CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
✧
-: sixth year :-
── IN WHICH THE MEETING
GOES AHEAD
. . .
Oliver and Erin walked silently down the hallways, several feet of flagstones between the two and no sign of either making the distance any shorter as they climbed up the several staircases and made their way through the labyrinth of corridors that made up the Scottish castle.
As the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom was on the third floor of Hogwarts, consequently the office of Remus Lupin would be as well; the layout of the classroom was different to that of the other teachers and as Erin knew after attending a particularly lengthy and boring detention with none other than Gilderoy Lockhart ( he had made her polish the frames of his many portraits when he figured the Slytherin wasn't impressed by his stacks of fanmail or medals and trophies awarded to him by the townsfolk of some poor remote village in Merlin-knows-where rural Transylvania ), the office of the current Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was connected to the main room through a small door behind the bookshelf in the back-right corner of the classroom.
There was the usual tension that constantly resurfaced during their interactions - even if the interaction was completely silent and simply just walking beside each other down the lengthy halls of their shared school - so much so that it was almost veiling the hidden history between the pair. They liked to pretend that it ceased to exist, so why couldn't everyone else?
Finally they reached Classroom 3C and Erin was the first to push the door open, leading the way through the aisle between the rows upon rows of desks that now sat empty on the early Saturday afternoon. She made sure to be the first to knock on the closed door to Lupin's office, waiting a comfortable amount of seconds before she pushed the door open snd the two rivals could step inside.
"Was it not possible to let me know about this meeting in any other way?" Erin asked as Professor Lupin looked up from his desk and waved an arm in front of them, the two chairs in front of his desk edging further apart through a silently-cast spell. She sat down on the one on the right and crossed her legs, ensuring that her skirt covered up everything it needed to. "Would it be too hard to send a message through owl? Or perhaps take a leaf out of the Ministry of Magic's books and send the little paper airplaces?"
"I can say I am glad neither of you attacked the other in the corridor. Miss Tonks, I was simply preparing you for what is to come by sending Oliver to deliver the message as opposed to those fiddly Interdepartment Memos Mr Fudge had come to favour." Lupin replied, as calm as he always was as Oliver also took a seat.
"I told her about the list." Oliver spoke up next, tone completely flat. He was somewhat embarassed by the fact that out of all the people to end up his tutor for the subject, he ended up with Erin Tonks of all people; but whilst trying to convince him to accept her as his tutor over anyone else, Lupin had showed him the incredibly long list of Erin's outstanding grades in Defense Against the Dark Arts - whether that was quite literally the grades at the end of her subject tests or end of year assessments, or the results that came back from her essays and homework regardless of the teacher.
It had been an endless list of repeated 'O's, with a singular 'E' that was marked with a note in Quirrel's shaking handwriting 'Unfortunate, for I spilled my dirigible tea over the remaining four inches that would no doubtedly bring her grade up to mark'.
"Good." Professor Lupin began, eyes surveying the surface of his dark oak desk before extracting a sheet of parchment and placing it in front of Erin. "Mr Wood and I had a meeting before lunch in which we reviewed his work and picked out the topics he found hard. As you mentioned you ability to work out a timetable and anything else to do with this, I have refrained from doing so myself, but have given you a small checklist of what I believe necessary to see by the end of April."
Both Oliver and Erin supressed groans at the idea of enduring these sessions for so long. Instead, the Tonks girl picked up the list and began to scan the topics before anything else.
"Oh this will be easy!" She couldn't stop herself from exclaiming. "I know majority of these like the back of my hand! Yeah... The Unforgivable Curses, Boggarts.. Jinxes, Werewolves.. Hags - oh that's a good one." Erin paused, glancing between Oliver and Lupin. "Sir.. this list is practically ever topic on the curriculum."
"Wow, way to rub it in my face."
"Take your Quaffle and stuff it in your pie-hole Wood if you don't shut up you really are going to be in trouble." Erin replied without even glancing away from the long list. "If you aren't completely blown out of your mind, then I think you'll find that it was actually a tone of worry there. Because seriously, I might hate your guts and fantasize about using Fred Weasley's Beater's bat to launch you off of the top of Astronomy tower, but if you don't get your act together then you'll recieve a 'T' and look about as gormless as a troll."
"Miss Tonks, that is enough." It was these moments when Remus questioned himself taking on the position of professor; how could he remain an authority figure when Erin Tonks had the ability to throw such well-constructed insults that he would do almost anything to be able to laugh at. "I'm going to leave it up to you to decide how you are going to progress through that list. If it were me, I would spend half an hour on each, but you may choose to ignore every word I say."
Erin seemed to have her work cut out for her.
✧
