Chpt. 15 - GNO

It was Guys Night Out/Girls Night Out. The guys had left already. All the girls were in the Head Dorm common room. They sat in their PJ's in a circle on the floor. Chris excused herself from the group to go get some popcorn from the kitchens. While she was away, the other girls whispered among themselves. The smell of extra butter drifted over to them, and Chris appeared with a giant punch bowl full. She set it down on the floor in the middle of the circle and sat down. Christiana had barely touched the ground when Av asked the question she had been dreading.

"Where did Remus take you?"

Her four best friends looked at her expectantly. Remus had given her permission to tell them, but she didn't know if she was able to. It took some prying, but eventually she told them all she knew. By the time she was finished telling his story, she was crying. Laura and Marlene reached over and embraced her. It was hard for all of them to imagine a life where they were afraid of killing others, and everything was outside of their control. Their hearts ached for Remus, and they took solace in the fact that he had his three loyal friends to count on. The girls wiped their eyes and tried to calm themselves down. Lily fiddled with the rug as she began to speak.

"So that's where the boys go off to. I kinda wondered why GNO always happened on the night of a full moon. It seemed kind of... odd."

"Yeah. But how can they go with him anyway? Is it just a cover-up so he isn't the only one to disappear? Or what?" asked Av.

Christiana knew the answer to this one.

"No, they all go with him. I'm not sure how this all works but I do know that they use a secret passage way and go out onto the grounds. How they do that without being caught - I have no idea. But they go to the Whomping Willow. They must do something so he doesn't attack or hurt them, I guess. I know there is this opening in the roots and they slide down it into a tunnel. The tunnel actually leads to the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade. No wonder people thinks it's haunted. Of course Remus must howl and bite and run around in there."

"But I still don't get it. How come James and Sirius and Peter aren't dead? So... how could a werewolf refrain himself from biting, killing... eating three wizards when their locked up in a house with him? And if they found some anti-werewolf cure, why not share it with everyone else?" Lily thought aloud, to which Laura simply replied, "I don't know..."

Suddenly, Marlene interrupted the silence, "I am not sure if this is the right thing to do… but I have to talk to you guys. And it feels right to say it now..." Confused, they looked up from their thoughts and focused their attention on their friend. She was fingering the ring on her left finger. No one had really noticed before, even though she clearly had it on the whole time, they would have noticed her putting it on. Looking back, none of them even remembered seeing it on her hand before that moment. Confused, they all drew closer to get a better look at it. She held out her hand for everyone to see. It was gorgeous. One diamond in the center and an emerald set on each side of it.

"MAR, YOU'RE ENGAGED! When did this happen? To who? Oh... my... gosh!" shrieked her best friend. Lily's hands stopped tugging on her shining red hair and switched to holding up Marlene's shining ring. But then, seeing her friends uneasy expression, she stopped, and let her friend continue.

"Well... I'm married, actually," She went on in spite of the gaping faces around her. "You sort of guessed part of that already. But... Uhm… its to... Walden Macnair…?" Marlene paused for her friends reactions. She waited a long time, but eventually Laura was the first to say something.

"Well, no wonder you didn't want to tell anyone! He is a Slytherin."

Laura received a room of mixed emotions from her friend's faces at this comment, but she continued.

"That's where you've been sneaking off to all year, isn't it…? Sneaky, sneaky! Hey! Why were we not invited to the wedding? Seriously? That's cruel!"

The other girls complained in agreement with Laura. Marlene decided she should tell them the whole story. She started out by telling them this was highly top secret. She wasn't sure if they should know, but she thought that it would be okay with Dumbledore. A feeling of extremely curiosity fell over the hushed group. Marlene skipped most of the mushy details, but she explained how even though she didn't know why exactly it happened in the first place, all she knew was she was so glad that it had. And how, if anyone found out, something bad could possibly happen; what, she didn't know. That was why he was still following Bellatrix around all the time. Marlene told them how amazing he was, and all of their plans. They would officially honeymoon in France after the end of the semester, when school was out. Someday, hopefully sooner than later, they wanted to have a little boy and girl, and name him Finnick, after Walden's father, and her Ellie, after Marlene's mother. They couldn't wait much longer to officially start their life together as a family. When she finished her tale, the girls were crying and laughing and hugging and jumping and eating popcorn. After another hour or so of gossip, they all were so disoriented and deflated that they just dozed off one by one.

Lily stayed up past everyone else, tossing and turning in her sleep. Around 5 o'clock in the morning, she got up and walked around, when something outside the window caught her eye. It was a stag. Lily thought this the school grounds were an odd place to find a deer, so she continued to peer out the glass. Following the stag was a black dog, with some other small critter that she couldn't quite make out alongside it. And behind the dog... was Remus Lupin.

A/N: Can I just say that when I wrote the original draft of this YEARS ago, Suzanne Collin's had not yet published The Hunger Games books. So, kuddos to past me for coming up with a soon to be popular name for Walden's daddio! ;)