The next morning Sirius, James, and Peter came into the Great Hall to find Lily and Remus already sitting at a table together, and at Remus's other side sat Madelin Wood. They were all reading mail that had just been delivered; Lily had a letter from her family, and Remus and Madelin were looking at a Daily Prophet together.

"Hey, everyone," Sirius said before yawning.

The three looked up to acknowledge the new company and then lowered their eyes back down to reading. Peter noticed the date on the Daily Prophet and said, "Blimey, it's already the fifth? I hadn't even quite realized it was February yet."

"Yep," said Remus sighingly.

"The month of everyone's favorite holiday," Sirius said with lazy bitterness.

Lily laughed, and at first it seemed to be at his remark, but she was still looking at her letter. "Petunia tripped over our dog in the hallway and her braces scraped a long line of paint off the wall," she explained.

Everyone laughed.

"You're kidding!" James said. "That's hilarious."

"Who's Petunia?" asked Madelin.

"Her sister," Remus answered.

"Was she hurt?"

"Does anybody care?" said Sirius. When he and Lily had been getting to know each other a long time ago, they had found that just about the only thing they had in common was loathsome family members, so he had heard enough about Petunia to develop a distaste for her by now.

"No, she was okay," Lily answered, still laughing. "But I'm sure the wall looks kind of weird now."

The others continued to laugh, and Madelin started to smile in amusement.

Lily put her letter away in her bag and Remus and Madelin returned to the newspaper. As they read the news their faces became more grim than they had been moments before. Lily took a drink of juice, her eyes shifted to the side at the paper, and after she put the goblet back down and wiped her mouth she said to them, "Pretty scary, isn't it?"

It was obvious to everyone else without them seeing the text on the page that it was an article about the Death Eaters. When he and Madelin had both finished reading, Remus asked, "Does anybody want to see this?"

James outstretched his hand to receive the newspaper and spread it on the table in front of him so that Sirius and Peter could see it, too. Large print at the top of the page read, "Crouch Cracks Down on Death Eaters." The article said the following:

"Everyone by now is aware of what the Death Eaters do, what their intentions are, and why they are a serious danger to us. But the question that Ministry official Barty Crouch is focusing on right now is, Who are they?

"'Not many people are realizing that the Death Eaters are real people,' says Crouch. 'They are people from the inside of magic society that we know. Anyone that you see every day at your job could be one of them. It is my goal to reveal each and every once of them in plain sight. Instead of trying to catch them while they're hidden under their black robes operating together, we will do whatever it takes to get their names so that they will not be able to hide anymore.'

"Crouch has already begun his thorough search for the enemy, and in the past two weeks has arrested almost sixty witches and wizards suspected of working with the Death Eaters. Thirty-six of these have already been put on trial, and nine were judged as guilty. This makes the number of captured Death Eaters to be twenty-three. Crouch is offering less harsh sentences to the arrested found guilty who will give names of others they worked with, which he hopes will lead to the arrest of more guilty people and less innocent ones.

"Many are against Crouch's ways of fighting the problem, claiming that it is only giving them something else to fear. Will the constant accusation of others lead to distrust of and even prejudice against all Purebloods, whether they truly share the opinions of the Death Eaters or not? What about innocent people who just end up at the wrong place at the wrong time? Rosaline Whitacre, an assistant at a small office for Muggle secrecy management was accused and put on trial because she stayed home sick the day the office was destroyed by the Death Eaters. Whitacre was able to prove she had known nothing about the plans and was released, but she had to spend nearly a week in Azkaban which she is still recovering from.

"'This system is doing us more bad than good,' protests Gene Morley, a studier of potions development and father of three. 'You can't say the word "Death Eater" without somebody getting accused and arrested. It is nothing but a perfect way for people to get people they don't like locked in Azkaban by lying about them. There are children with their parents losing their jobs and getting taken away to prison because they've been wrongfully accused, and the other parents don't know what to tell them. And nobody even knows what they're doing with the people who have been found guilty; one of my kids was terrified because he'd heard a rumor about people being tortured to give names. This is not the way to solve the problem, and this is not the way to be protecting us.'

"Whenever presented with these kinds of responses to his methods, Crouch promises that no harm is going to be done to those who are innocent and there is nothing to fear. He says, 'A few days in Azkaban are a small price for a few people to pay for the guaranteed safety of the public.'"

James finished reading first and reached over the paper to take a piece of toast, not bothering to use a plate. "I don't know. Crouch seems like kind of a nut to me."

Lily and Remus both nodded their agreement.

