The furious scratching of quill on parchment was what Gabriela needed on most days to take away from the constant buzzing in her mind. Though, as of late, the noise reduced and amplified in waves, it was therapeutic to listening to the subtle white noise of her writing as she settled in the library for a day of studying. It was a wonderful Saturday morning, the boys were still in bed, and the sunlight streamed through the stained-glass windows, warming the room as Spring's impending arrival warmed the Scottish landscape. All was well.

That was, of course, until someone sat directly across from the winged girl, patiently waiting for her to look up. With a sigh, Gabby dog-eared the page she was reading and rested her quilled hand away from the parchment. As a testament of her progress in controlling her emotion-fueled demonic magic, the girl managed to make direct eye contact with the Hufflepuff sixth year that had called her a demented magpie while at Hogsmeade a few days before. She did, however, offer up a silent prayer that for a mere second Remus could gave a moment of clairvoyance and decide that he absolutely needs to go to the library.

"Hi, doll." Gabriela wanted to wretch at her use of the moniker that the boys, and now Lily, for some reason, were so fond of using. "I'm so terribly sorry for the misunderstanding at Hogsmeade over Christmas break. Candace is just so jealous of you." This made the silent girl smirk, knowing the Huffie was willing to throw her friend under the bus (I guess not all of them were diamonds), and waited with baited breath for the rest of her statement as she pulled her hair into a bun with ink-stained hands. "I shouldn't speak ill, but she's always wanted to have wings, but you, like, pull them off. She hasn't the shoulders for it, honestly. Anyway, I just wanted to apologize. Also, pass that along to Remus, the poor dear. He didn't have to take time from his holiday to talk to them. I was going to do it myself the second we got back to the common room." She directed a megawatt smile to her silent hostage, who replied with a polite nod of her head, flipping her book open once more to continue with her work. "Speaking of Remus…"

Where the heck is that werewolf and his posse when you need them? She slammed the book closed once more and sighed.

"Is he seeing anyone at the moment?" The girl, Clark, she thought her name was, was playing with the ends of her hair in an innocent manner. She could see the sparkly varnish on her nails and the tiny CE + RL carefully written in tiny type onto every other one. Gabriela thought she might vomit.

Right eye twitching with the effort to remain calm, she replied in typical Ravenclaw fashion. "I reckon he's still asleep, so, I don't think so."

Clark fake laughed, giggling obnoxiously in an exaggerated manner at the quip. "You're so funny." She rather thought that the word funny was dipped in some very potent venom, the way she said it. "You, innocent flower! I meant, is he dating anyone?"

"Uhm… Lupin doesn't really date," she started, noting in her mind that it wasn't exactly a lie. He hadn't dated anyone. "He's more of a 'I met one girl and fell in love' kind of bloke." Still not a lie. He had met exactly one female in first year and he had promptly decided the quest for a significant other was over. "I mean, there's the odd snog in between, but very rarely." Of course, she didn't have to mention that the odd snogs had also been her. Particularly the first time they were allowed butterbeer at Hogsmeade.

The Hufflepuff's heart melted. "That is so cute. I bet he's told you all about it. You seem like such great friends."

"Hey. 'Morning, doll." Remus' voice emerged from the stacks behind the table, as he strode, still in his pajamas and sleep clearly still clinging onto every fiber of his being, towards Gabriela. "Bed empty, no note; all to saunter off to study without me, eh?" His fingers tangled into her hair, gently cradling her head in his hands and kissed the top of her head affectionately. Gabriela was still staring at the other girl across the table.

"I couldn't bare waking you," she said with a smile, remembering how the man had been face-down, sprawled out at odd angles on the bed, mumbling in his sleep. "Why are you here now, though?" She asked, finally looking away from Clark to stare at Remus and his tussled blond hair with curiosity.

He rubbed his sternum absent-mindedly as he sidled onto the bench beside her. "The… er… furry little problem woke me up rather insistently. I just wound up here."

"Sleepover? Fun! I love a good pajama party," Clark interjected, leaning forward across the table at Remus, who, Gabriela noticed, was trying very hard not to bat her away with one of Gabby's books. His hands itched over the spine of a particularly heavy Arithmacy tome, toying with the possibility.

