A/N: Claude's POV
Things would probably not calm down for the rest of my time at Hogwarts, and I was fairly prepared to accept that. After all, Mary's death had hit everyone very hard, and the persons responsible had not come to justice, or even been caught to my knowledge. That on its own was enough to make the final months of my time at Hogwarts incredibly chaotic, but of course there had to be more to it.
At dinner on a Thursday night toward the end of April, Professor Dumbledore stood to address the whole school. We were all fairly certain he would make an announcement about Mary. After all, he very rarely made an effort to address the whole school outside of the start and end of term feasts.
"Thank you," he said when the hall had fallen silent. "It is my wish to bring to your attention a rather historic occasion which took place this morning. In the next edition of Dark Creatures Monthly, to be distributed in two weeks time, there will be an article by our own Susanna Papp of Hufflepuff on the lives, natures, and social constructions of werewolves and vampires. This is her second published work and we are all very proud of her."
I glanced over that the Hufflepuff table where Susanna was blushing at the applause that sounded at this announcement. In that moment, I could see what it was that Remus Lupin saw when he looked at her, and while I generally thought Iris was the most beautiful girl in the world, Susanna Papp glowing with pride was certainly a beautiful sight.
From the look on Remus's face, he seemed to think so as well.
Professor Dumbledore raised his hands and the room fell quiet again.
"Let this be a testament," he said, beaming, "that there is no accomplishment beyond your reach. Every student in this school is capable of great things. Whatever your passions, whatever your dreams, do not let anything shake you from your path. With guidance, patience, and discipline, you can achieve anything. As a special treat, we are offering an extra Hogsmeade trip this weekend. Once again, Miss Papp, congratulations."
Susanna blushed even more fiercely as the hall erupted ever more violently with applause. Nothing like getting extra time out of the castle to make you into a proper school celebrity. I reckoned she'd be on even footing with Sirius and James after this, at least for a little while.
"She hadn't told me," Iris said thoughtfully. "Mattia, did Zola mention anything to you?"
"She didn't," Mattia said, cutting her chicken breast with vigor. "But I knew anyway."
There was finality in her voice that suggested she would not want to tell us how she knew, but I knew better than to ask.
"Interesting," Iris said, smiling. "I wonder if she gets free copies. I'd love to read it."
I was interested to read it myself. I'd heard she'd interviewed an actual werewolf anonymously for her research, but hadn't been able to get ahold of a vampire. Werewolves made me…nervous, to say the least. Something about how they could be hidden in plain sight almost all the time was unnerving. But Susanna had assured me that her essay would change my mind, so I would have to see if she was right.
"Well, she won't be available to talk about it this weekend," Mattia said, smirking slightly as she glanced over at the Gryffindor table.
"Why not?" I asked. I looked at her sister, her friends, the Marauders, but nothing seemed unusual to me.
"Seriously?" Iris snorted. "Do you not see how Remus is undressing her with his eyes? They're going on their second real date!"
It had not occurred to me that prior to publishing both works, Susanna might not have much time for a boyfriend. Of course, it all made perfect sense, but I wanted to point out to my girlfriend that Remus nearly always looked at Susanna like that, but I figured Iris wouldn't listen or approve of my input. I held my tongue.
Actually, I wondered, as I ate my pudding, how many students had actually published during their time at school, never mind twice before graduating. Zola Hilton was working on a book, not an essay, so she had yet to actually publish her massive manuscript. Probably the last time someone had accomplished such a thing was Dumbledore himself.
Perhaps I had never given Susanna enough credit, I thought as I went about my patrol that night. After all, I had only ever seen her as Iris's friend, another one of those girls. Bright, yes, but a bit obnoxious and incredibly demanding. And her interests tended toward things that made me uneasy, uncomfortable, and occasionally frightened. How many hours could one girl spend reading Dark texts before something warped her mind? But as she liked to point out when I expressed concern over her tastes, her goal was redeeming the mislabeled, not learning all the secrets of the Dark Arts.
Of course, she could hardly hope to have one without the other.
"Claude," Mattia said, grabbing my arm, "I'm going to take the north and east ends. Can you cover south and west?"
"Erm, aren't we supposed to stick together?"
After Mary's death, I felt a lot less calm about splitting up and walking the castle alone any time of day, but at night every shadow seemed like a corpse.
Mattia raised her eyebrows at me and I knew she wasn't interested in my fears. For all I knew, she had some way of knowing that nothing of consequence was happening that night, and she thought my behavior was cowardly and silly. Of course, Mattia didn't know everything. She couldn't. She just came bloody close to it.
