A/N: Thank you, thank you, thank you! Muah!
Disclaimer: They don't belong to me, and I'm thankful to say that Ms. Rowling apparently still loves them. (I was getting worried).
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"Do you know what's wrong with Harry?" Hermione glanced up from her Transfiguration homework as she finally asked the question that had been bothering her for a few days now.
Ron, who was supposedly working on the same assignment, quickly moved his arm to hide the doodle he was drawing of a Quidditch field. He looked up with slightly widened eyes. "Huh? Harry?"
Hermione was quiet for a moment before rolling her own eyes slightly. "Yes, Harry. Do you know what's wrong with him? He's not himself."
"He misses Gia," Ron said with a shrug. "He's just moping because of that."
Pursing her lips slightly, she shook her head. "No. I don't think that's it. He's being even more sullen than usual."
Ron shrugged again. "It's nothing, I'm sure. He's just in his own little world these days."
Hermione looked toward the stairs where Harry had ascended about an hour earlier, claiming that he was tired and needed a nap. She wanted to say something else but decided against it. Instead, she glanced back at her Transfiguration book and frowned. "I'm bored."
Looking up with a bright smile, Ron jumped at the opportunity to distract her from her homework. "Really? Me, too!"
Hermione looked like she was fighting back a grin, and she raised a single eyebrow in question. "Oh, really? I would have thought that designing your own personal Quidditch field would be simply exhilarating."
Ron turned a sheepish shade of red and glanced down at the work he'd tried to cover. "Well, excuse me for finding Quidditch more amusing than the proper preparation for turning a worm into a book."
Rolling her eyes, Hermione couldn't help the laugh. "Okay, even I'll admit that it is rather boring."
"So!" Ron said brightly, not believing that she'd actually called a lesson boring. "Do you want to do something else? We could go visit the House- Elves. Maybe they need liberating."
She didn't buy this for a second, of course. "It's not my fault you slept through breakfast," she said haughtily. "You'll just have to wait until lunch because it's not fair to go down there and nick food from them."
"We don't have to nick it," he answered back defensively. "They enjoy giving it away."
"Well, it isn't polite to bother them when that's your only intent," she said smoothly. "If you want to visit them and, I don't know, discuss the importance of resisting authority, then, yes, I will join you."
Ron sighed and looked away. "I'll wait for lunch."
It was a Saturday morning, and the Common Room was unusually crowded. This was surprising, as it was the first weekend without snow and the temperature, while warm by no means, was not totally freezing. But apparently a lot of professors had assigned extra work to get the students back into the swing of things post-holiday, and students were studying all over the Common Room.
Hermione glanced at everyone else working diligently and thought about how irresponsible of her it would be to put off her homework. Then she saw Ron looking at his textbook with a bewildered look of boredom that was simply beyond pitiful, and she finally gave in. With a sigh, she closed her book and looked at him expectantly.
"Any ideas besides the House-Elves?"
"I wish it was a Hogsmeade weekend."
"It's not," she said, wishing the same.
Ron looked around as if the Common Room was going to present him with a splendid idea to cure their boredom. And strangely, it did. "We could go for a walk," he suggested, looking toward the high tower windows. "It's sunny outside- no rain, no snow. Maybe we could visit Hagrid."
Hagrid had returned from his mission with the giants in the middle of the last semester. Apparently, it hadn't gone well, but he had made quite a bit of progress in the area of his love life. He seemed quite happy whenever he was discussing a certain Beauxbatons Headmistress. Of course, they hadn't really been visiting him as much this year as they normally had, and while they always swore to visit again soon, they rarely did. Most of their visits consisted of Care of Magical Creatures lessons, which had been reduced to bi-weekly in order to leave more room for regular Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons.
Hermione nodded, thinking that visiting Hagrid was a brilliant idea. "Yes, let's do that," she said briskly, standing up and placing all of her supplies into her bag.
They both hurried up to their respective dormitories to drop off their load of books and pick up their cloaks. It was still too cold for a simple jacket. Ron glanced at Harry's bed when he entered the circular room and saw that his best friend had the curtains pulled closed around the four poster.
"Harry?" he called quietly; he figured that a trip to visit Hagrid might pull Harry out of his current mood. But when he carefully pulled back to the curtains, he saw that Harry was lying face down on the pillow, presumably either asleep or pretending to be asleep; his glasses were on the nightstand next to the bed.
Sighing, Ron closed the curtains again and returned downstairs to meet Hermione. She was waiting for him in the Common Room, her cloak folded neatly in her arms.
"Was Harry awake?" she asked, seemingly reading his mind.
Ron shook his head, not bothering to mention that he had a strong suspicion that Harry was faking his nap. "No, I checked."
She frowned and shrugged. "Oh, well. You ready?"
He nodded, following her out of the portrait hole.
