The exhaustive searches yielded no murderer, and no clue as to how Black had entered and exited the castle so quickly and without being seen. Even the majority of the portraits hadn't seen him, and those that had couldn't agree on appearance, magical ability (some claimed he'd transformed into a bat and flown out), or even direction. As she patrolled, Amelia got very sick of passing clumps of them, gathered together in one another's frames, bickering.
It was a very weary staff that eventually cleared the students out of the Great Hall the next morning. After the briefest of debriefings the first shift of staff headed to bed, Amelia gratefully among them. As she crawled under her covers, flicking the curtains closed with her wand, she marvelled at the depth of hate that Black must feel for her cousin's young friend to try something so stupid as to break into a castle full of armed, angry people.
0o0o0o0
The build up to the Gryffindor vs. Slytherin match was all that Amelia had expected. Wandering through the halls she was singularly glad that her own school had disposed of houses. It seemed that all she had to do to witness an assault these days was to walk between classes; not that that's at all unfamiliar for an ex-student of my University, she mused, peeling the latest quidditch related victim of house rivalry off the wall outside her classroom and sending him on to the Hospital Wing.
Despite the exuberance that greeted the build up to the sporting event, the school was still quieter than usual. Her colleagues were tense and the students talked of little other than the appearance of the infamous Black. Amelia had caught herself on several occasions glancing at the immense bolts on the castle doors.
Heading towards the doors one lunchtime she forced herself to ignore the castle's formidable defences (and any musing on what they could be designed to keep out) and pulled her collar closer around her neck. The weather had turned cold and wet over the last week, leading to students dashing across courtyards to escape the weather. Amelia had followed suit until Pomona had taught her a rain repellent spell – a charm that some of the smugger students had also recently learned.
She was heading for Hagrid's, being nominated as the latest in a string of staff who were attempting to cheer the half-giant up. She saw her cousin pop into existence behind Harry and Ron and secret her timeturner beneath her robes before waving to Amelia. The four of them paused for a moment under the cover of the beautiful (and largely implausible) wooden bridge.
"Just come from Care of Magical Creatures?" she asked, hoping to gauge Hagrid's mood.
They nodded, rather unenthusiastically.
"How is he?" she enquired, her hopes of an easy afternoon fading.
"We're studying flobberworms," said Ron, gloomily.
"They're big maggots," Harry added grimly, on her questioning look.
"I expect Hagrid's playing it safe after Malfoy…" Hermione suggested, giving her cousin something of a hopeless look. Harry and Ron's faces had become thunderous at the mention of their petulant classmate; Amelia decided to leave them before she had to take house points from them. Hermione caught her arm before she passed her.
"We should get together, sometime," the girl said. Amelia agreed: she had missed her cousin.
"Only if you have time," she said, winking, before disappearing off towards Hagrid's.
"Let me know when you're free," she called back up the slope. Hermione beamed and nodded before trailing resignedly after her two best friends.
0o0o0o0
Hagrid was, as could be expected, morose; it probably didn't help that Amelia, on being invited for an immense cup of tea, couldn't help but shudder at the flobberworms. She had issues with maggots at the best of times and felt that being appreciative of gigantic specimens was asking a little too much.
In the end, she managed to cheer Hagrid up a little by calmly introducing herself to Buckbeak, who bowed to her complacently and was soon content to lay his beak in her lap and have his feathers stroked as she attempted to break through one of Hagrid's rock cakes.
By the time she was walking back up to the castle it had been dark for some time and she was met (she had decided to take a slight detour around the Lake) by a mildly worried Remus Lupin.
"I saw you from up there," he said, gesturing in the general direction of the Astronomy Tower. "I didn't think you should be wandering about on your own, given the circumstances."
Amelia, though somewhat flattered, raised an eyebrow.
"I just meant that you ought to be more careful," he continued, raising his hands in a placating manner. "I mean, you've not learned too many defensive spells yet – I wouldn't want you to come across Black on your own…" He paused and took stock of her current expression. "… and I couldn't sound more patronising if I tried, could I?"
"Oh, I don't know," Amelia grinned, "I'm sure you could if you tried hard enough."
Remus narrowed his eyes at her, though he couldn't prevent the corners of his mouth from rising slightly.
"Anyway, since you're here, do you fancy a cup of tea?" she offered as they made their way back into the warm, dry interior of the castle. "You can even continue patronising me if you like," she teased, with a shy smile.
"Ah well, when you put it like that…" he grinned.
0o0
Remus settled into a chair near to the fire and pretended not to watch his colleague as she bustled around her living room: shifting piles of books and attempting to find her kettle. She was humming some Muggle tune as she went and he realised that music must contribute to the unusual way that she moved sometimes, as if to a rhythm that no one else could hear.
