It's Christmas Time Again: A Time-Traveling TMS Holiday Extravaganza

Autumn Term, 2011

So it wasn't easy, but one day after another passed, and I made it through those first few months of term.

I met my room mates - all blokes who I honestly barely remember at this point because they were all ✨those type people✨ who didn't really like me much, but who also didn't have it in themselves to ask me to be moved either. (Besides that, they just didn't have any real reason to.) They were all younger than me, with different interests and different maturity levels, and they took the three beds closest to the door, leaving me in the far corner of the room, where I spent most of my time pouring over books when I bothered hanging around in my dorm. I spent much more time in the library or hanging about on the grounds.

For a while, everyone was keen to ask me what it was like being the longest Hat Stall in History, wanting details about what the Hat had said during those seven minutes. A lot of them asked me, but some of them just gossiped and speculated. I got a lot of "so in so said that such and such told them the hat told you blah de blah" and I'd be like "uh, no" and they'd rush off to tell their friends it was just a rumor.

"I don't remember most of what the hat said, alright?" I snapped at one curious Slytherin. "Go and tell your friends so they tell their friends who tell theirs so people can stop asking me already!"

Wide eyes followed me about the castle most days and the teachers seemed hesitant to call attention to me, like they were scared I'd get answers wrong and fuel the rumors I was stupid and it was like they didn't want to add to the bullshit. Honestly, I was afraid of the same thing, so I didn't volunteer much in class, either, but I did study and do my homework diligently and I got top marks on my assignments, as long as they didn't require me working in a group or speaking out-loud in class.

I barely saw Victorie or Violet, who were wildly popular, the both of them. Victorie was part veela through her Mum, the famous Fleur Delacor, and had this natural charm as a result. She never met a stranger, as they say.

Personally, I was a stranger even to myself.

I wanted to spend more time with Victorie and I fully believe she meant to spend more time with me, too. Her face always genuinely lit up with excitement whenever we ran into one another, and she made a point to come give me a hug nearly every morning when she came down for breakfast in the Great Hall, but she was in Gryffindor and popular and social and I was not.

One day in early October, after Transfiguration, I was packing up my things after a long morning trying to turn mice into teacups, when McGonagall called out, "Master Lupin, if you could please stay behind, I wish to speak with you a moment."

The other kids snickered and whispered, then slunk out of the room with their things, leaving me behind with McGonagall.

I made my way up to the desk as the other students left. She was bent over a stack of parchments, marking them up with her quill. I stood while she finished the page she was on, and then she laid the quill down and looked up at me.

"Master Lupin," she said, and she waved her wand, producing a chair opposite her. "Have a seat."

"Am I in trouble?" I asked.

"Heavens no." She paused, then peered over her glasses at me warily. "Is there something you should be in trouble for?"

I shook my head. "Not that I know of."

"How are things going for you here at Hogwarts?" She asked.

"Are you happy with your dormitory?" she asked, "The house elves are warming ye blankets nicely now it's getting a wee colder at night?"

I nodded, "Brilliantly."

"Yer father was always a bit chilled," McGonagall said. "I tried to make sure the elves knew to warm his a wee bit extra when he was in his first year. It was a side effect of the Lycanthropy."