"Mr Lupin! I thought you weren't going to come!"

I walked into Professor Slughorn's office, where over fifty students were sitting at a table, eating off a huge platter of fruit and croissants.

"Take a seat, young man," Slughorn said, chuckling. I took a seat near the other first-years. "Alright… so, lets continue, where were we? Oh yes, Mr Snape… Severus, my boy! Tell us about your parents. What do they do?"

"Oh, well…" Severus mumbled, looking at the table. "My father is a muggle, he's currently unemployed and looking for work… and my mother is an unemployed witch."

"Oh…" Slughorn paused, obviously trying to think of something nice to say. "Well, I do hope they become employed again. So, what about you, Miss Lily Evans?"

"Well, my mother is a teacher, she teaches muggle students. And my father is a journalist," said Lily. "They're… they're both muggles."

Slughorn nodded. "So, what sort of subject does your mother teach? Potions, like me?"

"Uh, no. She teaches History," Lily said, sounding embarrassed.

"Right… do you have any siblings? Are they a witch or wizard as well?" Slughorn asked.

"Er — I have an older sister, Petunia," Lily explained. "She's thirteen, so if she was a witch she would have already started at Hogwarts by now."

"Oh, yes… very good, very good," Slughorn said. "And what about you, Mr Remus Lupin? What about your family?"

"Oh, well my father works in the Ministry, he studies magical creatures such as boggarts, dementors, and… werewolves," I said. "And my mother, she's a muggle, and she performs in local plays."

"Lovely, lovely! Do you have any brothers and sisters?"

"No, it's just me," I said, but that got me thinking. I had always wondered whether I would have become an older brother if I hadn't been bitten by Greyback. Perhaps I would have, but my parents didn't want any younger children to have to put up with a werewolf as a brother.

"Alright, so how about you Miss Monifa Blanchet?" Slughorn asked.

"Well, my parents are both pure-blood," Monifa said, curling one of her long, black locks through her finger. "My mother is descended from the noble house of Black, and my father is from an African line of pure-bloods."

"OK…" said Slughorn. He looked taken aback. "What do your parents… do for work?"

"They don't work," Monifa said. "We have very rich ancestors on both sides, so they don't need to work."

Monifa was a kind girl, I'll give her that, but she was quite full of herself, especially her pure-blood status and rich family. Her and I were chatting later on in the meeting about books that we both loved, and she seemed pretty nice then. Severus and Lily were both talking about something, and all the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw first-years were chatting. The older students were talking amongst themselves and with Professor Slughorn. Slughorn dismissed us after some time, and as we were walking out, Monifa approached me.

"By the way — why were you late?" Monifa asked. "And why do you have a bandage on your face?"

"I tripped on my way here," I said. "Had to go to Hospital Wing."

"Oh, OK," she said, seeming to believe me. "Also, how are you going with the Potions homework?"

"Potions homework?" I asked, a terrible feeling rising in my stomach. I still had two more essays for History of Magic to do, plus Transfiguration…

"Just kidding," she laughed. "You should have seen your face. Anyway, wanna hang out in the courtyard this afternoon?"

"Yeah, of course!" I said happily.

"Cool — meet me at the Courtyard after lunch?"

"Yes, see you there," I said, and we parted ways. I walked to the common room, checking the time. 11:30. Lunch in half an hour, then hanging out with Monifa. So half an hour to do some work… then lunch… then however long I would be with Monifa… then some time to do more work… then dinner… more time to do work… then bedtime.

Lunchtime came around a lot faster than expected, and I rushed to the Great Hall, holding James's essay.

"Haven't seen you in a while," James said, raising an eyebrow at me. "Sirius told me what happened this morning."

"And Remus… I was just thinking, are you OK?" Sirius asked.

"What?" I asked. "Yes, why?"

"I didn't think of this earlier, I'm sorry, but… you said you went to visit your mother, who was ill… but, are you being abused by your parents?" Sirius asked. "Did they… did they make your face bleed like that?"

"What? No! No, no, my parents are lovely," I said. "Thank you for your concern, but — no. The truth is… I was playing football with some muggle friends, and got a injured from it."

"Oh — why didn't you just tell me?" Sirius asked.

"Because… because you said your family didn't like anything to do with muggles, so I thought you may not like me because of it," I lied, my mind racing.

Sirius laughed. "I already told you I don't agree with their views. Anyway, we good?"

"Yeah," I smiled.

After lunch, I walked down to the courtyard to see Monifa waiting for me.

"Took your time," she laughed.

"Sorry," I said. "So… what do you wanna do?"

"Well, how about we get to know each other better? I don't really have any friends yet," she said. "Also… I don't think my parents would approve of our friendship."

"Why?" I asked.

"Well… your friend, Sirius Black, his Dad is my mum's cousin," she said.

"OK?"

"And, well, I'm not sure if he's told you, but his parents are super against anything that isn't pure-blood," she said sadly. "And my parents are the same. I know I may have seemed very pro pureblood supremacy at the Slug Club, but my sister's in the club. And… she may have told Mother and Father if I hadn't acted like that. The Black family have very high expectations. And the Blanchet… my father's side. Ugh, I envy you so much, not having a family like that. Your life must be so easy."

"Yeah, I suppose," I said. If only you knew, I thought.

"Ugh, why are you so nice, Remus?" she asked. "Can I be you? Like, you have nice parents, right?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Please, let's swap lives," she said.

Yes, please, I thought. But instead, I just laughed. "Don't know if that's possible."

She laughed back. "So, are you going to stay in the Slug Club?"

"It's a bit boring, but a good opportunity to make friends," I shrugged. "So I suppose I will stay, how about you?"

"If you do, then yeah," she said. We sat down on the other side of the courtyard. We sat in silence for ages and seemed at peace, not like we'd only just become friends earlier that day. But then we were interrupted.

"Monifa," snapped a voice. We both sat up to see a third-year girl in Slytherin robes, who looked almost exactly like Monifa, but older. "This boy is a filthy half-blood. Get away from him — you don't want to be messing with people inferior to us."

"Oh! He's… half-blood," she said. "Sorry, didn't realise, Ada."

"Come on, mother is already enough of a disappointment to the her side of the family for marrying a black man, but at least her man was pure-blood," Ada, who I assumed was Monifa's sister, snapped. "Get up."

"Ada! It's nothing like that! We were just hanging out… I just assumed he was… pure-blood…" Monifa said, her voice shaking.

"Weren't you listening at the Slug Club? Don't be a blood traitor!"

"Sorry for lying to you, Monifa," I said quickly. "I told you I was pure-blood. I'm not really."

"How dare you lie to my sister!" Ada yelled at me. "And you will call her Mistress Blanchet, you filthy half-blood!" At that, Ada spat at me, and pushed me over, grabbed Monifa's hand and the two sisters were walking away.

"Pleasant sister you have," I said.

We were in Potions class on Monday morning, and I was sitting with Monifa, Sirius, James, and Peter.

"Oh… Ada?" Sirius scoffed.

Sirius had only just realised that he knew Monifa from being related to each other when I had introduced them to each other. They'd only met each other three times, the most recent time being three years ago.

"Yeah," Monifa laughed. "'Filthy half-blood'. Sorry about her, though, Remus."

"So, she spat at you?" James asked. He, Peter, and Sirius found the incident with Monifa's older sister, Ada the previous day extremely funny, for some odd reason. But, for some odd reason, they seemed to find everything funny.

"How is the cure for boils potion going here, gents, and lady?" Slughorn came round to our table to expect the hard work we — correction, I had completed for our potion.

"We're about halfway done," I told him.

"Great," he said. "Keep up the hard work."