"He did not!"
Mairead nodded her head, giggling so hard she couldn't speak.
"Well, well, well!" said Sophie, looking impressed. "Who would've thought Lupin had a naughty side?"
"Oh, I dunno," said Ansel, shrugging. "He's got a pretty good sense of humor. Plus he really likes Mairead," he added thoughtfully.
He, Sophie, Edgar, and Mairead were all lounging outside by the lake. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and Mairead had rallied her three friends to have a picnic before the cold weather set in. She had gathered the food (thanks to her proximity to the kitchens), Ansel and Edgar had conjured up pillows and an enormous, soft picnic blanket for them to relax on, and Sophie had somehow managed to nick a bottle of wine which they were passing around, drinking straight from the bottle.
"No, he doesn't; he's that nice to everybody," Mairead dismissed. She took a swig from the bottle and passed it over to Edgar, who took a drink and passed it along in silence.
"Hey, are you okay?" she asked him.
Edgar shrugged. "Fine," he said listlessly.
Sophie frowned. "What gives?"
Edgar forced a smile that looked more like a wince. "Nothing. It's not important."
"It's important to me," said Mairead, sliding over so she was right next to him. "What's up?" Edgar hesitated.
"Fucking out with it already," Sophie exclaimed.
Edgar sighed. "I think Jonathan is seeing someone else," he said quietly.
Ansel sat up. "When did this happen?" he asked, frowning.
Edgar shrugged. "Things have been weird since we got back to Hogwarts," he admitted. "It's like we're not on the same page anymore. He's been hanging out with a new group of friends, and I think he may be going out with one of them."
"So he broke things off with you?" Sophie asked. "That rat bastard!"
Edgar shook his head. "There was nothing to break off," he insisted. "We just never see each other anymore."
"What do you mean 'there was nothing to break off'?" Mairead asked. "Didn't you tell him how you felt?"
"Yeah, of course I did!" Edgar said.
"And what was his response?" asked Ansel.
"Well... I thought... I mean," Edgar stumbled. "You know how we met last year in the O.W.L. study group?"
All three of Edgar's friends nodded.
"Well, I thought we really hit it off. So when the year ended I said I hoped we could stay in touch, and he said he'd love that."
"Yes, this is not news to us," Sophie confirmed. "You were crowing like a rooster. And you did keep in touch. You wrote every damn day over the summer."
"Right!" Edgar exclaimed. "And then we got back here and... you know... I thought that something would happen. But he hasn't said anything this whole time and now he's talking about his other friend, Rich, like he's the beginning of the world and-" Edgar's voice broke.
Mairead wrapped both arms around Edgar and pulled him to her. Edgar slumped over onto her shoulder.
"I just feel like it's all fallen apart," he sniffled. "I feel like I don't fit into his world and I just don't know what to do."
Mairead rocked Edgar and stroked his hair like he was one of the little children at St. Hedwig's. After a few minutes, she softly asked, "Do you want advice, or do you want sympathy?"
Edgar shook his head. "I dunno," he said thickly. "Advice, I guess."
Mairead pursed her lips. "So, you've said how great you and Jonathan hit it off, right? And how well you got on and how you talked all summer and how you thought something would happen when you got back. Right?"
Edgar nodded against her shoulder and sniffled loudly.
"But like, did you ever... I mean... what I mean to say is... did you ever, like... actually tell him how you felt?"
A long silence followed. Finally, Edgar asked, "Define 'tell him how I felt.'"
"Oh, for fucking fuck's sake!" Sophie exploded, throwing her arms up.
Mairead glared at her. Not helping! she mouthed, but Sophie ignored her and went on.
"You've seriously gone all mopey because the king of your heart didn't magically read your mind that you wanted to go out?"
"He knew I wanted to go out with him!" Edgar insisted, sitting up and wiping his face.
"How did he know?" Mairead asked quietly.
"He - I - b-because..." Edgar faltered. He turned to Ansel for support. "Help me out here!"
"Actually, I kind of agree with Sophie on this," Ansel said slowly. "Sorry mate," he added. "It sounds like you've both been waiting around for the other to make the first move. And so far the only one who's made a move has been Rich, apparently."
"Well, what was I supposed to do?" Edgar demanded.