"You know," Madelin began, "I've heard this rumor that Hogwarts is on the list of predictable targets for Death Eater attacks."

"That's true," Sirius confirmed immediately, as if there was no refuting it. "The Kincaids' dad is an Auror, and he's heard stuff at work that he actually told them not to spread around. They've been tightening the security around this place the whole year and we don't even know it. Obviously because Dumbledore doesn't want to scare the piss out of the whole student body."

"Alright, so they've been tightening security," Lily said. "That doesn't mean anything for sure."

"And Hogwarts is so big and secure," Peter said. "It just doesn't seem plausible that they could do any damage here. I thought that was the whole reason they've decided that all government facilities will be rebuilt as one large building with extremely protective charms on it, because places like this are so safe."

"You'd be surprised what crazy people will try," James said.

"And they're crazy," Sirius said. "Terrorists will do anything to make an impression. And if they really want to make an impression, hitting this place would be something. So many people in the wizarding world have kids that go here. The entire future of our society is in this castle. And there's other valuable stuff here that we don't even know about, without a doubt. Weapons, maybe. Who knows?"

Even though Madelin had brought up the subject, she seemed uncomfortable because of how everyone, especially Sirius, was making it into a casual debate. She stood up slowly, in a way without direction or cause quite yet. Remus looked up at her. "You going?"

"Yeah, I think I'll go find Selena at my table. I'll see you later," she said to him. And this time she looked at everyone else and added, "Bye, you guys."

They all waved or said some kind of goodbye as she left. Then there was a pregnant silence that followed, and Sirius whipped it right out of the air.

"So, what exactly is happening between you and Maggie?" he asked Remus.

There was a pause of confusion, and then Lily blinked in disbelief of him and corrected blankly, "Madelin."

"Right," he said, making no attempt to burn the name into his memory for future reference. "Anyway, are you...well...?"

Remus shrugged his bony shoulders, moving some waffle remnants around his plate with a fork. "We're just friends right now."

"Is 'right now' the key part of that statement in her book, too?" James asked.

"Er...I..."

"Yes, of course," Lily answered for him with an affectionately annoyed sigh. "She knows what's going on."

Sirius turned the pages of the Daily Prophet until he found a more optimistic article and hid his face behind it, already detached from the conversation.

"The thing is, I don't know," Remus said with frustration in his voice that sounded too tired to be completely risen.

"Oh, have some more confidence," she said. "I've seen the two of you together enough to know."

"What's Madelin like?" James asked curiously.

"She's...really nice," Remus said, scratching his hair around the back of his head. "She talks a lot more when she's not with five people, you know. I'm still getting to know her, I guess. But it's really easy talking to her."

"Madelin's a smart girl," Sirius said suddenly, the paper still hiding any kind of expression on his face. "I had her in my third year Defense class."

Everyone turned their heads to him but he didn't say anything more, so Peter said, "There you go. She's smart. She sounds perfect for you."

Sirius slowly lowered the paper a little. "Remus, I don't..."

Everyone looked at him once again. The fact that he had used Remus's real name was such a surprise that when he didn't continue they had to know what it was he wasn't saying.

"What?" Remus asked.

He lowered the paper from him completely. "Moony, I don't think you should..." Sirius didn't want to say it, but something was nagging him until he did. "I don't think you should try getting into anything with Madelin."

It took the others a moment to realize what they'd just heard.

"What?" James asked confusedly.

"What are you talking about?" Peter asked. "You just got done saying that she's a smart girl."

"Madelin is a smart girl," he repeated unnecassarily. Then, "She'll figure it out."

There came a loud, overtaking silence full of anything but understanding.

"Figure what out?" Remus asked calmly, curiosity obviously taking over his other possible reactions.

But he was standing up to leave.

"Sirius!" Lily was appalled.

"Sirius, what the hell are you saying?" James demanded.

"Forget it," he said, and just like that he had already left.

James turned around to face the table again. "He was acting weird when we met Madelin outside the train, too."

"Just ignore him," Lily said. "He doesn't know anything. He's just being unneededly protective."

"I don't get it," Remus said. He was looking like he might if Sirius had just blatantly insulted him in a way he never had insulted a friend before, and obviously had no idea what to think at the moment. "Is he...in a bad mood and just...?"

"Yes," James said, for as a matter of fact he had noticed this morning that Sirius seemed to be in a bad mood. "But that's not why. He has a reason. He just doesn't want to come out with it for some reason."

There was a moment of unhappy contemplation, and then James said directly to Remus, "I'm not saying you should listen to him at all, of course. I mean, we all know how much Sirius knows about relationships."