I agreed to take the south and west wings of the fifth floor and paced the south corridor without any incident. Someone's cat had been out hunting, but that was hardly unusual at Hogwarts.
The west corridor began much in the same way. I heard little but my own footfalls until I was about halfway down the corridor. There was a classroom rarely used at the end of the hall, and it was when I had reached the broom cupboard halfway to it that I heard the sound of what was probably a chair being upended.
I pulled out my wand, gripping it tightly. If Mattia had known something bad was going to happen and left me alone, I would kill her myself. I held my breath, feeling my heart pounding in my throat as I inched toward the room, listening for any signs of dripping.
I paused outside the door of the classroom. There was a rustling sound, another rustling sound, but I couldn't tell what exactly was going on. Scrapping – more furniture being moved? I hoped that was all it was. My hands were actually shaking as I undid the locking charm on the door and touched my fingers to the cold doorknob.
Someone inside made a hissing sound, possibly someone in pain, and I swallowed, taking a deep breath to steady myself before inching the door open. If there were too many of them, I would be dead too. But I could not see them, whoever they were, and if I opened the door slowly all the way I would lose the element of surprise. I took another deep breath and pushed the door open violently, my eyes nearly falling out of my head at the sight in front of me.
Instead of someone being killed, tortured, or something otherwise unsavory, Remus and Susanna were snogging on a table in the middle of the room, a chair beside them knocked over, Remus's hands on her uncovered breasts. They seemed so caught up in what they were doing that they didn't notice me, and my fear was quickly replaced by rather embarrassing arousal. I hadn't anticipated how erotic it would be to watch two attractive people snog. And if I was being honest with myself, Susanna and Remus were certainly attractive people.
I said nothing, rooted to the spot, not sure if I should send them off to bed with a warning as a prefect was supposed to do, or sneak back out and lock the door behind me in the hopes they wouldn't notice, as I would hope that Remus would do if he caught Iris and me doing such a thing.
Before I could decide what to do, however, Susanna opened her eyes and saw me staring. I was certain she was going to scream, yell at me, be furious, but instead she began to laugh. At first, Remus didn't find anything unusual about this as he kissed a trail down her neck, but her laughter was so obviously not related to their coupling that he turned to find me standing there, blushing at them.
"Fuck," Remus said, quickly pulling Susanna's shirt closed as she continued to laugh.
"Sorry," I spluttered. "Sorry, I was patrolling. I didn't mean to…."
She giggled again and said, "How long were you standing there, Claude?"
"Not long."
I said it a little too quickly, and I wished I hadn't blushed, but I really hadn't been standing there long. I wasn't some kind of pervert, no matter what my body's automatic responses were. I had no control over my hormones, after all.
Susanna seemed to find this whole thing endlessly amusing, after all, and she said, teasingly as she ran her fingertips along Remus's shoulder.
"What? You weren't about to join us on the understanding that we don't get punished?"
Remus and I exchanged horrified, bewildered looks and Susanna just continued to laugh. Small wonder she and Sirius Black had flirted; their minds were remarkably similar sometimes.
"Relax, boys," she said, buttoning her top swiftly. "I take it you want us to clear out."
"Erm," I muttered, blushing again. "I suppose since Remus is a prefect I could give you guys a free pass, as long as-"
"It's fine," Remus said. "Really. We can go to bed, Claude."
But I thought of how they, like Iris and me, like Sirius and Betsy, would be separated from each other come next September. These last few, precious months of seventh year were the last months of their being together at Hogwarts. I sighed.
"No, no," I insisted. "You two stay. You'd do the same for me. Don't worry about it. I won't say anything and I'll even hang out a bit longer in this corridor to keep watch if you'd like."
They looked surprised, grateful, and Susanna checked Remus's watch.
"We really shouldn't be out too much longer anyway," she said, sounding a little bit tense. "We've got class in the morning."
Sometimes I thought that girl should have been in Ravenclaw. It was the sort of thing I could imagine my sister saying in a moment like this, if my sister had ever snogged. I suspected she hadn't.
I nodded and gave them some privacy, pacing the length of the west corridor a few times. I was a little perturbed they hadn't bothered to put up a charm to block the sound from reaching me, but I suspected Susanna thought it was funny that I could hear her sighing and moaning and whispering Remus's name as I kept watch for them. Not soon enough for my tastes, Remus poked his head out of the room.
"Thanks, Claude. I'll walk her back. No need to worry about us. You can go to bed now."
I hesitated, wondering if maybe I shouldn't wait until they were out in the hall, and I nearly said as much, but Remus closed the door again. I decided to do as he said and go to bed. After all, he was a prefect. If they got caught, he could always say he caught her out of bed and was escorting her back. Or something.
