MATILDA - fred weasley

Chapter 3

Matilda arrived at Defense Against the Dark Arts halfway through lunch, too furious at the Weasley twins to withstand a whole hour in the Great Hall with them while they poked fun at any student they deemed interesting enough.

She understood that she may have overreacted from their point of view, but they were missing the very large and very important detail as to why.

Matilda's acceptance into Hogwarts was an unusual one. Most wizards and witches who are affected by lycanthropy are often denied an education, and Matilda had never heard of an educated werewolf. Granted, that's what her parents had told her.

So, Matilda was raised under the impression she would be a good-for-nothing piece of scrap that her parents could throw away once she was of age. That was until a very stern-looking woman had arrived at the Diggory household on a rainy March morning, letter clasped in hand.

The year prior, on September Twenty-Sixth – Matilda and Cedric's birthday – she'd been so disappointed when only Cedric received a Hogwarts letter. The stern woman had sat down Matilda and her parents and explained very carefully that Matilda could attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Matilda was so grateful for the opportunity, so grateful that she vowed never to step out of line and do anything that may cause Minerva McGonagall or Professor Dumbledore to kick her out.

This was precisely why having the Weasley twins step in to protect her was a bad thing.

It wasn't as though it was the first time the Slytherins had ever teased her for the visible scars on her skin – and it certainly wouldn't be the last. Every single time it had happened, Matilda was able to walk away reasonably unscathed since Montague and his goons are too stupid to try anything, but now that they knew the Weasley twins – their mortal enemy – were willing to get into a fight over her...

That put her invisibility at risk.

If anything were to go wrong, all the blame was on her. It was her fault the Slytherins picked on her scars, it was her fault for talking to Fred Weasley earlier that week in Flourish and Blotts, and it was her fault she let them get so far that she needed saving.

"Miss Diggory?"

Matilda looked up from her book, where she had begun drawing a rough model of the stars. She was sitting at a desk in the Defense classroom, having walked in when she noticed the door was open.

Professor Lupin was standing at the front of the room, hands in the pockets of his shabby robes. He looked worse than he had the previous day, his face greyer and eyes droopier. The scars on his face were rather pink in contrast to it, and Matilda wondered what beasts he may have encountered to earn those. He had that funny smell again, and Matilda couldn't place where she'd smelt it before.

"Hello, sir," she said, placing her quill down. "I hope you don't mind me being in here so early."

Lupin smiled politely, "Not at all. You've either got a very good memory or have a knack for Astronomy." He pointed at her drawing.

"I think I'm just attentive, really," Matilda replied.

He examined the map closer and squinted, "You've misplaced Sirius. It's more to the left," he placed his finger on her book, a little off where she'd placed the star, "there."

Matilda picked up her quill and annotated the page. "Thanks, Professor. Are you a bit of an Astronomy buff?"

"Something like that," Lupin mused, and Matilda saw how his face turned sad for a moment before he smiled again, "Why aren't you with the other kids?"