"You're going to freeze," he noted pointedly as they made their way through the long halls of the castle. She was dressed in a dark gray sweater, a knee-length black skirt, and gray tights despite the fact that it was a Saturday.
"I didn't have any clean jeans," she said, shrugging. "And anyway, Hagrid has a fireplace."
"Couldn't you borrow jeans from someone?"
She rolled her eyes. "Lavender's taller than me, and Parvati's butt is bigger than mine. We can't share bottoms."
Ron laughed and absently kicked a wadded up piece of parchment in front of him. They carried on with lazy, mindless conversation until they reached the first landing of the castle. A group of Ravenclaws Fifth Years were sitting around the entrance hall studying Arithmancy. They all smiled when Ron and Hermione passed by, and Terry Boot asked her if she wanted to study with them. She was terribly tempted, but she just smiled politely and said, "No, thank you."
"They probably want to copy from you anyway," Ron whispered in her ear as they exited the castle and walked down the stairs to the front lawn.
Hermione just rolled her eyes again. "No, they're very smart, you know."
"Padma Patil is smart?" he asked in slight amusement.
But Hermione nodded. "Yes, she really is. She's actually got the third highest average in the year."
Ron wanted to tease her about the fact that she actually knew the class standings, but he was somewhat intrigued. "Well, obviously, you're top of the class. Who's second?"
"Malfoy."
Ron nearly choked.
"Malfoy?! As in Draco Malfoy?"
"No, his twin sister," Hermione said sarcastically. Then, looking over at Ron, she said, "Oh, come on. Don't tell me you didn't know he was smart."
"I knew he was a smartass." Ron was extremely put-out by this new revelation.
"Ron, he's been second since our first year." She couldn't believe that this was such a surprise. "He even beat me in Potions third year."
"Perhaps he wasn't taking twelve subjects."
"Oh, shut up," she said, shoving him with her shoulder. She smiled despite herself.
"It's getting colder," Ron commented, pulling his cloak around him as Hermione did the same. He really wasn't in the mood to continue the discussion of Malfoy's intelligence level. He was a bit upset that Malfoy even had a brain- let alone a good one; he was soothed slightly, though, by the fact that at least he wasn't the worst in the year. There was always Neville, and he was fairly sure that ninety percent of the Hufflepuffs were rather thick. Oh, yeah. And Crabbe and Goyle.
Hermione finished the clasp on her cloak and dropped her hand easily into Ron's. He sent her a grin as he glanced at her from the corner of his eye. It wasn't often that they got any time like this, any alone time just for the two of them. It was nice.
They walked in silence for a little while, carefully and inconspicuously scooting closer together with each step until Hermione was actually in front of Ron, and his arms were wrapped around her waist, his hands clasping both of her own.
"You changed your shampoo," he said out of nowhere, breaking the peaceful silence.
She stopped walking and turned around in his arms, a strange look on her face. "How did you know?" she asked, wrinkling her nose up just a little.
"Because it smells different."
Hermione didn't do too good of a job of hiding the pleased look that covered her face as she beamed over the fact that he had apparently made such a habit out of smelling her hair that he had the scent memorized. "It's cranberry," she said quietly.
"What happened to the lemon and coconut thing?"
Hermione wanted to kiss him so badly that she actually found the intensity of the urge indecent.
"I ran out of it," she said quietly. "So, I used Parvati's."
"It smells nice." He smiled at her again and found her hand with his own. "Come on. I'm starting to freeze!"
He took off, and Hermione ran a few steps to keep up with him, though it really wasn't all that hard, as he was dragging her behind him. When they reached the sloping ground in front of Hagrid's cabin, they slowed down a bit so as not to slip and go sliding.
Just as they started up the three short stairs leading to his house, though, the front door opened and startled them both. They both visibly jumped and were met with a rather low chuckle.
"I would think your startle reflexes would be more advanced than that," mused Professor Remus Lupin. He waited at the door for them; he'd obviously been on his way out but had changed his mind upon seeing the visitors.
"Professor Lupin," Hermione said a bit breathlessly, casually letting go of Ron's hand and pretending that she didn't see the amused smirk cross her teacher's face. "We weren't expecting to see you here."
"Nor was I expecting to see the two of you," he mused, holding the door open and letting them into the small cottage. "Hagrid's just left for the village, and I was just on my way back to the castle."
"Hagrid's not here?" Ron asked, peering around the familiar settings and seeing the still barely burning fire that he'd obviously used the Floo through.
Professor Lupin shook his head and motioned for them to sit down. "But you two look like you're turning into Popsicles, so perhaps you should warm up a bit before going back."
They took seats next to each other on one of Hagrid's over-sized ottomans, and Lupin sat across from them on the window ledge, glancing out at the grounds as he did so.
"Isn't Harry with you?" he asked, turning back to face the pair of fifth years.
