The next morning Amelia woke early and sleepily opened her curtains to the beginnings of an impressive thunderstorm; she was immediately and profoundly thankful that the staff weren't required to play. Glancing into her living room she noticed that Remus had already slunk off to transform (and presumably be checked over by Poppy) so she showered and decided to get ready for the match.
She dug out her waterproofs, left over from a career in muddy trenches, slipped them over her jeans and concealed them beneath her robes. If she was required to watch the match she was at least going to come home dry. She ran into Severus on her way down to the Great Hall; he seemed to be returning from the Library and, as there was no one around, he greeted her cheerfully.
Faced with her task so early in the morning, she decided that the direct approach was the best way forward.
"You were unnecessarily rude to my cousin," she growled. Snape's features fell, then rearranged themselves into a sneer.
"She repeatedly spoke out of turn."
"You asked a question, she answered it."
"I did not ask her to speak."
"You didn't want anyone to answer so you could continue rubbishing Lupin!" she accused. Amelia was really beginning to lose her temper now: her face was flushing and her voice rising. Fearing the appearance of an audience, Snape took her to one side.
"You have no idea what goes on in my lessons, Miss Brown, and you have no right to inte-" he began, heatedly.
"You have no right to treat Gryffindor students with contempt and afford preferential treatment to those of your own house!" she snapped, pulling away from him slightly. "Nor do you have the right to bully any student. The fact that no one else's guardian has bothered to shout at you before now does not negate my complaint, and nor does it excuse your behaviour!"
Severus's voice was beginning to crack with anger; "Do you wish to make a formal complaint?" he spat.
"No," Amelia retorted. "I would prefer it if you would stop bullying people. As professional colleagues I'd hoped that we could resolve this matter on our own, though if you feel that this isn't possible I'd be happy to discuss this with Minerva and Albus."
They stood, eyes flashing, inches apart for a few seconds*.
Amelia gave a deep sigh.
"I'm sorry, Mr Snape, I thought that we could be friends, but anyone who needs to bully those in his care in order to feel valid, and most particularly finds it enjoyable to upset my cousin – whose word I can assure you I am more than happy to take over yours – is not someone I intend to spend any time with at all. Thank you for your help with my potions work, I don't think I shall require any further tuition from you!"
She made to leave, but turned back and pointed an angry finger at her now apoplectic colleague.
"And your blatant attempt to reveal Professor Lupin's condition to the entire third year was really bloody low. I don't know your history, because clearly there must be some, but having spent time with the both of you I cannot imagine anything that might persuade someone who is normally so sensible to so cruelly attack such a kind and intelligent man. I hope that if your ploy succeeds, you realise just what it is that you have done to him!" And with that, Amelia stormed off towards breakfast, leaving a dumbfounded Snape seething in her wake.
Still fuming as she crossed the Great Hall, she was surprised to find Harry already at the Gryffindor table, attempting to eat breakfast.
Taking a deep breath (and checking there was no one else around), she approached him.
"Nervous?" she asked as he glanced up at her. He grimaced.
"Well, I know I'm not supposed to show bias, but good luck." He nodded, looking like he might be sick.
"And you can tell Mr Weasley that I'll be taking his unfair detention to Professor McGonagall."
"Thanks Professor!" said Harry, surprised. "Was Hermione alright last night – we were a bit worried…"
Amelia smiled at him, glad that her cousin had such good friends. "She was fine. She stayed up at mine until pretty late." Harry gave her a warm smile before turning to the first of his team-mates to traipse down the stairs.
0o0o0o0
Having intended to watch the match with Snape, Amelia instead headed out with Poppy Pomfrey, who noticed her young friend's mood and tried to cheer her up. By the time they'd reached the pitch and had begun to ascend the stairs to the faculty tower, Amelia was feeling a good deal happier.
