"She's leaving." Sirius muttered discreetly under his breath. James, Peter and Remus glanced up to see Helia Blacksmith stride out of the Great Hall purposefully.
James flashed a quick grin round at his friends. "Let's go." He clambered out of the bench and began to follow the Ravenclaw girl.
The others scrambled to follow him.
"Just like that?" Remus asked, "No planning? No nothing?"
"What did you expect, Moony?" James teased lightly, "A big blackboard filled with chalk instructions and mathematical solutions?"
"I think maybe you're underestimating Blacksmith." Remus said quietly, Peter nodded along with him.
"C'mon." Sirius whispered as the group turned into the corridor outside just in time to see the flutter of a robe disappear around a corner, "She's not expecting us, and it's four on one. We've got this in the bag."
James peeked around the edge of a stone gargoyle, and let out a sudden, confused sound. He stepped out and around the corner, friends on his heels. The passage finished in a dead end of stone. There was a Ravenclaw robe lying on the ground with a little piece of paper folded neatly on top of it. James stooped to pick it up. The writing on the inside was scrawling and messy but the words were clear:
Nice try, boys.
Sirius let out a low whistle. "Okay, she's good."
Remus fought the urge to say I told you so, instead opting for a single raised eyebrow. James met his look and grinned.
"I respect the immense skill level it takes to pull one over on us." he said, glee finding it's way into his voice. Only James could be so happy to have someone pull a trick on him, "This is going to be fun."
---*---
"Do you even have a trunk?" Jade asked, watching Helia as she perched on the end of Jade's bed.
Helia rolled her eyes, "Why would I have a trunk?"
"You know- clothes, books, equipment, pets. All the things that the rest of us have to actually carry that seem to suddenly apparate into existence for you."
"I wear my uniform on the train." Helia said, "And I carry The Spot." She indicated the large black cat with a ginger patch directly in the middle of it's forehead that was currently trying to chew a hole through Jade's uniform. Noting this, Jade made a disgusted sound and dropped The Spot onto the floor with a heavy thud! Unruffled, the hell-beast padded off in search of some other fabric or possibly important essay to destroy. Helia watched him lovingly.
"I swear that cat is getting fatter." Jade muttered accusingly. Helia looked mildly insulted. "What about the stuff you need for school?" Jade attempted.
"I get that delivered first day." Helia said, as if it were obvious.
"Of course you do." Jade muttered. She began moving her t-shirts from her trunk into the draws by her bed, not bothering to fold them. "What do you parents think?"
"My parents are muggles." Helia sounded amused. "To them, all of this is upside down and back to front. Missing luggage is hardly the biggest thing they have to get their heads around. Plus" she said, "I'm a great liar."
"Humble, too." Jade added sarcastically.
Helia looked like she would of winked if she didn't have the emotional range of a decommissioned robot. "The meek may inherit the earth, but at the minute it belongs to the conceited. Like me."
Jade snorted.
The large clock in the Ravenclaw girls' dormitory chimed ten: Curfew. Helia stretched her arms wide and yawned.
"Well," she said, "See you tomorrow, Jade."
"How do you not get caught after curfew every night?" Jade mused, more to herself than to the teenage girl currently backing out of the dorm.
It wasn't because she was excited to be back. And it wasn't because of the giddiness and genuine excitement she had felt messing with the Marauders. Or the way she had seen Remus look at Potter, as if he hadn't doubted for a second that she'd outsmart them. No, it wasn't because of any of that- and in fact Helia boiled it down to tiredness- that she hummed a happy song all the way through and out of the Ravenclaw common room, or that, before that, just as she let the door swing shut between herself and Jade, Helia let a genuine smile creep onto her face and, spreading her fingers in the air to illustrate her point, replied, "Magic."
---*---
Helia was already in the Great Hall by the time Jade and Linette arrived, blurry eyed, the next morning and dropped into their seats. She put a clean napkin inside the book she was reading and set it on the table. Linette stared down at her plate of scrambled eggs with a face that was only half-conscious but extremely hungry.
"So. Tired." Lin said, dramatically, "Morning. Not. Good."
"You didn't have to get here early." Helia nodded to the rest of the hall, where spaces were mostly vacant. She noticed as Potter, Black, Pettigrew and Lupin trudged through the enormous doorway and took their seats at the Gryffindor table. Potter inclined his head to her as he passed, as if they were opponents facing off in a battle. Helia, amused, nodded back.
Linette, not noticing the gesture, looked up at Hel and replied in such a plaintive voice that it reminded Helia of the time Jade had accidently stood on The Spot's tail. "Food."
Maybe Helia would have laughed, Jade certainly did, if it weren't for two things: 1. Helia didn't laugh, and 2. An owl dropped a familiar looking note directly on the cover of the book she was currently reading (Half Bad). Frowning, she picked up the little bit of parchment and unfolded it. There was her own untidy scrawl across the top:
Nice try, boys
And, under it in considerably nicer handwriting:
Congratulations. You really got them good; I think Prongs might throw a party now he finally has a (his words) 'worthy opponent'. How'd you do it?
-R
Helia glanced up at the Gryffindor table. Lupin was steadfastly not looking at her. Unfortunately 'not at her' apparently implied the chest of the boy opposite, who happened to be Pettigrew. As soon as he realised this, a flush crept up Lupin's face and he averted his eyesight, glancing about all over the place, just in time to see the corner of Helia's mouth twitching. Not a smile, not yet, but close enough. He grinned sheepishly at her.
