The rest of the trip passed by in a blur of awkward silence, interjected with bouts of polite, forced conversation. My cheek muscles were starting to feel as though they were about to fall off as I was keeping a fixed grin on my face for so long. It came as something of a shock when I looked at my watch and realised that, after endless amounts of tramping around the village, looking idly around shops and pretending I was enjoying myself, we had only been there for one hour.

God. Whenever Marlene and I came up here, the time would fly by.

I guess that's just different people for you.

"Shall we go up to that haunted shack?" I asked, after we had been sitting on a bench talking about the weather for a good five minutes. My feet and brain were numb with cold and boredom. "I've heard it's worth a visit."

Moony stiffened slightly as the wind blew more harshly, tossing hair over my face. "I was more thinking about the Three Boomsticks," he said, not quite meeting my eye. "I'm freezing!"

I pulled a face, even though the thought of the warm, cosy interior of the pub was rather appealing. "Oh, but I really wanted to have a look," I said, trying to keep my tone light and not too whiny. "Don't you think it's intriguing? A boarded-up building, no-one ever goes in, no-one ever coming out, but once a month the locals hear screams inside, and snarls…."

He rolled his eyes, but I could see his hands were clenching tight around a fistful of his robes. "They're just stories, Lily."

"I don't think so!" I protested, feeling mildly offended that he was dismissing my idea so quickly. "I mean, half the people who live here don't let their children near that place any more. They're all convinced there's violent spirits in there."

He laughed. "That's ridiculous. Anyway, we don't need to see violent spirits when we've got Peeves!"

I eyed his hands now in a white-knuckled grip around his robes, and felt rather scornful. He was obviously frightened stiff by the rumours. "No, I don't think spirits make the noise," I tried to say in a pacifying voice, "After all, why would they only do it once a month? Always at full moon too, I heard one bloke say. Hey," I suddenly snorted with laughter, "You don't think there's a werewolf hiding in there, do you?"

Moony stood up so fast the entire bench shook violently. "Enough of this," he said, and to my surprise his voice was cold, stony. "Let's go to the pub, I'm really thirsty."

I stared at him. He was once again not looking at me, but there was something about the set line of his jaw and grim look in his eyes that told me he wasn't joking.

"Okay," I said quietly, and stood up to follow his lead.

What in Merlin's name was that all about? I asked myself, as the warmth from the pubs roaring fire washed over me. The place was crammed to exploding point with Hogwarts students, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught a familiar glimpse of two heads, one dark, and one honey brown.

"Just one minute," I muttered to Moony, "Could you get me a butterbeer, please? I'll pay you back later."

Not waiting for an answer, I sped off and dived into the chattering throng of students, got shoved around a bit (I was getting used to it) and eventually found myself by Marlene's side.

"Lily!" she cried happily, the second she clocked who was standing next to her, "How's it going?"

"Yeah, girl, spill all the details," grinned Ashleigh, lifting her eyebrows suggestively. "Got down to any business with Moony yet?"

It took a while for me to catch on exactly what she was implying, and when I did, I slapped her hard on the arm. "It's nothing like that!" I snapped, while the pair of them honked like constipated geese, "He's really…"

"Sweet?" suggested Marlene.

"Damn sexy?" inquired Ashleigh.

"…boring," I completed, shooting the pair of them a glare. The second I said it, however, I clapped my hand over my mouth, horrified at myself.

"Boring?" repeated Marlene incredulously. "Merlin, Lily, aren't you even enjoying yourself?"

I looked from one to the other, still holding my hand over my mouth. Well, the cat was in the fire now. Or however that phrase goes. "No," I said in a low voice, figuring I may as well be honest. "And my jaw is aching for all the wrong reasons."

"Because I've been pretending to be enjoying myself all day," I added, at the puzzled frowns on their faces, "You know. Fake smiling?"

"Oh, Lily," sighed Marlene, a pained look on her face, "That's awful."

Ashleigh looked serious, although that isn't unusual for her. "Then you'll have to break it to him gently, won't you? Don't lead him on any more."

"I am not leading him on," I said, nettled. "I mean, this is only one date. I'm not sure if he's even enjoying it himself…" I recounted my story of Moony's reaction to mention of the haunted shack. At the end of it, I saw Marlene and Ashleigh exchange glances.

"What?" I asked carefully, not sure if I wanted to know.