He was, he knew, increasingly intrigued by this odd young woman. He was determined not to show it however, as he knew where an indulgence in such fascination could lead. But not for someone like you, his mind cruelly supplied. No, he couldn't do that to her.
"Here we are," Amelia said, bringing over two steaming mugs of tea and settling onto her sofa, one leg drawn up (apparently so her chin could rest upon it) the other tucked neatly beneath it. She has very nice legs, another part of his subconscious supplied. Lots of her is very nice, actually… concentrate on the tea, Lupin! The tea!
"I meant to ask you," she said, after a moment's thought. "Did you catch up with Harry?" Her tone suggested complete nonchalance; Remus immediately suspected that she'd been more worried by Trelawney's prediction than she had initially let on.
"I did, as a matter of fact. He seems to be taking the prediction lightly enough," he sipped his tea, thoughtfully. "It seems unlikely that he would go out of his way to get into trouble… at least for the moment," he conceded.
"He's already faced Voldemort twice, you know; three times if you count when he was a baby," she said, conversationally. "It's not as if he shies away from things… Hermione says it's as if he thinks he has to do it because there's no one else."
"Commendable," said Remus, taking a proffered biscuit. "Though if he knew the truth of his relationship with Black I doubt he'd be quite so reluctant to throw himself into the thick of it again."
"Hmmm," Amelia agreed, through a mouthful of tea. "Harry's parents must have really trusted him. Black, I mean." She studied her friend's face carefully as he stared into the fire; again he seemed a good deal older.
"They really did," he said quietly. "We all did."
Amelia decided not to press him any further and instead glanced up at the clock.
"Crumbs! Look at the time! We'll be late for dinner!" With that she sprung from her seat and shooed the stunned professor out of her living room.
0o0o0o0
Not two days before the match, Slytherin announced that they couldn't play because of their Seeker's damaged arm.
"Whiny git," said Fred Weasley when Amelia mentioned it. She rather had to concur, but she wasn't about to admit this to a student, so she cuffed him lightly around the back of the head.
"Who're you playing instead?" she asked George as his brother pretended to writhe in agony.
"Hufflepuff. They're pretty good this year," he added in a rare attempt at helpfulness.
Amelia nodded and checked the twins' essay plans before moving on to the next group.
0o0o0o0
News of Lupin's illness didn't surprise her in the slightest, it being full moon and all, though she was a little confused as to why Dumbledore was still keeping his condition from her. She was fairly sure that the majority of the staff were aware of it; even Severus had made an effort to conceal a recipe entitled 'Wolfsbane' from her during their potions sessions. Though as he was making a remarkably bad job of it, leaving it just within sight whenever she was around, she had a shrewd suspicion that this courtesy wasn't his idea.
This suspicion was confirmed when Hermione visited her on Friday afternoon, clearly upset.
"Alright missy," Amelia said sternly, after a few minutes of idle and unenthusiastic conversation. "You've barely touched your tea. Spit it out."
Hermione looked at her cousin, appeared to come to a decision and carefully put her teacup down before asking, "Is Professor Lupin alright? He wasn't in class today."
"He's not been feeling himself, lately," Amelia responded, in what she hoped was the party line. "Why? You've not got a crush on him have you?" she teased.
Hermione, always the picture of maturity, made a face: "He's nice and all, but he's, well, old."
"Oh, thanks Hermione, you know he's not that much older than me."
"You know what I mean!" Hermione exclaimed, smacking her cousin across the shoulder.
"Well, what's up then?"
"Professor Snape covered for him in Defence Against the Dark Arts today," she responded carefully. "He spent the whole lesson rubbishing Professor Lupin's work, started us off on werewolves, which we shouldn't be covering until May, and set us a two scroll essay on their identification and extermination."
Amelia was shocked. How could Severus try to reveal Remus's secret like that? And so obviously too! Remus was such a kind-hearted man, despite his… condition (though a small part of her admitted bias here). Perhaps this world frowned upon the existence of werewolves to a greater extent than she'd previously imagined.
She made a mental note to go and shout at Severus at her earliest convenience.
"Anything else?" she asked, more sharply than she'd intended.
Hermione looked at her knees and said, in a small voice, "He shouted at me for answering a question."
"Oh did he now," Amelia snarled. Hermione, who had failed to note her cousin's tone of voice, continued.
"Then he gave Ron a detention for sticking up for me."
"Bastard," Amelia said, with feeling, amending her mental note to: must castrate Severus Snape.
She'd just about managed to cheer Hermione up when her cousin left, though it took a while for her anger to dissipate. How dare he?