"He's asleep," Ron said carefully, remembering his suspicion that Harry was simply faking his tiredness.
"Asleep?" Lupin shook his head. "It's nearly noon. Shouldn't someone wake him up?"
"Oh, he's been up," Hermione said, undoing the clasp on her cloak and turning around to smooth it down behind her. "But he was tired and wanted a nap."
Lupin pursed his lips for a second but then shook his head and smiled at them. "Well, actually, I've been meaning to catch you two alone anyway."
Both Ron and Hermione had identical thoughts of how mortifying it would be if Lupin were to question the going-ons between them. Luckily, however, this wasn't his intent.
"I was wondering how Harry's doing. He's been rather sullen lately."
Hermione bit her tongue to keep from saying that he'd been sullen for a year now. Instead, she forced a smile on her face and said, "He's just tired. The O.W.L.s, you know..."
"And Quidditch," Ron supplied to the grateful half-glance of Hermione. "He's busy."
"Yes, I imagine he is," Lupin said thoughtfully. "It must be terribly hard what with him up at all hours of the night and all."
Ron and Hermione exchanged a puzzled glance, neither of them knowing just how much to reveal nor how to get out of their teacher how much he already knew.
Ron took the initiative and made a go at it. "Um, what do you mean, Professor?" Perhaps subtlety was overrated; there was nothing like just coming right out and asking.
"I'm just curious as to why he's made the owlery his sudden sanctuary. Not too many students visit it in the middle of the night." Lupin leaned back slightly against the window and surveyed his students.
"Uh," Ron thought quickly, "Exactly. It's always so crowded during the day, you know. It's hard to get a letter mailed out of there without having to fight half the school."
Hermione nodded in agreement.
Lupin frowned just slightly. "Well, I certainly hope that whoever he's writing to is worth the inevitable drop in his marks that will occur if he continues to fall asleep in all of his classes."
"But he hasn't even fallen asleep in your class," Ron protested earnestly, feeling the need to defend his friend. And it was true anyway. Harry hadn't fallen asleep in Defense Against the Dark Arts since Quirrell had been in charge of the class. It had been impossible to sleep through Lockhart's maddening lectures about his hair care product line. No one had even wanted to sleep through Lupin's class in third year. Falling asleep in the fake Mad-Eyed Moody's class could have proved quite devastating to the offender unless they fancied being transfigured into small rodents. And Lupin was, if possible, even more interesting this year than he'd been before.
Some classes were easy to catch a quick nap in. History of Magic, for example. Professor Binns never even paid attention to whether or not his class was even alive. Divination was another easy class to doze off in, as Professor Trelawney actually praised students for resting their Inner Eyes. Charms was a tossup. On some days, it was quite simple to fall asleep, but on the days when Professor Flitwick brought out his stack of thick textbooks and was able to survey the class properly, he didn't allow napping.
Other classes, though, were absolutely not for sleeping. Transfiguration for one. Professor McGonagall was perhaps the fairest teacher in the school when it came to being non-biased towards her students, and being in Gryffindor wouldn't help at all if she caught someone sleeping through her lecture. They were due a detention and a deduction of House points without fail. And someone would have to be absolutely mental to try and nap through Potions. Seamus had tried it once in second year, and none of his classmates would soon forget the way Snape had yanked him up by the ear and dragged him to the front of the classroom where he was ordered to stand and list off the twelve uses of dragon blood. Letter. By. Letter.
But to Ron's protest, Lupin simply smiled faintly. "I know he hasn't. And if he ever does, it better be because Voldemort himself had knocked in the middle of the night and asked for a game of Quidditch." Ron and Hermione glanced at each other with lifted smiles. Lupin laughed briefly and went on. "But I've checked, and his grades are dropping overall. This isn't good, obviously. Learning as much as possible is extremely important. Especially now."
"I try to get him to study all the time," Hermione said earnestly. "But he won't listen to me." Ron rolled his eyes, and Lupin smirked slightly.
"Well, you tell him that if all of us had to sit through seven years of Binns, he bloody well better do the same." He looked from one to the other. "If he doesn't stop skiving off so much, he's going to regret it.
Even Ron wouldn't argue with this fact. In the past week, Harry had skipped all three History of Magic lectures, one Charms class, and one Divination lesson. He'd claimed to not be feeling well, but he'd also refused to visit Madame Pomfrey for any medicine.
"Now then." The professor sat up brightly. "Next Saturday is a Hogsmeade weekend, right?"
Hermione thought it over quickly in her mind and realized that she hadn't even noticed that it was already time for their monthly Hogsmeade visit. She nodded, though, her mind wandering to all the things she needed to pick up. She came back to reality, though, when Lupin spoke again.
"Right. Well, I've spoken to Sirius, and he said he's going to make it up here by then. It's been awhile since the last time you all saw each other, hasn't it?"
