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Lily looked down at her muggle notebook, then bit her lip. Despite the fact that she’d spent the majority of her first six years at Hogwarts solving mysteries, confronted with what she was facing now, everything that had come before seemed petty. This was especially true because, almost inevitably, whenever she’d set out to figure out who was responsible for some disturbance, the answer had been straightforward and immediate. James and Sirius were responsible for it, or, more rarely, either James or Sirius was responsible for it. Occasionally Peter would be implicated, too, though his involvement in their shenanigans tended to be down to his own stupidity. Remus—
Lily bit her lip again. It was harder to contemplate Remus. He was the furthest thing from stupid that someone possibly could be, and on top of that he was kind, conscientious, even funny. It was hard for her to imagine why he insisted on hanging out with Potter and Black at all, much less why he'd become involved in their escapades.
She looked down at her notebook again, shoving thoughts of Remus from her mind. Thinking about Remus was always a questionable enterprise, inevitably leading to confusion and musings on what, exactly, it was that made him so incredibly attractive. She supposed it was another mystery, but unlike the ones she set to solving around Hogwarts, he was a mystery to which she suspected she'd never have an answer. Remus had never given the slightest indication he gave any more thought to her than he did to any other friend. At least, she supposed, he hadn't taken a page from Sirius’s book and actively tried to set her up with James.
She picked up her quill and wrote WEREWOLF on the top of the first blank page. The word didn't feel real to her, but she knew there was nothing imaginary about what she'd overheard Severus saying to Dumbledore. He'd nearly been attacked and killed by a werewolf at the last full moon, and, for some reason, the Headmaster didn't seem to care.
That probably meant the werewolf was known to Dumbledore, but why he'd be protecting him or her Lily didn't know. She bit her lip, trying to piece together what she could from the limited amount she'd heard. The Whomping Willow seemed to be involved somehow, and Sev had definitely said “shack”. She wrote down Shrieking Shack with a large question mark, and wished she could just ask Severus what had happened — but she knew she could never stomach talking to Severus again.
She turned back to the idea that Dumbledore knew something, and started a new column of possible suspects. Faculty. Students. Aberforth?
She sighed and closed her notebook. This would require in person surveillance.
Lily approached the Whomping Willow tentatively, and wondered if she'd misunderstood what shack Severus was talking about, after all. Perhaps he'd even said another word altogether. Pack? Maybe he'd meant a pack of wolves. Or back? Maybe he was talking about the back of the willow, or even going back to Hogwarts after the attack.
In any case, no matter where she moved or how she looked, she could see no way past the Whomping Willow, at least if one planned to approach the Shrieking Shack from Hogwarts grounds. The tree was massive, violent, and seemed to malevolently hang over the entire structure.
Despite that, she had a strong feeling the Shrieking Shack was involved. This close to it, even stuck behind the Whomping Willow, she could feel protective magic seeping toward her. It didn't make sense unless there was something to be protected from, and what could possibly require more protection than a werewolf?
She frowned, then bit her lip. She supposed it would need to wait for the full moon. She might not be able to figure out who or what was inside the house, but once the full moon was over, if a werewolf was inside, it would eventually need to come out.
“Lils!” James called as she tried to exit the castle, and Lily fought against the nearly inescapable urge to roll her eyes. “Where’re you off to?”
Lily opened her mouth to tell him she was patrolling, then shut it as she realised he was the Gryffindor on duty tonight, and would therefore know that it wasn’t her turn to patrol. She hesitated, then decided she’d do better to just tell the truth.
“Just a little investigation,” she murmured, quietly.
As James rolled his own eyes, she thought she might get away with leaving it there, but after a moment he said, with surprising earnestness, “Where’re you going? Maybe I can help.”
She hesitated again. This was one of the first times she’d been investigating something where she was relatively sure that James wasn’t involved, a certainty that had increased given that it was the full moon and he was standing here in front of her well after sunset. Even though he drove her mad almost all of the time, there was no denying that he was clever and resourceful. As she remembered the raw fear in Severus’s voice as he’d described his encounter, though, she decided she couldn’t subject anyone to that — not even James.
“No, it’s all right. Just a little surveillance outside, close to Hogsmeade.”
To her shock James paled, looking more genuinely distressed than she’d ever seen him. “Lils, are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked, and he was talking oddly, too — as though he was, for once, actually considering what he was saying. “It’s the full moon—”
Lily looked at him, sharply. “Why should it matter that it’s the full moon?”
James looked downright alarmed, now, and Lily revised her opinion that he absolutely wasn’t involved, though how he could possibly be involved she didn’t know. “It shouldn’t! It doesn’t!” he said a bit frantically. “Only…”
“Only?” Lily questioned, pointedly, wishing she could shake him, but after a long moment he just shook his head, looking sheepish and so innocent that she felt like he couldn’t be. She decided it didn’t matter anyway. James wasn’t a werewolf and so he wasn’t her immediate concern.
