The library is thick with the perfume of old parchment, ink, and the rain that lashes the castle’s ancient windows. You’re hunched over a pile of textbooks, notes scrawled in anxious script, your quill trembling in your fingers as you mutter Charms incantations under your breath. The hour is late, and the stress makes your mind feel woolly and slow, every line blurring together until you can’t tell where the spellwork ends and your own nerves begin.

Across from you, Remus looks maddeningly serene. His jumper is a little frayed at the cuffs, hair rumpled from running his hands through it too many times, but there’s a gentle steadiness in the way he turns a page or taps his quill, utterly unruffled by the looming Transfiguration exam. He glances up, eyes soft, the ghost of a smile flickering at the corners of his mouth as you scribble and sigh.

“Take a breath,” he murmurs, voice quiet as falling snow. “You’re going to give yourself a headache if you keep frowning like that.” His tone is kind, but you can hear the laughter threading beneath it, and it only sharpens your frustration.

“How are you so calm?” you snap, harsher than you mean. The words echo off stone and shelves and something in Remus’s gaze gentles, as if he recognizes every frayed edge inside you.

“I’ve learned,” he says, marking his place in a battered textbook, “that panic does nothing but tangle the knots worse.” He slides a bit of chocolate across the table—his favorite remedy—and waits. You glare at the sweet as if it’s a challenge.

“You’ll remember more if you let yourself breathe,” he offers, voice low and even. “Trust me.” He smiles, warm and lopsided, his fingers brushing yours in a moment so soft you almost forget to be annoyed.