Ron nodded, his face already looking excited for the prospective visit from their favorite dog. "We haven't seen him since June."
The mention of June set a brief, uneasy tension over the room, but it disappeared when Lupin grinned. "Well, just make sure that Harry actually drags himself out of the dormitory for the day, okay? He said he'll be writing with the exact meeting instructions, but he'll definitely be there."
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A cup of tea later, Ron and Hermione were walking back towards the castle by themselves. Professor Lupin had suddenly remembered something he had to speak to Madame Sprout about and had excused himself. Ron seemed quite lifted, but Hermione was rather distracted. Ron finally gave up and just asked her what was wrong.
She sighed distractedly and said, "You don't reckon Harry will get in trouble, do you?"
Looking sideways at her, Ron raised his eyebrows in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"Well, what if Professor Lupin tells Sirius that Harry's grades are dropping and that he's skipping class a lot and all that?"
Ron shrugged. "So what if he does? Do you think Sirius will really care?"
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Of course he'll care! That's his godson, isn't it? He's got to feel some sort of responsibility toward him."
Ron rolled his own eyes. "And what's Sirius gonna do anyway? Ground him?"
She raised her shoulders slightly. "Maybe."
"Get real, Hermione."
"Well, think about it," Hermione said stubbornly. "If things hadn't gone wrong three years ago, Harry would be living with Sirius."
"Yeah, and if things hadn't gone wrong fourteen years ago, Harry would be living with his parents." Ron shook his head. "But that's not the case, is it?"
Hermione looked extremely putout by the whole situation, and she pulled her cloak tighter around her. "I just don't want him to get in trouble," she said rather quietly. "That's all."
"He's not going to," Ron said with a long overdue sigh. "Lupin probably won't even mention it. And if he does, Sirius won't do anything except tell him to study harder. It's a few grades slightly lower than what he normally gets. It's not like he robbed Gringotts or something."
She gave her own sigh and nodded slightly. "Okay," she said finally. "And maybe seeing Sirius will get him out of his mood."
"Of course it will," Ron said assuredly. "He'll be thrilled."
When they reached the Gryffindor Common Room a few minutes later, most of the students were on their way down to the Great Hall for lunch. Harry was just coming down the stairs from the boys' dormitory when his best friends stepped through the portrait hole.
"Feel better?" Hermione asked brightly, giving him a friendly smile as they stepped closer to each other.
Harry nodded vaguely; he looked a bit disoriented. "Where've you guys been?"
"We went to visit Hagrid."
"Really?" Harry actually looked interested; maybe he hadn't been faking his nap. "How is he?"
"He wasn't there," Ron said shrugging. "He had to go get something from the village- you know, probably our next lesson." He put verbal quotation marks around the word 'lesson.' Harry cracked a smile, and Hermione rolled her eyes. "But Professor Lupin was down there at his cottage."
"Why?" Harry looked genuinely confused.
Ron shrugged. "He'd been talking to Hagrid. But he invited us in for tea."
"How generous of him to offer tea in someone else's home," Harry said sarcastically, though it wasn't meanly natured.
"Well, it tasted a hell of a lot better than the tea we normally get in that house," Ron said adamantly. All three of them laughed.
"Well, what did he want?" Harry asked curiously.
"He said to tell you to start studying more and to quit skipping class," Hermione said shortly. Harry just looked at her; Ron rolled his eyes.
"And he said to make sure you come to Hogsmeade next weekend." Ron grinned. "Snuffles is going to be there."
"Really?" Harry's green eyes lit up almost immediately. He glanced around to make sure that no one was listening in on their conversation. "He talked to him?"
Ron nodded. "Yeah, he said he'll tell us exactly what time and where and all of that later in the week."
"Cool," Harry said with the most genuine expression he'd used lately. "Wish I'd gone with you down there."
Ron shrugged. "Well, I called your name, but you were asleep. I figured you probably didn't want me to wake you up."
Harry nodded, understanding. And Hermione looked at him with concern etched all over her face. "Are you okay, Harry? You sure you don't want to go see Madame Pomfrey?"
Harry shook his head. "No, I'm fine." Looking at Ron, he said, "Bet you're starving, huh? You missed breakfast."
Ron nodded. "Yeah, and Hermione forbid me from bothering her best friends the House-Elves."
Snickering, Harry rolled his eyes. "Let's go to lunch."
He and Ron walked toward the portrait hole together, laughing and making smart-aleck comments about 'spew.' Hermione watched them from behind before hurrying to catch them up.
"It's S.P.E.W.," she said haughtily, breaking in between them and bumping each of them with her shoulders. "And you'd know that if either of you ever bothered to hold up your commitment as officers."
Ron and Harry exchanged a grin over her head.
Some things never changed.
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So, there's the next part.
Just one thing to say.
JUNE 21st!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Need I say more?
