CHAPTER VII.

Remus kept an eye and an ear on the rumour mill, listening more attentively to Mary and Marlene's chirpy gossiping at the Gryffindor table than he normally did. Still — he heard no news about Zelda, about how Bitchy Bancroft (this nickname was gained, Remus knew, because Zelda had an unusual habit of not responding whenever someone insulted her or made a crude joke, instead choosing to stare them down silently until they grew uncomfortable) had miraculously turned out to be Muggle-born. Nothing. Not a peep.

It was almost infuriating. He really had expected that Hufflepuff boy, the one Zelda had taken to the Christmas party, to blab.

He was still wondering why the rumour mill hadn't picked up on anything by the time the full moon rolled around two weeks after the party, just before they were set to leave Hogwarts for Christmas break.

"Alright, Remus, dear," said Madam Pomfrey as she opened the door in the back of her office and motioned for Remus to follow her out onto the grounds. "I expect this moon should be — well, not too hard, especially with the new pain potion I had my apprentice whip up for me."

Remus startled at this. He'd been trailing glumly behind Madam Pomfrey as she led him to the Whomping Willow, forty-five minutes before the moon was due to rise. "Your apprentice?" he asked, willing his voice not to crack.

"Yes, yes, but don't worry, it's just a classic recipe for all sorts of aches," Pomfrey assured him. "She thinks I'm just replenishing my stocks. . ."

"Right," Remus muttered.

He let her lead him down the tunnel in silence and only sat down once she'd left, wishing him luck and promising that she'd be back first thing in the morning to fix him up and bring him back to the Hospital Wing. With a sigh, Remus sank onto the rickety bed in the corner of the Shrieking Shack's upstairs bedroom, then raised his head and scanned the room.

"Hello?" he called out tentatively. "You lot here?"

A moment of silence passed. Then Remus heard a muffled giggle, and there in front of him stood James, Sirius, and Peter, looking just as pleased with themselves as they were every time they pulled this off.

"Hi there, Moony," James said with a lopsided grin, discarding the Invisibility Cloak in the corner.

Remus rolled his eyes, but couldn't help smiling. "You're cutting it awfully close, Prongs."

"That's the fun of it, though," Sirius pointed out. Next to him, Peter snickered.

"Yeah," Remus sighed as he watched his friends transform into their animal forms; he winced as he felt his back pop like he'd stretched too far. Moonrise was coming. "Fun."

━━

As much as he wished to sleep the following day away, Remus knew he couldn't. He found himself unable to coax himself into skiving off patrolling the corridors simply because he couldn't bear the guilt — Merlin knew he was a terrible enough prefect already — even though it was the day after a full moon.

Lily might have been Head Girl, but she didn't know about Remus's furry little problem, and Remus absolutely refused to allow James to tell her. He'd gotten deliriously lucky with James, Sirius, and Peter. As unfailingly kind as he knew Lily was, he couldn't expect someone else to accept him for what he was. Not when the impossible had already happened, and he'd somehow found three best friends who knew what he was and loved him anyway. Remus wasn't about to push his luck with a fourth person. Especially not when that person was such a good friend.

What was more, he'd gained nothing from this past full moon except a new scar, and it was positively ghastly.

Madam Pomfrey had reminded Remus that it was lucky he hadn't broken any bones this moon, and that it might not scar so visibly anyway, if he was good about applying murtlap essence. James and Sirius had insisted it added to Remus's roguish, mysterious look. Peter had said it really wasn't as bad as Remus thought.

Remus, of course, knew better than to believe any of this. The scar stretched from his left collarbone all the way up to the angle of his jaw, ending right below where his cheek began, all angry and red and raw — and itchy. Merlin, it was itchy in a burning way, but then cursed wounds always were when they started to heal. Remus tried not to be bothered by it, but he'd noticed while heading to the seventh floor to patrol that students who passed him always got a little wide-eyed, their gazes sliding down to his neck and then furtively glancing away, like he was contagious or something.

It wasn't as though Remus was unfamiliar with this. He knew how he was perceived. But the embarrassment at his new look was strong enough that even after being discharged by Pomfrey, Remus had found himself avoiding classes and the common room just so he didn't have to deal with people's nagging questions.

And so on the night of the new moon Remus found himself stalking through the corridors, trying not to look like he was limping, and silently hoping he wouldn't run into a teacher who might make him go back to his dormitory because he was 'overexerting himself.' It felt good, to carry on with life as though nothing at all had happened. It felt normal.

It was snowing lightly outside, Remus observed as he past a large window. He wondered if it would snow back home in Wales, come Christmas in two weeks.

Footsteps approaching from behind made Remus stop and sigh to himself. He really didn't fancy putting anyone in detention or deducting house points, namely because it would mean having to bear the brunt of someone's scrutiny about the new addition to his scar collection.

Remus turned around, and immediately felt a burning desire to sink through the floor, never to be seen again — because here was Zelda, on prefect patrol herself, her green and silver badge glinting on the lapel of her robes.

Internally kicking himself though he was, Remus couldn't help but notice that she seemed to be without Evan Rosier, the other Slytherin prefect in their year. He frowned. "You shouldn't be alone," he said, knowing how seriously James took his duties to accompany Lily on their Head Boy and Girl patrols. "It's not safe, these days."

"It is for me," Zelda said pointedly. "I'm not Muggle-born, remember?"

"Ah," Remus said. "Right. Yes."