"Nothing," said Ashleigh vaguely, though she continued to frown. "It's just that me and Marlene were talking earlier, about him. We came up with a theory…"

She might have continued, maybe even telling me what this mysterious theory actually was, but as it turned out she broke off suddenly, light green eyes fixed over my shoulder. Two seconds later, Moony was tapping my arm.

"Got your drink!" he said enthusiastically, handing me a glistening brown bottle. "Er, shall we…?" He stopped and looked hesitantly around at Marlene and Ashleigh, both of whom were giving him scrutinising looks.

"Yeah," I said at once, though I stared at Ashleigh for a second longer. "I'll see you later, girls," I added over my shoulder, as I turned and squeezed my way back through the crowd.

There was but one table that I could see that was free, and as I stood there looking at it I noticed about seven other people also making a dogged bee-line for it.

Clearly, on a night like this, it was a free-for-all. Now, I'm not the most competitive kind of girl, but hey, my feet were tired and I wanted to sit down.

"Quick!" I shrieked, and I grabbed Moony's hand and yanked him violently through the milling people, making his head snap back on his shoulders and probably giving him whiplash to boot. Saving my apologies for later, I set off on a determined sprint, ploughing my way doggedly through the people and towing Moony along behind me.

Result was, we won the table, leaving the other seven people to glare at us and make do with a bit of wall to lean on.

"Result!" I cried triumphantly.

"Er." Said Moony.

I stared at him in disbelief. I had just elbowed and scratched and kicked and shoved my way through a crowd of people so we could sit down and put our feet up, and the most he could say was "er"?

And then I realised he was staring at our hands, still clasped together from where I had pulled him along behind me.

"Oh!" I said, snatching it away at once and blushing furiously. "Sorry!"

"That's alright," he replied, with a kind smile.

See, I'm not sure if I like that. Kind smiles. They're just too…patronising. Give me a cheeky grin any day.

I don't think I've ever seen Moony give a cheeky grin in my life.

"So," he said, once we had sat in a highly uncomfortable silence for a while, staring fixedly at the table-top, "Slytherin versus Gryffindor soon!"

Huh? I stared at his expectant face, for a moment utterly perplexed. Were Gryffindor and Slytherin having a show-down at sunset or something? Should I call the riot police?

"Quidditch," he added, shattering the image in my head of Dumbledore on horseback and brandishing a cattle prod at once.

"I knew that!" I laughed at once, "I'm, er, very excited!"

His face lit up. "Are you really? Me too! Of course, I've always loved Quidditch, right from when I was a little boy and my father took me to see…"

I gazed at his animated face, shining with passion and sweat from the fire. I looked over his gentle, sky blue eyes and scattering of freckles, barely visible on his milky white skin. As his sudden torrent of words rushed over me like a monotonic waterfall, one thought and one thought only came into my head: Remus Moony Lupin, I have never realised this before, but you are boring. I know it's wrong, and I know it's mean, but you are simply boring. And that's in the capital B type of boring.

Then I felt like an incredible bitch for even thinking it. What if he really liked me? What if I was leading him on, giving him false hope, like Ashleigh had said? As he beamed reminiscently into the fire, recalling his childhood games to me, I suddenly realised I couldn't keep up this charade any longer. Not if I had any respect for his feelings at all.

"Moony," I cut over his rambling about the Kenmere Whatsits team, unable to keep my mouth shut any longer, "There's something I have to say."

He looked up at me, amused. "Why do you call me that?"

I jerked back, temporarily thrown. Damn it, I've been waiting for ages to learn his real name and the day I actually do, I just revert to calling him Moony anyway. Bloody typical. "Er – because…I think…I mean…that's what I call you in my head," I white-lied, conveniently forgetting to tell him that up until today, I hadn't even known what his real name was. "Ever since I heard Black call you it."

He smiled delightedly. "You do that too?"

"Yes," I said hurriedly, not wanting to start him off on another subject, "But about what I was going to say…" I trailed off, his words suddenly sinking in. I stared at him, thinking I must have heard him wrongly. "You call people other names in your head…too?"

Moony nodded slowly, looking at me with a new, wondering sort of expression on his face. "Ever since I can remember."

We sat there, taking each other in, and in that spilt second, I suddenly realised that for the first time that day we were sharing a silence that was neither uncomfortable or awkward. In fact…it was almost nice.

Perhaps this date wasn't going to be a complete loss after all.

