarked casually.

"Yeah, she does," Leah said, frowning. "It's something she's working on with Madam Pomfrey. I try to stay out of it as much as possible because mum and dad ride her about it all the time and she doesn't need another voice telling her what to do. I get injured, Suzy gets sick. Of course, it's easier to pinpoint the cause of mine, it's Quidditch, but for Suzy there are all sorts of contributing factors."

I was so frustrated. She hadn't told me anything I hadn't been hearing for years.

"She likes her steak pretty raw," I said, trying to make it a casual, seemingly unrelated conversation.

Leah cocked her head to the side, considering.

"Yeah, she does, I guess. I don't think that's related to her illness, though, since that would cause stomach problems and she's got more of a respiratory issues going on." Her eyes suddenly grew wide and she said, "Oh. Oh! Remus, no, she's…. You didn't think she…. She doesn't have a furry little problem, Remus, I'm sorry if you got worked up about that…. No, she's really just got some issues with her immune system. Drives Madam Pomfrey up the wall."

I thought I did a decent job of hiding my disappointment as I went about working on pruning the Snargaluff with Leah. She shot me the occasional pitying glance, but I kept my pride and didn't acknowledge her charity-filled expressions and hand-out looks. I would accept none of that.

Susanna would want nothing to do with me. Her passion for werewolf rights was not selfish, as I had so selfishly hoped, but altruistic, and altruism didn't lead to beautiful, blossoming love, but relationships built on pity and attempts to better one's station. But Susanna, angel that she was, couldn't save me.

"Right," I managed to choke out when I realized Leah was still watching me. "Well."

"Remus," she sighed, removing her goggles at the end of class, "it doesn't matter that she's not. She's still head over heels about you. Just talk to her, or kiss her, or whatever feels right. Honestly, you can't go wrong! The one thing I don't recommend is not telling her before she figures it out, though, because if there's one thing she prizes over almost anything, it's trust. She's going to be devastated that you didn't trust her with your furry little secret, but if you tell her out front, that's going to win her over even more."

I wasn't so sure she was right about that, but I liked to think that it would all be okay if I told her, that Sirius and Leah were right. They were probably wrong, though. I prided myself in being right about nearly everything, and I was just sure this was one of those times I was going to be spot on, despite Leah's obvious knowledge of her sister and Sirius's incredible knowledge about relationships and what girls wanted and things like that.

It was an intuition thing.

After Herbology I went to the library to get some reading done in advance. I didn't want to get behind, and if James and Sirius kept up their intense abilities to get us into trouble, I was going to be shorter on time than I wanted to be when push came to shove.

"I don't know, Mattia," sighed a voice that made the skin on my arms prickle. It was Susanna. "I'm trying to decide if I want to look into specific cases of lycanthropy or not. Professor Kettleburn cautioned that it would be difficult to get anyone to share their stories. They tend to be private people."

My heart was racing as I lingered behind a bookshelf, feeling terrible for listening in, but not being able to pull myself away.

"So what do you think?" Mattia asked. "What do you want to do?"

"I mean, it would be so helpful for my work if I could get real sources. Do you think if I promised they could stay anonymous, I'd be more likely to get people to work with me?"

"You'd have to find someone who'd admit it first. And I don't want to seem prejudiced, but a lot of werewolves aren't particularly savory characters. I'm not saying all of them are by any stretch, but you're going to have to be careful."

I turned over in my brain what Leah had said about telling her before someone she figured it out. Especially if she started talking to other werewolves, she'd figure out sooner rather than later about me. Then she would never look at me favorably again. But if I told her... Maybe there would still be a chance. And I wanted so badly to help her with her research, not just because of what it could do for me personally. I wanted her to succeed because she deserved it.

I grit my teeth and tried to think of a way to help her, to tell her, without really telling her. That way, when the time came, at least I could say I tried but I didn't know how. Trying was worth points, wasn't it?

The thought was what counted.

All right, so I knew that's just what people said to make themselves feel better, but to be honest with myself, I was determined to make it work for me, true or not. With a deep breath, I came out from behind the bookshelf.

A/N: Mattia's POV

When Remus popped up, I wasn't sure what he was going to do. Part of me wanted to give them some privacy, what with the way Susanna looked at Remus, and the way he so obviously was thinking of her when he saw how low she'd unbuttoned her uniform top.

"Remus!" she said with a smile. "What brings you to the library?"

"Books," he said, then realized how stupid that sounded and blushed. "I, um, couldn't help but overhear your conversation."

"Oh, that's fine!" she said eagerly. "Here, have a seat!"

I nearly snorted when I saw her patting the chair that was practically on top of her, it was so close to her own. Remus looked like he'd rather stick his arm down his throat and like he wanted nothing more than to snog her senseless all at once and I found myself puzzling over how it could be possible for someone to look so contradictory all the time.

Well, not all the time. Just where Susanna was concerned, but that was quite a lot of the time.

Part of me thought I should be off to find someone else to hang out with, make an excuse to leave them alone, but I wanted to see their interaction.

He did sit, finally. Then he nervously said, "So, you're thinking of interviewing a werewolf."

"Yeah, although everybody's telling me it's not a very good idea," Susanna said, smiling at him. "What do you think, Remus? Your opinion is very important to me."

If she hadn't been such a good friend, I actually would have gagged. As it was, I found it difficult to hold in. Honestly, the way those two looked at each other it was a wonder they weren't just forgoing everything and shagging right there on the table.

