It was amazing how a few tiny words could so completely change a person's attitude. Before Vivian came out of her common room, Remus had been so nervous he'd felt he might be sick. After she appeared, he went from utterly humiliated by his own dweebiness to practically floating on air when she didn't seem to mind... and then, three little words brought him crashing back down again. He no longer wanted to go anywhere or do anything with her. He just wanted to head right back to the dorm and hide.

"Remus?" asked Vivian. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," he replied, trying to sound like he meant it. He was good at that – Remus had been convincing people he was fine the week of the full moon for years.

"You sure?" she still looked concerned. "You look like you didn't sleep last night. Under your eyes is all dark."

Not surprising when the full moon was only four days away... not to mention he'd been up late worrying about this date. "I'm all right," he said, then changed his mind. "Well, maybe I'm coming down with a cold or something." That would explain his absence when he vanished for the day. "I'll be all right."

"If you're sure..." said Vivian.

"I'm sure," he assured her.

They headed down the hill into the little town of Hogsmeade. It was a nice spring day – there were puddles on the ground from a pre-sunrise shower, and the air was chilly, but the sky was clear and blue, and the breeze smelled nice. The wind made Vivian's long sleeves flutter and her hair blew in her eyes, and Remus turned pink as he realized he was staring at her again. He'd better say something.

"Um," he said. "So... well, here." He pulled the reading list out of his pocket. "I made a list for you of good werewolf books in the library." He held it out. "Oh, and Professor Duncan has a couple you might want to borrow. Those are marked – just ask him for them, he likes lending them out."

"Thanks." Vivian took the list and looked at it. "I think I've already read a lot of these, but it would've been a few years back. I'll have to go through them again... what's this one?" she pointed to a particular title, one of the one's he'd marked as being in Professor Duncan's private library.

"Oh, that one's a case study on Jack the Ripper," said Remus. "Did you know they had to erase the memories of eighty-two members of the London police force to keep people from finding out it was a werewolf?"

"I've read about that," said Vivian. "In other books, though – I didn't know there was a whole book just on it. Most authors talk like the case wasn't very important."

"Well, it wasn't really," said Remus. "The werewolf didn't kill many people, and they caught her quickly. What made it unusual was that she was a Muggle originally. That doesn't happen very often."

"No, I guess it wouldn't," agreed Vivian. "The Ministry keeps tabs on werewolves and they're not usually allowed into Muggle areas except under special circumstances. Did it say whether anybody ever found out how she was bitten?"

Remus shook his head. "No," he replied. "That was the big mystery about it – the ministry knew where all the werewolves they knew of were. The author said it was scarier to the wizarding community in London that than the actual murders... that there might be werewolves running around and nobody knew who they were."

Vivian nodded. "That's always given me the creeps," she confessed. "How twenty-seven days out of the month, werewolves just walk around looking normal and you'd never be able to tell." She shook her head and changed the subject, apparently not noticing Remus' wince... or perhaps she did notice it, and just misinterpreted it. "Now... you're Muggleborn, right?"

"What makes you say that?" Remus asked, his eyes widening. She was from a pureblood family... what if they were one of the ones who didn't like Muggleborns?

"Your clothes," she replied reasonably. "Although I wasn't sure, actually. 'Lupin' is a wizard name. I shouldn't have phrased it that way, I guess. I didn't mean to offend you."

"Oh, you didn't," said Remus. "Actually, I'm half and half. My father was a wizard, but I tend to think of myself as more like Muggleborns, because my Mum and my stepdad are both Muggles, and they mostly raised me. I barely know my father's family."

Vivian nodded, and looked a bit brighter. "Okay," she said, "so then why don't we go to the Muggle Café?"

"Where's that?" asked Remus. He hadn't heard of it, but then, he generally tagged along with James and Sirius in Hogsmeade, and they were far more interested in Zonko's and Honeydukes, and in the Three Broomsticks, which was where the good-looking girls from Hogwarts liked to hang out.

"This way," she said, and as she led the way, she explained. "It's not run by Muggles or anything, that wouldn't be allowed. It was founded by a pair of witches – sisters – who spent a lot of time studying Muggles and how they react to magic. They found a lot of things they liked in the Muggle world, so for a retirement project they decided they'd open a Muggle-style restaurant, just for fun. A Muggleborn friend of mine showed me where to find it. Some fun people hang out there – once a week, they let the patrons stand up and recite their own poetry, and there's a long-haired wizard with a singing saxophone who always seems to be around there."

"Sounds like fun," agreed Remus.

When he actually saw the Muggle Café, however, his reaction was to laugh out loud. It was nearly a precise replica of a 1950's soda shoppe, right down to the smooth curves and pastel paint, and it looked very strange and out of place among the medieval architecture of Hogsmeade.