Zelda appeared to look him over as they stood across from each other in the corridor. Remus tried his very best not to squirm, but he did take note of the fact that Zelda seemed determined not to stare for too long at any one part of him, instead choosing to inspect the stone floor of the seventh-floor corridor like it was the most fascinating thing she'd ever seen. He also noted that her wrist, while half-covered by her robes, was bruised from where Graham Carter had grabbed her. The bruise was a sickly yellowish-green colour, which meant it was healing, but still.

He wondered why she hadn't bothered to heal herself.

"You're far from the dungeons," Remus commented. He felt rather faint. Perhaps it was the sharp, sweet smell of peppermint. Did the air always smell of peppermint when she was around?

"I know." Zelda pursed her lips. "Didn't fancy patrolling with Rosier."

Remus raised an eyebrow at that. "Did anyone. . ." Did anyone find out? Did anyone say anything?

She seemed to hear his question despite the silence, though, because she shook her head. "Not that I can tell." Zelda narrowed her eyes at him, then, and Remus fought the urge to shrink away. "Why? Have you told?"

"No," Remus said, doing his best — and, judging by the way he felt his cheeks heat up, failing miserably — to remain poker-faced. "I didn't. Promise."

"Do you know if anyone else did?" Zelda demanded, then looked immediately guilty. "It's only that — well, Graham doesn't want to speak to me. I've no idea what he has or hasn't said."

"I don't know anything about that," Remus said simply. "But I made a promise. I might not necessarily approve of this — this story you've been telling, but it's hardly my place to declare it untrue."

Zelda only looked at him. Her eyes seemed to darken from mahogany to the colour of spilled ink. In the seclusion of his mind, Remus thought he'd never seen anyone with eyes as dark as hers.

After a long moment of silence, he inclined his head and added, "Untrue though it may be."

Still staring unflinchingly at him, Zelda cocked her head like a predator having caught the scent of prey. It was unnerving. Her gaze dipped from his, then, and slid down to the place on his neck that had been ripped open by the wolf's — by his — claws.

"Cursed wounds," Zelda mused, less to him and more to herself, "aren't they?"

Remus swallowed, mouth suddenly dryer than parchment. All his clever comebacks and snide remarks, filed away so expertly for moments like these, suddenly turned tail and fled.

She was eyeing him with the air of a Muggle scientist observing the results of a particularly puzzling experiment. There was no pity in her eyes — only keen interest. A Healer's mind, Remus supposed. Privately, he wondered why Zelda wanted to be a Healer at all. She hardly seemed like the motherly type, or the kind to simper at a sick person's bedside; not like Madam Pomfrey was.

Desperately, Remus tried to swallow again, but his throat seemed to have suddenly become host to a drought. "Er. . ."

He was saved from responding by a faint popping sound. Puzzled, Remus and Zelda looked down at the same time to see a gooey brown ball rolling between them.

"Oh no —" Zelda gasped, just as Remus muttered, "A dungbomb — move!"

But it was too late. The dungbomb exploded between the two of them, sending Zelda into a furious coughing fit and making Remus cover his nose and mouth with the sleeve of his robe as his eyes watered. They backed away, Zelda moving to join Remus as they fled the dungbomb's smelly range, but a hissing sound and a low chuckle made them both turn around, wide-eyed.

"Prefects setting off dungbombs in the corridors!" Mr. Filch exclaimed, almost gleeful, as Mrs. Norris snaked around his ankles. "Ooh, Dumbledore will be pleased to hear this. . . you'll have your badges revoked, you will. . ."

━━

They did not, in the end, have their prefects' badges revoked. They did, however, receive detention.

"Moony? Detention?" Sirius exclaimed upon Remus's return to the dormitory that night. "Wow, mate, I didn't know you had it in you to get a detention without us!"

"It wasn't me," Remus said huffily. "The dungbomb just rolled out into the corridor from nowhere." He cast a suspicious look at James, then at Peter, but both of them shrugged, as if to say, not us.

"Well, hang on. . ." Sirius said thoughtfully, leaning against the doorjamb. "Pete and I did set some dungbombs on Mrs. Norris a couple weeks ago, and we did leave a couple on the seventh floor — got detention for it and everything — but maybe not all of them went off." He grinned. "Nice."

"Ugh," was all Remus could say as he wrenched the bathroom door open. He was at least proud that he'd summoned the good sense not to mention that Zelda had been with him. "I'm going to shower."

He watched Zelda on the Marauder's Map for the next few days, counting down to the detention — Remus noticed she'd begun to spend less time down in the dungeons, where the Slytherin common room was, and more time in the library. There were her early mornings in the Hospital Wing with Madam Pomfrey and her prefect duties on the lower floors (it seemed her escapade to the seventh floor had been a one-time thing).

Remus suspected that at least her best friends must know something. Or that Graham Carter had told a few people, but that the story had not yet spread like wildfire.

But, then again, it was really just Graham and Professor Slughorn who had any right to be suspicious, and Remus sincerely doubted Slughorn's ability to embarrass a student in front of a class, so that just left Graham. Who, Remus considered, was a Hufflepuff — and most likely too nice to spread a rumour, true or otherwise.

But then there was what he'd witnessed the night of Slughorn's party, and afterwards. Zelda's outburst, so strangely unlike her; Graham violently grabbing her wrist; the bruise that hadn't faded.

Remus didn't know why these thoughts plagued him like this. Why was there a cloud of worry above his head, focused on Zelda? Why did it seem to darken with rain whenever he thought of what could happen should her housemates find out the truth of her parentage?

The worrying was as confusing as it was suffocating. It seemed to follow him around.

Maybe it was just the thrill of knowing that, for the past seven years, Remus hadn't been the only student in Hogwarts keeping a destructive secret.

He supposed he could relate to her, in that sense.