"Tell him how you feel!" Sophie exclaimed. "Tell him you want to stick your tongue down his throat and shag his brains out!"
"I can't tell him that!" Edgar cried.
"Yes, you actually can," Sophie said firmly.
Edgar turned to Ansel.
Ansel turned up his hands. "I mean, I wouldn't use exactly those words, but yeah, you've got to tell him how you feel."
Edgar looked around at his friends, realized they were unanimous, and slumped. "What if he doesn't feel the same way anymore?" he asked, looking down at his hands. "What if I just imagined the whole thing?"
Mairead took his hands. "Listen to me, Edgar," she said firmly. "You don't need a man to complete your life. You're perfect the way that you are. If you're honest with Jonathan, and he tells you he doesn't feel the same way, then we'll get drunk and eat junk food and sing breakup songs and move on with our lives."
Mairead watched Edgar closely. The tiniest smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
Sophie picked up the bottle and swallowed a mouthful of wine. "Yeah, that's all well and good coming from Miss Perpetually Single over there, but the closest she's ever coming to 'fucking' was mouthing off to Lupin, so..."
Mairead burst out in surprised laughter. "Fuck you!" she said, grabbing a pillow and whacking her friend over the head. She looked over and saw that Edgar was laughing too, and felt her heart lift.
"Okay, okay, enough," said Ansel, ever the voice of reason. "It is clear to me that we have some very important business to attend to here," he looked gravely around at the group. "I hereby call to order the first meeting of the Order of Get Edgar Laid."
...
Truth be told, Mairead did sometimes feel as though she were perpetually single.
That wasn't to say that she was completely innocent. She had gone out with a few guys (all either Muggleborns or Slytherins who weren't dissuaded by her last name) and had even been with Slytherin Steven McKee long enough that she had gotten him off with her hands and her mouth a few times. But Steven had been older than her and had broken things off when he graduated. He was moving to Portugal and wanted to spare her the pain and loneliness of a long distance relationship. ("I've had experience with long distance, babe, and you deserve better than that.")
At first Mairead had been touched that he had been so considerate, but then she had heard from Sarah Quimby, who had been friends with him and was still in touch with him, that Steven immediately took up with a string of other girls as soon as he got to Portugal, so she had come to acknowledge that she had been fed a line.
After Steven she had enjoyed a brief summer flirtation with another Slytherin named David Somers, but then she had found out from Sarah that he was only pursuing her because he had heard from Steven that she was good with her mouth, so that ended before it got started.
Most days Mairead was completely fine with the idea of being single. After all, she had a lot of other things going on. She was not naturally gifted the way others at the school were, and so she had to put more work into keeping her grades up. Additionally, after so many years of tension between herself and most of the student body - who either regarded her as an aspiring Death Eater or as a traitor to the Dark Lord's cause who had thrown her own father to the Dementors - she had finally managed to scrape together a group of friends that may have been small but was nonetheless fiercely loved by Mairead. She simply didn't have time for romance.
Yes, Mairead thought as she settled into her seat behind the library's desk that evening, she was absolutely, perfectly content.
Except when Roger Davies walked into the room.
There was a line to the desk, and Mairead was working alone. She checked out a stack of books to Hermione Granger, helped recommend a book on soil additives to Neville Longbottom, helped another student create a citation for personal correspondences during the Goblin Rebellion, and frequently trotted back and forth to the stacks to help students find books. She was so preoccupied that she didn't even realize Roger was in line until he was standing right in front of her.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Roger! Hi."
I'm out of breath because I've been running back and forth between the desk and the stacks, she thought to herself. That's the only reason.
Roger smiled that devastating smile of his. "Hey, so, I've got a bit of a problem," he said, leaning on the desk conspiratorially.
Mairead leaned in, too. Not to be closer to him, mind, but because sometimes patrons need confidentiality.
God, he smells good.
"What's the problem?" Mairead asked.
"Well, I checked out this book the other day, and my cat decided to spill a cup of coffee all over it."
"That's so nice," Mairead said dreamily. "I didn't know you had a cat."
"Er, yeah," Roger replied, looking puzzled. "I've got a cat. So yeah, the book... it's in pretty bad shape."