Oh, yeah! Please review!
Disclaimer: They don't belong to me, and I'm thankful to say that Ms. Rowling apparently still loves them. (I was getting worried).
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"Do you know what's wrong with Harry?" Hermione glanced up from her Transfiguration homework as she finally asked the question that had been bothering her for a few days now.
Ron, who was supposedly working on the same assignment, quickly moved his arm to hide the doodle he was drawing of a Quidditch field. He looked up with slightly widened eyes. "Huh? Harry?"
Hermione was quiet for a moment before rolling her own eyes slightly. "Yes, Harry. Do you know what's wrong with him? He's not himself."
"He misses Gia," Ron said with a shrug. "He's just moping because of that."
Pursing her lips slightly, she shook her head. "No. I don't think that's it. He's being even more sullen than usual."
Ron shrugged again. "It's nothing, I'm sure. He's just in his own little world these days."
Hermione looked toward the stairs where Harry had ascended about an hour earlier, claiming that he was tired and needed a nap. She wanted to say something else but decided against it. Instead, she glanced back at her Transfiguration book and frowned. "I'm bored."
Looking up with a bright smile, Ron jumped at the opportunity to distract her from her homework. "Really? Me, too!"
Hermione looked like she was fighting back a grin, and she raised a single eyebrow in question. "Oh, really? I would have thought that designing your own personal Quidditch field would be simply exhilarating."
Ron turned a sheepish shade of red and glanced down at the work he'd tried to cover. "Well, excuse me for finding Quidditch more amusing than the proper preparation for turning a worm into a book."
Rolling her eyes, Hermione couldn't help the laugh. "Okay, even I'll admit that it is rather boring."
"So!" Ron said brightly, not believing that she'd actually called a lesson boring. "Do you want to do something else? We could go visit the House- Elves. Maybe they need liberating."
She didn't buy this for a second, of course. "It's not my fault you slept through breakfast," she said haughtily. "You'll just have to wait until lunch because it's not fair to go down there and nick food from them."
"We don't have to nick it," he answered back defensively. "They enjoy giving it away."
"Well, it isn't polite to bother them when that's your only intent," she said smoothly. "If you want to visit them and, I don't know, discuss the importance of resisting authority, then, yes, I will join you."
Ron sighed and looked away. "I'll wait for lunch."
It was a Saturday morning, and the Common Room was unusually crowded. This was surprising, as it was the first weekend without snow and the temperature, while warm by no means, was not totally freezing. But apparently a lot of professors had assigned extra work to get the students back into the swing of things post-holiday, and students were studying all over the Common Room.
Hermione glanced at everyone else working diligently and thought about how irresponsible of her it would be to put off her homework. Then she saw Ron looking at his textbook with a bewildered look of boredom that was simply beyond pitiful, and she finally gave in. With a sigh, she closed her book and looked at him expectantly.
"Any ideas besides the House-Elves?"
"I wish it was a Hogsmeade weekend."
"It's not," she said, wishing the same.
Ron looked around as if the Common Room was going to present him with a splendid idea to cure their boredom. And strangely, it did. "We could go for a walk," he suggested, looking toward the high tower windows. "It's sunny outside- no rain, no snow. Maybe we could visit Hagrid."
Hagrid had returned from his mission with the giants in the middle of the last semester. Apparently, it hadn't gone well, but he had made quite a bit of progress in the area of his love life. He seemed quite happy whenever he was discussing a certain Beauxbatons Headmistress. Of course, they hadn't really been visiting him as much this year as they normally had, and while they always swore to visit again soon, they rarely did. Most of their visits consisted of Care of Magical Creatures lessons, which had been reduced to bi-weekly in order to leave more room for regular Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons.
Hermione nodded, thinking that visiting Hagrid was a brilliant idea. "Yes, let's do that," she said briskly, standing up and placing all of her supplies into her bag.
They both hurried up to their respective dormitories to drop off their load of books and pick up their cloaks. It was still too cold for a simple jacket. Ron glanced at Harry's bed when he entered the circular room and saw that his best friend had the curtains pulled closed around the four poster.
"Harry?" he called quietly; he figured that a trip to visit Hagrid might pull Harry out of his current mood. But when he carefully pulled back to the curtains, he saw that Harry was lying face down on the pillow, presumably either asleep or pretending to be asleep; his glasses were on the nightstand next to the bed.
Sighing, Ron closed the curtains again and returned downstairs to meet Hermione. She was waiting for him in the Common Room, her cloak folded neatly in her arms.
"Was Harry awake?" she asked, seemingly reading his mind.
Ron shook his head, not bothering to mention that he had a strong suspicion that Harry was faking his nap. "No, I checked."
She frowned and shrugged. "Oh, well. You ready?"
He nodded, following her out of the portrait hole.
