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 SeverusSnape.

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… SybillTrelawney… teapots… ProfessorBinns… 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.