When she got her hands on him, Snape wouldn't know what had hit him. Still¸ she thought, seeing the time, that can wait until morning.
0o0o0o0
By evening, Remus was curled up beneath his desk, mentally planning his next few assignments and generally feeling sorry for himself. Although he was very grateful to Snape for brewing his Wolfsbane potion, he couldn't help thinking that he'd made it taste bad on purpose. That's not the only reason he's irritating you, now is it? Apparently the more annoying parts of his brain had decided to join in with the pity-party.
He shivered. The day had been so busy – and the evening come on so quickly – that the moon had almost taken him by surprise. He'd been so caught up in his work, thoughts about Sirius, Harry and (increasingly) Amelia, that he'd neglected to light his fire.
His treacherous mind turned back to his old school friends. It was at these times that he missed the boys most, his memory dwelling on moonlit adventures into the Forbidden Forest and grounds, along with more human times in the Hogsmeade or the Library with Lily.
He laid his head on his paws and gave a great sigh which, unfortunately for him, stirred up a vast cloud of dust, making him cough and splutter. Making a mental note to ask the House Elves to clean his office more thoroughly, he made a move towards the secret passage that led to his rooms, intending to at least sleep in his own bed.
As he padded across the icy stone floor, he heard a quiet but utterly frightening noise; glancing over his shoulder he saw the door handle at the other end of the room begin to turn. Knowing that those of his colleagues that were aware of his condition would allow him his privacy on these occasions, he made a dash back to the relative safety of his desk. Hoping fervently that he wasn't about to be discovered by one of his own students, he listened to the room beyond the wood.
He heard the door open and close again a few seconds later; he hunkered down – why hadn't they knocked? The intruding footsteps – barefoot, he guessed – came slowly closer, and the drumming sound of his heartbeat threatened to drown out all other noise. The feet stopped just before the desk. Opening his eyes, he could see them, toes tapping as if their owner were coming to a decision; if this turns out to be a student, he thought, they'll catch merry hell in the morning for sneaking about their teacher's office in the dead of night.
After a moment the feet retreated back a few paces, giving him false hope, before apparently seating themselves on the chair he was keeping by the door. He sniffed the air experimentally, hoping to discern some trace of his enemy… he smelled beeswax, and herbs… and roses… and linen? Momentarily flummoxed, he mentally reviewed his students and colleagues and tried to imagine those scents as belonging to them. There were a few of the older students that he considered clean enough to be a possibility, but only one staff member whose scent he didn't already know – who he had been careful not to get close enough to for him to pick up her scent in human form…
An unpleasant knot began to form in his stomach as he became increasingly convinced of the intruder's identity. They had both been silent for some time, one cowering beneath his own desk, the other waiting patiently for him to emerge, before Amelia had had enough.
"You aren't going to stay under there all night, are you?" she asked, stretching slightly. "Only it's pretty bloody cold in here."
She waited for a few moments, her question greeted with nothing but silence.
"I could come over there, I guess," she continued to the world at large.
This time, she heard the creature under the desk stir in panic – what did she think she was doing? He thought, desperately trying to see a way out of this impossible situation. He gave up.
Slowly and miserably, Professor Lupin slunk out from behind his desk, clearly of the opinion that while being discovered was marginally better if it was on his own terms, he was still perfectly entitled not to be happy about it.
Amelia took one look at her friend and burst out laughing. Surprised and mildly affronted, Remus paused, glancing back to his hiding place as if reconsidering it… perhaps she'll forget I was here and go away…
Sadly, he was out of luck. Trying to recover some self-control, Amelia attempted to mollify him.
"I'm sorry, I've j-just ne-never seen a w-wolf sulk before."
Remus subjected her to a baleful stare as she lapsed once more into gales of laughter.
Whatever reaction he'd been expecting, it hadn't been this; beginning to hope that she didn't view him with abject disgust, he padded a little closer to her.
Calming down a little more she assessed his new appearance, head to one side, then:
"You realise I rumbled you straight away?"
He looked at her in a puzzled fashion, so she continued, "I'm a reader… I'd thought Dumbledore might tell people, but he seems to like to keep people's… quirks… close to his chest."
Remus stood and stared at her for a while, as her statement settled in. A reader? No wonder she picks things up quickly, he thought.
Amelia was watching him from her perch.
"I realise that you're not used to people barging in and laughing at you…"
Remus snorted.
"… ok, true, you know the Weasley twins, but I couldn't help thinking that you might want some company." She glanced down at him and noticed that his tail was beginning to wag; emboldened, she carried on, "And now I notice that you haven't got the fire lit and it's bloody freezing in here. Well, the fires are lit in my rooms, and I have a sleeping bag, so…" aware that she was babbling, she blushed. Why did this feel so awkward? She was only helping out a friend, wasn't she?