"Helia? Helloooooo? Are you listening?" Jade clicked her fingers in front of her friend's face.
Helia recovered quickly, obscuring her momentary lapse in concentration, "In which of the nine realms of Norse mythology do I pay attention?"
"The shiny one?" Jade said hopefully, "There's a shiny one right? I think I remember this."
"There's a light realm, if that's what you mean." Helia said. "Where the elves live."
"Yeah, okay. That one. What were we talking about again?"
Linette, apparently recuperated by the power of scrambled eggs, rolled her eyes. "You asked her about timetables and she was busy eye-flirting with Remus Lupin."
"Eye-flirting?" Helia asked.
"Remus Lupin?" Jade almost shouted.
"You're getting side tracked." Helia said to Jade, glancing over at Lupin, who seemed mercifully oblivious, "What, in the light realm, the dark realm, Asguard, Midgard or any of the ones I can't remember with the giants in, is eye-flirting?"
"No, okay. I need a second." Jade uncharacteristically grinned at her, "Remus Lupin? What in the name of Merlin's soggy left testicle-"
"Because that's a mental image I want." Lin said, looking mournfully down at her half finished breakfast.
"-were you doing smiling at Remus damn Lupin?" Jade finished, with a flourish that landed a slice of butter she had been waving around on her knife into a jug of pumpkin juice.
"I really wanted some juice." Helia sighed, watching the butter sink through the golden liquid.
Jade pointed her knife at Helia's face in a way she probably didn't even realise looked threatening. "Stop avoiding the question." She ordered.
"Maybe," Helia said, eyebrows raised, "I was just smiling in his general direction"
Jade squinted over the table.
"Lin," she said, without looking at the other girl, "Have you recently started raising cattle?"
Linette looked up, startled, "No. Why?"
"Because I smell bullshit." Jade jabbed the offensive weapon at Helia's chest.
"Language." Helia mimicked McGonagall's Scottish brogue, seemingly unaffected.
"Do you like him?" Linette's voice was quietly thoughtful. Helia looked at her, face carefully blank.
"I've barely had two conversations with the guy." She replied honestly. "I know nothing about him."
"And who's fault is that?" Lin probed in a gentle tone "When was the last time you had a real conversation with anyone not around this table?"
Helia stood up, leaving her untouched toast in it's place. "We have Transfiguration next with the Slytherins" She said to Jade, a bit too quickly "Then Herbology and Charms with the Hufflepuffs and Defence Against the Dark Arts and Potions with Gryffindor. That's what you wanted to know, right?" Jade watched Helia, confused; she had never seen her friend like this before "See you."
And Helia walked out of the Great Hall, not stopping to speak to anyone.
---*---
Remus followed his classmates as they shuffled into the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, and lined up against one wall. Their new professor was a squinty-eyed old wizard with a hunchback and a limp, who had obviously decided decades ago that teaching was not the profession for him, yet stayed out of sheer force of will.
"Right." the man announced, pacing up and down in front of the students with his cane leaning on his shoulder like a drill sergeant with a gun. "You will call me Professor Scamander only. None of this last name business that children feel like they can get away with nowadays, understand?" Melany Patel gave a little gasp at the teacher's name, and he sighed dramatically "No, not that Scamander." He said slamming the cane down on the bookshelf, right into the spine of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. "Little upstart, he was." the teacher muttered "Disgrace to the family name."
Professor Scamander eyed his pupils as if he expected one of them to disagree, as if he dared them to. Remus gently pulled the sleeve of James next to him to attempt to dissuade his friend from doing anything stupid. James shot him a look but said nothing.
When it became apparent no one was going to speak, Scamander sighed again and pointed at the desks with his cane. "I want boy-girl seating. I don't care who your friends are." nobody moved "Go!" he growled.
Remus watched his friends scramble for seats: James pulling out a chair for Lilly with a flourish, to which she flicked her hair over her shoulder and went to sit beside Peter, and Sirius gently coercing Jade Wood to sit next to him. He watched as Helia Blacksmith took a seat at the back of the classroom, clearly expecting no one to dare to sit next to her.
Remus sat down next to her.
Helia turned her head, giving him a long look. Remus couldn't tell if she was happy he sat there or silently vowing to murder all his friends and family, but if he had to guess he'd place his bets on the latter.
The lesson was reasonably short, and mostly consisted of Professor Scamander yelling at people for getting out their books, and then yelling at people for not getting out their books, and then meeting every unwilling gaze in the class with the kind of premium stink-eye that you need to graduate from collage with a Master's Degree to achieve.
All the while, Remus watched Helia out of the corner of his eye. She was curiously still, never fidgeting or moving in the slightest, and when Scamander turned his World Record holding death glare on her, she stared back, unrelenting, until the teacher was forced to break their locked eyes with a grunt. She never once spoke to Remus.
When the lesson ended, they packed their respective bags silently and left. Remus couldn't help thinking he'd done something wrong. It wasn't until he opened his Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook later that night that a note fell out. The first two lines were familiar to him, and the third had the same scrawled writing as the first:
It wasn't hard. Just a basic Wingardium Leviosa on my robe to make it look like it was going around a corner. I'm saving the fun stuff for when your friends learn to- and this is a muggle expression- 'get good'. I recommend using that map of yours. You're going to need it.
-H
Remus grinned into the common room fire. James had been right; this was going to be fun.