"Oh, right," Mairead recovered herself slightly. "Let me take a look at your file."
She turned to the drawers that contained the files on each student and opened the A-D drawer. Riffling through, she quickly found Roger's file.
"Looks like you've only got one book checked out," she said. "To Kill a Mockingbird?"
"That's the one," Roger confirmed, his attention diverted to a display of Which Broomstick? magazines.
"Oh, I love that book!" Mairead exclaimed. "Are you taking Muggle Studies, then?"
"Yeah, I am," Roger replied, picking out the latest issue of the magazine.
"Did you like the book?" Mairead asked enthusiastically.
"Yeah, it was great," Roger said without glancing up from the article he was perusing. "Er, really moving."
Mairead beamed. "It was, wasn't it? Anyway, do you have the book with you?"
"What? Oh, yeah." Roger stuck a finger into the magazine to save his place and reached his other hand into his bag to pull out the book, which did look rather woebegone. Just from looking at the outside Mairead could see that the pages had all wrinkled and the covers were swollen, a tell-tale sign that it had truly gotten doused in liquid. "Like I said, my cat just decided to drown it in coffee," he repeated, going back to his magazine.
Mairead grinned. "Well hey, at least it wasn't molasses."
"Huh?"
"You know. Molasses."
Roger looked completely out to sea.
"Like in the book?" Mairead tried to explain. "You know - because he... in the book when they... with the -"
Roger was looking at her like she had just sprouted horns.
"You know what? Why don't you just leave the book with me and I'll see what I can do?" she said.
Roger unleashed his knee-weakening smile at her again. "Thanks, Mary. You're a pal."
With that, he strolled off, magazine - which he had not checked out - in hand.
Forty-five minutes later, Mairead had finally worked out a way to extract the coffee from the pages, and was now looking for a way to speed up the process.
She had tried "Reparo!" in an attempt to restore the book, but that had only caused several breaks in the spine to knit themselves together again. She had tried "Evanesco Coffee!" and that had done nothing at all. She finally had a breakthrough when "Scourgify!" had soaked the book with soap bubbles and she noticed the liquid soaking into the pages was causing the coffee stains to spread. She realized that now that the coffee had dried the book didn't really consider it to be coffee anymore. So Mairead was delicately reconstituting the coffee stains with small amounts of water, then Summoning the coffee. In this manner, she was gradually able to siphon the coffee out of the pages, but going page-by-page was taking far too long.
She balanced the book on its bottom edge and held the tip of her wand over the top edge.
"Aguamenti!" she muttered, and a stream of water drizzled out of her wand and onto the pages.
"What in the Sam Hill are you doin', Walter?"
Mairead jumped violently.
Professor Lupin was standing in front of the desk, looking highly amused and slightly guilty. "I didn't mean to startle you," he said with an apologetic grin. "What are you doing?" he asked again.
Mairead let out a breathless laugh. "Someone spilled coffee on a library book. I'm trying to fix it."
"By waterboarding it?"
"Pardon?"
Lupin shook his head. "Never mind." He leaned in closer. "So what is the method here?"
"I'm reconstituting the coffee and then summoning it."
Professor Lupin raised an eyebrow.
"Here, watch," said Mairead. "Accio, coffee!"
The brown stains on the book slowly travelled up the pages, out the top of the book, and in the direction of Mairead's wand. She reached for a stained handkerchief on the table and used it to sop up the liquid. Mairead straightened and looked triumphantly into Professor Lupin's grey eyes, which were wide with surprise.
"I never would have thought to try that," he admitted. "Is that an old librarian trick Madam Pince taught you?"
Mairead shook her head. "Nope. Normally we just charge students who destroy a book. But I just messed around until I found something that worked."
Professor Lupin cocked his head to one side. "Do you do that often?" he asked.
Mairead shrugged. "Who cares if it's unconventional, as long as it works?" she said instead of answering.
Lupin gazed at her thoughtfully for a few moments. "Indeed," he said at last.
Mairead grew uncomfortable under his scrutiny. "It doesn't deserve to get thrown in the bin just because it's a little banged up," she said, feeling slightly defensive. "Especially if a little creativity will solve the problem. It's a good book."
