Not Alone After All

Chapter XXIII

The next morning, Laura was glad she didn't have Defence against the Dark Arts as a class, because ever since their little argument the prior night, Laura and Professor Lupin hadn't spoken to each other. She only had her usual Potions class in the morning, which she spent in silence next to Ginny, and not making any eye contact at all with Professor Snape. Once the class was over, Ginny told her that Fred and George wanted to meet her in the gerat Hall, so thats where she went after changing into her casual clothes, since her school day was over. 

She walked into the Great Hall and immediately spotted the two red heads sitting on a table. They greeted her with smiles as she sat down across the table from the two. 

"So, we're going to pull a prank on McGonagall," George revealed to her, which made her slightly cringe at the thought. 

"Are we sure about that?" Laura asked the twin.

"Absolutely not," Fred said with a smirk. "But we've got to do it sometime, she can't be the only professor we've never pranked."

"You've pranked Snape?" Laura asked them.

"Yes." The two said at the exact same time. 

"We're pretty sure he knows it was us-"

"-but he didn't have enough proof at the time-"

"-so we walked clean/"

"For goodness' sake, stop doing that," Laurie said, horrified at the dialogue that she had just witnessed. 

"Stop doing what?" The two asked, one again at the exact same time. When they realised they had spoken in unison, they locked eyes and smirked, after turning back to Laura. 

"That!" she exclaimed, pointing at them. "How do you even do that?" The two shrugged together.

"It's a twin thing."

--

As expected, the trio had been caught. Their prank consisted of trapping one of McGonagall's books so that when it was open, slime would be expelled from it and the person who had opened it would be absolutely covered in green slime. Except they didn't calculate the prank very well, for the book was opened during class, during a class Professor Lupin was also assisting, meaning the two professors were covered in green slime in front of thirty second year students. 

As soon as the class finished, Fred and George Weasley were called into McGonagall's office. She already knew they had been the ones to do it to her, but she was trying to see if anyone else was involved. She started citing names, and as soon as Laura Potter's name was said, the two tensed up, but still immediately denied her participation. They knew how much trouble she would be in if Severus Snape was to give her detention one more time. And they knew how much her house would hate her if she kept making them lose points, and kept pulling pranks with the two Gryffindor boys.

Nevertheless, Minerva called Laura Potter to her office, where Fred, George and professor Lupin were waiting for her arrival.

Professor McGonagall explained the situation. 

"Messrs. Weasley say you had nothing to do with this prank, Miss Potter," McGonagall said to her, a stern look on her face. "Are they lying to me?" Laura had never been more thankful to the boys. She looked at the two of them, their serious faces obviously begging her not to tell the truth. 

"That depends on how you define lying, Professor," was all Laura had to say. 

"Well, I define it as not telling the truth, how do you define it?" Minerva asked her. 

"Reclining your body to a horizontal position."

There was a silence, until Fred snorted, which made George laugh. McGonagall gave the people in the room a look, realising even Lupin was trying his best not to laugh at the girl. 

"Get out of my office, Potter," McGonagall told her.

"Absolutely, professor," she quickly said, before walking right out of the room. 

Soon enough, she could hear footsteps following her.

"That was incredibly stupid," Lupin scolded her as he caught up. "So incredibly stupid, you have no actual idea of how - are you even listening to me?" Lupin exclaimed, grabbing her arm to make her stop walking away from him. 

"Actually, yes. I heard the words 'incredibly stupid' quite a few times." Lupin sighed at her response. This was a bad day for him, and yelling at the closest thing he had to his late best friend wasn't making it any better. 

"Sorry, sorry," he said, after calming himself down. He knew how volatile and impulsive he could be in the day of a full moon. "Are you okay?" She frowned.

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

"Snape didn't give you a hard time?" He asked. Only then Laura remembered. Today was the 25th, which meant there would be a full moon that night. She immediately calmed down as she didn't want to make his day any harder than it already was. 

"No, he assumed you'd given me detention with Harry," she said, her tone much calmer than previously.

"Good," he sighed, running his hand through his face in nervousness. "Because McGonagall is expecting me to bring you in tonight for detention, but I don't think that's the greatest of ideas," he said. 

"Yeah, it is," Laura told him. "I'll be out before the sun sets," she said. Remus frowned. There had to be something behind all of that. He had been yelling at her for the past two days, why would she want to spend time with him?

"It really isn't," Remus said, a stern look on his face. 

"It is. You shouldn't be alone tonight," she said. "I'll keep you company. And be out before the sun sets."