"What's with her?" he asked with a grin, plunking himself down beside Julia.
"Hourly Harry mortification," Oliver said without glancing up from his breakfast.
"Ah." Teddy left her alone, knowing all too well she'd surface eventually and start whining about how stupid she felt. And sure enough...
"'I've wanted to marry you for years'?" she shrieked, oatmeal clinging to her face and hair. "Why didn't one of you curse me to death?"
"We like you too much," Teddy said, reaching across the table and placing a paper napkin on her face, which stuck to her cheek. She made no effort to remove it."Yeah, you're our comic relief," Oliver added.
"AUGH," Winnie proclaimed with eloquence, and was promptly facedown again, napkin and all, in oatmeal.
"It's been two days, Winnie," Oliver said distractedly. "Give it a rest."
"Oh, I'm sorry my eternal inner turmoil is bothering you," Winnie spat, resurfacing. "I can go up to the Astronomy tower and jump off of it if it's too much of an inconvenience."
"No, you're fine right there," Oliver resigned, shoving a third pastry into his mouth and shooting a look at Teddy that said plainly, 'your turn'."Harry thought you were a laugh, don't worry about it," Teddy reassured her.
"A laugh?" she repeated hollowly. "A laugh?"
"Wrong thing to say, I think," Julia muttered beside him."Yeah, I got that, thanks."
"Hey!" Winnie exclaimed suddenly, brightening up instantly. "You're out of the Hospital Wing!"
"Keen on the uptake, isn't she?" Oliver commented, smiling.
But Teddy was frowning across the table. "Okay, I know a considerable amount of oatmeal is on your face, but that only accounts for less than half a bowl of oatmeal, and there's not that much splattered on the table."
"Oh, I ate while I was down there," Winnie said offhandedly, wiping her face clean with a paper napkin. She appeared to be completely cured of her 'eternal inner turmoil' for the time being.
Oliver stared. "You are the nuttiest person I have ever met in my entire life."
She shrugged happily as she got to her feet, slinging her bag over her shoulder. "I try."
The four of them walked to Transfiguration in discussion of Winnie's oddities. She plopped into the seat behind Teddy and suddenly looked up, shocked. "Hey! You're out of the Hospital Wing!" she repeated in the same tone of voice.
"Really keen on the uptake, isn't she?" Oliver muttered. Teddy and Julia grinned.
"Not Teddy, you twit," Winnie said. "I was talking to Riley." She beckoned to the beaming boy, who waved and sat down heavily in front of Teddy."Hey Julia," he said. "First day of Gryffindor classes, huh?"
Julia nodded. Teddy thought he heard her make a very quiet squeal of delight. Though Julia had been even less talkative than usual that morning, she'd been beaming from the second she'd gotten up with the prospect of being in every class with her friends.
"What were you in for?" Teddy asked Riley curiously with the air of someone talking about a term in Azkaban.
"I fell off my broom, same as you," Riley said. "Just before you did, actually. But then Madam Hooch sort of... accidentally made me cough up my lung when she was trying to dislodge one of my teeth from my throat."
Oliver winced. "Holy hell."
"That's what Madam Pomfrey said, too. Then she threatened to take Madam Hooch's wand away, and then I don't really remember anything until last night, when I woke up with both lungs in tact. I guess it took some pretty creative Healing, but she managed. Er... Teddy?" he asked oddly as he finished.
"Hmm?" Teddy said.
"Why are you smelling me?"
Teddy opened his eyes and noticed that he had his nose pressed into Riley's shoulder, and was furthermore aware that he was inhaling deeply as he did so. "Er... sorry," he said, confused at his own behaviour.
"Teddy?"
"Hmm?"
"You're still doing it."
"Right." Teddy backed up and sat up straight in his seat. "Sorry."
"Good morning, first-years," Everard chirped merrily as he entered the room. "Teddy, Riley, glad to see you have recovered. Julia, we are very pleased to have you in our midst."
"Thank you sir," she muttered, blushing but grinning.
"Another Gryffindor?" Vincent Vorkson said from across the room. "That's hardly fair, is it? Give us another Slytherin, then."
"It doesn't work that way, Vincent. Sit down, and kindly address me as 'sir' or 'Professor' in the future," Everard said with a flare of anger in his voice. "Right then. Homework please," he demanded; with a flick of his wand, eleven rolls of parchment stacked themselves neatly on his desk, just as the wands had done in the Great Hall the previous Friday.
"You're bloody Head of Slytherin house! You're supposed to be on our side, not theirs!"
"I am not on any side, Vorkson. Sit down or I will be forced to give you detention. Ten points from Slytherin for your cheek, and if you speak against Gryffindor again, it will be fifty."
Vorkson sat slowly down, grumbling beneath his breath."Wonderful," Everard exclaimed suddenly, clapping his hands together enthusiastically. "Today's is a practical lesson; the five people who change the most acorns into chestnuts by the end of the lesson will receive no homework. You may start now," he finished with raised eyebrows, referring to his watch.