“Nothing. I’m just being silly,” he shrugged. “Don’t stay out too late, I won’t be able to cover for you once my shift ends.”
Lily had no intention of appearing back at the castle before breakfast, but she didn’t bother to say so, just nodded and stepped outside.
After an endless night in which it felt as though she’d accomplished nothing, Lily felt sharp confusion as she saw Sirius Black emerging from the Whomping Willow itself, only a few minutes after sunrise. She knew he couldn’t be a werewolf because she’d seen him well after sundown the previous evening, only an hour or so before she’d run into James. He was, even more unbelievably, followed by Peter Pettigrew, who Lily would have sworn would be too much of a coward to go anywhere near the Whomping WIllow, whether he was a werewolf or not.
Remus trailing after them wasn’t such a shock, since where two of them could be found it was almost inevitable that the other two would follow. Unlike Sirius and Peter, who looked in good health, though, Remus was limping and had some nasty looking gashes on his left forearm.
Her first thought was that Remus must have been attacked by the werewolf. After a moment, though, almost as though she were coming out of a haze, a different picture started to emerge in Lily’s head. Remus’s habitual illnesses, almost exactly once a month, like clockwork. Occasional injuries that could never be fully explained. The very fact that he was so close to Sirius and James and Peter.
Lily gasped, then slapped a hand over her mouth, but it was too late. All three boys turned to look at her. Sirius looked abashed, Peter looked terrified and Remus…
Remus was paler than she’d ever seen him.
Lily had no idea what to say, and so she didn’t say anything, feeling like the part of her that was always, unabashedly Gryffindor was failing her in some unspeakable way. And, just when she thought things couldn’t possibly get worse, she saw James Potter running toward them.
“Er, good morning,” she said, feeling as awkward as she’d ever felt in her life. “I’ll just… be getting back to the castle.”
No one tried to stop her.
As Lily saw Remus duck down yet another side corridor the moment he saw her in the hall, she let out a frustrated breath and decided it was time to do something. She knew he had Potions next, because she did too, and so she ran down a different hallway to catch him where she knew he’d end up, on his way to the main staircase.
When he saw her he actually tried to turn around again, so she leapt forward, grabbing his robe with her hand and pushing him into an alcove where she’d caught one too many Slytherins in compromising positions.
“You’re avoiding me,” she said, without preamble, and he looked at her as though she’d gone mad.
“Lily, I’m a monster. What else am I supposed to do?”
Lily felt something twist inside her gut. “Remus,” she murmured. “You’re not a monster. Well, I mean, I suppose you are, for a few hours a month, but I don’t care about that. I thought the werewolf was dangerous, I’d never have gone investigating if I’d known it was you.”
Remus looked around, as though concerned they might be overheard, but there was no one to hear. “I am dangerous,” he said firmly. ”And I think you know that, too. Every time you look at me now you get red and you can’t meet my eye.”
“For fuck's sake, Remus,” she exclaimed, feeling amazed that he could have misread her so completely. “It’s not like that at all. You’re the smartest person I know. You must know that I'm in love with you.”
She expected Remus to protest, or perhaps blush, but he only stood there, looking astounded.
After a very long moment, she blinked, realising, abruptly, that he probably was astounded, that he really hadn't given her any consideration at all. “I'm sorry,” she said, slowly. “I’ve always known that you don’t feel the same.” She grimaced, then blushed violently. “But, of course, it’s completely alright that it isn’t mutual. I don’t suppose that you’ll just be able to forget I said it, but it doesn’t mean that anything has to change.”
“But…” Remus said, slowly, still looking at her as though she might be mad. “You’re going to be with James.”
Lily felt something explode inside her. “For fucks’s sake, Remus,” she hissed again, feeling furious, now. “I’m never, ever going to be with James, and that has nothing to do with you or with anyone else other than me and him. I barely even like James, and I certainly don’t like him like that. That won’t change whether or not I get over you.”
“Get over… me?” Remus asked, ploddingly, almost as though the words were foreign to him. “You can’t possibly mean that you have feelings that are… romantic in nature, toward me?”
“I’m sorry,” Lily blinked, starting to feel more sure that she wasn’t the mad one. “Is there usually some other meaning that ‘I’m in love with you’ can have?”
“No,” Remus said, still sounding disbelieving, but also, somehow, hopeful. “I don’t suppose there is.”
She shrugged. “Well, then.”
Remus had always, at all times, been nothing but polite and mild mannered in her interactions with him, and so it was with some shock that Lily experienced him shoving her against the wall, and beginning to snog her senseless.
As she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him, she knew, absolutely, that Remus Lupin was a mystery worth solving.