"What were you going to say?" asked Moony, and in a rush, everything I had been determined to tell him came pouring back into my head.

"Er…yeah," I mumbled, trying to look into his eyes but fixing on his nose instead, "Well…um…you see…"

There was a sudden, tremendously sharp bang on the other side of the pub. Several people screamed, which quickly dissolved into laughter, but amid the sounds of hysteria someone was yelling in anger or pain.

"What was that?" said Moony sharply, whipping his head around to stare up at the other end of the pub where many people were gathered, jostling for space.

"I don't know," I replied, frowning over at the crowd. There was definitely someone shouting, accompanied by laughter, then the sound of smashing glass…more noises of hilarity…

Just as I was about to suggest calling for the bar tender, Potter and Black suddenly burst from the crowd, fast pursued by a large, blond boy, who's immediate distinguishing feature was the fact that his head was, not only bright red, but swollen to twice the usual size.

"YOU PUT ME BACK!" howled the boy, holding up his gigantic head with both hands, "YOU BLOODY BASTARDS, PUT ME RIGHT AGAIN!"

"Oh my God…" I murmured, watching as the boys eyes, enlarged to the size of tennis balls, filled with tears of fury. Next to me, Moony didn't say anything. When I glanced around at him, I saw his lips were tightly pressed together, his face an odd, taut mask.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" yelled Potter joyfully, while Black cackled with glee, "I can't see any difference – wasn't your head always like that?"

There was another loud bang. The boy had just shot a badly-aimed curse at him, it ricocheted off the wall and smashed a plate to dust. Potter and Black laughed even more loudly, and their voices drove into me like blunt knives. Something stirred inside me, then grew white hot, twisting and writhing, shrieking like a siren. That was the way they always laughed at me. That was the exact same, characteristic shriek of glee they always used on me, whenever I fell prey to their pranks, to their jokes. Shaking with suppressed rage, I turned to Moony.

"Say something to them!"

He didn't reply. He continued to stare at them, his face paper white. But he never moved. It was almost as though he simply couldn't hear me.

The laughter of the entire pub pounded around my ears. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. "They're your friends!" I all but shrieked over the noise. "You're a Prefect! Stop them, for God's sake!"

He turned hollow eyes towards me, dull, empty blue irises, yet within them shone a spark of defiance. "That kid Aubrey is a right little idiot. He probably deserves what he's getting." He fixed a half-convincing smile onto his face. "Just try to ignore them. What were you going to say?"

For one, full moment I sat there and looked at him, my chest heaving up and down as the hot, burning emotion throbbed in my chest, getting stronger with every second.

He was going to ignore them. He was quite prepared to just sit there, while his friends tormented some boy only a few metres away from him, and act like he couldn't even see them.

"You disgust me," I said quietly, though my voice was trembling, "If you're not going to bother yourself with saying anything, then I will!"

And so I rose, pushing the table violently away and making it hit him hard in the stomach. I turned away, and stalked towards the crowd, where I couldn't even see the three boys any more, though I could still hear their laughter, that malicious, sneering laughter…

Unable to get any closer, I slid out my wand, pointed it to my throat and muttered, "Sonorous."

I took a deep breath, then yelled as loudly as I could: "POTTER!"

My voice reverberated like a shockwave through the crowd and several people near me yelled and pressed their hands over their ears. Making use of the temporary distraction, I pushed my way through them, making my way to the centre where Potter and Black stood, looking as though they'd been caught with their hands in the biscuit tin.

Now I was face to face with them, I pointed my wand upwards again and muttered, "Quietus." Then I waved it over at Aubrey, and said firmly, "Finite."

His head shrunk to normal standards at once, though it remained scarlet with rage. I turned my gaze back on Potter and Black, who both stood, looking rather deflated. "Just what," I said quietly, for everyone around us was silent, "Do you think you were doing?"

I was so angry, I didn't even notice that they both flinched slightly as they would if a teacher addressed them. I was so furious, I didn't even note that I was having the same effect on them as an irate Professor McGonagall would have. All I cared about was my determination that they would both pay for thinking they could go around hexing people all the time, and get away with it.

Black, however, recovered first. "I think it's pretty obvious, don't you, Evans?" he drawled lazily. "Aubrey here thought he could get away with being smart with us. Someone had to sort him out, and we thought we'd take the liberty."

"So you thought that the best possible way to 'sort him out,'" I stated flatly, "Was to blow up his head?"

