Good Girl || George Weasley

35

"He's here."

The follow Saturday, no progress with figuring out the Second Task, still hiding our relationship, and many, many, many kisses later, George and I are seated in the Three Broomsticks, hands wrapped around mugs of hot chocolate, as we wait for Remus.

But no more waiting is needed, because he's here.

He looks somehow both better and worse than he looked when I saw him last, if that's at all possible. I stand up from the booth as he approaches to give him a hug.

"Hey, Katie," he says, smiling down at me. He's grown out his facial hair, and it looks good on him. And while he looks better, more well-rested, there's still that hollow look in his eyes that never really seems to go away. I had checked, before writing him, to make sure that the full moon wasn't this week. It's still about two weeks away, but I can tell by his slight pallor that it's already starting to hit him.

"Hi, Remus," I reply, "Thank you so much for coming. You have no idea how helpful this is."

"It's no problem at all," he says, sitting down in the chair on the opposite side of the table from the booth where George and I are seated, "I meant it when I told you last spring that if you needed anything, you could always ask."

He greets George, who smiles eagerly back at him. Both Fred and George liked him enough when he was our professor, seeing as he was one of the most laid-back, engaging professors we've ever had, but their respect for him grew a hundred times when they found out that he was, essentially, just like they are in school.

"So," Remus says, folding his hands on the table as he leans forward in his seat, "What's been going on?"

I spill everything to him - keeping my voice low - without hesitation, and when I say everything, I mean everything. From every look that gave me the heebie-jeebies, to losing the map, and while Remus's expression hardly changes the entire time I'm talking, I can tell that he cringes slightly when I admit that we've lost the map twice in a matter of months.

"So you think Moody is up to something," Remus concludes, "or not who he says he is?"

"Basically," George confirms, "but we have no clue what could be going on. We figured you'd be the best person to ask."

"Have you brought this up to Dumbledore?"

"No way," I say, quickly, and both George and Remus look at me, "He'd trust Moody over two kids, don't you think? Even if we had damn good evidence? Plus, our evidence is missing, so there's no chance."

Remus clicks his tongue, looking past us towards the bar, deep in thought. I stay quiet, practically able to see the gears turning in his head.

"He appears as Crouch on the map," he says quietly, less of a question and more of just saying the information out loud to mull it over, "Yet you've seen Crouch and Moody in the same room at the same time." He pauses, directing his next question to both George and I, "Do they both appear as Crouch on the map, then, when they're together?"

I look at George, who shrugs sheepishly. "We - well, I - planned to check that on the day of the First Task, but it was already missing by that point. We think, if he really is up to something, that he took it, because we're on to him. Kind of. Even though we don't really have a clue what we're onto."

Remus wrings his hands together. I can tell he's racking his brain for any sort of information that could possibly help. Hell, I'm just thankful that he didn't immediately dismiss us and tell us that we're overthinking things. Then again, he could have done that to me last year when I sat myself down at his desk one evening after classes and told him that I knew he was a werewolf. He easily could have told me that I was crazy, looking too into things. But he didn't.