Lupin continued to look at her, head still tilted slightly to one side. "I agree," he said softly after a few moments. Mairead shifted uncomfortably, and at last Lupin blinked and seemed to come out of his reverie.
"It's a great book," Lupin said, catching on to what she had said earlier. "Are you a fan of Muggle literature, then?"
Mairead nodded. "I love it."
"What's your favorite book by a Muggle?" he asked.
Mairead shrugged. "Any one I can get my hands on?" she asked. "This one was really good," she offered, gesturing to the book now lying between them on the desk.
"What else have you read?"
"We read Great Expectations by Charles Dickens in Muggle Studies last year. I liked it but didn't love it."
"What did you dislike about it?" Lupin asked.
Mairead pulled a face. "The ending. It felt so..."
"Contrived?" Lupin guessed.
"Yeah. It was just not very believable."
Lupin nodded thoughtfully.
Mairead looked up, an unpleasant thought suddenly occurring to her. "Oh, no, it's not, like, your favorite book or anything, is it?" she asked anxiously. Professor Lupin chuckled.
"No, no, it isn't," he reassured her. "I would suggest you give him another try, though. Dickens wrote both Great Expectations and David Copperfield to be somewhat autobiographical. The latter is considered by some to be the better of the two."
Mairead nodded, smiling. "I will."
The two shared a smile, and Mairead felt her face become warm, for some reason.
"Oh!" she said, suddenly remembering she was at work. "Was there something I could help you with?"
"I actually came here to see you," Lupin admitted. "I've scheduled some classroom time for the First Years, but I wanted to clear it with you before asking them to attend. How would next Friday evening at eight o'clock work for you?"
"I can do that!" Mairead said.
"Good! I'll set something up. It'll be in the History of Magic classroom, since it's large enough to fit everyone."
"Okay, see you then," she said, smiling. Well done, her brain praised her. Now just stop there and you'll be fine. But Mairead knew that more words were coming, and she had no power to stop them. "I mean - I'll see you before then, too. Because, like, classes and everything. Plus I imagine you'll be eating in the Great Hall. If you want to. Not to make assumptions or anything."
Stop! Just stop talking! her brain was crying at her. She pressed the heel of one hand into an eyebrow, melting under the heat of her own awkwardness.
Lupin just smiled pleasantly. "I'll see you Friday, then." He started to go, then added with a teasing grin, "As well as all those other times you mentioned."
Mairead winced and nodded. She could feel herself blushing to the roots of her hair.
Once he was gone, she pulled out the schedule to consider whom she could approach to trade shifts with. Despite what she had told Lupin, next Friday did not, in fact, work for her. She was scheduled to work in the library next Friday, so she would have to find someone to cover for her. As a rule, everyone hated to work on Friday evenings, but Mairead was determined to make it work. Though she couldn't say why, the fact that Professor Lupin had come to the library just to see her had made a feeling of pleasure wash over her. She would have said yes to him if he had said they would be meeting on the moon at midnight on her birthday.
...
The following Friday at a quarter to eight, Mairead stood inside the History of Magic classroom, gnawing on her lip. She had managed to trade shifts with another student worker in the library, though she would pay dearly for it. Now she shifted nervously from foot to foot, waiting for Professor Lupin to arrive.
She checked for the fourth time that she had everything she thought she would need. She had brought a large book cart with her (thankfully the History of Magic classroom and the library were both on the first level), which was loaded down with dictionaries, thesauri, and all twenty-seven volumes of The Encyclopedia of Dark Magic.
She pulled her bottom lip back into her mouth and continued to bite it. She hoped she had enough books. She should have asked Lupin how big the First Year class was this year.
She reached into her pocket, pulled out the agenda she had written in consultation with Professor Lupin, and was examining it for problems when Lupin walked in.
"Good evening, Mairead," he said. "Thank you again for your help this evening."
"Don't thank me yet," Mairead replied, feeling queasier by the minute. Lupin smiled warmly at her.
"Don't be nervous," he reassured her. "You're going to do marvelously, and I'll be here to help if you need me."
Mairead nodded, but despite his reassurances thought with a slight feeling of panic that there was a good chance she would be sick, or faint, or both when the first students began to trickle in. She leaned against Professor Binns's desk behind her for support, since her knees didn't feel very steady. Professor Lupin came over and leaned on the desk next to her. She felt slightly soothed by his calm presence at her side.