Remus and Peter laughed half-heartedly. Lily bit her fingernails in thought, still not satisfied and very confused. James went back to eating and he and Lily met eyes briefly as they had developed a habit of doing often as a kind of certification that they were going to have to talk about something later together.

Remus just became quiet and continued to look troubled, his eyes drifting over toward the Hufflepuff table every once in a while.

Shortly before James and Sirius's Transfiguration class was to start later that day, they were walking down the school halls with three members of the Quidditch team: William Bell, his girlfriend Yvette Doisneau, and her brother Arnaud. James and Arnaud were in a dynamic conversation about the Scotland Sirens playing in the Quidditch World Cup last year, while Sirius was just being uncharacteristically quiet.

"No, no, no," Yvette had to cut in after listening to their conversation for a few minutes. "It wasn't that Killman didn't see the Snitch. He was bluffing; that's his trademark strategy. But it had just become too predictable by then. Stork caught onto it right away. It cost them the ten points they needed to win."

James looked to the side at Sirius as William started to correct her on the exact number of points the difference was. He and Sirius could read each other's minds so well there wasn't really a need to say anything, but he did decide to ask, simply, "What?"

Sirius just shook his head. "Nothing."

James shrugged. If Sirius didn't want to talk about what was bothering him, there was never any use prodding him about it. So he turned back to the others, but then Sirius grabbed his arm to make him look back. At first he didn't say anything, stopping to think first. And then he began, "You know this girl named Sophia Stabbard?"

James's shoulders sunk. "Oh, no," he sighed, already knowing where this was going.

"No, Prongs, it's not like that," he defended right away. "It's not another one of those."

"Another what?" William asked, having overheard.

"A girl," James said, which explained everything. Yvette laughed and William accepted it right away as something he didn't need to hear about.

"Anyway, I met her last night in the Hall," Sirius explained. "I swear I've never seen her before. I've never even heard the name Stabbard before. I mean, does anybody know her?"

"Wait a minute." William stopped. "Are you saying you've got something going with Sophia Stabbard?"

"At this point, I can only say if I'm lucky," Sirius said regretfully.

But William, from what he knew about Sirius's way with girls, seemed to take that as a "Yes." He made a kind of wincing sound and said, "Oh, man. I don't know about dating in the Slytherin territory, you know, but she is the hottest piece in the house."

"Will!" Yvette yelled.

"But of course I think you're the hottest piece in the whole school, baby," William fixed right away, laughing in a guilty you-caught-me way.

"Wait, wait," said James. "Did I just hear him right? She's a Slytherin?"

"Yeah," Sirius admitted slowly. "But I didn't know that until after I talked to her for ten minutes."

James rolled his eyes and hit his forehead with a book he was carrying, which luckily was not a very hefty one. "Could you get more shallow, Padfoot? How can you even care how hot she is knowing that? And you, of all people."

"No, you don't understand," Sirius begged. "This girl...she's not like the other Slytherins. She's not a snake. She is a fox, though," he added, unable to resist, with a kind of drooling expression glazing over his eyes.

"Good grief..."

"Sophia's a tough kitten," William commented. "I've heard she doesn't even have any friends. I wonder if you can handle her." Then, after a moment's thought, he added, "Actually, she's perfect for you, now that I think about it. She spends almost as much time in detention as you do."

"Yeah?" Sirius asked. "For what?"

"Skipping classes, mostly."

"How do you know all this?" Arnaud asked.

"Monty Clubber forges excuse notes for her every once in a while for a few Sickles. I hear all about how weird she is from him."

"Will, we've got to get going," Yvette said, looking at her watch. She, William, and Arnaud had the next class together two floors up from the one they were on.

"See you guys later," William said to James and Sirius, and the two groups went in opposite directions.

Sirius looked like he was violently contemplating two sides of an argument in his brain. "Do you really think it's a bad idea?" he asked James.

He shrugged. "It's your choice, Padfoot. I'm not the one who has met her. It just really surprises me that you of anyone would think twice about it."

"Yeah, I know." For Sirius didn't really know why she was still on his mind. After he had learned what house she was in, it should have been easier to dismiss her as not being worth getting to know. But somehow, it wasn't that simple. The easiness of that first conversation with her, the elation of the newness of meeting her that had dominated the entire encounter until she told him what house she was from, was still fresh in his memory and wouldn't leave him alone.

After sitting through Professor McGonagall's entire lesson without hearing a single word of it, he had reached his decision.

"It's your turn," Madelin said.