She was increasingly grateful to her concealed waterproofs as she watched the stands gradually fill with increasingly bedraggled spectators. Amelia's school, while encouraging students to compete in the football / rugby / hockey / netball tradition, had never successfully instilled in her anything resembling a desire to play, nor anything akin to school pride. She was therefore astonished to catch sight of her cousin and her friends, all wearing Gryffindor colours, faces painted in red and gold, file into the stands. Watching them for a few moments she noticed that they were all conspicuously dry; she grinned proudly as she saw the raindrops forming a water-free dome around them, Hermione at its centre.
The wind around the tower was roaring now and as she glanced towards the end of the pitch the goalposts were rattling. She watched as the team captains shook hands and the players, already soaked to their skins, took to their brooms.
Hermione had once described the game to her as 'like rugby, but airborne,' but the sheer violence of the match still surprised her. Lupin had been right to suggest that quidditch might rival rugby in the 'Possibility of Receiving Most Unpleasant Injury' stakes.
As the weather worsened, Amelia lost track of most of the action; around two hours in Madame Hooch called for a timeout and she saw her cousin dart out to meet the team, then dart back to her place between Ron and Neville in the stands. She had the distinct look of someone who was Up to Something; Harry rose back into the storm looking more hopeful.
The play continued for another half an hour as the lightening crackled and the rain swirled around the tiny players; she wasn't sure how, but Gryffindor appeared to be winning.
As she watched a Hufflepuff player streak past, her breath caught in her throat. She felt her skin prickle and her blood turn cold. Around her an eerie silence was washing over the crowd. In front of her, Dumbledore stood up and leaned over the rail, craning to see the pitch. Across the grounds, dark shapes were moving slickly and with purpose – Amelia realised that she could taste blood as she watched, hopeless, while the hordes of Dementors swarmed across the quidditch pitch and funnelled upwards towards the struggling players. As one, the staff ran down the stairs and onto the pitch to help the airborne students to the ground and force the Dementors out of the grounds.
They'd got most of the flying teenagers safely back to earth when Amelia felt Hermione's throat tighten, somewhere in the stands; she felt, rather than heard her scream. Her heart plummeted as she looked up and saw that Harry was falling, tumbling and turning with the wind. Beside her, Dumbledore raised his wand and slowed the boy's progress.
0o0o0o0
After checking on Harry that evening Amelia stole down to the kitchens, preferring to eat in her rooms after such a stressful day. On her way back to her tower she passed Professor McGonagall, whose lips were still white with anger from earlier in the day.
"I don't think I've ever seen anyone that angry before," said Amelia as they ascended the main staircase.
"Albus? Yes, well, if they will attack the students…"
"I imagine they're unlikely to try again?" she asked, hopefully.
"With any luck," replied the deputy head. "Not joining us for dinner this evening, my dear?"
Amelia shook her head, "My immediate plans include a hot bath and a good book, sorry."
"That's all right, it's been rather a long day… a hot bath and a good book sounds like an excellent end to it."
As she continued up the stairs to her rooms, Amelia decided that she hadn't been entirely truthful, but wasn't all that worried; everyone deserved a little privacy from time to time.
0o0
She couldn't help glancing at the dark shapes circling the grounds that evening, as she dealt with her waterproofs and had her bath, the heat of the water relaxing some of the tension she'd felt since the Dementors had converged.
Sleepily, she sat down to dinner in front of the fireplace, being careful to leave the door slightly ajar, and continued to read for a time. At around ten o'clock her door creaked, and she heard paws pad across the floor behind her towards the sleeping bag in the corner, left out since the previous evening. The wolf looked up at her and nodded before settling down.
After a while Amelia put down her book, stretched and got up to close the door. Remus, who had been dozing peacefully, woke with a start at the click of the door and, as she collected some butterbeer and a bowl he allowed himself to watch her again.
She seemed agitated this evening, uncomfortable; his heart fell. Desperately, he hoped that she hadn't come to her senses and decided that he was, in fact, disgusting. He padded towards her uncertainly as she settled back in her chair and put down a bowl of butterbeer for him.
She glanced at him then and said, "Rough day," by way of an explanation. Gently, and as much to his own surprise as to hers, he nudged her hand with his snout in a comforting gesture.
