From Beginning to End

Chapter 11: Valentine

Marlene McKinnon rolled her eyes in Herbology.

Professor Sprout was lecturing about the plant Moly. It was a black-stemmed plant with white flowers that held properties to reverse enchantments. As interesting as the subject might have been, it seemed none of her peers were paying any mind to the lesson. Not they did on a normal day anyhow. Today was especially noticeable though.

It was a friday afternoon, February eleventh. Somehow every girl in the damned castle seemed to have been put under some sort of love potion. They were going bonkers.

Everyone knew Alice was dating someone though she was far too secretive about it. It really wasn't a big deal. Great you fancy a bloke, so do the rest of the birds here, no need to hide it. Merlin!

    Even the Ravenclaws of which the Gryffindors shared this class with were distracted. Doris Purkiss kept batting her eyes all weird at Adrian Chang. Benjy Fenwick and Tilden Toots were taking turns throwing notes at the girls around the room and then pretending to be extremely focused on the neglected plants in front of them.

    Marlene felt a nudge to her right. She turned to see Mary MacDonald looking at her anxiously, bouncing in her seat.

    "Wotcher?"

    "Sirius Black just winked at me!" she whispered breathlessly.

    Wow. It wasn't like Sirius Black was the year's biggest flirt. He grew up as a spoilt pureblood, of course he knew how to charm witches with quick glances and mischievous grins. Had she forgotten about all the pranks he'd pulled on the both of them? Was this all because of Valentine's day, a holiday that forced you to be stupidly giddy with love, or would it be like this forever? Marlene didn't get it. She didn't want to get it. Merlin these people had their heads filled with the wrong sort of thing.

    "He winks at everyone."

    Mary's smile slipped instantly, her shoulders slumping. The poor girl just deflated. Marlene felt bad but it was the truth. Saying this was better than giving her false hope after all.

    "Yeah. Yeah, I suppose you're right." Mary said. "Maybe Lily'll have more luck with Remus."

    "What?"

    "Oh come on." Mary gave her a look. "Those two totally fancy one another."

"I heard that," Lily cut in, shears in hand, "and no we don't."

But, her face was flushed and her eyes kept darting over to the brunet, lanky boy, as if hoping he hadn't overheard. Mary had a point.

Marlene shrugged. She didn't care. "Okay." She cut a leaf off her Moly. "Who do you think will win the next game? Slytherin or Ravenclaw?"

A couple days later on the eve of Valentine's Day, Remus found himself surrounded by books in the dark library, ignoring the pains creeping up his shoulder blades as a reminder that the moon was nearing in a couple weeks. He was at the furthest point he could be from both moons; two weeks, but his body didn't care. There was no mercy for the cursed.

Potions homework still needed to be completed despite the fresh blanket of snow beckoning Hogwarts students outside and the desire to read a good book with a cup of tea on the side table by the fire.

He hated potions. The instructions on the board were always too hard to read, Slughorn's writing a loopy cursive in a small script that was far away. Remus always found himself messing up one instruction or another causing the result to be the wrong smell, color, thickness or all three.