45.
The first few weeks back at Hogwarts were rather odd ones for Remus. Everywhere he went there seemed to be a plague of giggling girls either standing in groups or peering out of doorways at passersby. Oddly enough many of these giggling females were watching him, just as much if not more so than they were watching Sirius and that was simply baffling. Stranger still was the fact that several girls had been spotted following Severus around the castle. Whispering amongst themselves—no doubt plotting something dastardly—Severus had about had it with them following him everywhere, he was on the verge of hexing them. James and Sirius found both of the boy's situations enormously entertaining and Remus often wondered if they were the ones putting the girls up to this. Only it wasn't just girls from Gryffindor, they were from all houses and Remus knew that neither James nor Sirius would be that involved in something as inconsequential as getting girls to stare at and follow them around.
The castle had never seemed so full of girls before and now there appeared to be almost nothing but girls wherever he went. If it hadn't been for the fact that Remus had classes, he would have hid in his dormitory the entire day so he wouldn't have to see a single girl staring at him or hear them giggle. Yet, he often found himself thinking about one girl in particular. A girl with curly black hair that fell just past her shoulders, sparkling blue-purple eyes and a mischievous smile that never seemed to completely vanish. The fact that he had never before noticed her was slightly alarming to Remus. He could not fathom an explanation for how this particular girl had escaped his notice the previous years he had attended Hogwarts. Then again, he had been a bit preoccupied the previous years, so it was sort of understandable that he had not noticed her before…wasn't it?
On most mornings Remus found himself in front of the dormitory mirror, messing with his hair and hoping that he at least looked semi-presentable. A part of his brain was appalled that he was spending so much time trying to look good, however he told himself that as long as he didn't spend as much time in front of the mirror as Sirius and James then he was alright. He often tried to convince himself that the crowds of girls in the halls, classes and the common room were not all that scary. They were people and so were boys, nothing scary about that. Nothing at all. Nope. Totally not scary or even something to be worried over. They are just utterly terrifying, that's all. Remus was certain that girls were far more terrifying than any sort of monster could ever be. Monsters didn't make his palms sweat, monsters didn't make him feel nervous and as though he had no control over what came out of his mouth. Monsters did not giggle behind his back while he turned red over something he had said or simply because he noticed that he was being stared at. Girls were definitely worse than monsters.
That was what Remus told himself while he walked to classes that first month back to school, yet there were two girls he could not quite lump with the rest. Lily certainly never acted that way, she was his friend after all and then that girl with the mischievous smile, surely she wasn't all that scary like the rest of the female population. Perhaps one day he would actually learn her name, it had to be something wonderful. She couldn't have any other sort of name. Remus often daydreamed entire conversations with this girl who he often saw in the halls, yet even in his daydreams he did not know her name. One day that would change. He had it all planned out and all that was left was to put his plan into action.
Severus POV:
Most of the time Severus wanted nothing more than to be invisible. Why on earth did he have annoying girls popping up everywhere he went, couldn't they see that he wanted to be left alone? There was studying to be done, there were spells and potions to look up while he worked on creating his own. Since when did the female population decide that they needed to follow and chase him around the entire school every day? It was truly maddening. It seemed as though suddenly every girl in the school knew about the secret passages and were continuously lurking in them. There had to be a way to elude them until his experiment was ready to be tested. This was something he did not want to tell his friends about, not even Lilly could know yet. Until it was ready though, he had to find a way to avoid as many annoying and rather irritating girls as was possible…starting with finding new places to hide and to be alone.