For his part, Remus was torn between the very welcome suggestion of a warm bed and good company and, once more, the shame of his condition and the possibility of losing her as a friend. As he looked at her and noticed her blush creep down her cheeks and neck and under her shirt, he was suddenly very aware that Amelia was wearing her pyjamas… they were simple; she had on long black cotton bottoms and 'class of '98' t-shirt. Not particularly revealing, but it was cold in the room and his mind had no trouble whatsoever in filling in the blanks. He swallowed, hard.
Amelia, thinking that he was considering bolting, tried again.
"I can't promise to be particularly good company, but at least it'll be warm…" her breath, he noticed, formed steam in front of her face.
That decided it really, Remus concluded, moving towards her and nodding his head.
"Great," she said, smiling.
As they walked together in amiable silence in the gloom of the sleeping school, acknowledging the occasional portrait, Remus was engaged in a silent war with himself.
So… that part of himself that he was really beginning to hate, began: you're walking with a scantily clad girl towards her room…
She's not scantily clad, he said to himself, firmly, she's not that much younger than me, and we're heading for her living room, not her bedroom. And we're just friends…
He risked a sideways glance at her; her rather shapely legs were swishing past him and he could see the bare flesh of her ankles. Dropping back slightly as she waved cheerily to a particularly jovial portrait his gaze came to rest, not entirely against his will, on her bottom. It was slightly plump, he noticed, suddenly fascinated, and was bobbing up and down invitingly as she walked. The Voice, which was beginning to sound a little like Severus Snape said, accusingly, Just friends?
Oh gods… he thought, I'm being hypnotised by this woman's bottom…
It was with a great force of will that he managed to drive his thoughts away from Amelia's bottom (and what it would feel like to become better acquainted with that part of her anatomy). Frantically, he ran through the dullest things he could bring to mind.
Frogspawn… Sybill Trelawney… teapots… Professor Binns… snooker… inkpot, quill, parchment, desk… my desk… my desk with Amelia on it… NO!
Er- Er- tax forms! Yes, tax… queuing at the Ministry… that creepy bust of Minister Mayfleet… bust… Amelia's bust… Amelia, with her bust, on my desk… ARGH!
Oh Gods…
Amelia continued to saunter forward, oblivious to the turmoil this was causing within her lupine companion. At one point, much to Remus's relief, Argus Filch appeared quite suddenly from a dark doorway, evidently hoping to catch wandering students unawares; there was nothing quite like the sight of Filch to drag a man's thoughts away from his fantasies… if only to prevent the greasy little man from intruding.
Once Amelia had recovered herself (and Remus had resisted the urge to eat Mrs Norris) they continued on their way, both excruciatingly aware that the caretaker's leering gaze was following them along the corridor. Remus shuddered; his unfaithful mind had got as far as 'Argus Filch, on my desk' and had shut down in self defence.
0o0
Her rooms, Remus decided, were well worth the chilly if rather fraught walk. The stones felt warm beneath his feet as he went to investigate one of her many bookcases, briefly allowing his animal desire to explore to drive his human form forward.
Amelia smiled at him as she fetched her sleeping bag and set it out; he seemed a little more relaxed now. She'd hoped that her forward manner wouldn't scare him away and her gamble had paid off; she didn't want to lose this friend. Despite the warmth of their colleagues, she sensed that Remus felt equally out of place at times.
"I've got a couple of bottles of Butterbeer around somewhere if you want some."
Remus gave her a Look.
"I also have a bowl, smartarse."
Smiling inside and marvelling at how little this extraordinary witch was phased by the weird situation they'd found themselves in, he gave her a nod and padded over to investigate the sleeping bag while she busied herself with the cupboards.
He gave the sleeping bag an experimental sniff. It smelled of soap and grass and, overwhelmingly, of Amelia; he breathed in deeply before telling the part of his mind that had been scared away by the appearance of Filch to bugger off. He thought that if he concentrated he could trace the different trips and outings the sleeping bag had been taken on and began to do so before realising that this could be construed as snooping. Perhaps Amelia would tell him about them, if he asked when he was human again. Amelia returned with their drinks then, and folded herself up into the windowseat, which had sprouted sporadic cushions since the last time he'd seen it.
They settled into a comfortable rhythm of drinking their butterbeer, Amelia periodically chortling at something or other in her book and reading it out to him if he looked interested. This lasted for roughly half an hour before she gave up and began to read aloud. Remus was warmed by the butterbeer and allowed his mind to disappear into the lilt Amelia's voice telling her fantastic tale, he found it very easy indeed to forget the events of the previous few days.