Wednesday, 17 November 1976

Remus grinned when he walked into the library and saw Lena sitting alone at a table. He walked over and sat across from her.

"Hey, Lena."

"Hey, Remus," Lena said brightly, looking up from her book.

"What are you doing?"

Lena's smile dropped. "Studying for Binns. I've got an exam on Friday and he assigned us an extra three chapters to learn."

"Don't worry about it. I'm sure you'll do fine. You're brilliant."

Lena smiled softly and gazed down at her book. Hearing rustling, Lena looked up.

"What are you doing?"

"Keeping you company," Remus said as he tapped on his book.

Blushing, Lena said nothing.

"Are you alright, Lena?"

"Yeah, why?"

"It's just you been reading at that page for a really long time," Remus explained.

"Oh," Lena said as her cheeks turned a bright red, "I just got distracted."

"S'all good," Remus said kindly. "No need to be embarrassed."

Unlike earlier when she lied to Remus, Lena was actually distracted and it was all his fault. She could not help but stare at him as he read. She loved the way he played with the corners of the pages with the fingers of his right hand. She loved how relaxed as he submerged himself into an imaginary world. She loved how relaxed his body was. She loved that his light brown fell on his forehead as he leaned over his book. She loved his eyes that were as green as grass and how they flicked across the page.

"What's up?"

"Huh?"

"You've been staring at me."

"I was thinking about you."

Lena was positive that her face was the same color as Remus' tie.

"You were?"

Shit!, Lena thought. I need to come up with an excuse. I can't tell him how I was thinking about how good looking he is!

"I was wondering how it happened," Lena said slowly.

Why did I say that?

"How what happened?"

Stop talking!

"How you got bit."

Lena wanted to die as Remus stared at her with a blank expression. She could not believe she just used that as her cover for looking at him. She didn't even care how it happened and she felt terrible for bringing up something Remus was so insecure about.

"You don't have to tell me. It's personal and it was nosy of me to ask. I don't even know why I was thinking about it. Shit, I'm sorry!"

"No, it's okay. Calm down. I just didn't think you'd want to know about it.

"I like knowing stuff about you."

Lena could not believe how she kept making herself look like a fool.

Remus smiled, "I like knowing stuff about you too."

Lena gave him an appreciative smile and hoped her face was returning to its normal color.

Looking down at his hands, Remus began to speak so quietly that Lena could hardly hear him. "When I was four, this werewolf called Fenrir Greyback was questioned by the Ministry. A werewolf killed two Muggle kids. It was him but he pretended to be a Muggle and the Ministry believed him because the Werewolf Registry wasn't really maintained back then. My dad was there for the questioning. He knew the signs of someone being a werewolf. He voiced his concerns but the committee didn't believe him. My dad and Greyback got into this big fight and my dad said werewolves were 'soulless, evil, deserving nothing but death.' Greyback decided to get back at my father by turning me into a werewolf."

Remus looked up from his hands to look at Lena. Her brown eyes were large and he could see her emotions swimming in them.

"That's not true. About werewolves being 'soulless, evil, deserving nothing but death.' You're so kind I can't even think of a word for it. You deserve the world."

"Thank you… Ya know, my dad feels so guilty for saying it. He knows it's not true. He feels guilty about everything…"

"Remus," Lena said gently, taking his hands in hers.

Squeezing her hands with his own, Remus continued. "My dad's so worried about the future. No one's gonna want to hire a werewolf. I guess they're worried that we'll kill our coworkers or something… I don't know."

Merlin, people are dumb. People only turn into werewolves once a month at night. It's not like they're gonna attack someone during the day or anything like that, Lena thought.

Remus kept speaking. "My father's worried about me in the future. Like what am I going to do for a career and make money for myself and whatever future family I might have."

Lena gave him a thoughtful look. "Don't worry about it now. You're still in school. It's going to be hard, but I know you. You can get through anything. You're brilliant."

Friday, 19 November 1976

Lena was pouring over her History of Magic textbook during lunch, trying to get some last minute studying in before the exam.

"Lena, put down the book and talk to us," Ava said.

"I just wanna go over this material one more time."

Maggie sighed. "Lena, you've been acting weird since last Monday. All you've been doing is studying."

"You never spend anytime with us anymore," Ava added.

"I want to. I just have to study and do well on this exam."

"Oh, but you have time to talk to Remus everyday?" Ava said, annoyed.

"I haven't been talking to him everyday! I was finally able to apologize to him on Monday and he saw me the other day and decided to study with me!"

"It's not just these past two weeks! You're always saying you can't hang out because you have to study! You've been like this since first year!" Maggie cried.

"Well I do! It's not like I enjoy it! It's something I need to do!"

"No one actually studies that much!" Ava said. "Seriously, what do you actually do? Hang out with other people? I mean it's fine if you do. You just don't have to keep it a secret from us!"

"I'm not hanging out with other people!"

"Well, you're keeping a secret about something! We're Hufflepuffs! We're not supposed to be secretive. We're supposed to be honest with each other," Maggie proclaimed.

"Being honest and secretive aren't mutually exclusive!" Lena retorted.

"Oh, so you are keeping secrets from us?" Ava said.

Lena groaned. "I didn't mean it like that! I just don't have to tell you two everything."

"We don't expect you to! We just wanna know why you don't want to spend time with us!" Maggie cried.

Lena opened her mouth to say something but no words came out. She wasn't ready to tell them about her dyslexia.

"Ya know what? Don't bother trying to answer. We don't want to hang out with someone who doesn't want to hang out with us," Ava declared.

"Let's go," Maggie said with a steely tone.

Lena remained sitting in a trance as they left the table. Her head was pounding and everything she heard around her was muffled and static-like. Her vision was blurry and she could not tell if she was breathing.

Lena was sure she could have remained sitting there for hours if it wasn't for Zoë gently nudging her and telling her it was time to take Binn's exam.

Lena was sure she did poorly on the exam. Her classmates all agreed that it was a terrible exam. Lena had little confidence in herself that she did well if a group of non-dyslexic students struggled. Half of the energy she would normally spend on reading the questions was taken up by her earlier conversation with Maggie and Ava. Lena could not help but think that she just lost her closest friends.