Remus cleared his throat and said, "Well, it is rather dangerous, but I've got a bit of a solution."

I perked up. Was he actually going to just come out and say he was a werewolf? He'd not actually told anyone, we'd all figured it out. Of course it had been suggested to him to just tell her several times, but I hadn't thought he'd actually do it...

"What's that?" she said happily, leaning in quite close to him.

"I happen to know someone who's a werewolf," he said slowly. "He's a very private person and will want to be anonymous, but I think I could convince him to owl you so that you could interview him by correspondence, if that's agreeable to you."

I wanted to groan. I wanted to smack him across the face. I wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him until he just told the poor girl the truth! She wasn't going to care! She wasn't going to judge him! 'I happen to know someone' my foot. Ugh.

"That sounds perfect!" Susanna gushed. The gushing, of course was not about Remus, but about the prospect for her research.

I couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for him, there. The way to that girl's heart was her research, which was surprising for a Hufflepuff, and Remus's usefulness for her research was about to consume how she looked at him. He must have known that, must have realized, so what was he up to? How badly I wanted to read those letters that were going to go back and forth between them, without Susanna even realizing what she had in her hands. He said he'd have his friend get in touch and then she hurried off to prepare questions.

"You should have told her," I said quietly, after a miniature debate with myself on whether or not to get involved. "Leah's going to be disappointed. How do you expect this to work?"

"I don't know," he sighed. "I don't know. She's smart, she'll figure it out, and then she'll hate me."

"She won't hate you," I groaned, but I was sure he'd heard it a thousand times from one person or another. Even Sirius was trying to get him to man up and just kiss her or something. She was so obviously gagging for it. "She will probably be disappointed when she figures it out, though, because you didn't just tell her."

"I can't, Mattia," Remus sighed. "I just can't. Did you see the way she was looking at me, like I was some kind of hero? She would never look at me like that again, and I just couldn't bear it. Do you know what that feels like? Do you know what it's like to have someone look at you like you've saved them but know that if they knew you, really knew you, they'd look at you and feel afraid?"

"Of course I don't," I said softly. "But you're not listening, Remus, you're not listening to any of us." I sighed. "You know what? Never mind. Forget it. Forget I said anything at all and work it out on your own. You're clever, I'm sure you'll figure it out eventually. You're not listening anyway."

And with that uncharacteristic outburst, I stormed away, searching for Alyson or Leah or anyone I could vent at about what had just occurred. The first people I came across, oddly enough, were Leah, Sirius, and Alyson, sitting in a circle around a star chart and pretending to be studying it.

I never did find out what they were actually up to. I was too distracted by my own news to ask at the time and I more or less forgot about it later, but I sat down between Leah and Alyson and said, "You'll never guess what just happened in the library."

"You saw Snivellus trying to shag a book," Sirius guessed.

"No."

"Hypatia Fancourt finally conjured a circus of penguins and had them do a tap dance number?" Alyson said with a small smile.

"Does she actually want to do that, or is that your dream for her?" I laughed. "No, obviously that didn't happen."

"Remus told Suzy about his so-called condition," Leah sighed wistfully.

"You were, unsurprisingly, the closest," I said eagerly. "But you're not going to like what actually happened half so much."

I then proceeded to tell them the conversation I'd been having with Susanna about her research, how Remus joined us and what his supposed solution to her dilemma was.

"He said what?" Sirius roared. "A friend?"

"Someone he knows, actually, I think is what he said," I corrected, frowning as I tried to remember the specifics of the exchange. "But the basics of the scenario remain the same, I suppose."

"I can't believe he would do that," Leah groaned. "This is going to be a disaster, I just know it. Well, there's no talking him out of it now, not now that he's told her he'll help her. You know she's going to figure it out eventually. She'll figure out it's someone at the school and then there'll be hell to pay when she finds out it's Remus."

We all nodded, staring down at the star chart.

"I just got an idea," Sirius said, a fire in his eye as he looked up at Leah. "You just gave me the best idea!"

"What idea?" the three of us asked nervously. Sirius just shook his head.

"You'll see soon enough," he assured us. "I've got to go! I've got to go share my amazing plan! Thanks Leah, you're amazing! I suspect Remus and Suzy will than you eventually, too, you know, after they've heaped their lavish praises and gratitude on me."

And with a wink, he'd taken off to Merlin knows where with remarkable speed that I'd come to attribute to Marauders on a mission. Very few others moved with such speed and conviction.

"What do you think he's on about?" Leah asked in an uneasy voice.

"I'm not sure," Alyson said slowly. "But I suppose it can't be any worse than Remus's own stupidity."

"You underestimate the ability for the Marauders to compound on each other's stupidity," I said, nervous. "It's practically exponential."

We looked off after him in silence. I was trying to remember exactly what Leah had said, trying to think of what sort of idea it would have given him, but I was coming up empty. We turned back to pretending to study the star chart intently until dinner time.

I decided as we sat there that the Marauders were probably going to be the death of us all. Okay, maybe not literally, but at least in the sense that they sort of had a way of bringing down all those around them in their efforts to achieve whatever half-baked ideas they'd come up with. I knew I didn't want to be on the ship when it sank, but I also knew my friends weren't getting off the ship any time soon, so the least I could do, I mused, was make sure all the lifeboats were working properly.