"You're going to freeze," he noted pointedly as they made their way through the long halls of the castle. She was dressed in a dark gray sweater, a knee-length black skirt, and gray tights despite the fact that it was a Saturday.
"I didn't have any clean jeans," she said, shrugging. "And anyway, Hagrid has a fireplace."
"Couldn't you borrow jeans from someone?"
She rolled her eyes. "Lavender's taller than me, and Parvati's butt is bigger than mine. We can't share bottoms."
Ron laughed and absently kicked a wadded up piece of parchment in front of him. They carried on with lazy, mindless conversation until they reached the first landing of the castle. A group of Ravenclaws Fifth Years were sitting around the entrance hall studying Arithmancy. They all smiled when Ron and Hermione passed by, and Terry Boot asked her if she wanted to study with them. She was terribly tempted, but she just smiled politely and said, "No, thank you."
"They probably want to copy from you anyway," Ron whispered in her ear as they exited the castle and walked down the stairs to the front lawn.
Hermione just rolled her eyes again. "No, they're very smart, you know."
"Padma Patil is smart?" he asked in slight amusement.
But Hermione nodded. "Yes, she really is. She's actually got the third highest average in the year."
Ron wanted to tease her about the fact that she actually knew the class standings, but he was somewhat intrigued. "Well, obviously, you're top of the class. Who's second?"
"Malfoy."
Ron nearly choked.
"Malfoy?! As in Draco Malfoy?"
"No, his twin sister," Hermione said sarcastically. Then, looking over at Ron, she said, "Oh, come on. Don't tell me you didn't know he was smart."
"I knew he was a smartass." Ron was extremely put-out by this new revelation.
"Ron, he's been second since our first year." She couldn't believe that this was such a surprise. "He even beat me in Potions third year."
"Perhaps he wasn't taking twelve subjects."
"Oh, shut up," she said, shoving him with her shoulder. She smiled despite herself.
"It's getting colder," Ron commented, pulling his cloak around him as Hermione did the same. He really wasn't in the mood to continue the discussion of Malfoy's intelligence level. He was a bit upset that Malfoy even had a brain- let alone a good one; he was soothed slightly, though, by the fact that at least he wasn't the worst in the year. There was always Neville, and he was fairly sure that ninety percent of the Hufflepuffs were rather thick. Oh, yeah. And Crabbe and Goyle.
Hermione finished the clasp on her cloak and dropped her hand easily into Ron's. He sent her a grin as he glanced at her from the corner of his eye. It wasn't often that they got any time like this, any alone time just for the two of them. It was nice.
They walked in silence for a little while, carefully and inconspicuously scooting closer together with each step until Hermione was actually in front of Ron, and his arms were wrapped around her waist, his hands clasping both of her own.
"You changed your shampoo," he said out of nowhere, breaking the peaceful silence.
She stopped walking and turned around in his arms, a strange look on her face. "How did you know?" she asked, wrinkling her nose up just a little.
"Because it smells different."
Hermione didn't do too good of a job of hiding the pleased look that covered her face as she beamed over the fact that he had apparently made such a habit out of smelling her hair that he had the scent memorized. "It's cranberry," she said quietly.
"What happened to the lemon and coconut thing?"
Hermione wanted to kiss him so badly that she actually found the intensity of the urge indecent.
"I ran out of it," she said quietly. "So, I used Parvati's."
"It smells nice." He smiled at her again and found her hand with his own. "Come on. I'm starting to freeze!"
He took off, and Hermione ran a few steps to keep up with him, though it really wasn't all that hard, as he was dragging her behind him. When they reached the sloping ground in front of Hagrid's cabin, they slowed down a bit so as not to slip and go sliding.
Just as they started up the three short stairs leading to his house, though, the front door opened and startled them both. They both visibly jumped and were met with a rather low chuckle.
"I would think your startle reflexes would be more advanced than that," mused Professor Remus Lupin. He waited at the door for them; he'd obviously been on his way out but had changed his mind upon seeing the visitors.
"Professor Lupin," Hermione said a bit breathlessly, casually letting go of Ron's hand and pretending that she didn't see the amused smirk cross her teacher's face. "We weren't expecting to see you here."
"Nor was I expecting to see the two of you," he mused, holding the door open and letting them into the small cottage. "Hagrid's just left for the village, and I was just on my way back to the castle."
"Hagrid's not here?" Ron asked, peering around the familiar settings and seeing the still barely burning fire that he'd obviously used the Floo through.
Professor Lupin shook his head and motioned for them to sit down. "But you two look like you're turning into Popsicles, so perhaps you should warm up a bit before going back."
They took seats next to each other on one of Hagrid's over-sized ottomans, and Lupin sat across from them on the window ledge, glancing out at the grounds as he did so.
"Isn't Harry with you?" he asked, turning back to face the pair of fifth years.
