That Year We All Changed...

Chapter Two: Every Good Love Story Needs an Astronomy Tower

"Ellie! Hey, Ellie, wait up!"

Ellie stopped and turned, and watched Remus sprint down the corridor to catch up with her.

"I tried to call you about six times, but you didn't turn around! What's going on in that little brown head of yours?" He grinned at her and ruffled her hair.

"Hey... watch the hair, buddy," she said teasingly, running her fingers through it to try and fix it. Unfortunately, this didn't work, and she had to pull out a brush and start working on it.

"Can I have my glasses back?" he asked, slipping them off her nose as they walked and she blushed.

"Yeah. Sorry I didn't wait up for you. It's just... when I walk by myself, I start to zone out and think so deeply that everything else fades away. Either that, or I'm daydreaming."

"And what were you doing this time?"

"Daydreaming." The two laughed quietly.

Remus glanced out a nearby window, at the sun beginning to disappear behind the distant mountains. The reddish-orange light cast a similar glow over everything in the corridor, including Ellie, reflecting off her reddish-brown hair and making it look almost as red as Lily's. This gave him a fiendishly genius and exciting idea.

"Do you have anything to do?" he asked suddenly, turning to the girl, who was standing awkwardly and waiting for him to stop staring out the window.

"Well... no, I was just going to spend the rest of the night in the common room with Lily..."

"Excellent!" he cried, grabbing her by the wrist and hauling her off in the opposite direction as the common room.

~*x*~

"I've never been up here during sunset."

"Mm... neither have I."

The two sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the deck of the astronomy tower, watching as the sun slowly set on the horizon. Rubbing her arms briskly, Ellie shivered in the cool October air.

"Are you cold?" Remus asked, frowning. It pained him to see that his spontaneous idea was the source of her discomfort.

"Uh... yeah. Just a bit." Ellie plucked at her short-sleeve tee shirt.

"Here." He grinned and pulled off his jacket, draping it across her shoulders. She sat perfectly still and let his smell wash over her. Like her grandmother, except... without the old lady smell. "Is that better? Are you still cold?"

"Well... yeah, I'm still kind of cold," she stated sheepishly.

"We can solve that quickly." He smiled and pulled her into a hug, resting her head on his chest. She paused for a moment, and, realizing that Remus wasn't the sort of guy to take advantage of her (she'd been friends with him for five years - she should know), she wrapped her arms around him and settled into his embrace. "How's that?"

"Much better."

They fell into a deep silence for sometime. Remus found this odd, since he knew Ellie, and that she couldn't stand long silences - they were too awkward for her, unless she was with a very good friend. Which led him to question... were they good friends?

Ellie piped up finally, almost reluctantly. "I had a weird dream last night."

"Really?" he asked, grinning down at her.

"Want to hear it?"

"Of course."

"Okay." She took a deep breath. "Well, it wasn't least night - last night my dream involved my friend from Sheffield coming to visit and wearing contact lenses - but I was on this cargo plane... Do you know what..."

"I know what a cargo plane is, Ells," Remus interjected. "Continue."

"Well, it's a cargo plane, but it's got the layout of an apartment building. And I'm in this room, with a door leading outside the plane, and there are all these cats - black cats, white cats, gray cats, and white-with-black-spots cats. There's this little boy there (he looked like on of the Catchlove kids) and he says 'It must be hard keeping all those cats in, with that door.' Okay, why is there a door on the side of an airplane, and why would I be opening it? Anyway, this lady shows up - I think it was Madam Rosemerta - and she tells me she's going to read my mind. So, I'm like 'Go ahead,' and she does, and I slip into this dream-like state. I dream that I'm in a freezer with all these body-bag things, and I open one up, and all these maggots come out and start eating me alive! Then I wake up (in my dream) and the cats are looking at me. And then I woke up in real life."

"That... was weird." Remus sighed and shook his head. "Only you would have those kinds of dreams."

"You want to know the worst part?"

"What?"

"She never told me what she saw when she read my mind."

Remus chuckled quietly. "That's what you get, when Madam Rosemerta reads your mind. You know that woman is only sober about ten percent of the time." Ellie giggled. "The other ninety percent she spends handing out ale to underage wizards."

"That's mean, Remus!" Ellie stated, slapping him on the chest with only a little bit of mercy. "You know she doesn't sell to underage wizards!"

Remus scoffed. "Have you met Mundungus Fletcher?" he asked incredulously.

"Well..." Ellie rolled her eyes. "He probably gets his from somewhere else."

"Sure... yeah, sure, Ells. You just keep telling yourself that."

To fill up the lull that formed in their conversation, Ellie snatched Remus' glasses off his nose and put them on. She pulled away from him and sat up straight, grinning smarmily.

"You better give those back this time," he stated, lunging towards her. She giggled quietly and moved back a few feet, begging him to come and get her. Remus leapt after her and pinned her to the wall and beginning to tickle her. It was a well-known fact that she was about the ticklish person in the entire school. The Slytherins could always tell when the Gryffindors had a tickle match, because she laughed and shrieked so loud. It would go that everyone dived for Ellie at the same time, usually Sirius and James sitting on her, while Lily and Remus proceeded to get her worst spots.

"Remus, stop!" she squealed, lashing her feet out, as this was her only line of self-defense. Unfortunately, her legs were nowhere close to touching him.

"Oh, and why?" he asked, smirking down at her. "I know you like it, Ells, and you know you like it, so why...?"

Her face was mere centimeters away from his. She could feel his steady breathing on her face, lifting her bags off her forehead, and he smelled the strawberry pie she had had for dessert.

"Remus, I-"

"Hey, guys!"

Ellie jerked her head back in surprise, only to have it hit the stone wall behind her.

"Crap, Sirius!" the brunette exclaimed, grabbing the back of her head.

"Are you okay?" Remus asked quietly, letting her rest her head in his hand. Ellie nodded.

"Yeah, I've felt worse pain." And her eyes told him it was true, but it still hurt like hell.

"Guys, I found them!" Sirius cried, leaning in the door to the astronomy corridor. "They're just making out! It's no big deal!"

It was then that the two realized what position they were in. She was half-lying on the ground, with Remus pretty much on top of her.

"Now might be a good time to get off me..." Ellie murmured, her eyes growing wide.

"I think you might be right about that..." he replied, standing, and helping her to her feet.

"Sorry I walked in on you guys!" Sirius proclaimed, sounding truly apologetic. "If I'd known what you were doing, I'd have given you a little more privacy, but Lily was really worried about you, and James, too..."

"First of all Sirius, we weren't doing anything," Ellie began, giving him a serious glare through Remus' glasses. "And, second of all, this isn't as bad as the time you tried to tickle me and accidentally pulled my pants down."

"Oh, yeah!" Sirius grinned at the memory. "And you ended up exposing your bright pink knickers to that group of second years?"