Alyssa Greene is an orphan raised by an ordinary muggle family. Most unexpectedly, on her eleventh birthday, she received a letter from Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And so for 7 years she was torn between her magic and her muggle lif...
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On Halloween morning, I awoke with the rest and went down to breakfast, feeling thoroughly depressed. During the day we had the opportunity to visit Hogsmeade, but I had no desire to do so.
The pretty wizard village usually attracted me with its variety, the magical atmosphere, and the piles of shops waiting for me to spend my money in them, but now I just wanted to go back to bed and not get up.
I had a guilty conscience, depression, and I didn't know what to do with my desires and fantasies. I couldn't stop thinking about the moment in Remus's office no matter how hard I tried. It was the sudden intimacy that was so disconcerting. Never, since I had known that Remus was actually my professor a few weeks ago had he shown any real interest, no, desire, for me as a woman. In most cases, the communication between us remained at the teacher-student level, and I was almost certain that he was more uncomfortable with the whole situation, even than I was.
Last night he gazed at me on the sofa with an appreciation and desire that made me blush even now.
I wasn't stupid. I knew I was a catch. I didn't have Mabe's beauty, but there was something about me that clearly resembled the boys' attention. Boys. I hadn't thought about what an older man in his early thirties would have thought of me.
It was a no-win situation; I remembered his words from one of our talks.
"Wood invited me to go to the Three Broomsticks together. " Mabe's voice drew me out of my melancholy.
I smiled sincerely at her, knowing how much she liked the captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
"I'm afraid he'll bore you to death with his talk of snitches and bludgers," I joked.
"You don't mind? I'll leave you alone to go in Hogsmeade. You can go with Penny or Michael, actually," she told me.
"Don't worry, I'm not really in the mood to go to the village anyway."
"How long will you continue in this mood?" she asked, and there was anxiety in her voice. "You can't lie to me that it's about exams. You do brilliantly in almost every subject. "
"Stop worrying about me. Especially today." I pulled her to me and hugged her. "Go fun. And I promise tonight I'll be a totally new person."
She looked at me with her big beautiful eyes to make sure she still had nothing to worry about. I tried to put on my most encouraging smile, which disappeared the moment Mabe turned her back on me.
I lied to her. And myself too.
***
My favorite place for a walk and solitude was by the lake next to the Forbidden Forest. I didn't want Hogsmeade's liveliness, nor did I want to go back to the common room. I spent most of the day in nature, reading and clearing my mind of all my emotions. Only here did I manage to break away from the world around me. It was as if there was something in me the trees could feel and they chattered to it, my intuition perhaps. There was a softness to the woodland floor, to the moss that supported and sprang back. The woodland was the birdsong, it was the playful light and it was the serenity of time that flows without the clocks of man.
