Despite Gwen's opinion of James and Sirius, she continued to hang out with the four friends quite a bit. The only difficulty was trying to pry Eunice away from Sirius so that they could hang out with Lily and Grace. The four girls had become rather good friends. Gwen admired Lily and Grace—Lily for her skills in charms and potions, and both of them for their sweetness. Gwen felt that Sirius and James could take a lesson from them.

Gwen was surprised when, not long after the dueling match, Remus's mother became ill again and he left to visit her. This time there was no incident with Remus slipping on the way to the gate, and eventually Gwen convinced herself that her suspicions were groundless.

Besides, Remus continued to help her with her Transfiguration homework once a week, which was a huge relief to Gwen. In return, she shared a few Charms and dueling tricks with him.

It soon became obvious that Gwen had a bit of a knack for dueling. She and Sirius were ranked quite high on the team, despite being first-years. Sirius, of course, was soon becoming popular in just about every arena of Hogwarts life except for Quidditch. Gwen herself was rather popular with the dueling crowd, but as the pastime wasn't nearly as exciting as the flying sport, her fame was of a pretty limited kind.

But she had friends, and few enemies—and those were mostly confined to the dueling floor. All in all, Gwen found herself adoring Hogwarts, and rather sad to leave it at the end of the school year.

000

"Gwen!" someone called over the noisy Platform nine and three-quarters. Gwen craned her neck to see who it was.

"Eunice!" she cried as soon as she recognized the girl struggling toward her with a trolley. They gave each other a hug.

"Wow, you shot up a bit over the summer, didn't you?" Gwen said, standing back and looking critically at her best friend.

"Just a bit," Eunice said, trying not to preen.

"Look, there's Lily and Grace," Gwen said, pointing through the crowd. "Let's go catch them and get a compartment together."

The two girls hugged their parents goodbye and headed for the train. Lily and Grace greeted them with a flurry of hugs, and they boarded the train and searched for an empty compartment.

"Can you believe we're third years already?" Grace exclaimed as they found a place and sat down.

"Can you believe we have another new Defense teacher?" Eunice countered.

"Another?" Lily exclaimed. "Who?"

"A Professor Medea, I believe," Eunice said.

"Please tell me we don't have a new Potions teacher," Gwen added.

Lily laughed. "I didn't know you were so fond of Slughorn!"

"Well, I'm not, particularly, but he's a lot better than Gumboil was. I mean, Slughorn doesn't pay much attention to me, but that's just the way I like it in that class," Gwen said feelingly. Lily smiled. She had helped Gwen sort out her cauldron many a time—she knew exactly how bad Gwen was at the subject. "He seems to like you, though," she added to the redhead.

Lily rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "He's a nice enough man, but I'm just not interested in being in his little circle of fame."

"Well, I'm glad he came back from his sabbatical in time to teach the next six years, that's all," Gwen finished.

There was a tiny squeal from Eunice, and Gwen knew instantly what had happened. She grinned, not looking up. "Sirius spotting?" she asked her friend wryly.

"Of course," Eunice said, pretending to fan herself. "Talk about shooting up over the summer! I think I may swoon."

The other girls laughed heartily.

000

Eunice never did swoon, but a few of the professors almost did when a whole load of dung bombs went off at the front of the Great Hall one evening. No one knew who it was for sure, but everyone had their suspicions—and most of them suspected James and Sirius.

First of all, the two of them took more glee in the actual occurrence than most of the rest of the student body, and secondly, it seemed just the sort of thing they would do. The impression grew as a number of other pranks were pulled throughout the next few months: a replicator charm that created a plague of frogs in the girls' bathroom, a jinx that caused Filch to be chased down the hall by hordes of, of all things, socks… And there was a rumor of the Pegasus owned by the professor of Care of Magical Creatures having spent an entire afternoon belching pink bubbles. In all, the two of them were beginning to get themselves a reputation as pranksters, and they were more popular than ever.

Gwen was just glad she wasn't involved in the pranks. She didn't think detentions with Filch would be much fun. He had a habit of assigning laborious cleaning tasks, and talking reminiscently the entire time about the "good old days" when they were allowed to use corporate punishment on the students. Not terribly pleasant, really.

She was also glad Remus didn't get detention—at least, not on Tuesday nights, which was when he helped her with her Transfiguration homework. She needed all the help she could get. She could struggle by on Potions, and if she had a question she could turn to Lily, but she really relied on Remus' tutoring sessions for McGonagall's class.

Gwen and her friends worried about Remus sometimes. He seemed to get sick quite a lot, getting dark circles under his eyes and nodding off in the occasional class. They were also worried about his mother, who seemed to get sick as often as he did. Gwen sometimes wondered if he stayed up all night worrying about her, or if he was under some sort of family curse. But it was the third year this had been going on, and it seemed to be holding steady, not getting worse or anything.

Three months in, Gwen knew her third year at Hogwarts was going to be a good year. It was only November, and she had already placed fourth in a dueling meet, won 25 points for Gryffindor in Charms, and of course, there was Hogsmeade.

Hogsmeade was fantastic. What with the candy and joke shops and The Three Broomsticks, the students had a wonderful time. Quite a number seemed to end up in Madam Puddifoot's with their significant other. Gwen and Lily rolled their eyes, but Eunice defended it.

"If I went in there with Sirius, I wouldn't care how tacky the place is! Half the couples in there are too busy gazing deeply into each others' eyes to notice the décor, anyway." The other girls laughed, but agreed.

000

"Well, that's all the transfiguration homework," Remus said. He and Gwen were sitting at their usual table in the common room. It had gotten a little late, and the last of the stragglers had gone up to bed a few minutes before. As usual, Gwen glanced over Remus' Charms and Defense assignments while he checked her Transfiguration one last time. "Did you want to go over Herbology?" he asked.

"No," Gwen said, yawning. "We can do that some other time." She was quite sleepy. The homework check with Remus had gone a lot longer than it usually did. James, Sirius and Peter had hung around in the Common Room longer than everyone else (although Peter had fallen asleep and sat in an armchair with his head back, snoring). But eventually, even they decided there was no reason to stay up longer, and had left. Had Gwen been a little more awake and alert, she might have wondered if Remus were keeping her late on purpose.

"Okay." Remus closed up his books and shuffled some papers nervously. He cleared his throat. Gwen looked up at him under her brows, bemused. Suddenly, Remus turned to her. "Would you like to go out with me sometime?"

Gwen blinked, then smiled. "Okay," she said. "When?"

Remus almost seemed surprised at her immediate affirmation. "Well, there's a Hogsmeade trip Saturday."

"Alright, then," Gwen said, "It's a date."

Remus beamed.

TBC

AN: In case you didn't notice, I skipped from the end of the first to the beginning of the third year.

Thanks to letmebewithyou and werewolflemming!

Please review!