Still, she watched in apprehension as the classroom slowly filled over the next fifteen minutes. Lupin tilted his head in her direction.
"We're expecting fifty-two students this evening," he muttered.
"Okay," she said in a tiny voice.
Professor Lupin turned and looked fully at her. "You can do this," he said firmly. "You're going to do wonderfully."
Mairead tore her eyes away from the filling seats and looked up at him anxiously. "Do you really think so?"
"Absolutely."
Mairead took a deep breath and nodded. "I'm going to write the agenda on the blackboard," she said, her voice a bit stronger.
She picked up a piece of chalk and began to write out the agenda, and was pleased to find that her hands were not shaking as badly as they had been a few minutes before. She did, however, realize that writing large letters neatly was not in her skillset.
"I didn't realize how challenging writing with chalk was," she said over her shoulder to Lupin.
"Yes, I have to admit it came as a surprise to me, too," he responded with a chuckle. "I never gave it much thought before I started teaching."
Taking care to write as neatly as she could manage, Mairead spelled out the agenda on the chalkboard:
By the end of this workshop, students will be able to:
-Distinguish among a dictionary, a thesaurus, and an encyclopedia
-Describe the purpose of a cross-reference
-Describe the purpose of an index
-Determine which resource is needed to find particular information
-Utilize cross-references and indexes to locate further information
Mairead finished writing the agenda and turned back around. With an unpleasant drop in her stomach, she realized that the classroom was now full of a sea of faces looking expectantly at her and Professor Lupin.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then forced herself to smile at the class.
"Right, I think everyone is here," Professor Lupin began. He smiled around at the group. "Welcome, and thank you all for joining me here for this workshop. I'd like to introduce you to Mairead O'Keefe. Mairead is a Seventh Year student who also works in the library. She has kindly agreed to teach you all some tips and tricks that will make your homework assignments much easier."
Mairead could feel her heart pounding in her throat, but determinedly held her smile in place while Lupin introduced her. Her heart lifted slightly when she saw Nora and Alex sitting together and waving from the crowd. She smiled more genuinely and gave a small wave back. She also picked Sam out with his fellow Ravenclaws. Then another student in Gryffindor robes whom Mairead didn't recognize raised her hand.
"Yes?" Mairead called on the student.
"My brother says you're a Death Eater," the girl said with a tone of suspicion.
Mairead could see Lupin make a sudden movement out of the corner of her eye, but before he could respond Mairead said calmly, "Your brother is mistaken."
Another student, also in Gryffindor robes, called out, "Yeah, I heard that, too."
It's always the Gryffindors, Mairead thought with an internal sigh.
Strangely enough, she found the years-old accusation to be fortifying. This, at least, was familiar territory. She felt her body settle itself into the body language and mild facial expressions she had found worked best over the years.
"Yes, it's a common misconception," she said pleasantly. "But don't worry, it's not true."
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Professor Lupin was watching her closely. His relaxed demeanor was gone; he looked like an animal ready to spring in to protect her at any moment.
"I heard you live at St. Hedwig's," said a third student.
Mairead nodded. "That part is true," she confirmed with a smile.
"'Cause your dad's in Azkaban?" asked another student.
"Correct," she said.
"Where's your mum?" asked a girl.
Mairead allowed herself to look a little sad. Sad enough that they can see you're unhappy about it, but not sad enough that they think they can bully you into crying, she thought. "She died," she said simply.
"Did you kill her?"
"Ryan!" Lupin said sharply. "That's enough, everyone." Mairead looked over at her Professor. He looked extremely tense, and he took the opportunity to study her face intently for signs of distress.
"It's okay," she reassured Lupin quietly. Then, turning to Ryan, she said, "No, my father killed my mum."
"Do you ever go to Azkaban to see him?" another boy asked eagerly, clearly curious about the Wizarding prison.
Mairead allowed herself a wry smile. "No, my father and I don't exactly exchange Christmas cards," she said, and a few students giggled.
One boy spoke up, his voice squeaky with excitement. "I heard that her dad tried to kill her the same night he killed her mom but he couldn't and that's why he was defeated and went to Azkaban!"