She and Remus were walking down the icy cobblestone streets of Hogsmeade on the way to a bakery, playing a game they had started doing often to get to know each other in which they took turns asking each other random questions. They were now so comfortable with each other that the game usually ended up making a transition into easily flowing conversation after a few minutes.

"Alright..." Remus thought, his gloved hands cozily resting in the pockets of his coat. "If you could change into any animal, what would it be?"

"Hmm...I think a dolphin," she decided. "That would be fun."

"But you couldn't do it just anywhere. You'd have to be in the water."

"So?"

"Alright, a dolphin then. Your turn."

Madelin looked around in thought as snowflakes flurried into her dark hair. "Why do your friends call you Moony?"

"They do that around you?" he asked, caught by surprise.

"Yeah, I've heard Sirius call you that a couple times."

"Well..." Remus tried to think of a way not to lie to her. "I had this really weird thing when I was little that I was terrified of the moon." He thought of a way to extend the story creatively and abandoned all hope of being partially truthful. "I couldn't look at it without seeing this really creepy face in it. It's the kind of thing I could never point out; you just have to notice it yourself."

Madelin giggled. "Can you still see the same face in it now?"

"Nah. I think my imagination made it scarier then it really was then. But of course, I told this to my friends one day and they never stopped teasing me about it. When we all started making up nicknames for each other, Moony just seemed obvious."

"Why all the other nicknames?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Just things that came about. Sirius just acts like a dog, for one thing, so we've always call him dog-related things." He remembered something true he could tell her and added, "He's always wanted a really nasty-looking guard dog named Snuffles and he wanted us to call him that for a time, but one day Padfoot came up and it just stuck."

Madelin nodded. "I see."

There was a comfortable pause in the conversation that was filled with the talking of the people around them and the noises of the town. Then Remus remembered it was his turn and said, "Okay...What are you scared of more than anything?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but then someone called, "Madelin!"

Madelin's friend, Selena Sterling, had almost completely passed by her and Remus without noticing them. She was with two other friends and they were all carrying shopping bags most likely full of items bought from Christmas money.

"Hi, Selena," Madelin said.

"Where are you guys going?" she asked. "We're going to the Three Broomsticks now, we're exhausted. You should come with us."

Madelin showed some hesitation to agree and then slipped her arm through Remus's. "Oh...that's all right. Remus and I are kind of on a date, you see."

"Ah, I get it," Selena said, not at all offended and casting Remus a smile and wink. "Well, I'll see you back at the school then."

As the three girls walked away, Remus looked down at Madelin and she smiled at him very casually, as if nothing had just been established. But to him, what she had just said had made all the difference in the world.

Sirius and James were some of the only people who were on the school grounds after class. A great number of students, including Remus, Lily, and Peter, had gone shopping in Hogsmeade, and most of the others were inside keeping warm by fireplaces. But there were a few small groups outside in the snow, the largest being nine Hufflepuffs who were engaged in an epic snowball fight and a group of popular Slytherins including Bellatrix Black and Lucius Malfoy.

Noriko Takanashi, a Fifth Year girl who was one of Lily's friends, came up to them and said, "James? Do you know anything about guns?"

"Guns?" he echoed oddly. "Why?"

"I have to interview another student for an essay in Muggle Studies, and weapons are my topic. I thought you might be good to ask since one of your parents is a Halfblood."

"No, I don't really know anything about that. Have you asked Lily?"

"Prongs!" Sirius interrupted, pulling James's sleeve.

"I didn't want to ask Lily because I think someone else is interviewing her already," Noriko answered.

"Oh," James said. "Well, you might want to pick another topic. I don't think I would necessarily know much about weapons even if I was Muggle-born."

"Prongs!" Sirius said again, pulling his arm more obnoxiously.

"What!" he asked, turning.

Sirius was looking in the direction of all of the Slytherins. "That's her."

He pointed and James's eyes followed his finger to where Sophia Stabbard was standing off to the side of a lesser crowd of Slytherin students who were in a circle smoking cigarettes, looking off into the distance with her arms crossed. Her long coat was hanging open unbuttoned and today Sirius could see she wore her full uniform, silver and green house colors included, which for some reason made kind of a surreal sight.

James squinted his eyes, getting a good look at her. "Cute," he agreed. "I definitely don't remember ever seeing her before."

"Yeah," Sirius said, not seeming to be listening as he stared at her. "You'll have to excuse me, Prongs."

"You're gonna talk to her again?" James asked in surprise. "Now?"

"Yes, I am."