"He's asleep," Ron said carefully, remembering his suspicion that Harry was simply faking his tiredness.
"Asleep?" Lupin shook his head. "It's nearly noon. Shouldn't someone wake him up?"
"Oh, he's been up," Hermione said, undoing the clasp on her cloak and turning around to smooth it down behind her. "But he was tired and wanted a nap."
Lupin pursed his lips for a second but then shook his head and smiled at them. "Well, actually, I've been meaning to catch you two alone anyway."
Both Ron and Hermione had identical thoughts of how mortifying it would be if Lupin were to question the going-ons between them. Luckily, however, this wasn't his intent.
"I was wondering how Harry's doing. He's been rather sullen lately."
Hermione bit her tongue to keep from saying that he'd been sullen for a year now. Instead, she forced a smile on her face and said, "He's just tired. The O.W.L.s, you know..."
"And Quidditch," Ron supplied to the grateful half-glance of Hermione. "He's busy."
"Yes, I imagine he is," Lupin said thoughtfully. "It must be terribly hard what with him up at all hours of the night and all."
Ron and Hermione exchanged a puzzled glance, neither of them knowing just how much to reveal nor how to get out of their teacher how much he already knew.
Ron took the initiative and made a go at it. "Um, what do you mean, Professor?" Perhaps subtlety was overrated; there was nothing like just coming right out and asking.
"I'm just curious as to why he's made the owlery his sudden sanctuary. Not too many students visit it in the middle of the night." Lupin leaned back slightly against the window and surveyed his students.
"Uh," Ron thought quickly, "Exactly. It's always so crowded during the day, you know. It's hard to get a letter mailed out of there without having to fight half the school."
Hermione nodded in agreement.
Lupin frowned just slightly. "Well, I certainly hope that whoever he's writing to is worth the inevitable drop in his marks that will occur if he continues to fall asleep in all of his classes."
"But he hasn't even fallen asleep in your class," Ron protested earnestly, feeling the need to defend his friend. And it was true anyway. Harry hadn't fallen asleep in Defense Against the Dark Arts since Quirrell had been in charge of the class. It had been impossible to sleep through Lockhart's maddening lectures about his hair care product line. No one had even wanted to sleep through Lupin's class in third year. Falling asleep in the fake Mad-Eyed Moody's class could have proved quite devastating to the offender unless they fancied being transfigured into small rodents. And Lupin was, if possible, even more interesting this year than he'd been before.
Some classes were easy to catch a quick nap in. History of Magic, for example. Professor Binns never even paid attention to whether or not his class was even alive. Divination was another easy class to doze off in, as Professor Trelawney actually praised students for resting their Inner Eyes. Charms was a tossup. On some days, it was quite simple to fall asleep, but on the days when Professor Flitwick brought out his stack of thick textbooks and was able to survey the class properly, he didn't allow napping.
Other classes, though, were absolutely not for sleeping. Transfiguration for one. Professor McGonagall was perhaps the fairest teacher in the school when it came to being non-biased towards her students, and being in Gryffindor wouldn't help at all if she caught someone sleeping through her lecture. They were due a detention and a deduction of House points without fail. And someone would have to be absolutely mental to try and nap through Potions. Seamus had tried it once in second year, and none of his classmates would soon forget the way Snape had yanked him up by the ear and dragged him to the front of the classroom where he was ordered to stand and list off the twelve uses of dragon blood. Letter. By. Letter.
But to Ron's protest, Lupin simply smiled faintly. "I know he hasn't. And if he ever does, it better be because Voldemort himself had knocked in the middle of the night and asked for a game of Quidditch." Ron and Hermione glanced at each other with lifted smiles. Lupin laughed briefly and went on. "But I've checked, and his grades are dropping overall. This isn't good, obviously. Learning as much as possible is extremely important. Especially now."
"I try to get him to study all the time," Hermione said earnestly. "But he won't listen to me." Ron rolled his eyes, and Lupin smirked slightly.
"Well, you tell him that if all of us had to sit through seven years of Binns, he bloody well better do the same." He looked from one to the other. "If he doesn't stop skiving off so much, he's going to regret it.
Even Ron wouldn't argue with this fact. In the past week, Harry had skipped all three History of Magic lectures, one Charms class, and one Divination lesson. He'd claimed to not be feeling well, but he'd also refused to visit Madame Pomfrey for any medicine.
"Now then." The professor sat up brightly. "Next Saturday is a Hogsmeade weekend, right?"
Hermione thought it over quickly in her mind and realized that she hadn't even noticed that it was already time for their monthly Hogsmeade visit. She nodded, though, her mind wandering to all the things she needed to pick up. She came back to reality, though, when Lupin spoke again.
"Right. Well, I've spoken to Sirius, and he said he's going to make it up here by then. It's been awhile since the last time you all saw each other, hasn't it?"
