selenophile || remus lupin

chapter twenty one

"Fia, wake up," said Lily, gently placing a hand on her best friend's shoulder.

At the contact, Ophelia gasped out in pain.

Laughing, Lily said, "Did I scare you?"

"A bit, yeah," said Ophelia, masking her pain.

"Well, hurry up," said Lily, still laughing. "We'll meet you in the great hall."

Ophelia looked up to see Marlene, Alice, and Lily all dressed and ready for the day, leaving the entrance of their dormitories. How long had she been asleep for? It had been a while since she had gotten a decent amount of sleep.

She got out of bed and immediately grabbed onto one of the bedposts for support. She was still badly beaten up, even if no one could see it. She took a deep breath. Even if she was in a lot of pain, she couldn't be seen wincing or limping, otherwise people would ask questions that she had no intention of answering.

She quickly put on her school robes and walked into the bathroom. She grabbed her hairbrush and walked to the mirror.

"Fuck," she muttered.

There was a deep, grotesque, and particularly painful bruise along her cheekbone. It was a dark purple, obviously rejecting the magic that her mother had used on it.

Furrowing her eyebrows, Ophelia tried to think back to the spell that her mother used to vanish them. She fumbled around for her wand and shakily placed the tip on her cheekbone.

"Dolor abscondam"

Nothing happened. She tried it several more times before groaning in frustration.

"Shit what time is it?" she asked, before she ran back into her dormitories and found a clock.

8:55

"Shit," she had five minutes before class started. Panic settled in. She didn't want to be late for her first class back from the holidays, but she absolutely couldn't be seen with such a large bruise across her face. Deciding that the latter was much worse than losing a few house points, she paced back towards the bathroom to try and cover up her scars.

After several more minutes of trying to perfect the spell and completely vanish her bruised face, she finally succeeded. Her face looked as good as normal, but still hurt greatly at every touch.

She quickly grabbed her backpack from the front of her bed and sprinted all the way to her charms class on the third floor. Out of breath, she pushed the heavy oak door open. All heads turned towards her and Professor Flitwick paused in his lecture.

"Miss Black, how lovely of you to finally join us. That'll be ten points from Gryffindor and a detention. Find your seat and please see me after class."

Ophelia sat down next to Alice, and received a look from Sirius, who turned around in his chair, as if to say where were you?

She shook her head at her brother and turned back to pay attention to the professor.

✩☾✩☽✩

At eight oclock that evening, Ophelia half walked, half limped to the charms classroom. She took a few deep breaths before walking normally through the door.

Remus Lupin was sitting cross legged on top of one of the large wooden desks, hunched over a book. She internally groaned. They had "made up" right before Christmas, but things had been pretty tense, even afterwards.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, a little more attitude in her voice than she meant.

Remus looked up at her, "Flitwick asked me to supervise."