{ARE YOU SERIOUS?}

         ROSELYN JOKING WAS the sweetest person in Hogwarts. Not nice, but sweet and sincere. If Roselyn said something, you knew it was the complete and honest truth. She almost never said 'no' to a favour for somebody, and was always ready to help someone in need. She was an intent listener and remembered anything you told her. Sometimes though, she was brutally honest and said something rude without realizing it. However, she made up for it with her, again, sincere apologies and sympathetic gestures. These and many more are all reasons that made it so confusing as to why she was best friends with the most obnoxious boys in the entire school.

     "Honestly, Rose, why are you friends with them?" Lily asked, as this question had bothered her since first year.

      Ro watched the boys walk in front of them on their way to Potions. Sirius said something, jutted his thumb back at Lily and I, and James punched his shoulder. "They just have... completely opposite personalities compared to you. You're so different from them."

     "Oh, believe me, Lily, James is only an arse to impress you, but once you get to know him and stuff he gets super nice. The same goes for the rest of them. You know how protective they are over me." Roselyn talked quietly to prevent the boys from hearing her. If James knew Ro was admitting these things to Lily, he would never forgive her. Well, he probably would eventually, but Roselyn would have to do some weird embarrassing thing in front of the whole school.

     "That makes no sense." Lily squinted and shook her head. "Neither do they." Roselyn chuckled and Lily nodded. "But it still makes no sense as to why you would even want to be friends with them in the first place!" She exclaimed, putting her hand out to exaggerate her point. "Oh, they pay me, Lily. Didn't you know?" Ro moved her strawberry bangs a little to the left. "Wait, what?"

     "Mhmm. Four sickles a day. I honestly think I should be getting a raise sometime soon!" She yelled passively at the boys. "Oh, Rose, we were just talking about that!" Sirius turned and started walking backwards. "We were thinking about adding a couple knuts a day. Thoughts?" Peter turned and joined in on the joke. "Only a couple knuts?" Rose whined. "Hold on, hold on," Lily interrupted. "Are you serious? I honestly can't tell." She gave a concerned look to Roselyn. "No, he's Sirius. I'm Joking. Roselyn Joking." As they turned into Potions, she heard Remus laugh slightly at what she had said (he could never get tired of the fact that her last name was Joking) and Lily stopped short in the hallway. "Nice one, Side Eye." James mumbled as he sat down next to me. "A-Thank you." Ro responded, blushing.

     Any complement she ever gets makes her blush, because she always thought that everything about her and everything she did brought insults (this was a reasonable assumption; she used to live on a popular street with a lot of rude and disgusting kids that took advantage of her kindness and always made fun of her). She started to think that everything that she did deserved insults. In any case, compliments from anyone were a complete surprise to her and even if they were about little things, they still made her feel special.

     "To be honest, I should be getting paid to hang out with you guys." She smiled to herself and untucked her bangs from her left ear. "Probably." Remus smiled back at her, sitting on her other side.

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     "It's really nice out today," Rose started once her and the boys sat down for lunch. "Before you even go there, I do not want to eat lunch outside today." James interrupted her and immediately began to  build a small mound of food on his plate. Roselyn groaned and threw her head back. "Why not?" She whined, a disappointed frown on her face. "It's so sunny and pretty and there's only, like, two clouds in the sky and this kind of weather only happens twice a year and you know that." She half whined half rambled.

"She has a point, Prongs." Sirius backhanded James' shoulder. "Well, that sucks, because I'm still not going. There's a bunch of bees by the tree anyway." He said between a mouthful of beans and ham. "There's bees?" Roselyn stood up, her eyes wide. "That settles it then. I'm going if you come or not." She put her hands up in mock surrender and put some fruit in her bag.

     "Wait up, Ro." Remus called from behind her after she had already started walking. She turned her head and found him smiling at her and holding a glass of lemon-aid. "At least one of you is sensible." She smiled back at the three boys at the table, then locked arms with Remus. "Shall we?" She asked in a exaggerated posh accent. "Let's." He replied in the same tone and began walking to the courtyard.

     Once they had found the tree with the beehive, they sat beneath it, Remus a little further away than Roselyn. "Catch." She said, tossing him a pear from her bag. "It's moments like these that really make me wonder if you would make a better Hufflepuff than Gryffindor." Remus smiled incredulously as he watched Roselyn start to climb the tree to sit in front of the beehive. She broke apart a peach and put little pieces of it out for the bees, while she sat with her legs on either sides of a thick branch. "How so? Wouldn't climbing up a tree to a beehive be considered brave?" Roselyn looked down to see Remus standing and leaning against the trunk. "Ah, see, but a Gryffindor would do it on a dare, and a Hufflepuff would do it just to feed the bees."

     "Okay, Master of all Knowledge. I guess I never thought of it that way." 

     "You didn't have to." She could hear Remus' smirk from five feet above him as he bit into the pear she gave him. Ro smiled.

     "Oo, there's a little bee!" She gasped and sat with major interest as she watched a fat, fuzzy bumble bee grab a small piece of peach and take it back into the hive. She sighed. "Ugh. Adorable." Her groan made Remus smile and he looked up to watch her seemingly skip down the branches and jump down next to him, brushing a stray red hair out of her mouth. "A bee lover's job is never finished." Her freckles seemed to be illuminated by the sun and the everlasting smile on her face. The pit in Remus' stomach grew. He knew that telling her what was on his mind would only upset her, and she was in such a good mood because of the bees and the sunshine. He cleared his throat when they had both sat down again.

     "There's gonna be a full moon soon." He nearly mumbled. "Yeah, I know. I've been getting calendars with the moon cycles on them." She was excited to tell him this, each month showed a picture of a different kind of flower.

     "I was thinking, um, cause I've just been having this weird feeling, I don't, uh, I don't think you should come... this time." He watched the smile slowly fade from her face until her lips were a straight, disappointed line.

     "Remus, come on-"

     "Just hear me out, okay? I have a weird feeling about this week. I don't know, it just doesn't sit right with me that you come. You know I'm only saying this to protect you." He interrupted her and immediately saw the consequences of that.

     "You don't need to protect me. I can manage everything perfectly fine. I've never gotten hurt before, and I don't plan on getting hurt anytime soon. Plus, I'm older than you. By six months. You and the boys always do this, you always baby me like I'm some kind of fragile porcelain doll that you feel the need to protect for some reason. I'll be fine, Remus. Promise."

     That didn't go as bad as Remus originally thought it might have.
"Okay. Sorry, Ro."

     "Don't be." She shrugged and gave him a reassuring smile. Could she be any more attractive? Remus didn't think so. In a friend way, though.