A stack of acorns appeared on the desk in front of Riley, but he took no notice. He was distracted by the face planted in his back. "Teddy, what the bleeding hell."
"Hmm?"
"Will one of you remove him from me?"
Winnie reached forward and pulled Teddy's shoulders back. "What are you doing?" she hissed in his ear.
"I don't know," he said somewhat dreamily, lazily pointing his wand at an acorn and having it immediately turn into a chestnut without his needing to think about it. "I can't figure it out for the life of me. He smells really peculiar, but that doesn't explain" (Winnie pulled him back again) "why I keep reflexively" (and again) "trying to smell him." Winnie linked an arm around his neck from behind to keep him from leaning forward once more. "I honestly can't stop myself," he continued in a strangled voice."Winnie, what is going on over there?" Everard asked from the front of the room, looking genuinely mystified.
"It's all right, Professor," Teddy assured him as he beckoned at Riley and as Winnie continued to hold him in a headlock. "She's doing the both of us a favour."
Everard raised his eyebrows but didn't comment. Teddy ignored the approving comments from the Slytherins about having one less Gryffindor to contend with and looked at the acorns on his desk out of the corner of his eye, deciding to focus on his task at hand.
Teddy was able to get more of a hold on his strange tendencies when he was working. Winnie held onto his hair the entire class to keep himself from face-planting into Riley's shoulder, which definitely helped. Riley fortunately started to find the situation rather amusing once he believed that Teddy wasn't doing it on purpose. Teddy still managed to outdo most of the class in his Transfiguration skills despite his issue; Winnie, though having to contend with one hand being occupied the entire class, was also among those without homework. Julia and Oliver glared jealously at them as they wrote down the criteria for their paper on practical Transfiguration.
"Now Teddy, if I let go, do you think you'll be able to manage not attaching yourself to Riley?" Winnie asked as she shoved her book into her bag single-handedly.
"Yes," Teddy said with an expression of concentration.
"Are you suuuuure?"
"I've been practicing," he assured her, and she let go of him, smiling. Riley stood a short way away, braced in the event of an incoming Teddy. Teddy stood up straight, however, and managed to walk by Riley without a single inclination in his direction.
"Good on you, mate. Much appreciated," Riley said as he passed in the corridor, grinning.
"I've been hungry all morning," Teddy said loudly in response, rubbing his stomach and focusing on walking in a straight line.
"That's because you didn't eat breakfast," Oliver pointed out.
"Oh. Yeah. That's probably why," Teddy commented distractedly as he drifted right; Riley had stopped to speak to his older brother in the corridor. Oliver shot out an arm and pulled him back on track.
"Teddy, mate, maybe you should head back to the hospital wing."
"I'm fine," Teddy insisted. "I'm just... odd. I'm an odd person, haven't you noticed?"
"No, actually. Winnie's the odd one. Julia's the quiet one, I'm the witty one, and you're the zen-type guy who doesn't lose his temper and is relatively cheerful regardless of circumstance."
Teddy stared, along with Winnie and Julia. Oliver shrunk slightly under their glares. "I may also be the observant one."
"Apparently," Teddy and Winnie said simultaneously as they stood in front of the History of Magic class, waiting for the doors to open. Teddy stood with the rest of the crowd until Riley walked up behind him, at which time he turned completely around and connected his nose once again with Riley's shoulder.
"Hospital wing?" Oliver prompted, standing Teddy upright and steering him away from Riley.
"I'm fine," he stated again stubbornly, but Winnie and Oliver promptly had him by an elbow each and were escorting him down the corridor. "Hey, let go."
"Nope," Oliver said shortly.
"I'm not even sick!"
"We beg to differ," Winnie insisted. "I know healthy Teddy would never keep hair of such a bright pink like that without becoming self-conscious that someone would call his bluff about being Metamorphmagus."
Teddy glanced up at his scalp and caught a glimpse of his neon pink eyebrows. He frowned and forced his hair immediately to a droopy brown. Oliver, meanwhile, raised his eyebrows at Winnie. "Maybe we ought to share the title of 'The Observant One'," he said quietly. She paid no mind and continued to stare straight ahead.
The rest of the short trip to the Hospital Wing was travelled in relative silence, aside from the occasional statement from Teddy regarding his unusual state of hunger. Once having burst through the doors, however, Winnie was the first to complain loudly, "Madam Pomfrey, Teddy's come down with a case of the Smellsies and is acting slightly but not entirely weird."
"And I'm really hungry. Like, hungrier than usual," Teddy interjected.
"Underage drinking is not my business," she stated annoyedly at Winnie's disruption of the silent ward.
"I don't mean that he smells, I mean he keeps smelling other people. Merlin," she added under her breath.
