Her.

Time seemed to be on five times speed at Hogwarts. Before Sienna knew it, a whole month had passed, and neared closer and closer to the end of October.

Sienna and Remus kept themselves busy in an unofficial contest of who-can-be-the-best-at-Charms, and so far, Sienna was winning. She was top student in Charms, and was delighted with herself.

Most of her life, Remus was the smart and talented one. Her parents payed more attention to Remus, compared to her, and she always craved their validation. Their parents adored Remus. A kid with lycanthropy, and still was top of class in everything. He was their human trophy. Sienna struggled most of her life with making her parents see her. Remus notices that, and often tries to make their parents be proud of her too, but sometimes he gets too warped up in his own problems that he doesn’t notice Sienna’s. And she doesn’t blame him for that. His life is hard, she understands that. But now that Sienna was better than Remus in something, maybe she’ll finally get the validation she so dearly deserves.

However, Remus had his own unofficial contest with Sirius at Transfiguration. Sirius was top student in that, and McGonnagall was really proud of him, even if she didn’t show it. But Sienna knew. She could always read people better than others. Sienna knew McGonnagall adored Sirius.

In History of Magic, it was all Sienna and Remus, fighting for first place again. The rest of the class, either falling asleep or just not paying attention.

Herbology was Peter’s best subject, and it was obvious. He shone in those greenhouses, (whether it was pride or sweat, Sienna didn’t know) and Professor Sprout loved Peter. She always said he’ll do good later in life, and Peter was left in a good mood for the rest of the week.

Sienna didn’t care for Potions. Obviously, she still tried but it definitely wasn’t her favourite subject. Lily however, was doing very well, getting top marks in everything she did in Potions. But, so did Snape. And as much as Lily defended Snape and their friendship, Sienna didn’t believe her. It was obvious Lily didn’t really like Snape, and Snape liked Lily a little too much. Whenever they were partners for Potions, something always went wrong.

Defence Against the Dark Arts was Sienna’s second favourite subject. James loved it too, and the two were often teamed up together. They were becoming closer as friends, and Sienna loved that. James was doing exceedingly well in DADA, Sienna right on his tail, and then Remus. Remus was actually really good, but showed it less. He was more of a stand-off-to-the-side perfectionist, rather than James’ show-the-world-what-I-can-do behaviour.

Aside from classes, Sienna joined Hogwarts’ book club. Emily had told her about it, and Sienna immediately agreed. Sienna and Emily had starting getting way closer, and they met up more often now. They would walk to some classes together, if Marlene, Lily and Mary were walking without Sienna. Or her and Emily would go on walks around the school, and talk for hours. Turns out, they had a lot in common. Liked the same music, the same books, the same style of clothes, the same food, even the same little things. But for some reason, when the two would hang out talking and laughing in the common room and Marlene would walk in on them, she would scoff, sulk off and be in a bad mood for the rest of the day.

The book club was Sienna’s favourite thing at Hogwarts. They met up every Tuesday and Sunday, and would talk about the books they had read. So far, it was only five girls; Sienna, Emily, two girls from Ravenclaw and one from Hufflepuff. They would set a certain book to read, and after everyone had finished they would spend ages talking about it, and debating different characters. Sienna loved hearing everyone’s opinions and thoughts, and loved sharing her own.

She had tried getting Remus to join, but he refused, because he didn’t want more social interaction. So instead, Sienna made up her own club, just for her and Remus, and they had great sibling bonding time together.

There was a full moon at the start of October, and it went worse than the last one. When Sienna came to the shack in the morning she found Remus lying in a pool of his own blood and tears. Remus came out of the hospital wing two days later, with way more new scars. Sienna’s heart always breaks a little whenever she sees Remus in the morning after a full moon, just lying there on the floor. Tired. Helpless. Especially after a bad moon. It makes it all harder.

That moon the twins told their friends that Remus had a cold, and Remus acted under the weather a few days before the moon, and then a few days after to really sell it. Sienna was proud of the actors they had become, even if it meant lying to their friends.

A Quidditch match was held about two weeks into October, and James was bouncing around the common room all day. Marlene was really excited too, but she was less of an enthusiastic Quidditch maniac. Sirius, it turns out, also a big Quidditch fan, he just didn’t show it as much. But apparently James knew all about it.

The weather on the day was absolutely miserable. It rained all day leading up to the match, and everyone apart from James, Marlene and Sirius were more than happy to stay in and skip the match. But the three wouldn’t let them, and Quidditch fans are annoyingly persuasive.

However, Sienna actually ended up enjoying the match. She hadn’t planned to, but she was entranced in the game. It was between Gryffindor and Slytherin, and Sienna was very eager for Gryffindor to win. She was also immersed in the technique, and her favourite were the beaters. They had bats to hurdle the bludgers as far away from the rest of their teammates as possible. They protected their team, while also trying to take down the opposing team.

Remus, on the other hand, wasn’t interested in the least. He sat crouched down in his seat, reading the entire game. Sienna had tried getting him to watch multiple times, but gave up. So it just ended up being James, Marlene, Sirius and Sienna cheering, wooing and clapping while Remus, Peter, Mary and Lily were just sitting, shivering and complaining about the cold.

Slytherin was winning by a couple of points, but at one point the Gryffindor seeker caught the snitch, and they won. It all happened so fast, the crows took a moment to register what had happened. But when they caught on, the crowd erupted in cheers mixed in with low groaning from the Slytherins.

The Gryffindors held a party that night in the common room to celebrate, but Sienna and Remus just stayed in Remus’ dorm the entire time, reading and chatting. The twins weren’t big on crowds and loud music, so they were more than happy staying in, all cozy-ed up in the dorm.

Sienna went down a few times to check on the rest of her friends, but quickly returned back up before she could be suffocated by the amount of people there. Frank and Alice were supervising the party, making sure no one too young drank or anything like that, and Sienna chatted to them for a few minutes before almost being trampled over by a random sixth year.

The twins enjoyed talking about their day together. Sharing thoughts and opinions on people was their favourite thing. There wasn’t a thing happening in one of the twins’ life that the other wouldn’t know about.

That was the night when Remus told Sienna that he felt a bit left out in his group of friends. James and Sirius immediately clicked and went off being best friends, and kind of left Remus and Peter on their own. Remus said James and Sirius often had gone off for hours at a time and talked. Sometimes one of them would crawl in the other’s bed at night and they would chat in hushed voices throughout the entire night.

Sienna felt really bad for Remus, but she knew there was nothing any of them could do. They couldn’t force the two not to be friends. Sienna just told Remus to try not to be bothered by that. So what if they’re closer friends than the rest? Remus had Sienna and that’s all that mattered. Remus had burst out laughing at that, and that was the end of their heart-to-heart conversation.

When the party was over, everyone returned to their dorms. Lily came in dragging Mary and Marlene in behind her. They told Sienna that Mary kissed a second year boy, and Mary was grinning ear to ear. Sienna was half-confused, half-impressed. She was also a bit disgusted, but didn’t say anything. Mary seemed delighted with herself and Sienna didn’t want to ruin that.

After the party, things got boring again. Normal classes and normal homework. Except, the 31st of October was soon, which meant Halloween.