Her Single Rose (Remus Lupin)

Sixty-Eight

Aries felt like she was back in first year, constantly feeling like she had to keep her walls up, creating more and more barriers as her time without Remus increased.

Her back stayed straight, her large appetite shrunk to the one she was used to at home, her hair was always down and flowing without a single stray hair.

It was clear to anyone that had known Aries for a long time that she had definitely gone back to her old ways. Without Remus with her, her anxiety attacks would come back rather frequently, too.

Though it was more concerning to Marlene, since she was the roommate that had to listen to Aries muffled sniffling during the night.

Mindy herself had done nothing to help calm the girl and simply slept with a pillow on her head.

Though, once the mornings came through, Aries did everything in her power to push away all of her misery and stood up with a blank face like she used to.

Even Marlene couldn't get her to smile anymore, Sirius could never get her attention during class and Remus decided it was best not to look in her direction at all. Both deciding to keep to their studies as distractions.

Neither willing to talk or even glance at each other in fear of their own feelings. Aries had barley glanced at the Gryffindor table, if not, glancing over to Lily and Alice as they gave her sympathetic smiles.

Lily herself had started getting closer to the Marauders, seeing as her time with James ended up increasing by more than Lily herself cared to admit. Alice had been finding more time with Frank and, quite similarly, Marlene had been hanging around Sirius.

It seemed as though the only few that weren't finding love in the air were Remus, Peter and Aries. Since love was becoming rather frequent lately, Mindy and Regulus ended up finding a liking towards each other as well.

Of course this liking didn't spread to Aries as much as she'd like it to, seeing as Mindy was snitching on her to her mother.

It was obvious after some time that Mindy was keeping a very watchful eye on her. Since Mindy was not only her roommate but a close friend to Marlene, in a relationship with Regulus and also a Slytherin of pure blood, her odds of getting away from Mindy were low.

Even if Aries left home, she couldn't escape Mindy, and that was a problem. A problem that Aries was not willing to ask help for. She even remembered her cousins words to ask for help when she needed it, but continued to ignore them as time went on.

As of now, it was officially the day of Remus's birthday and Aries decided that even though she couldn't do anything with him, she could always just send him an anonymous gift.

And after going through everyone that owed her something through the years, Aries pulled all the favors she could find and only hoped that her owls would get through the the people in time.

Classes weren't the best that day, seeing as Slughorn thought it would be fun to give all his students the assignment of a full scroll introducing the next unit of potions.

Thankfully, as Aries was doing her homework in the library that afternoon, her owl landed in the library owl drop off. Multiple letters hanging from each ankle of the owl.

Aries knew from experience that the Black family owl was a biter, in that cause she thought it would be smart to practice her wandless magic.

Accio letters

Aries lifted her hand and within only a second the letters untied themselves from the owl, catching him off guard, and launching at Aries full speed.