She Said What?

Chapter 10: I Despair over Romance

October 2

9:45 AM
Status: In disbelief

Today, in Charms, we had to work in partners on a spell that made inanimate objects dance across our table. And, needless to say, it was a bit of a disaster in our room.

Alice paired up with Frank, who asked her to please spare him from William Gossamer, who had been eyeing him hopefully. Livvy paired up with Daniel Yetter from across the room, a mutual acquaintance of ours. James paired with Black, of course, and Pettigrew paired with Lissie Elmhurst, which left me with fewer prospects than I would have liked.

I ended up working with Remus, who has been my good friend ever since third year. This was a good thing – I adore Remus. He's an absolute sweetheart.

I gestured for him to come to my table and he shrugged, coming along since he had no one else he particularly wanted to be with. He smiled as he sat down, his lovely brown eyes bright as ever.

"Hey, Lily," he said. "Are you ready?"

"Yes, I'm ready," I said. "This shouldn't be too bad, should it?"

"No," he said. "We have to hold the wand like this, right?" He demonstrated a pretty good representation of the movement.

"Move it a little more to the right," I suggested. "And make your motions a bit more...brash, you know? You're doing it quite lightly."

Remus tried again. I told him it was good and he tried it on his quill. It moved feebly, as though attempting to rise, but it fell back down. Remus sighed.

"It's not really working," he said.

"I told you, be more assertive," I said, somewhat pleased that I could teach clever Remus something, for once. "Like...like this."

I waved my wand in a particularly grandiose movement; but I was a little too enthusiastic, because my wand accidentally hit Remus's bag and made a couple of sparks come out of it. Remus chuckled.

"Careful there, Lily," he said cheerfully.

I giggled, embarrassed. "Well, it's something like that, anyway."

"I think I get it," he said.

And it went on like this – polite, productive, a tad bit awkward but nothing too bad – for quite some time. I had an enjoyable period, because while I love Livvy and Alice to bits, they can get a little off-task (particularly Alice) and can irk me to no end.

Remus isn't like that, though. He does what he has to do and he's very amiable about it all. No jokes, no off-hand conversations – all pleasantries and work.

We were going along very, very well for, as I said, quite some time. However, halfway through the period, we were startled by a very loud bang from James and Black's corner.

Apparently, James and Black got bored with the dancing charm and decided to try out some other charms in our book; and one of them went a little off and caused an explosion, as well as an odor of rotten eggs. They were both laughing hysterically and Flitwick – irked as he was – assigned them detention. They took their punishment merrily and continued to chuckle.

I watched this in disbelief for a few seconds and turned back to Remus for his opinion. To my surprise (or maybe not) Remus was chuckling too – hard, at that.

"They are too funny sometimes," he said affectionately.

And then all I could do was stare at him. I mean, he was the good guy in their clan of trouble-makers! He was supposed to even them out, be the voice of reason. They've obviously corrupted him through the years; and I still find it difficult to believe that wonderful Remus finds smelly odors to be 'funny.'