After arriving at Hogwarts and entering the Great Hall, Diana noticed that the castle somehow seemed emptier. Even the population of first year students during the Sorting ceremony was half of what it usually had been.
As it seemed, many families had decided to keep their children at home, thinking that they would be safer with them. Diana wasn't sure if this was true; no one was safe if the Dark Lord wanted them dead.
As Dumbledore stood to his feet after the feast to give his usual speech, Layla nudged Diana with her elbow.
"What?" Diana mouthed.
Layla gestured her head down the Slytherin table. Following her gaze, Diana saw Regulus, sitting with Avery, Mulciber, and Snape. Something seemed different about him, though Diana couldn't quite put a finger on it. He seemed sadder, somehow. Anxious. Lost.
After the rather gloomy feast came to an end and students were asked to go to their common rooms, Diana left the Great Hall with Layla, both of them silent. Just as they emerged into the entrance hall, Diana turned around when she heard someone calling her name.
A smile automatically made its way over her face when she saw Remus approaching her, but it faded the next moment when she remembered everything. For a second, she wished that someone would Obliviate her so that she could forget all of it. So that she could even forget herself and the life that awaited her.
"Hello," Remus said brightly as soon as he reached them. He waved at Layla before leaning in to place a little kiss on Diana's cheek.
"Hey." Diana tried to return the smile. She then looked back at Layla, saying, "I'll see you later in the common room."
"Oh... okay..." Layla mumbled, giving her friend a sympathetic look that meant 'good luck'.
"So how come you didn't write back to me over the summer?" Remus asked Diana once Layla had walked down the marble staircase in the entrance hall and toward the dungeons. "I was beginning to worry that maybe your parents had seen me sneaking out of the house and that you'd gotten into trouble." He chuckled.
"Oh, I got into trouble, all right," Diana whispered, mostly to herself.
"Well? How are you doing?" Remus asked, his smile still over his lips.
"Listen, can we go somewhere to talk? Somewhere private?" Diana said, looking around the crowded hall to make sure Avery and Mulciber weren't anywhere nearby.
"All right." Remus nodded unsurely, his smile slowly fading away. "Here. This way."
Without questioning him about where he was taking her, Diana followed Remus away, going through one corridor after another, to places in the castle that didn't seem too familiar to her.
At last, Remus stopped when he reached a dead-end hallway. He raised his hand and began to knock at a certain brick on the wall, in a specific rythme.
Tap. Pause. Tap. Pause. Tap, tap, tap.
The next moment, Diana had to take a step back when the wall began shaking and its bricks started to crumble apart from each other to form an archway; just like the entrance to Diagon Alley through the Leaky Cauldron.
"Where is this place?" Diana questioned when a long passageway appeared in front of them.
Remus gave her a sheepish smile. "This is the secret passageway I always go through to get to our Ancient Runes class."
"You git!" Diana laughed in realization, playfully punching him on the arm. "I knew you always took a secret shortcut! I've been begging you for two years to show it to me!"
"Yeah, I remember." He grinned. "We even made a bet that if you got a better score than me at the Ancient Runes' exam, I had to show you the passageway."
"Yup. And you said that if you got the better score, I would have to go on the worst date ever with you."
Remus couldn't help but to laugh at the memory. "It was so hilarious and humiliating. I actually felt bad for you."
"No, you didn't."
"No, I didn't," Remus admitted, smiling again.
Diana sighed, looking away from him as she forced herself to remember why she had brought him here in the first place.
"Can we talk now?" she said again, her voice small and wavering.
Remus nodded weakly, gesturing his hand for her to walk inside. Once they had both gone into the passageway, Remus took out his wand from his cloak's pocket and gave it a small wave. On cue, the bricks behind them began to climb back on top of each other to form the solid wall.
Once the wall closed behind them, the passageway turned dim. And so Remus gave another flick of his wand, nonverbally lightening the torches inside the passageway.
At the end of the secret corridor, there was a staircase that would lead them up to the West Tower, where their Ancient Runes classroom was. But they didn't climb up through it. Instead, Diana sat down on the first stair and Remus joined her, sitting right beside her.
Diana opened her mouth to speak, but Remus was quicker to say, "You're not breaking up with me, are your?"
Diana turned her head to look at him, recognizing the hurt in his eyes.
"Why — why would you think that?"
"Dunno... at the beginning of summer, I really screwed up by behaving like a lunatic. But then even when I apologized, you still didn't return most of my letters after that. And now you're acting really weird."
"No, of course I'm not breaking up with you!" Diana said, but she then shook her head, looking down at her feet. "I mean, I don't even know what I'm doing myself —"
"So you do want to break up?"
"Wha — no! Stop putting words in my mouth!" Diana scolded, pulling at the end of her hair out of frustration. "Can you just let me talk, Lupin? I've been rehearsing the perfect lines for weeks, and now you're making me nervous and I'm starting to forget everything I've tried to memorize!"
If it were any other time, Remus would've laughed at how cute Diana looked whenever she got angry, but now he couldn't bring himself to even smile.
"What is it?" Remus asked quietly, his brows furrowed apprehensively as he watched her.
Diana closed her eyes and took a deep breath as they were both still sitting on the stair. When she opened her eyelids again, she mustered all her courage to look up at him, but gazing back into those chocolate brown eyes made everything more difficult.
"Okay... here we go..." Diana began. "Before I get to the main part, first I need you to understand something, Remus; I come from a traditional Wizarding family. And being raised as a part of such family means that your family's honor comes before you. Ever since I was a kid, I never got my way. It didn't matter if I wanted to wear trousers, because my family believed that ladies should only wear dresses. I was never allowed to play Quidditch with my boy cousins, because Quidditch wasn't a game for girls, according to my mother. I never had a choice; whether it was the food I liked, the clothes I wanted to wear, how to talk, how to behave, and just how to live my life. I didn't have a choice then, and I'm not given a choice even now."
"All right..." Remus nodded at her gently to go on.
"You've been friends with Sirius for six years now, and I'm sure you know what kind of a family he was raised in. So I assume that you know what life is like for people like us."
"Of course I know," Remus said softly.
"Okay..." Diana whispered, taking another breath to prepare herself to go on. "I said all this, so you would know that this is not my choice. That I had no say in this whatsoever. That I would do anything to stop this from happening, and I really need your help."
"Diana, you're scaring me. Please just tell me what's going on," he implored worriedly.
Diana gulped, before finally blurting out, "I'm engaged to Evan Rosier."
"You're... what?"