She filled him in on the events of the day, absently stroking his head as she did, and although he dearly wanted to check on Harry in the Hospital Wing he stayed put, preferring to stay warm and fuzzy and to continue being stroked.
Finishing her story, Amelia trailed off to stare into the fire, thinking of the awful things the Dementors brought to mind.
"If only I could stop seeing the rubble…" she said, mostly to herself.
Remus, who was utterly baffled by this last statement couldn't have questioned her if he'd wanted to; she looked so small and tired that all he wanted to do was put an arm around her and tell her that everything would be alright. Given the lack of arms, he settled for jumping up beside her on the sofa and offering a comforting paw. Amelia was so sleepy that this barely registered, but she wriggled around to get more comfortable, giving him more room purely by chance.
Eventually, he too drifted off and thus they slept, curled into the same seat; the wolf's head resting in Amelia's lap.
0o0o0o0
After the mutual mild embarrassment experienced when waking up in the same room as someone that you sort of fancy (even if one of you is currently a wolf), Remus returned to his office in order to await his transformation back to humanity. Having become a man once more, and had a hot shower, he returned to his office, glowering at the pile of marking that had built up on his desk in his absence.
The sounds of the school waking up increased as he worked, and he was about two-thirds of the way through the stack when he looked up to hear a familiar voice say,
"You look like shit."
Amelia was leaning against his doorframe, book under one arm, mug in hand. He could see students milling about in the corridor outside and guessed that classes were about to start. He looked at her stood there, the very picture of irreverence, and thought that he'd never seen anything so alluring in his life. He decided to move the conversation forward as thoughts of exactly what he'd like to do with her in his office threatened to overtake his brain.
"I've looked worse, believe me," he said, unable to stop himself smiling back up at her as she chuckled and moved off along the corridor.
It's official mate, said a voice that reminded him strongly of his old friend Prongs, you're doomed.
As the door closed behind her, he scrubbed his face with his hands and tried to concentrate.
0o0
Once his pile of marking was done with and the Grindylow in the corner (squelch!) had been replaced by a thin, wispy creature with an unpleasant expression, Remus headed down to his first class of the day. Passing by the first floor corridor he paused to take in a snippet of an argument and was seized by reverie; surely he was seventeen again and it had been an enraged Lily Evans, not Amelia, who was shouting at a sixth-year to "Take that first-year off the ceiling you stuck up little prat!".
He was momentarily nonplussed when, the unfortunate first-year having been released from his predicament, the aforementioned sixth-year – now pinned to the far wall by a thin beam of light streaming from Amelia's wand – was Duncan Crowe and not James Potter.
Some things never change, he smiled to himself as he made his way to the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, thinking that Lily and James would have approved of this young woman. His smile faded a little as Harry and his friends entered the classroom noisily and he reflected on the unfairness of it all.
Before he could get started, his class burst out at once into an explosion of complaints about Snape's behaviour while he had been ill.
"It's not fair, he was only filling in, why should he set us homework?"
"We don't know anything about werewolves –"
" – two rolls of parchment!"
"Did you tell Professor Snape we haven't covered them yet?" he asked, frowning slightly; Severus seemed to be trying to set him up.
The babble broke out again.
"Yes, but he said we were really behind –"
" – he wouldn't listen –"
" – two rolls of parchment! –"
He smiled at the look of indignation on every face; his class seemed to be behind him at the very least, and he could be thankful that no one would have had time to start their research.
"Don't worry. I'll speak to Professor Snape. You don't have to do the essay."
"Oh no," said Hermione, looking very disappointed. "I've already finished it!"
Lupin felt his heart drop into his stomach – what if she knew?
Deciding not to dwell too much on this new and unsettling possibility, and considering it unlikely that if Hermione had figured him out (and given her cousin he wouldn't put it past her) she would then spread it about the school, he got on with the lesson.
When the bell rang, everyone gathered up their things and headed for the door, but Lupin called out to Harry as he made to leave. The boy doubled back and watched him covering the Hinkypunk's box with a cloth. Feeling very much like he was speaking to James, he began,
"I heard about the match," he said, turning back to his desk and starting to pile books into his briefcase, "and I'm sorry about your broomstick. Is there any chance of fixing it?"