Potter would let them off easy, and he was running the patrols for the night.
The next evening, I ran into the strangest thing I had ever seen in my life, more startling than walking in on Remus and Susanna snogging, more bizarre than being solicited for illegal activities, more rare than a unicorn sighting.
Sirius Black was alone in the library.
Clearing my throat so as not to startle him, I sat down across from him, raising my eyebrows.
"Ansel," he said, frowning down at his book again when he saw it was me.
"Black."
"Need something?"
"No," I said, shrugging. "Just a bit confused."
"Something I can clear up?"
"This might seem like an odd question," I said, "but why are you in the library?"
Sirius snorted and closed his book, stretching his arms and smirking at me.
"It's open to everyone, Ansel," he said, although I could tell he was more amused than annoyed. "If you must know, Betsy insisted that I study for Muggle Studies."
"Why?"
He frowned a little, glancing around the library as if making certain no one was listening in on us.
"If you must know," he said softly, "when the war is over, I plan to go into Muggle Relations. If I feel like working."
For some reason, the thought of Sirius Black working had never crossed my mind. Even when he said it, drawing the image into my head was virtually impossible. There was something just slightly off with everything in the picture, and I must have looked as perplexed as I felt, because he gave a small, bark-like laugh.
"Don't look so constipated, Ansel. Plenty of pureblooded wizards have worked. Not usually the ones in my sphere, but it has been known to happen. Anyway, Muggle Relations is a wonderfully blood-traitor field, and I can maintain my own interests with only one N.E.W.T. It's ideal."
I could certainly see how it would be ideal for him, and I said so, only a little annoyed with his smirk at my words. I had long since learned that Sirius Black could not help but smirk most of the time. The expression was a natural part of his face, learned and practiced since birth. I wasn't really easily offended in the first place, so maybe it was easier for me not to be stirred by his expression.
"I actually have another question."
It was strange, because when I sat down the question hadn't been on my mind, had never even occurred to me. Yet it seemed as the words left my lips that the question had been inside of me for so long, just burning for the right time to come out. Sirius, still smirking, quirked an eyebrow and nodded for me to continue. Perhaps he was amused. Perhaps that was just his face. I was not well enough acquainted with him to be sure.
"It's about Betsy," I said. "Like Iris, she's going to be here next year, and you're…not." He tensed, as if this reminder were painful to him. "I was just wondering…have you thought much about what the future holds? Because…I could use some ideas."
"I have thought about it," he admitted softly. "I think about it every day. It's going to be different for you than it is for me, Ansel. You and Prewett, you've been together for what seems like forever. No doubt when you're gone, you'll still visit each other frequently, maybe get engaged, maybe get married when she graduates. You know how it works." I nodded, having seen enough long-term couples in the wizarding world marry straight after graduation, sometimes even before the girl graduated if she didn't plan on working.
"But me and Betsy?" Black continued with a sigh. "I really don't know. I'll visit her every chance I can, of course, but I expect to be busy fighting the war quite a lot. And marriage? I don't know if either of us is ready for that yet. I want her to move in with me, but the typical path isn't going to work for us right now. So I'm probably the last person for you to come to for advice. And I wouldn't ask Remus about Suzy either."
"Why not?"
Sirius sighed, rubbing his temples. The look in his eyes was a serious one I had never expected to see from him.
"It's not my place to say," he said apologetically. "But trust me, it won't help you answer your questions and it might…it might cause things you don't want. Just…don't go there."
He seemed to imply by the intensity of his stare that he wanted my assurances so I did promise not to ask Remus about how he was going to continue his relationship with Susanna. Honestly, it had never crossed my mind that Remus and Susanna wouldn't marry the minute she graduated. I knew that they hadn't gotten together too long ago, but they way they were now that they were together seemed as though they'd been dating even longer than Iris and me. Betsy and Sirius, they were unorthodox people, but I never would have considered Remus and Susanna unorthodox. Exceptional, perhaps, but that wasn't the same thing.
"Well," I said, frowning, "thanks for the chat. I should leave you to your studying, I suppose."
"Any time, Ansel," Sirius said absently, turning back to his book as though nothing had disrupted his studying in the first place. I took a brief moment to drink in the sight of Sirius Black bent over a book, knowing I may never see it again.
As I walked away, Sirius's words about marriage played over in my mind. It seemed everyone was expecting me to propose to Iris, that it had already occurred to everyone but me. Oh, sure, I had always thought I would marry the girl, but the actual act of proposing had somehow never formed itself in my thoughts. Now that I was faced with it, that I knew I would be doing it sometime in the next couple of years – when was still a mystery I didn't know how to solve – the act seemed a daunting one indeed.