Fifteen.
Once I'd got into the common room, I ran up the stairs and into the dormitory to find Nat and Kate sat on my bed, chatting. They both gave me curious looks as I sat down beside them. 'You took your time!' Nat exclaimed. 'Did you stay there until it closed or something?' Kate added. 'Not exactly, no..' I muttered. The pair of them exchanged a look, raising their eyebrows at me. 'Go on..' Kate grinned, sounding interested. I then went on to tell them about almost everything that'd happened with Remus and I (I left out most of the kissing parts, as they both clearly knew that would've happened anyway) and all about Oliver kissing me like that. Neither of them seemed surprised about the latter, which shocked me a little. The whole Remus thing, however.. When I told them about the potion, they both shared a look that I didn't quite recognise and said that that the potion did sound like something we'd studied before. Like me, they couldn't remember what the name or purpose of it was. The three of us agreed that when we got the time to tomorrow, we'd go to the library and attempt to refresh our memories.
I slept fairly peacefully that night, floating through several pleasant dreams. I felt a lot happier than I had the previous morning when I woke up, seeing as I'd been able to tell Nat and Kate everything. I didn't see Remus at all when we went down to breakfast, which led me to assume that he'd already eaten. The rest of the day zoomed by, and I longed for our double DADA lesson. When Kate and I walked through the door, however, we found Professor Snape sat at Remus' desk. 'What the hell's he doing here?' I hissed under my breath. 'Dunno, maybe Lupin's feeling really ill..' Kate whispered back. We quickly walked to the front of the classroom and sat down in our seats. Luckily, we were right on time, so we didn't get any points deducted.
After taking away about fifty house points in total from people who arrived late, Snape stood up and glared at the class. 'Now, Professor Lupin is unfortunately too.. ill to take this class, so I will be teaching you for both of these lessons,' he said with a sneer. A collective groan rose from everyone apart from the few Slytherins in the class. Snape then went on to take away even more house points and told us that we'd be learning about werewolves. 'But sir! That's Third Year stuff!' I protested. 'We've already learnt about them!' 'Five points from Hufflepuff for speaking out of turn, Miss Flynn,' Snape replied coolly. 'You should be paying extra attention, as I get the feeling that you of all people will benefit from this.' I frowned, confused. What in Merlin's name was he going on about?
I turned around slightly to notice Kate looking at me with a worried expression plastered to her face, making me frown even more. Snape had already written down on the board some of the same things we'd learnt in Third Year, so I grabbed my quill, ink and parchment from my bag and started to write. Snape droned on for what felt like forever, giving us all so much to write that my hand began to ache after about five or ten minutes. I looked up to find Snape glaring right at me when he began to talk about the Wolfsbane potion and I stared down at my parchment, slipping into a daydream. I got pulled back to reality by Kate nudging me in the rubs with a serious, worried look on her face. 'Wha?' I asked dumbly. Kate opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. 'Nothing. Doesn't matter,' She mumbled, turning back to face the front of the classroom.
The rest of the double lesson dragged by. I spent most of my time wishing that I could just curl back up in my bed and sleep for a little while longer, as I felt incredibly tired despite the fairly decent amount of sleep that I'd got the night before. Unfortunately for us, Snape decided to set us an essay to do on werewolves as homework right as the bell went, meaning that everyone had to get their stuff back out and write it down before we could go. Kate and I breathed sighs of relief as we exited the classroom and headed down to the Great Hall for dinner, where we were meeting Nat. I was still trying to think what possibly could be wrong enough with Remus to make him miss a whole day of teaching classes, take a smoking potion that tasted bloody disgusting and having something wasn't contaigious at all. I told Kate all of this, but the only thing she said in reponse was 'Merlin, did you not listen to what Snape was saying to you earlier on?', which confused me even more. I just gave her a confused look as we walked inside, scanning the Hufflepuff table for Nat. Eventually, I found her sat in the middle of the table, surrounded by everyone else. Great. This meant that I'd have to wait until later on to tell her about what Snape had said to me in DADA.
'Alright?' Nat grinned as we sat down. 'How did DADA go?' She asked, winking at me. 'He wasn't in, so we had Snape instead,' I replied plainly. Nat's eyebrows immediately shot up. 'And what did he say to you?' 'How d'you know that?' I stared at her, open mouthed. 'I could tell by the look on your face,' Nat laughed. 'It'd probably be better if we told you in a bit,' Kate said, giving Nat a pointed look and gesturing to the people who were sat near to us. What was going on with those two? 'Anyway, we need to go to the library after we've finished eating,' I said as mine and Kate's plates appeared before us. 'It's about what I told you about last night.' I lowered my voice, filling my plate up with food from the middle of the table.
A short while later Nat, Kate and I walked out of the hall and down towards the library. 'So what did Snape say to you then, Rels?' Nat asked. 'Well, he decided that we needed to go over what we learnt about werewolves in Third Year, so I told him we'd already done it and for he said that I needed to pay attention because he thought I'd benefit from it!' As soon as I'd said that, Nat and Kate exchanged that same look again. 'What is it with you two?' I snapped. 'Every time I mention Rem- Professor Lupin, you look at each other funny!' 'It's not that we don't like you two practically being together, we're just worried about you.' Kate explained. 'What if you get caught? Then what'll you do?' Nat added. 'I suppose you're right..' I sighed. 'I'll make sure that we're as careful as we can, I promise.' By this time, we had reached the library doors and the three of us went inside.
We found out usual table and dumped our bags down, bagsying the chairs. 'Alright, so where do we start?' I asked as we looked around the vast amount of shelves stacked with books that surrounded us. 'Weeeell, maybe we should take a look in the Third Years' DADA books first?' Nat replied. 'Good idea,' I grinned. We eventually found a very battered copy of The Essential Defense Against the Dark Arts and Kate carried it back to our table. 'If I remember correctly, the bits on werewolves should be on page 394, maybe we could have a look there?' I suggested, putting my bag down on the floor and sliding down into my seat. Kate opened the book and flicked through it until she landed on the right page. Her eyes skimmed over the text until she stopped and put her index finger down on the page. 'Here we go,' she mumbled. Both Nat and I shifted our seats in closer to get a better look. 'A potion has been created to help aid the werewolf when he has transformed, enabling him to keep his mind. This is named the Wolfsbane potion. Its' main properties are: a sour, bitter taste; smoking when freshly brewed and a murky brown in colour.' My mouth dropped open and I shook my head rapidly.
'No way,' I somehow managed to choke out. 'No bloody way. He can't be, the full moon isn't even until tomorrow.' Kate and Nat were looking at me with somewhat blank expressions on their faces. 'The wolf usually needs to drink the Wolfsbane potion for up to a week before he transforms.' Nat continued, reading from the book. I wasn't really sure what to think so I just sat there for a moment, my thoughts going round in circles. It all seemed to make sense, but I didn't quite want to believe it. It wasn't that I was suddenly scared of Remus because he was a werewolf, I felt incredibly.. sympathetic towards him. The more I thought about it, the more I realised how obvious it had been that he seemed to dislike himself when we'd been laid on the sofa in his office together last night, as he had asked me several times if I was sure that I wanted to be with him and that I could easily have any of the guys in my year that I wanted.