Remus had been staring at the leaf caught in Ivory's hair for the past two minutes.

He wasn't sure what he ought to do, because he was terribly awkward. Was he supposed to just reach over and pluck the leaf out of her auburn locks? He had hugged her, held her hand, offered her words of comfort, let her pour her heart out to him, allowed her to cry on his shoulder and even accidentally dozed off in the same bed as her that very same day, yet taking a leaf out of her hair was the thing he was making a big deal about.

"Why are you looking at me like that? Do I have something on my face or...?" Ivory bluntly asked him, snapping him out of his thoughts.

"No!" he said quickly, blushing. "No, it's just..." He somehow mustered the courage to lift his hand to her hair and take the leaf out. He showed it to her, tossing it to the ground carelessly afterwards.

"Oh," Ivory said, shrugging. "Could've told me before, couldn't you? Was someone a little scared of human contact?" she joked.

"No, I—it's not that, I just—" he stammered.

"Relax, I'm only joking," she told him, giving him a warm smile and brushing her hair behind her ear. "Thanks. I suppose I'll need you to take a lot more of these out of my hair."

"Why is that?" he asked.

She pointed up, to a spot above Remus's head. Remus looked upwards from where he and Ivory were sitting on the ground, only to see James holding another bunch of leaves above their heads.

"Confetti!" he yelled, throwing them into the air so that they showered over Ivory and Remus.

Remus reached over and grabbed James's leg, knocking him to the ground when he least expected it. Remus then smirked victoriously at Ivory, who giggled.

A few feet away from them, Sirius and Peter were stuffing leaves down each other's trousers and shirts. James scrambled to his feet and collected more leaves to throw at his other two friends, leaving Ivory and Remus to sit on the ground alone.

Ivory lowered her head to the ground and stared up at the blue sky. Remus followed and they laid there together in silence. Ivory's eyes trailed over the sky, watching the white tufts of cloud that partially covered the sun. She bit her lip, thinking about how she would talk to Lily, Alice and Marlene. It would mean she'd have to recount the story again, which would surely be hard for her to do.

"You aren't cold, are you?" Remus asked suddenly, scratching his chin. "That isn't exactly the warmest jumper I own because I wear it so often that the material is wearing thinner and thinner. I think it might also be getting a hole in the right sleeve... or the left one, I can't really remember. It's not like I pay attention much to which sleeve is getting a hole in it. I don't even know why it's my favourite jumper, anyway. It looks like my others, but for some reason I find myself wearing it more often than any of the others I own... Are you cold?"

Ivory's lips curled upwards at his nervous rant. "No, Remus, I'm perfectly fine. It's just warm enough. And it's comfortable."

"Good," he sighed. "My mum knitted it. She loves knitting and she knits a lot of my clothes... Well, mostly just my jumpers, and obviously not my uniform... But she doesn't knit with magic; she does it all by hand. She's a Muggle, after all."

Ivory thought it was cute how Remus spoke about his mother and how he loved wearing the jumpers she knitted for him. She thought about how he was so simple, how he didn't need any extravagant possessions and was content with what he had.

It was silent again for a moment or two, with only the shouts of the other three teenage boys as background noise.

"Remus?" said Ivory impulsively. She paused, wondering whether to ask him what she wanted to ask.

"Yeah?" he replied curiously, turning his head to the right to look at her.

She hesitated only for a moment. "Do you think I'll ever go back to normal? I just... I've lost everything. I don't know how to go back to before all of this happened... back to yesterday morning when I was laughing with my friends, back to last month when I got back at you guys for that prank, back to every other moment leading up to this when nothing was as real and every problem I had was a thousand times smaller... My life is never going to be the same ever again. How will I go back to how I used to be?"

The words spewing from her mouth came easier than she expected them to. She was telling him all of this because she knew that he, of all people, understood huge moments in life that impacted everything. What she had really wanted to ask him had been if he had ever gotten over the fact that he was a werewolf, if he had ever accepted himself for who he was... but she knew she couldn't ask that. She wondered how he'd react if he knew that she was aware of his secret. She wondered if he'd be creeped out that she had cared enough to figure it out. It had seemed so obvious to her, though, when she'd first discovered the truth...

"I think you will," he said finally. "I don't know how and I know it'll be difficult, but I think you can get through anything, because I've known you for seven years and I know you're strong. I know you don't give up. You just have to remember that you aren't alone... You've got Lily and Alice and Marlene and James and Sirius and Peter and—"

"And you, I hope," she said to him, grinning. "After that whole very touching and very personal speech, I'd have thought you'd say you were there for me as well, huh?"

"And me," he finished, nodding.

Sirius screamed suddenly, causing both Ivory and Remus to jump and turn to look at him.

"NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, THAT'S NOT A LEAF. THERE'S SOMETHING CRAWLING IN MY PANTS AND I THINK IT'S A SPIDER!" he screeched, appearing extremely jittery as though he hadn't gone to the loo in several days.

"Sirius, don't take your clothes off! Ew, no one wants to see that!" Peter yelled.

"Then how the hell am I supposed to get rid of the spider?" he asked in a shrill, high-pitched tone.

James smacked him in the behind with the bag of Honeydukes sweets.

Ivory laughed and looked back at Remus.

"Now I know what Sirius is afraid of, should I ever need to give him a scare..." she said, trailing off and chuckling.

"They're lucky you find them funny and not plain stupid," said Remus, quirking his eyebrows at her.

"Oh, come on, don't pretend that you don't act that way too. I know you do," she told him.

"Do you really, Miss Perkins?" he asked, amused.

"Yes, because you wouldn't be friends with those three if you didn't," she stated. "You, Mr Lupin, pretend to be all innocent when you're just as big of a troublemaker as the rest of them are. How many times have you blamed something on James or Sirius when you were the one who did it?"

He chortled. "Too many to count," he said. "McGonagall and the other professors always believe me over them anyway. I suppose you're quite right..."

"That's all right," she said. "I guess everyone does it. Throughout the years, I have also blamed a couple of things on you."

Remus gasped dramatically. "Me? No! When?"

"Well, actually, not blamed... more like framed." The girl gave him an innocent grin. "The Hiccough Sweets and exploding bonbons Professor Slughorn got as a gift when we were in fourth year... may have been from me, signed from the four of you."

Remus's mouth fell open. "I never knew why I got that detention that one time in fourth year!"

"Yeah, that was me. Slughorn must've thought you lot were really thick. What kind of people sign their names when pranking a teacher? Also, shouldn't he have known not to eat anything from you guys anyway...? I covered my tracks, though, because I found something James wrote on a piece of paper and used magic to rearrange the letters so that the note would be in James's handwriting. Basically, it just seemed like the worst prank you all have ever pulled, which was also my intention."

"Ingenious," he complimented.

"I know, it's a shame that level of genius doesn't show in most of my grades," she answered smugly.

"After all this time, how did we not figure out it was you?"

"Play innocent," she replied. "You've done it several times as well, as I understand."

There was a large gust of wind that sent a flurry of leaves all around them into the air. Ivory's vision was momentarily blocked as her hair blew into her face. She quickly moved it away. Suddenly, she frowned at Remus, staring at the top of his head.

"What?"

"It's just... Remus, you've got... a leaf in your hair and... I'm too scared and shy to take it out," Ivory teased, purposely stuttering to exaggerate his shyness, muffling her laughter behind her hand.

"Shut up," he grumbled with a light smile dusting his lips, blushing even more as she reached over to brush the leaf out of his hair this time.