𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐘𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊 ❧ remus lupin

XVIII. Those Who Seek Shall Find

"A person's actions will tell you everything you need to know."

Juliet's POV

For the remainder of the day, I did a variety of things including studying, showering, more studying, and cleaning. Even though I'm an extremely messy person, I love that feeling I get when everything is cleaned up. At the moment, it helped make the extremely difficult nearly exploding balloon feeling go away for a minute or two, and it made me feel like I had my life together for once.

I took breaks in between my cleaning to eat a tasty lunch in the Great Hall with Lily and Sirius. The three of us ate and talked, but the pushing and pulling feeling came back inside me as I finished my food, and I tried my best to not be too obvious with how I was feeling, although I made me feel even worse to keep everything bottled up like this. The only person who I could actually talk to about this if I wanted to was Remus himself.

Pretty soon nightfall came around. Snow started twinkling down, and the nearly-full January moon shone brightly through the dark and cloudy sky.

Remus and I had planned to meet in the common room at 1 o'clock in the morning, a time when any sane person would be asleep by. And I stayed up until the time came for me to meet Remus in the common room, keeping myself busy by reading books for my classes.

My eyelids grew heavy watching the clock turn slower than ever while I was waiting for it to strike 1:00 am. And once it finally did, I went to the bathroom and splashed some ice-cold water on my face to wake me up a little bit more. Then, I grabbed my bag and tiptoed out of the dorm room as quiet as possible to avoid waking up the girls, and quietly waited for Remus in the common room.

Once I was seated on one of the chairs, I checked to make sure I had everything I needed inside my bag, which included a cup of water to replace the Liquid Luck with, and a spare bottle of water to hold the potion in once we've stolen it.

Suddenly, Remus appeared in the middle of the room, startling me with a vision of only his head peeking out from underneath James' invisibility cloak.

"Merlin's Beard, Remus!" I harshly whispered, "you scared me!"

Remus laughed at me and removed the invisibility cloak completely. He stood holding a blank sheet of parchment and his wand and motioned me to get up and hide underneath the cloak with him.

And so I did after I swung my bag over my shoulder, and the two of us tried to move the cloak around so that it was able to shield us both from anyone who could see.

"Mufflatio," whispered Remus, making sure that any loose noise we made wouldn't be heard.

Once fully situated, Remus and I carefully walked out of the common room and through the corridors. I caught Remus staring down at that strange piece of parchment that he was holding earlier, directing us to go in what he called the best way possible to the Potions classroom. He was walking awfully close to me, but I didn't mind.

But as we were about to turn a corner, we were frightened by two Ravenclaw prefects patrolling the halls. Talking of the upcoming Quidditch match of Ravenclaw versus Slytherin, the two prefects seemed to be fully occupied and didn't notice us in any way possible.

But when we first saw them, both Remus and I nervously jumped a little bit, and his arm pulled me closer to him, for nervous reasons I'm sure.

After standing still until the prefects were gone, Remus and I began walking towards the Potions room once again. "Are you alright? You seemed frightened," Remus carefully asked.

But I just looked up at him a nodded my head, despite all of the nervousness that was rushing through my body right now. I couldn't tell if it was nervousness of the full moon tomorrow, the nervousness of stealing a Professor's personal item, the nervousness of standing this close to Remus, or all three combined.

Anyways, we had finally reached the potions classroom. "Alohamora," I whispered, unlocking the large door to the classroom. The two of us entered the room and immediately shut the door behind us.

Remus locked the door, and we both removed the invisibility cloak off of ourselves. I looked around the room. Seeing the same old desks, tables, and cauldrons as I did during any normal school day. There were so many ingredients and items stashed around the room, which I knew would make it extremely hard to find the potion of Felix Felicis. And when Remus shot me a confused glance, I knew he was thinking the exact same thing.

So, the two of us got to work and searched in every desk, cabinet, and storage container inside the room. It wasn't until I was rifling through an old bookcase when I thought I might have seen something. I opened I book that had the title of Unusually Rare Magical Potions written across the cover. I flipped through the pages of the book and was in awe with what I saw inside of it.

"Remus, come over here," I whispered across the room. He came over to where I was standing and said, "Have you found it, Jules?"

Instead of speaking, I just showed him the book. The book was thick, at least four hundred pages, and a chunk of the middle part of the pages had been cut out with a knife. In the middle of the book, particularly well hidden, was a small vial of clear liquid with a label on it reading Felix Felicis.

"I found it, Remus!" I nearly spoke too loud, and both of us were extremely happy. There was a rush of relief inside of me, and for the first time in weeks, I felt somewhat calm and happy. That exploding balloon feeling was getting smaller and smaller each day, and the joy inside of me at this very moment made it go away for a couple minutes, so I could celebrate this half-victory with Remus.

Without creating room much noise, both of us jumped up and down with smiles on our face from ear to ear. Remus then picked me up and gave me a big hug, while simultaneously spinning around in a celebratory circle.

"You're one step closer to beating this, Jules," he said as he gently set me down. For a moment, Remus still had his arms wrapped around me after our hug, and we were standing very close to each other. He slowly released me from his arms, and his chocolate colored eyes were looking back into mine. A soft smile rose to his face.

Me, being the extraordinarily awkward person that I am, broke the silence by saying, "So, um, we should probably switch the vials then, right?" while nervously reaching my hand behind my neck and walking back over to the bookcase.

"Yeah, yeah," he said, "let's, um, let's switch them now." This moment couldn't have been more awkward, and being the extremely awkward person that I am, I had absolutely no idea how to just, you know, stop being awkward.

Without making eye contact with Remus, I poured the vial of Liquid Luck into a separate container that I later placed in my bag. Then, since the potion itself is clear and has a water-like consistency, I poured the water that I had brought into the vial, sealed the vial, and placed it back in the book where I had found it. Remus placed the book back on the bookshelf, and we both spent the next few minutes making the room look exactly as we had found it.

The next ten minutes consisted of me and Remus, very close together underneath James' cloak, walking in dead silence back to the Gryffindor dorms. And due to that particular awkward moment back inside the Potions classroom, I was self-conscious in this moment, and I could tell that Remus was to. I mean what can I say? Awkward is practically my middle name. You can call me Juliet Awkward Greyback Fletcher.

Once we were safely back inside the common room, I quickly went back up to my dorm after giving a short goodnight to Remus. It was now around 2:30 in the morning, and I couldn't fall asleep.

The pushing and pulling feeling that I've been getting was still there, but it was in the back of my mind at the moment. What made me toss and turn for the rest of the night was the way that Remus looked at me and held me after he had hugged me. That look wasn't just a look from a friend, and from that moment I was 100% certain that what Zoe and Lily had told me so long ago was true.

Remus Lupin fancies me, and I have no idea how to feel about it.

Word Count: 1448

a/n: we love flat out remus and jules cHeMiStRy, even thought juliet has like freaks out every time she tries to process it...