Mairead allowed herself to laugh lightly at this. "I think if I were Harry Potter I'd be a bit more popular," she said.
Nearly the entire class laughed at this, and she took the opportunity to change the subject.
"We've got a lot of material to cover tonight, so why don't we get started and if you have any further questions I would be happy to answer them afterwards?"
Mairead began lecturing on information resources, and it wasn't until she and Professor Lupin began handing out dictionaries to the class that she took the time to realize that she wasn't afraid anymore.
Guess there's nothing like an inquisition to calm you down, she thought to herself.
"Now," she said, "Let's take a look at some dictionary entries and dissect them a bit."
She opened a dictionary and used her modified Doubling Charm to copy the text of one of the pages to the blackboard. Then, she muttered, "Engorgio!" and the text on the blackboard enlarged.
"Can you lot in the back see the text from back there?" she called. A few students called yes and one grinned cheekily and gave her the thumbs up.
Professor Lupin sidled up alongside her and examined the blackboard.
"You're going to have to show me how you did that sometime," he muttered lowly to her.
She flashed him a smile before turning back to the class and going through the different parts of the definition shown. She went over the pronunciation guide, alternative spellings, the definition itself, and used the section on synonyms and antonyms as a jumping-off point to talk about thesauri.
When Professor Lupin had first approached her with the idea for this workshop, Mairead had felt anxious that she didn't know enough to be of use to him. Now that she was carrying out the workshop, however, she realized that she knew more than she originally thought she did. And what was more, the students seemed to understand what she was saying.
She finished with thesauri, moved onto indexes, briefly went into glossaries, and rounded out her lecture by delving into cross-references.
She smiled around at the class. "Okay, I'm seeing some limp noodles here," she said, indicating the students who had slumped so far down that they looked in danger of sliding out of their seats and onto the floor. "Let's take a quick break to shake it out and then we'll finish up."
While the students were stretching, Mairead and Professor Lupin passed around the encyclopedias.
"I hate to say 'I told you so,'" Lupin said quietly to her when they returned to the front of the class, "but you're doing extremely well."
Mairead smiled bashfully at the ground. "Thanks."
"All right, let's come back together and finish things out," she called to the students. She gave them a minute to settle down, then said, "This was a lot of information to take in, and I know that cross-references in particular can be difficult to wrap your minds around, so I thought we could finish up with a game to practice."
Professor Lupin frowned. "What's the game?" he asked her softly. Mairead smiled.
"We're going to play one of my all-time favorite games: The Encyclopedia Game! Here's how it goes: Professor Lupin and I have passed around different volumes of The Encyclopedia of Dark Arts. There are twenty-seven volumes and fifty-two of you, so if you'll all find a partner, there will be two to a volume." While the students chose partners, Mairead turned to Professor Lupin. "You can have this one," she said with a grin and handed him the L volume.
"We're going to begin by picking a topic," Mairead explained. "It can be any topic likely to be found in this encyclopedia set. The student team who has the volume covering that topic will locate the article on that topic in their volume. They will begin reading the entry to that topic aloud and will continue to read while everyone listens. As soon as you learn something from the article that you didn't already know, raise your hand. The reader will then continue to read until they come to the next cross-reference in the article. They will call out the cross-reference and the team with the volume covering that topic will find that article and begin reading until someone hears something they didn't already know, and the cycle continues. We will continue in this fashion until we come to a cross-reference that brings us back to the original article we began with. If it doesn't make sense, we'll guide you through. Ready? Set? Go!"
"All right, somebody pick a topic!" Professor Lupin called out.
"We've been studying vampires in class," one girl called out.
"Perfect!" said Lupin. "Now, turn your volumes to look at the spine. Who has a V on theirs?"
Everyone turned their books onto their sides. A pair of students on the right side of the room shot their hands into the air.
"We do!"
"It's us!"
"Great, find the article on vampires," Mairead called. "Remember, it'll be arranged in alphabetical order."
The students turned the pages uncertainly, looking nervous. It took them a while to find the article and Mairead started to get worried that this would be a colossal failure, until -
"Found it!"
"Well done! Begin reading aloud, please!" Mairead said, relieved.
"Everyone else, be sure to listen for something you didn't already know," Lupin reminded the other students.