"No," said Harry. "The tree smashed it to bits."
Lupin sighed; somehow, he felt that this was all his fault.
"They planted the Whomping Willow the same year that I arrived at Hogwarts. People used a play a game, trying to get near enough to touch the trunk. In the end, a boy called Davey Gudgeon nearly lost an eye, and we were forbidden to go near it. No broomstick would stand a chance."
"Did you hear about the Dementors, too?" said Harry. It sounded as if he was none too proud of his reaction to the creatures.
"Yes, I did. I don't think any of us have ever seen Professor Dumbledore that angry. They have been growing restless for some time… furious at his refusal to let them inside the grounds… I suppose they were the reason you fell?"
"Yes," said Harry. The boy paused, apparently struggling with himself, before,
"Why? Why do they affect me like that? Am I just –"
"It has nothing to do with weakness," he said sharply, guessing where this train of thought must have sprung from. "The Dementors affect you worse than the others because there are horrors in your past that the others don't have."
A ray of wintry sunlight fell across the classroom, illuminating Harry's green eyes and producing the uncomfortable feeling that he was staring back into his past.
"Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk the earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope and happiness out of the air around them. Even muggles feel their presence, though they can't see them. Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory, will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself – soulless and evil. You'll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life. And the worst that has happened to you Harry, is enough to make anyone fall off their broom. You have nothing to feel ashamed of."
"When they get near me –" Harry stared at Lupin's desk, his throat tight, "I can hear Voldemort murdering my mum."
Almost overcome with despair, Lupin made to comfort Harry, as he had comforted his parents through the trials and tribulations of high school and later, the heavy losses of war, but found that he could not. Had the world been different, Harry would have grown up knowing him as an Uncle and it wouldn't have been weird… it also wouldn't have been necessary. He stayed silent.
"Why did they have to come to the match?" said Harry, bitterly.
"They're getting hungry," said Lupin coolly, shutting his briefcase with a snap. "Dumbledore won't let them into the school, so their supply of human prey has dried up… I don't think they could resist the large crowd around the quidditch pitch. All that excitement… emotions running high… it was their idea of the feast."
"Azkaban must be terrible," Harry muttered. Lupin nodded grimly.
"The fortress is set on a tiny island, way out to sea, but they don't need walls and water to keep the prisoners in, not when they're all trapped inside their own heads, incapable of a single cheerful thought. Most of them go mad within weeks."
"But Sirius Black escaped from them," Harry said slowly. "He got away…"
Lupin's briefcase slipped from the desk; he had to stoop quickly to catch it.
He disliked thinking of Sirius, particularly as a pale and maddened prisoner of the Dementors. They had been as close as brothers until the last few weeks of the war, when he'd began to feel a distance between them… but then, that Sirius was dead and gone, along with James, Lily, Peter, Alice, Frank and all the others that had fallen in those last, trying days. But Harry was waiting for an answer.
"Yes," he said, straightening up. "Black must have found a way to fight them. I wouldn't have believed it possible… Dementors are supposed to drain a wizard of his powers if he is left with them too long – "
"You made that Dementor on the train back off," said Harry suddenly.
"There are – certain defences one can use," said Lupin. "But there was only one Dementor on the train. The more there are, the more difficult it becomes to resist."
"What defences?" said Harry at once. "Can you teach me?"
"I don't pretend to be an expert at fighting Dementors, Harry – quite the contrary…"
"But if the Dementors come to another quidditch match, I need to be able to fight them –"
Lupin looked into Harry's determined face and suddenly he could see his old friends staring back out of the boy's young face. He owed it to them, especially to Lily, to keep Harry safe. He was the only one of them left who could.
"Well… all right. I'll try and help. But it'll have to wait until next term, I'm afraid. I have a lot to do before the holidays. I chose a very inconvenient time to fall ill."