Ron nodded, his face already looking excited for the prospective visit from their favorite dog. "We haven't seen him since June."
The mention of June set a brief, uneasy tension over the room, but it disappeared when Lupin grinned. "Well, just make sure that Harry actually drags himself out of the dormitory for the day, okay? He said he'll be writing with the exact meeting instructions, but he'll definitely be there."
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A cup of tea later, Ron and Hermione were walking back towards the castle by themselves. Professor Lupin had suddenly remembered something he had to speak to Madame Sprout about and had excused himself. Ron seemed quite lifted, but Hermione was rather distracted. Ron finally gave up and just asked her what was wrong.
She sighed distractedly and said, "You don't reckon Harry will get in trouble, do you?"
Looking sideways at her, Ron raised his eyebrows in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"Well, what if Professor Lupin tells Sirius that Harry's grades are dropping and that he's skipping class a lot and all that?"
Ron shrugged. "So what if he does? Do you think Sirius will really care?"
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Of course he'll care! That's his godson, isn't it? He's got to feel some sort of responsibility toward him."
Ron rolled his own eyes. "And what's Sirius gonna do anyway? Ground him?"
She raised her shoulders slightly. "Maybe."
"Get real, Hermione."
"Well, think about it," Hermione said stubbornly. "If things hadn't gone wrong three years ago, Harry would be living with Sirius."
"Yeah, and if things hadn't gone wrong fourteen years ago, Harry would be living with his parents." Ron shook his head. "But that's not the case, is it?"
Hermione looked extremely putout by the whole situation, and she pulled her cloak tighter around her. "I just don't want him to get in trouble," she said rather quietly. "That's all."
"He's not going to," Ron said with a long overdue sigh. "Lupin probably won't even mention it. And if he does, Sirius won't do anything except tell him to study harder. It's a few grades slightly lower than what he normally gets. It's not like he robbed Gringotts or something."
She gave her own sigh and nodded slightly. "Okay," she said finally. "And maybe seeing Sirius will get him out of his mood."
"Of course it will," Ron said assuredly. "He'll be thrilled."
When they reached the Gryffindor Common Room a few minutes later, most of the students were on their way down to the Great Hall for lunch. Harry was just coming down the stairs from the boys' dormitory when his best friends stepped through the portrait hole.
"Feel better?" Hermione asked brightly, giving him a friendly smile as they stepped closer to each other.
Harry nodded vaguely; he looked a bit disoriented. "Where've you guys been?"
"We went to visit Hagrid."
"Really?" Harry actually looked interested; maybe he hadn't been faking his nap. "How is he?"
"He wasn't there," Ron said shrugging. "He had to go get something from the village- you know, probably our next lesson." He put verbal quotation marks around the word 'lesson.' Harry cracked a smile, and Hermione rolled her eyes. "But Professor Lupin was down there at his cottage."
"Why?" Harry looked genuinely confused.
Ron shrugged. "He'd been talking to Hagrid. But he invited us in for tea."
"How generous of him to offer tea in someone else's home," Harry said sarcastically, though it wasn't meanly natured.
"Well, it tasted a hell of a lot better than the tea we normally get in that house," Ron said adamantly. All three of them laughed.
"Well, what did he want?" Harry asked curiously.
"He said to tell you to start studying more and to quit skipping class," Hermione said shortly. Harry just looked at her; Ron rolled his eyes.
"And he said to make sure you come to Hogsmeade next weekend." Ron grinned. "Snuffles is going to be there."
"Really?" Harry's green eyes lit up almost immediately. He glanced around to make sure that no one was listening in on their conversation. "He talked to him?"
Ron nodded. "Yeah, he said he'll tell us exactly what time and where and all of that later in the week."
"Cool," Harry said with the most genuine expression he'd used lately. "Wish I'd gone with you down there."
Ron shrugged. "Well, I called your name, but you were asleep. I figured you probably didn't want me to wake you up."
Harry nodded, understanding. And Hermione looked at him with concern etched all over her face. "Are you okay, Harry? You sure you don't want to go see Madame Pomfrey?"
Harry shook his head. "No, I'm fine." Looking at Ron, he said, "Bet you're starving, huh? You missed breakfast."
Ron nodded. "Yeah, and Hermione forbid me from bothering her best friends the House-Elves."
Snickering, Harry rolled his eyes. "Let's go to lunch."
He and Ron walked toward the portrait hole together, laughing and making smart-aleck comments about 'spew.' Hermione watched them from behind before hurrying to catch them up.
"It's S.P.E.W.," she said haughtily, breaking in between them and bumping each of them with her shoulders. "And you'd know that if either of you ever bothered to hold up your commitment as officers."
Ron and Harry exchanged a grin over her head.
Some things never changed.
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So, there's the next part.
Just one thing to say.
JUNE 21st!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Need I say more?
Oh, yeah! Please review!