The two students decided who would read aloud and began. The class seemed dubious at the concept at first, but when the reader described the existence of a Society for the Tolerance of Vampires, a student towards the front excitedly shouted, "I didn't know that!"
"Excellent!" Lupin called. "Timothy, keep reading until you come to the next cross-reference."
Timothy didn't have far to go before finding a cross-reference to vampire bats. His partner, a girl with shining black hair, flipped forward a few pages before frowning.
"I went to 'Vampire Bats' and all it says is 'See Bats, Vampire.'"
Mairead nodded. "That's really common. What that tells us is that this encyclopedia groups subtopics under larger umbrella topics. So who has the B volume?" she asked.
Another shuffle, then, "Here!"
"Great!" Mairead said. "Flip to the article on bats and then find the part on vampire bats. Remember, it'll be alphabetically arranged."
The team, two Ravenclaw students, found the article much more quickly than the first team had and began reading the article on vampire bats.
Shortly after they began, several students shot their hands up and two more shouted, "I didn't know that!"
The class rapidly got the hang of the game, and soon the students were flipping through the pages eagerly. The room echoed with exclamations of surprise upon finding new facts, giggles and shouts of disgust at times, and excitement whenever they thought they were close to circling back onto the topic of vampires. Twice they came close but were forced to switch articles before coming full-circle: once when Romania came up and another time when reading an article on blood.
A great shout went up around the room whenever Mairead raised her hand and called out, "I didn't know that!" The students seemed to enjoy teasing her.
"I'm not a perfect person!" she defended herself with a self-deprecating laugh.
While one student was doing a dramatic reading on Flesh-Eating Slugs while his classmates groaned, giggled, and cringed, Mairead stole a glance at Professor Lupin. He was leaning against the desk with his arms folded, watching the class enjoy themselves and smiling happily. Maybe he's younger than forty, Mairead mused. He caught her watching him and his smile widened. He said something, but Mairead couldn't hear over the cacophony.
"What?!" she asked. Lupin leaned in and spoke directly in her ear.
"I think they're enjoying themselves," he repeated.
He was close enough that his breath stirred her hair, and the pleasant rumble of his voice so close to her made a shiver run through Mairead.
"You know, you can raise your hand too, Professor," Mairead teased him.
"Well, if I hear something I didn't already know, I will," he replied with a cocky grin that made her laugh breathlessly and roll her eyes.
The game continued around the room, and the longer it went on the more the students appeared to enjoy themselves. Professor Lupin took a turn reading from his volume and Mairead smiled at her shoes, enjoying the sound of his voice.
Mairead had to agree with Professor Lupin's assessment: the students really did seem to be getting a kick out of the game, but never more than when, scarcely three sentences into the article on Werewolves, Professor Lupin raised his hand and shouted, "I didn't know that!"
Mairead joined the class in shouting out their surprise. "Professor Lupin, I am shocked - shocked! - by your lack of knowledge on this subject!"
He leaned in close again. "I'm not a perfect person," he said with a teasing grin.
Finally, a cross-reference from Inferi led to an article on the Undead.
Alex and Nora, who were sharing the U volume, traded off reading paragraphs until someone cried, "I didn't know that!"
Nora continued reading, her head bent close to Alex's, until they both let out a gasp and read in unison: "Corporeal Undead beings include VAMPIRES!"
The entire class burst into raucous applause. Mairead and Professor Lupin joined in, sharing huge smiles.
"Well done, everyone!" Professor Lupin shouted. "You have all done tremendous work. Let's all take a moment to thank Mairead for sharing her time and expertise -"
Lupin was cut off by an enthusiastic round of applause. Mairead blushed furiously and stared at the ground, hands shoved into her pockets.
Lupin concluded with, "Thank you all for coming and have a great weekend!"
The students filed out of the classroom chattering eagerly. Many of them were recounting their favorite moments from the game. Mairead felt elated. She had been convinced that the class would find the game too cerebral and would rebel. She couldn't believe how well they had liked it.
Alex, Nora, and Sam were among the last to leave and they all waved eagerly at Mairead on their way out.
"Do you know them?" Professor Lupin asked, watching her.
"They're also from St. Hedwig's," she answered.
