Miss Marauder //A Marauder's Era/Harry Potter Fanfiction\\ ON HIATUS

Chapter 18

"Expecto Patronum!"

I sighed as, once again, just a little wisp of white escaped my wand before fizzling out. "Why isn't this WORKING," I grumbled in frustration, my head flopping onto Lily's shoulder.

"What memory were you thinking of, Miss Potter?" asked Professor Wainwright, and I grimaced.

"Well... I thought of when me and James first learnt to play Quidditch, it was in the summer and our dad was teaching us -"

"No no no no," Wainwright sighed, rubbing his temple. "That's never going to work. I mean, yes, I'm sure it's a very happy memory of yours, but it can't just be happy, it has to be powerful. It isn't going to work with a memory of you being happy, which now you're just looking back on fondly. You have to be reliving this moment, and your emotions now have to be as strong, if not stronger than they were at the time. Let the memory fill you up."

"But I don't -"

"You do. Everyone has that memory. Everyone has the ability to cast a Patronus. The difficult part is just unlocking it," he said, and wandered off to speak to someone else. I sighed in annoyance, before turning to Lily.

"What memory are you using? You're almost there."

And, indeed, she was - she had conjured a stable Patronus, it just didn't have a form yet.

Lily blushed. "That's a bit of a private question, Maisie."

"Is it?" I asked curiously.

"Yes." And that was that.

I groaned, and looked around the classroom at everyone else's attempts. Not many people had managed to get past the white-wispy-bits stage, but a few had managed to shoot silvery bolts out of their wand.

I sat on the edge of my desk, probably crumpling my parchment that I had previously been working on. I gazed around at everyone else, wondering what on earth could possibly be my Patronus memory. My eyes flickered to Remus, who had his eyes closed in concentration.

I wonder what he was thinking of?

And then it came to me.

It couldn't have been anything else.

I leapt of my desk, and cleared my throat, holding my wand in the air in front of me.

My eyes fluttered shut, and I took a deep breath before I pictured the moment in my head. I let it consume me; it was like I was reliving it, I could almost hear the words being spoken, feel his eyes on mine.

It was Christmas Day, and Remus and I were in the living room.

"Are you alright? You look a bit hot." Remus gently pressed the back of his hand against my cheek, and I held my breath.

"Yep, I'm fine," I said, clearing my throat.

Remus opened his mouth to reply, but his eyes flickered to something above my head. I looked up, and saw a bunch of mistletoe hanging down from the ceiling.

"Who put that there?"

Remus shook his head. "No one, it just - grew."

I looked back down at Remus, to find he had already stopped looking at the mistletoe. Instead, his gaze was now fixed on me. With his eyes locked on mine, he took a step closer, so we were now pressed up against each other, my face brushing his chest.