Mischief Managed Y2 Part 2: The Truth of the Tournament

Chapter Twenty: The Prewetts' Prodigy's Approach

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When Patricia's fears had been confirmed about Remus Lupin by none other than Fabian Prewett, who was one source she knew damn well she couldn't contradict, her initial reaction had been to drink her way through a bottle of bourbon.

But when she realized Fabian and Gideon weren't joking about leaving Remus to her she had taken to the task with more care than she expected to give. As much as she tried to convince herself that she didn't give two flying fucks about anyone, she knew that wasn't actually the case. Plus, her unreciprocated feelings for none other than her roommate meant that she no longer felt comfortable being in her dorm that much. Usually, she hung out in Frank's but he had been spending more and more time with the third-year Alice Fortescue lately. Other than Frank, her roommates, and the Prewetts, who were too busy scheming together to pay her attention, she only had the Marauders to hang out with. She had upped her lessons with Sirius and James because she was in a tug-of-war situation whether to study for her OWLS or give up on them altogether. She also couldn't disagree that she had been subtly trying to find out more about Remus from the two idiots who seemed to know even less than her. She wasn't all that surprised since even if three of the Marauders were unusually smart for their age they were still little children compared to Patricia who had turned the mature age of fifteen on a non-disclosed date that no one would ever discover to be her birthday.

But even a mature age didn't prepare her on how to approach the rather obvious conclusion that Remus' father was a gigantic dickface. After several days of scheming about it when she wasn't collapsed into a state of anxiety over her approaching exams, she reached two conclusions. Remus Lupin was more tight-lipped about himself than even she had been at his age and there was no way that boy wasn't burying a deep-seated rage that would eat him apart soon if he didn't acknowledge it. So she did what she normally did when it came to figuring out how to handle the messy emotions of others. She skipped the bullshit the Prewetts had done in an attempt to get her to open up and focused on the one thing that had actually seemed to help. She hadn't expected Remus to want to come with her but she also knew that he really didn't have a damn choice. It gave her some satisfaction bringing up the Yule Ball and watching Sirius' eyes narrow, clearly re-remembering what had been so problematic about that night. Of course, Remus did not appreciate her reference as it would no doubt cause him a hassle later, as it should, but he was too polite to call her out on it.

Sometimes Patricia wondered how the kind and respectful Gryffindor could ever possibly remind her of herself. When Patricia was twelve she had been a nightmare and 'civil' would have been the last word anyone used to describe her, even herself. However if she hadn't started kicking and screaming while at Hogwarts, fighting everyone and everything to flee from a deep humiliating truth, she wasn't sure she would have survived.

No, Remus was her before she reached Hogwarts, wrongly convinced that she could single-handedly convince the woman who was supposed to love her, to pay attention to her, to stay.

"Are you alright?" Remus asked and she let out a deep breath, realizing she had clenched her fists which she habitually did when thinking of that weak-ass woman who regrettably was her mother.

"Need your help with something. I thought we established that?" Patricia asked sarcastically, knowing Remus' comment had less to do with why she had summoned him and more to do with why she appeared so upset. Sometime last year Patricia had considered the possibility that Remus Lupin was the same sort of weirdo that Fabian was, with that empathetic superpower that was extremely annoying and downright unfair. But Patricia had realized that Remus' intuition was closer to her own, not coming from some sort of sense but from watching the tiniest movements of others as if waiting for an attack.