A few stragglers stopped to asked Lupin some questions, so Mairead began to clean up. She wiped the blackboard clean and was gathering up the papers she had used when Professor Lupin finished saying goodbye to the students and joined her.
"That was excellent!" he said, smiling proudly at her. "You were marvelous."
Mairead pulled her lips into her mouth and bit down to stop herself from grinning like a fool. "Thanks. I hope they learned a lot."
"Thank you," he said earnestly. "This was better than anything I had hoped for."
Mairead smiled and shuffled her papers, too pleased to speak.
Professor Lupin fell silent. Mairead looked up and found that his smile had vanished and he was suddenly looking guilty and forlorn.
"Mairead, I am so sorry about what happened at the beginning of class," he said. "If I'd had any idea you'd be subjected to an inquiry like that -"
"Oh, it's fine," Mairead hurried to reassure him.
"It's not fine," he insisted. "You came here to help me and to help them and I just didn't... I didn't do enough to protect you. I'm sorry."
Mairead raised her eyebrows. "I didn't exactly let you protect me, Professor Lupin."
He shook his head stubbornly. "Still, I should have put a stop to it before it started."
"I've found that it's actually better to handle these kinds of rumors myself," she said. "Being shielded by a Professor sends a certain kind of message that doesn't seem to work out as well as just answering their questions myself."
"But you shouldn't have to answer to them," Lupin argued.
Mairead turned up her hands lightly. "Well, maybe not, but that's where we are. That's reality."
Professor Lupin fell silent at that. He looked closely at her for a few moments before softly saying, "... You've been dealing with this for a while, haven't you?"
Mairead smiled wryly. "Only the past six years or so." He regarded her in silence, his expression grave. She hated to see him looking like that. She desperately wanted him to be happy again. "Look, it was fine," she said firmly. "They were fine. It's not nearly as bad as it used to be."
He shook his head again. "I should have stopped it. I shouldn't have allowed it."
Mairead squared off her body against his. "If they hadn't asked me here they would've just found me in the library, or in the corridors, or in my Common Room. At least here I got them as a group and could send a consistent message. I'd rather hear what the rumors are and address them directly than wonder what's being said behind my back."
"You don't have to address them," Professor Lupin argued. "You could tell them to mind their own business."
Mairead sighed and shook her head. "If working in the library has taught me anything, it's that information isn't the enemy; ignorance is. A person with accurate information isn't nearly as dangerous as a willfully ignorant person spreading misinformation."
A long silence followed her words. Mairead watched the stubborn set to Professor Lupin's jaw slowly relax and a line that had formed between his eyebrows disappear. His grey eyes, which had been sparking with irritation and looking dark and thunderous as a storm at sea, softened back to the quiet, intelligent gaze she had become accustomed to.
After a while he asked softly, "Do you have any idea what a remarkable person you are?"
Mairead thought her face might catch fire. She looked away, blushing fiercely. "That's not true," she denied, but inside she was singing.
He's impressed, he's impressed! Her brain cried out in exaltation. Right. Best to make a quick exit before I do anything to embarrass myself.
Shaking her head to clear her mind, Mairead turned towards the classroom and raised her wand. "Accio, encyclopedias!"
He's got a nice laugh, she thought dazedly to herself a few seconds later from beneath a pile of twenty-six encyclopedias.
...
Author's Note: What did you think? A wolfish Remus murmuring in your ear to anyone who got the Drop Dead Fred reference. ;-) I hope you didn't find the chapter to be too light on plot. This is the chapter I've struggled the most with, because nothing much happens but there's a bunch of character development in it and it also develops Remus and Mairead's relationship so I couldn't bring myself to cut it. Hopefully the next chapter will make up for any lack of excitement in this chapter. It includes an encounter with our favorite canine convict... Oh, and this would probably be a good time to state the obvious: this story does not follow canon from this point forward.
Oh, and also, I borrowed the Encyclopedia Game from my favorite Ted Talk. If you look up "Rives: Reinventing the Encyclopedia Game" you should be able to find it if you're interested in checking it out.
No song for this chapter, but in case anybody's interested, the fancast I had in my head for Roger Davies the whole time I was writing this story was Timothée Chalamet. Enjoy, haha.