There were several stifled giggles from the crowd around us, and Black grinned widely. "Well, yeah," he said flippantly, "Like I say, he's had it coming. But credit where it'd due - " Here he jerked his head towards Potter, who was studying the opposite wall with a kind of determined fascination, " – it was Prongs' idea."

Some kind of dam seemed to have burst inside me as I looked at Potter's casual, couldn't-care-less features, his hands in his pocket, the arrogant smirk playing around his mouth as he refused to look at me. "You pathetic, sad, big-headed GIT!" I found myself shouting. "You don't care, do you? You don't care about how many people you hurt, just as long as you get the attention for it! I've had enough you – the pair of you! I'm putting you both in detention!"

He snapped his eyes around to look at me at once. "Detention?" they both yelled incredulously, and I felt a vicious pleasure swell up inside me. For once, I had finally managed to get through to them.

"I'm a Prefect, remember?" I said sweetly, tapping the almost forgotten badge on my robes. "I can do things like that."

The identical looks of shock on their faces was hysterical. The crowd murmured excitedly amongst themselves, over at the bar, I could see Madam Rosmerta, in the act of walking out to stop the fight, her mouth hanging open.

Potter looked furious. "Yeah, is that right, Evans?" he snapped, "So you're putting us in detention for hurting people, and not caring?"

"Well done!" I yelled back, my heart beating triumphantly, "Top marks, Potter!"

His face contorted as I threw his own words back in his face, and the next thing I knew, he had pointed his own wand at his throat, and his voice boomed spectacularly around the pub. "REMUS!"

I stared at him, momentarily thrown. What was he getting Moony out for? Was he hoping for some sort of back-up? I winced as Potter yelled once more, "REMUS, I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME, GET UP HERE!"

There was a moment of silence, then Moony appeared, red-faced, frowning at the forefront of the crowd. "What d'you want?" he snapped, deliberately not looking at me.

I glared at Potter, non-plussed. Even Black's brow was creased, as he stared questioningly at his friend. Apparently oblivious to all the looks, Potter turned back to me again.

"So you think all people who hurt others should be put in detention, eh?" he said, his eyes sparkling with vindictive revenge.

"Yes, I do!" I shot back, though inwardly I was starting to panic. He must have called Moony for a reason, and with that look in his eye, it could only be bad.

"So, Remus!" said Potter, with a false, airy tone, "D'you want to know what your girlfriend's been saying, or should I say bitching, about you behind your back?"

Moony froze. His eyes swivelled over to me, where I stood rooted to the spot, my heart thumping uncontrollably, no, he couldn't have heard, Potter wouldn't say that…

"She thinks you're BORING, Moony!" he cried delightedly, "Me and Sirius heard her, didn't we, buddy?" He looked around at Black for support, who looked suddenly awkward and didn't say anything. Potter turned back to Moony. "And, what was it, Evans? Oh yeah - she said that her jaw was aching for 'all the wrong reasons.' That she wasn't even enjoying herself, that she couldn't wait to ditch you and go home!"

I looked over at Moony's hurt, taken-aback face, and one look told me he believed every word of it. Potter was laughing ironically, Black was looking aghast.

"So Evans, by your book, shouldn't you be putting yourself in detention? Because, forgive me if I'm wrong, Remus looks pretty damn hurt to me, doesn't he?"

The whole pub was silent. Everyone's eyes were resting on me, as my face flushed hot and crimson, my heart shook and banged furiously at my ribs. I couldn't say anything. There wasn't anything left to say. Because I had said those things about Moony. There was simply no denying it.

But Potter's face, shaking with false, angry laughter at my astonished face, at Moony's eyes now staring at me as though he'd never seen me before, inspired something so strong and powerful I found my senses kick-starting back into life again. Raising my wand, I pointed it at Potter's sneering face and screamed the worst hex I could think of, as loudly as I could, directly into his face.

I heard the yell as I dived back into the crowd, but I didn't look back to see the effect. By the time I heard Madam Rosmerta's angry shouts reverberate through the building, I was already outside, the cold, December air smacking sharply into my burning, blurry eyes.

0o0o0o0o0

Hey, all of you wonderful people who grace me with your reviews. I can't believe it - we've hit the 400 mark! (Dances crazily) Well, that concludes Lily's (pretty catastrophic, lets face it) date with Moony!Did you enjoy it? Hate it? You know how to tell me!

Peace out xxx

Bubbles x