"What's funny?" asked Vivian.

"This looks like the places my parents would go when they were dating," said Remus. "I've seen photographs. In the Muggle world, places like this went out of style ten or fifteen years ago. I've never seen a real one, not that still looked like this."

"Really?" Vivian sounded very surprised. "Things change that fast? I read that when the sisters founded it, it was brand new."

"Yeah," said Remus. Now that he thought about it, things did change very fast in the Muggle world – while in the wizarding world, they didn't seem to change at all. "It doesn't seem that weird when you live with it."

"I guess it wouldn't," said Vivian. "If you want to go somewhere else," she ventured nervously.

"No, this is great," said Remus. "This is just fine."

The inside of the café was just as anachronistic as the outside, with an added level of surreality from the presence of patrons dressed in wizarding robes and cloaks. The beatnik with the singing saxophone was there, just as Vivian had described him, wearing a robe, a pointed hat, a varsity jacket and high-topped sneakers. The atmosphere was completed by a colourful, though of course inoperative, jukebox on one wall.

Remus and Vivian ordered hamburgers and shakes, which wince they were made by house-elves were much better than normal fast-food fare, and talked about Vivian's essay. By the time they'd finished and were going through the box of every-flavour beans looking for a non-disgusting dessert, Vivian had scribbled out an outline she was fairly pleased with, and seemed to be feeling much better about the whole thing.

"Here!" she said triumphantly, pulling out a pinkish-brown jellybean. "I think this is candy apple... it's either that or peanut butter. Here." She put it in Remus' hand.

He looked askance at it. One thing he'd definitely learned from eating the gross beans with James and Sirius was never, ever to eat the brown ones. There were chocolate and root beer and peanut butter ones, yes, but there were also things too terrible to name. "Tell you what," he said, giving it back, "we'll break it in half, and you taste it to make sure."

"Chicken!" she teased. "How'd you ever end up in Gryffindor?" But she broke the bean and popped one half in her mouth. After a moment's thoughtful chewing, she laughed.

"What?" asked Remus.

She swallowed and grinned. "Cat food!"

Remus smiled back. He'd started having fun again, and was very tempted to just forget about what she'd said earlier. After all, out of the whole school only his three best friends and the teachers actually knew. Maybe he could... but, he realized, he if actually got serious about seeing Vivian, she was bound to find out sooner or later. He'd better just ask now, so he could nip this whole thing in the bud before doing so became too painful.

"Vivian," he said. "Um, I'm sorry, and if you don't want to talk about it, then that's okay, I understand... but I'm curious. Why did you say you hate werewolves?"

"Because I do." She looked pained. "It's dumb," she admitted. "I know it's not their fault. I know they're normal most of the time and they didn't ask to be bitten, and they can't help what they do. I know, I know, I know, I've heard it over and over, but... ugh." She shuddered. "I just..."

"So it's kind of like a phobia," Remus offered. "It's irrational?"

"I guess," she agreed. "You see, two years ago, my... my father died. Because of a werewolf."

And Remus, rather stupidly, answered with the first thing that came into his head. It was an entirely true statement, but under the circumstances, it was also an entirely misleading one. He said, "mine, too."

"Really?" Vivian looked up.

"Yeah," Remus nodded. "See, we lived in London, and you can't see the stars from there, because there's too much light. So one night my father took me out into the countryside to show me the constellations, and while we were out there, this werewolf found us. The ministry people told us later that he'd escaped from St. Mungos. My father told me to run and he tried to fight it off, and it killed him."

Vivian's eyes were huge. "How old were you?"

"Ten," said Remus. Seven years ago, he realized. Was that all? Was it really less than half his life? It felt like he'd lived with this thing forever.

"Wow," said Vivian. "I was fourteen," she said. "We were staying in this town in Germany – my parents like to travel during the summers – and there'd been this string of murders. Dad figured it was a werewolf and since he was a wizard he thought he could do something about it. And he did, he killed it, and he got in trouble for that. They let him off because it was self-defense. But before he killed it, it bit him."

Remus nodded. "And then?"

"Well, Mum and I took him to the nearest wizarding hospital," said Vivian. "And they kept telling him it would be all right, and there were ways to live with it, but he said he just couldn't. So he... um..." she looked at the jellybeans on the table and licked her lips.

"Killed himself?" Remus ventured.

Vivian nodded, without raising her head. Remus couldn't see her too well, but something about her posture looked like she was about to cry.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have brought it up."

"It's all right," she replied. "Mum never wants to talk about it... we just kind of pretend it didn't happen, and it's awful. And when I try to talk to my friends, they don't seem to want to hear about it." She wiped her eyes and reached out to take Remus' hand. "We've got a lot more in common than I thought."

"Yeah," said Remus. But he was back to feeling sick again.