"Specifically Riley Thompson," Oliver added helpfully.Madam Pomfrey looked up from the chart she was holding, but remained a neutral expression. "Whatever it is, I don't think I can help you."
"What? But I have to stop smelling him. Do you have any steaks on hand, perchance?"
Julia gasped suddenly. Everyone looked around at her; she blushed slightly under their glares and put a hand to her mouth as though she hadn't intended to gasp out loud.
"Where have you been?" Teddy asked slowly.
The blush faded immediately from her cheeks. "I was here the whole time," she said evenly, staring with wide eyes at him as though he was some sort of circus freak. Teddy ran a hand over his face to check on his features in case they weren't quite right (as had been the case last time she had regarded him with such odd wonder), and sure enough, his nose was still scrunched up from its collision with Riley's ribcage.
"Why didn't anyone tell me my nose was like that?" he grumbled embarrassedly, re-moulding it into its original shape and allowing his hair to turn a bright red under the circumstance.
"It was too funny to see the double-takes as we walked down the hall," Winnie said offhandedly, as though she wasn't really paying attention to the topic at hand. "But seriously, Madam Pomfrey, you have to do something. I can't get anything done, I'm too busy holding him back from faceplanting into Riley."
Madam Pomfrey continued to stare, with a certain sadness in her eyes. "I'm sorry. This is simply something you will have to learn to get under control. There is nothing I can do, other than send you to St. Mungo's," (Teddy's hair stood literally on end out of horror at the prospect) "but I don't think the occasion permits that sort of action."
"Can't you at least hazard a guess?" Teddy asked pleadingly.
"I am afraid not."
"But you know something," Winnie said skeptically.
Madam Pomfrey hesitated. "It has happened before," she admitted reluctantly, but didn't expand on the subject.
Julia squeaked quietly beside Teddy. Despite his own confusion and annoyance with Madam Pomfrey for withholding information, he looked over at her. There seemed to be an intense war going on in her head; she was looking at him almost pleadingly, as though there was something he should know, but she didn't want to tell him. He frowned at her and extended an arm in concern, but once she realized her squeak had been heard, she stepped just out of his reach and stared with equal fervour at the floor.
Teddy's hair turned black with minor annoyance. "Why isn't anyone telling me anything lately?" he asked aloud, more out of wonder than anger. Oliver and Winnie looked at him questioningly, while Madam Pomfrey continued to stare at him evenly.
"So what caused it before?" Winnie asked as she turned back to Madam Pomfrey, not giving up.
Madam Pomfrey blinked several times. "It's unclear," she finally stated, returning to her chart.
"That answer was too long coming to be the truth! Out with it, woman!" Winnie nearly shouted. Madam Pomfrey looked at her with extreme annoyance and put her hands on her hips.
"Now really! I have told you all I am going to tell you! If there is nothing else, Mr. Lupin, I must ask you and your friends to leave the wing and cease disrupting my patients!"
"Was that necessary?" he asked Winnie quietly as they stepped back into the corridor.
"Are you satisfied that you got a lie about what is clearly a serious condition?" she asked pushily.
Teddy shrugged off her hyperbole. "Yelling at her wouldn't help matters. At least we know that she knows something."
Winnie ogled. "How do you stand to be so bleeding patient?!"
"Yelling doesn't help matters," he repeated, shrugging. Oliver and Julia stepped forward to create roadblocks between them, as Winnie looked about to explode.
"You look better," Oliver noticed loudly.
"Yeah, I feel better," Teddy admitted earnestly. "I'm not quite so overwhelmingly hungry anymore. Quite."
"Well, History of Magic is pretty well over, and it's not like we'll have missed anything anyway," Winnie decided with forced calmness, although the class was only ten minutes gone. "I vote we go down to lunch."
"Second," Teddy said happily, grinning. Oliver shrugged and followed them into the Great Hall, sitting down beside Winnie at the near-empty table. Julia only stared at her plate as the others began wolfing down their food.
"What's up?" Teddy asked her quietly in between mouthfuls of potatoes.
She looked up at him with wide-eyes. Teddy once again had the serious impression that she had something rather significant to say. After a bit more coaxing, Julia finally said quietly, "I think you should write your godfather and tell him about... this."
"The lunch isn't quite that good, Julia," he commented jokingly, trying to brighten the mood. Julia only shook her head and continued to regard him solemnly. Teddy frowned and nodded. "I was planning on it. Why?"
"It's..." she shook her head. "I just think it would be a good idea."
This advice apparently fulfilled Julia's need to speak, for she promptly began helping herself to a hearty lunch and exhibited quite normal behaviour for the rest of the day.
A/N: I keep creating mysteries without solving any. I hope it's not too confusing. I solemnly swear (that I am up to no good) to solve them all with time. I've got a list. :)
Beware of infrequent and sporadic updates beyond this point.