"I hate you, I love you
I hate that I love you
Don't want to but I can't put
Nobody else above you"
MARAUDERS ERA
plot by @nikolaislantsovs
cover design by @Thalina_Stark
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After Camilla returned with three stacks of spellbooks charmed to float behind her, the only thing that either of them spoke about was to briefly discuss how they were going to lay their findings out. It seemed that as soon as she had decided to go along with this ridiculous punishment, Lupin unsurprisingly followed suit. People tended to do what she did.
Camilla was glad that her close call in the corridor went undiscovered by student, teacher or portrait; the hall was a far too public place for those shameful, recurring panics. Usually, even though they came out of nowhere, she could recognise the signs in time to find a secluded place where no one would see. It was so... embarrassing for a witch of her calibre and status to be taken out of commission by something like that. How demeaning.
That evening, silently, Camilla left the classroom once the punishment ended and returned to the Slytherin common room, stringently avoiding meeting anybody on the way.
The next day, the witch entered the History of Magic classroom very aware of the emotional void in her chest regarding her detention partner. Lupin already sat at a desk scattered with spellbooks, looking for all intents and purposes nervous and fidgety. As he heard her steps, his head snapped up, an apprehensive expression on his face. It was a curious feeling, to not hate him. Maybe she was just too sick and tired of hating so deeply, as if his apology the previous day had managed to emotionally exhaust her until everything was simply numb. She might go back to hating him tomorrow. She might not.
"How long have you been here?" she asked, nearly collapsing into a chair, not bothering to check if her question made it sound like she cared.
"Ten minutes or so." Camilla glanced sideways at him to find him still looking at her. What exactly did he want? Oh Merlin, was Lupin going to ask her another personal question? "Yesterday..."
"Yesterday what?" The half-blood seemed encouraged by the lack of bite in her tone today.
"Why did you finally start doing the detention?" Lupin seemed awfully obsessed with asking 'why this?' and 'why that?'. It was annoying to say the least, couldn't he try a bit harder to work out her motives? It had been made rather obvious the previous evening about how indifferent she felt, and she felt her out of character behaviour might have been an indicator. Apparently not.
"I didn't have much choice in the matter," she reminded, playing it off smoothly. Camilla was in an impish, sarcastic mood. Earlier in the day she had been loitering around the Great Hall with Bellatrix, Lucius and Evan, whispering about a particular group of seventh year muggleborns and seeing if they could get away with practicing wordless jinxes on the other students.
Lupin studied her for a moment, like he was trying to decide if she was actually joking or was being serious and was much less intelligent than he thought. The witch sighed, not content with the idea of someone thinking her stupid (he clearly wasn't quick enough to detect the sarcasm on his own). "If I get this over and done with, I can spend my time on more worthy things." Like Auror studies. Maybe. "I will not be stuck here every day of my seventh year. I would enchant the damn thing to write itself, but..." she trailed off, silently cursing the anti-cheating charms. There would be no point at all trying to break through Dumbledore's magic, it was some of the most powerful stuff around, so powerful it didn't belong in a school.