"That's… great, Easterling." He replied, forcing a jovial smile on his face before turning back to Gabriela and mouthing what the fuck?

Returning a please help me look at him, she announced. "Clark here wanted to extend her condolences for the misunderstanding at Hogsmeade." The girl puffed up with pride, adjusting her clothing while she swooned at the Gryffindor.

"That's delightful. I rather hope it wasn't my warning that was misunderstood. I hope that part remains crystal clear." His tone was still friendly, but the Hufflepuff's charisma fell a bit. "Let's get breakfast," he murmured to girl at his side, playfully shoving her, causing a smile to blossom on her face.

"I need to finish my homework, so we can study for N.E.W.T.s, you sod."

Remus groaned turning it into a whine as he pressed his forehead to her temple. "Counter-offer. We grab breakfast to take to the dorm, we wake the others and then we study for tests, together." She opened her mouth to protest, but Remus took the opportunity to tilt her chin towards him and press his lips on hers with an easy smile. Gabriela rolled her eyes at his tactics, but kissed him all the same, noting that his hands were around her waist and pulling her closer to him with a grin. "Don't make me beg. You know I'll do it," he said in a low voice, which almost made her snort. Now, he was laying it on a little thick. Gabby could count on one hand the amount of times they had kissed outside of small pecks and smooches up in the dorm, knowing that neither of them was fond of any public displays of affection. His lips pressed on a spot on her neck that, for some reason, made her want to set everything around them on fire, and she didn't care if the castle went down in flames. Remus pulled back rather quickly, a smirk tugging at the left corner of his mouth as he moistened his lips with his tongue, hand rubbing his sternum once more.

"Fine," she conceded, if a little shaken by the odd turn the conversation had taken. "It's been a pleasure talking to you, Clark, but we've got plans, it seems. Boys," she commented, a little condescendingly, as she threw her things into her schoolbag, which Remus gladly took, and left the confused -and a little miffed- Clark Easterling to stare confusedly at the spot where the pair had just been. "You are a terrible human being, Remus John Lupin," she hissed as the pair entered the hallway, hand-in-hand.

He hummed briefly, as if musing. "Charming character quirk?" He asked, hopeful smile etched on his face.

"Awful. Just, fracking awful." She laughed, despite herself. "How'd you know where I was?"

"I told you. Moony was very insistent. I don't know how he knew it, but he did." Remus replied, distracted, as they turned down an unfamiliar corridor.

"This isn't the way to the Great Hall or the kitchens, Rem."

The boy just grinned broadly. "Oh, I know," he conceded as he opened a door behind him and pulled her in with a giggling squeal. Before he had even slammed the door of the unused classroom shut, he had clamped his mouth over the spot he found earlier. The two would find out, shortly after, that Hogwarts had six scroll-long forms for incident reports regarding fires. Forms they had to fill out in disheveled, singed clothing, and impish smiles on their faces.

They wished that were where the accidental arson ended. "Gabs, my robes! Really?" James muttered, as he patted the remaining smoldering bits of his robes, leaving a galleon-sized hole in them.

"I know. I'm sorry! Nightmare!" She replied, her wand flicking carefully at James' robes to repair the damage. It was the middle of the night and all the occupants had woken up to the whole dorm room shaking before bits and pieces began catching on fire.

"This is the third time in a fortnight. What is up with you?" Sirius asked, finally managing to put the flames out on his pillow.

Gabriela shrugged, unaware of Remus putting out the flames of several feathers behind her. "I'm not sure. My waking control is aces now, but when I sleep it's like I can't keep my magic asleep."

"So, sleeping and shagging in empty classrooms. Is that pretty much when it goes awry?" He countered, a wicked smile on his face.

"That was a one-time accident!" Remus exclaimed, blushing a violent shade of red.

"You got the whole of the third-floor west corridor forbidden!"

