almost lover

Bellatrix places her quill in the book and shuts it with a sigh. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

"Nope."

"I don’t know how you all do it," he addressed her with a bit of respect as the essay was pushed a bit further from his mind. "You, James, Sirius. How can you all not worry about these things, even the slightest bit, then still get good marks?” 

"Fair marks," Marlene corrected. "In my case, I barely got E's on my O.W.L.s, last year, and the only O I happened to get was in Defense Against the Dark Arts, and that was because Gideon helped me... study for them."

"It has to be done," Remus replied, adding a bit of gravity for dramatic affect. His own papers were hard to focus on, so he chose to take minute to clear his head. 

"I haven't even started mine yet," Marlene said, coolly. Her lack of motivation came off as laid-back, rather than lazy. "Slughorn is convinced that I have some kind of genius that I haven't 'tapped into'," Marlene laughed, the idea itself absurd. 

"Thank you," the wink got a head shake and smile in return. Really, he was used to Marlene’s company so he had a good understanding of her gestures. All in good fun. 

"That's a sorry shame," Marlene said with a nod and a grin. Upon him telling her that it was just an assignment for class, Marlene had lost interest in his papers.

"I meant in general. Can’t you just leave me to my work?"

"Which class?"

"No more than the usual illogicality of how our homework is assigned. Can I help you?"

"With my homework? No thanks, I don't do it, anyways."

"Thank you." 

"Nice catch," she replied with a wink. It was a gesture she performed quite a bit, and Marlene was sure that she had done it enough times in Remus's presence that she didn't have to tell him that it meant nothing.

You can’t give us a piece of text to translate and expect the translation to be a certain length of parchment. It doesn’t work like that.

"Something wrong, Bellatrix?"

"Do you think you could pass me the ink, please?" 

"Only because you said 'please'."