Lost in his thoughts, Lupin found himself wandering towards his rooms when Peeves tripped him over, probably getting him back for the chewing gum incident. Too tired to deal with the poltergeist (who was zooming away, loudly singing abuse) he bent to gather his books.
Lupin sighed as he straightened up, there was another reminder of his past, though not a friendly one.
"Severus, could I have a word?"
The sour-faced head of Slytherin glowered at him, but gestured his colleague into an empty classroom nonetheless.
"My students tell me that you changed their work and set them homework," he began, wishing that he were elsewhere and not having to have this ridiculous conversation.
"It seemed to me that they were woefully behind in their education," the other man sneered, his lip curling in distaste.
Lupin sighed, he really wasn't in the mood for this.
"Look, Severus, just because it's not the way that you'd do it doesn't mean that it's the wrong way to do it. And I shall take your early introduction of that particular topic as an innocent slip."
"I can't imagine what you mean, Lupin," said Snape, coldly. But his heart didn't appear to be in it.
Truth be told, Amelia's reaction to the rearrangement of classes had unnerved him somewhat; he had underestimated her attachment to her cousin. He wasn't sure how comfortable he was about losing such a promising friend and was privately as relieved as Lupin to be leaving the classroom ten minutes later, business concluded.
0o0o0o0
It had been nearly a week since Remus had realised just how completely rumbled he had been, and he'd thanked Amelia profusely, then blushed furiously as she'd shook her head, kissed him lightly on the cheek and wandered off laughing.
As he worked through his lessons and walked the halls of his alma mater he realised, with a pang, that he was looking forward to his transformations for the first time in twelve years; it had been a long time since that last time his three friends had arrived at his flat, sleeping bags tucked under their arms.
His thoughts seemed to drift endlessly between his enigmatic new friend and the men that he had once called brothers.
There had been a time when he could not, would not believe that Sirius had betrayed and murdered their small but defiant family. His mind still strayed back to the times when they'd sat on the grassy banks of the lake on a hot summer's day, Lupin reading, quietly observing his friends' antics. James would be plotting future pranks with Sirius, periodically glancing over to the group of girls in which Lily Evans was sat, and being smacked on the head by his friend if his attention wandered for too long or if he started drooling.
Peter would be laughing along with them, hanging on his friends' every word. They might sneak into the kitchens in the evening, little Peter carrying so much that he could barely walk, James showing off by levitating a pudding directly behind Filch so that it spilled all over him and Sirius and Remus laughing so hard their stomachs hurt, holding on to each other to stay upright.
And then there was Lily… so kind and thoughtful, always there for people when they needed it. He remembered the day that he'd chosen to tell her his secret. It was spring and the scent of mayflowers was wafting through the grounds; he'd been so afraid that she'd simply walk away and never speak to him again, but he needn't have worried. She'd listened calmly to his stuttered explanations and had given him the tightest hug he'd ever received (his teenage mind had of course relived this moment many times), told him that she'd figured him out in second year and returned to the project that the two of them had been working on for Professor Slughorn.
His friends… his best friends…
He shook his head; it seemed so long ago now, but the memories still seemed to find yet new ways to hurt him. He glanced out through the rain streaked glass of the classroom window at their 'spot' on the shores of the lake; he could have sworn that, just for a second, he had glimpsed four boys laughing together in the long faded sunshine.
He turned, sighing, as the door opened and his fourth-years filed in; he got on with his day.
0o0o0o0
*I am aware, Bones, that at this point you would like them to snog, so here it is, just for you:
They stood, eyes flashing, inches apart for a few seconds, before Severus, having entirely run out of things to shout at her, simply grabbed her, crushing his lips against hers. He seemed just as surprised as she did, even more so when she didn't pull away, instead deepening the kiss. His hands entangled themselves in her hair and she pulled him closer, mewling into his mouth.
0o0
I think we should leave them there, before they decide they need to relocate to a handy broom closet… honestly, what will Lupin say. Oy! *throws ball of screwed up paper at her characters* I'm working here, keep it down. You're in a school for gods' sake!