"We put most of it out!" Gabriela muttered, thinking it had been a bit of a dramatic measure to forbid a part of the castle no one went into, anyway. "Maybe I should just sleep in the Shack." She mumbled, pouting severely despite the fact that Remus was affectionately smoothing back her hair and mumbling sweet nothings into her ear.

James made an impatient noise. "Oh, come on, Gabs. It's not that bad. We just need to find out what's causing the impromptu barbeques and we can stop them. Until then, maybe we go to Madame Pomfrey for some dreamless sleeping draught for you."

The sleeping draught, however, had not helped. Instead of having a girl that would light things up in nightmares and would stop once awake or the nightmare ended, they spent a night dealing with irrepressible, uncontrollable amounts of magic coming from an entity that could not be woken up. After a particularly active night, Gabriela found herself stuffing some of her clothes and some blankets into a rucksack and marching towards the Shrieking Shack before any of the boys had the opportunity to protest. To her surprise, although it shouldn't really surprise her, Remus had already been there most of the afternoon, fixing up the bedroom and laying down additional wards to protect against her accidents.

"Remus, what are you doing here?" She asked, putting her bag down, and admiring the straightened posters on the bed, the repaired curtains and the layers of warm, fluffy sheets packed on top of it. As much as she wanted to sound exasperated, she was secretly pleased that Remus had seen through her thinly-veiled excuses throughout the day. Even though there was nothing inherently haunting about the Shrieking Shack (other than the young werewolf, once a month), it gave her the creeps to remain alone in the building.

"Well, I have this friend— cute as a button— who's been spending way too much time with Sirius developing a flair for the overly-dramatic and ran away from home." He replied, stepping back from his handy work, and smirking in her direction. "You honestly think I would ever let you stay in here alone? The lads were livid that you were even considering this. Peter was near tears!"

Gabriela frowned, sadly. If she knew anything about the boys, they were probably feeling betrayed that she thought they couldn't handle her and her bouts of accidental, sleep-laden magic. There was never a challenge that they backed down from, and she was basically just taking the challenge away from them. It was, in their odd Marauder minds, an unfair decision. "I'm sorry. I was thinking about their welfare in the tower. I mean, if that dorm room starts burning, we'd never get out of there alive. So, I'm just thinking about the safety hazard, not the boy's ability to handle all this bullspit."

His smile was so wide it crinkled his eyes, clearly amused by her analysis and the fact that her vocabulary now lived either in the realm of a rambunctious elderly woman or sailor on shore for leave. There was no in between. "Good. Because they already brought their stuff over. They're getting us all dinner and will be back at sundown."

She chuckled, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. "Of course, they are. Why wouldn't they be?"

"So, until then," he began, a glimmer in his eyes causing Gabriela to look at him apprehensively. "Fancy a shower?"

Her small nose furrowed at the suggestion. "Do I need a shower? Is there a sulfur and brimstone quality about me right now?" She inhaled deeply, not noting anything odd other than her vanilla-scented lotion, but she could be wrong.

Remus laughed, closing the space between them and embracing her. "I think you smell fantastic." His hands rubbed up and down the length of her arms, and his eyes darted from her eyes to her lips every few seconds.

"Oh. Oh!" She struggled for words for a few seconds before deciding that kissing him was a better use for her time.

Not long after, Sirius, James and Peter shuffled into the trapdoor, under the shack, finding Remus and Gabriela sitting at the chairs around the kitchen table, giggling like children, covered in heavy blankets. They were both sopping wet, their hair plastered to their head, mostly because they had forgotten to bring any towels, but partly because they had not had much time to escape the bathroom after the pipe had burst and they had run into the room to retrieve their wands.

"What did you do?" Peter asked, eyeing Gabriela suspiciously, her teeth chattering and her wings drooping, waterlogged. His eyes switched to Remus, who, like a good Marauder was sitting back, calmly, with a certain swagger that bespoke of his deeds. He also noted that his friend had a long, angry red burn running up his arm towards his shoulder.

"There's only a cold tap on the shower, by the way," Remus commented, all of a sudden interested in his nails, before Gabby sneezed, and her blanket caught fire.

