Symphony || Remus Lupin

XXXIV

No one knew about Myra becoming an animagus. If they had noticed her particular behavior during the month, they didn't speak up about it. If they noticed her slightly changed personality, they didn't point it out.

No one knew

∞-∞-∞

Remus knew.

He knew that there was something Myra was hiding from him, for her friends. He noticed that she had gotten a slight lisp in the previous month, he noticed the small bags under her eyes from either waking up early or sleeping late.

At first, he thought that she was just studying and was planning on telling her not to study that much when he noticed a parchment in her bag. Myra had gone up to her dorm to get her Potions book that she left and she had asked him to check her bag if it was inside, just in case.

When he looked inside, there was no potions book but he did find a crumpled up piece of parchment stuffed at the bottom of her bag. He knew that Myra rarely had spare notes just lying around, always keeping them together either in the textbook or bound together. Especially now, with her Charms NEWTs, she wouldn't leave them at the bottom of her bag.

Rightfully curious, Remus pulled out the parchment and unfolded it, smoothening out the wrinkles. The ink was smudged and the words were hard for him to make out. If it was anyone else's parchment, he didn't think that he would be able to read it. But Myra's words were clear to him.

They were some form of notes. Remus didn't think that they were for any subject since it didn't seem like it was in the syllabus. He noticed the words 'chrysalis' and 'dew'. He knew that this was some sort of extra work she was doing and he didn't know why.

Maybe this is why she hasn't been getting sleep.

Remus heard her footsteps carefully coming down the stairs and he barely had any time to stuff the parchment back and rearrange her books before she saw him.

"I found it!" She had said happily, flipping through the pages to the potion they were studying. "Was I gone long?"

Remus shook his head. "No, you weren't."

∞-∞-∞

They were closing in on the end of October and Myra couldn't wait. There was a Hogsmeade trip on Halloween and she was looking forward to taking Remus out. That Halloween night would be a full moon and she wanted to make sure he got to have a good day before.

That day, Regulus' tuitions ran a little longer and Myra ended up missing fifteen minutes of her next class, which was, sadly, Transfiguration. The pair had been too caught up with practicing the Exploding Charm on a bunch of pillows that she had brought and they were stuck cleaning up all the feathers for another fifteen minutes. She had thought to teach Regulus the Cleaning spell while they were at it but thought that it might make things worse.

Since she was late for McGonagall's class specifically, she knew that Myra had a free period before this and knew that she should have no excuse for being late. So Myra ended up getting a detention.

McGonagall didn't have her do anything hard, just helping her go through the first year's essays on the transfiguration formula and how each variable affects the spell. While they went through the essays, McGonagall would occasionally engage in small talk with her.