Sophia was looking down at the ground tracing figures in the snow with her feet as she eavesdropped on other people's conversations, smirking to herself every once in a while when she heard something funny or just ridiculously stupid. She reacted quite calmly when Sirius appeared right next to her.

"So," he said, holding the compass Remus had given him for Christmas in his hand, "a few minutes ago I randomly decided to just follow this compass wherever it leads me, and I ended up over here."

"Shh," she said, still listening to a story Bellatrix was telling Malfoy about seven strides away. "She's talking about you."

"It doesn't surprise me," Sirius said flatly.

"Come on," she said suddenly, grabbing his hand and pulling him in the direction of a tree that Bellatrix's group was near. They went behind the tree at a run and hid there, though Sirius certainly didn't know why.

Sophia peaked out and looked at Bellatrix. "I detest her," she explained to Sirius. "I swear no words have ever come out of her mouth that weren't completely unattractive."

"Yeah? So we do have something in common."

"Make a big snowball," she told him as she pulled her wand out of her robes.

He obeyed, as he had gloves on and she didn't, and then she pointed her wand at the packed round ball. "Wingardium leviosa."

It floated into the air and Sophia pointed her wand away from them, directing the ball over toward Bellatrix.

"Oh, you are not!" Sirius whispered sharply, exploding with excitement as the ball hovered unnoticed over Bellatrix's head.

"Oops," Sophia said sarcastically, dropping her wand into the snow. The snowball immediately fell onto Bellatrix's head and caked a thick layer of white on her hair.

"Ugh! What the bloody hell!" they heard her yell as they went into rolling fits of laughter. She heard them and spotted them behind the tree. "You! You filthy little-!"

Sophia grabbed her wand from the ground and the two of them got up, Sirius taking her arm and pulling her into a run as they continued to laugh so much their stomachs seemed to painfully shrivel up. Once they were a decent distance away from the unpleasant group, they stopped and calmed down.

"That was good," Sirius said.

"I've been wanting to embarrass her in front of her friends for forever," she said.

"And in front of Malfoy! The stuffiest guy in the house; I think he had to try really hard to keep looking like he had a pole shoved four feet up his arse right then!"

Once their laughing calmed to a stop, there was a stretch of strange silence that one would expect to happen in a second encounter between two people more than the explosive laughter from a moment before. Then Sirius decided to just ask her what he wanted to know.

"Why did you talk to me even though I told you I'm from Gryffindor?" he asked.

"I knew what house you were from before you told me," she explained. "You're Bella's and Narcissa's cousin. They never shut up about how much they hate you, I would have to be deaf not to know who you are by now."

"How come I've never seen you around before?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Maybe because I'm a Sixth Year. Maybe because you avoid paying attention to people wearing green at all costs. Or maybe I'm just not that noticeable."

"That last possibility is definitely not it." For a moment, Sirius just looked at her as if very confused. "I don't get it. You don't act like a Slytherin. I sure didn't get the impression you're 'pure.'"

"No, I'm not really. I'm about an eighth Muggle. My family's composed of Muggles who know about the magic community and have witches and wizards marry into the family a lot. I have Gryffindors, Slytherins, Ravenclaws, and Hufflepuffs in my family in equal amounts, not to mention nasty people and nice people both. Everyone I know just sort of assumes that I'm on their side, because my heritage is way too diverse for you to tell anything just from that."

"Whose side are you on, then?" he asked.

"Not your cousins'," she answered easily. She looked at the group of smokers. "Maybe theirs. Maybe yours. Why does it matter?"

"Er...I don't know. I guess I just..." He gave up hopelessly. "Do you want to do something with me in Hogsmeade tomorrow or not?"

She didn't think about it very long before saying, "Okay."

"Really?" he responded brightly.

"Yeah. Well. I kind of told myself that if you ever talked to me again even after finding out what house I'm in, I would give you a try."

Sirius took that in for a moment and then could think of nothing else to do but smile at her. She smiled back, but a little laughingly, and then she looked down at his compass, which he had started to fool with in his hands a little while talking to her.

"What is that thing, anyway?" she asked.

He looked down at it and then said quickly, "Nothing," hiding it behind his back.

"What is it?" she asked again, reaching behind him only to have him keep pulling away. "Was it really pointing at me? Let me see!"

In the distance, James and Noriko saw Sirius play around with her like this for a few more seconds before she ended up just chasing him around in the snow laughing.

"Looks like it went well," Noriko said, who only had a small idea of what was going on.

James, who actually had a quite surprised look on his face, nodded. "...Yeah."