The "demonic sniffles", a term affectionately coined by Sirius, was, apparently, the second step to the fire-engulfing nightmare that had become the friends' lives. It had started during Transfiguration. While they practiced turning animate objects in other animate objects, a rogue sneeze had accidentally lit the tail of the cat-form instructor on fire. Although the older teacher continuously assured Lively that it was an accident and that it was fine, there was a certain degree of annoyance when she had inspected the smoldering section at the back of her robes. For the safety for the class, she was asked to refrain to from practicing spells, in case she started sneezing again.

Sniffles devolved into bizarre activity a few days later when, during Defense, they were asked to review the Patronus charm for their upcoming N.E.W.T. examination. The boys had had no issue with calling their Patronuses, the animals bouncing around in the air above, inspecting the emerging forms of other student's protectors as they were called forth from the ether. Gabriela had only ever conjured a full-form Patronus once. It had been a little runt of a wolf, a cub, who had animatedly chased after Remus' own wolf, as if recognizing its sibling. Concentrating on a happy memory, she pointed her wand up in the air and exclaimed, "Expecto Patronum!" What came out of her wand was not the silvery, fluid-like substance she was expecting, but a thick, black smog. The smog formed an amorphous blob with shining red eyes that went around eating the other Patronuses with a wide, misshapen mouth. She dropped her wand in terror just as Sirius fell into a fit of bark-like laughter at seeing the giant demon leave nothing but a lone wolf Patronus roaming the air above them.

"It really wasn't that bad, Gabs," James insisted, for the seventh time, as they walked towards the Great Hall for lunch.

"I set a demon onto everyone's Patronus, James!" She shrieked back, exasperated. "It ate them!"

"It's not like you meant for it to happen," Peter added, trying to find a silver lining.

Gabriela swayed, prompting the others to stop their walking. James grabbed hold of her arm to steady her, his eyes locked in on the dark bags under her eyes and sallow face that had not been there this morning. "You with us, Gab?" Before he could finish his question in earnest, her legs gave out from under her, knees buckling, leaving James hanging onto her arm, as he gently lowered her to the floor. "I'm going to Madame Pomfrey, you go get Sirius and Remus!"

The hospital wing was far too quiet for their liking. The ominous dripping of potions, coupled with the occasional shuffle of the nurse looking for supplies made their hair stand on end. It was never good when a trip here was reduced to a waiting game. Remus sat next to Gabriela's bed, watching the girl as she lay there, motionless. When she passed out, her magic had once again gone crazy; random objects exploding, beds catching on fire, chairs shaking. The nurse had no choice but to place the girl into a state of stasis. She was hibernating, or so it had been explained. It seemed to Remus that she looked far too close to being dead. He shuddered, remembering when Gabby's mother had died. He attended the funeral with her because he knew that she would not want to face it alone. He remembered her body's vaguely waxy complexion as she lay in the casket. Gabby had been the spitting image of her mother.

"What's the news, mate?" Sirius asked, quietly for once, as he entered the infirmary.

Remus cleared his throat, the knot in his windpipe shifting, but not going away. "Er… Poppy's not sure what's going on. This isn't exactly run-of-the-mill magic. She's looking into it, but she had to put her into like a hibernation." He sniffled, his hand reaching over to hold hers. "She… um, said that she might wake her up once a week until N.E.W.T.s and then until she figures it out."

Sirius sputtered, outrage about the news clear in his face. "N.E.W.T.s? Those are ages away! She doesn't think she'll have a solution by then!?" His ire reduced once he saw his best friend break down into tears. "Shit, I'm sorry, Remus." His voice had softened, and he took a seat on the next bed over, patting the werewolf on the back.

"What the fuck have we missed? We've read every book in the library. We've asked everyone we could think of." His voice was tight, and he was trying the hardest he could to keep the reaction he wanted to have, destroying half the Hospital wing, under control. It wasn't easy when Moony was just as restless and upset as he was. "This isn't even her fucking fault! It wasn't even her goddamn mistake. FUCK!"

Black hopped from the bed, wrapping an arm around Remus' shoulders as he sobbed, his own eyes tearing up. "I know, mate. I know."