Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any associated characters.

The Morning After

Laughter.

It was the first thing he heard as his mind broke through into conscious thought, yet it seemed completely alien to him at that moment. His entire body ached as if his bones had been stretched, which was exactly what had happened, he thought dully. The pain became more severe as he became more aware of it. He groaned and the laughter stopped.

"Do you think we woke him?" A small voice piped up.

"We've been here ages, if we were being too loud he'd have woken up before now," reasoned a second, calmer voice.

"It must just be me who's forgotten what it's like to not be woken up by you two then."

"It's not our fault you're a light sleeper," A third said, brushing off the complaint.

"I'm not a light sleeper, you're just unnaturally loud."

"It's not my fault James couldn't untransfigure me."

"Why did you have to try at three in the morning?"

He groaned at the thought of what they had been trying to do at three in the morning – most likely under the influence of Firewhiskey – but it came out as a grunt of pain.

"See Peter, your complaining is causing Remus physical pain."

"It's more the thought of what you and James were up to," Remus muttered, opening his eyes.

James, Sirius and Peter were sat around his bedside, a screen separating them from the rest of the hospital wing. Sirius had propped his legs up on Remus' bed and was leaning backwards on his chair. Madam Pomfrey walked passed looking harried and shot him a disgruntled look; he ignored it.

"It was nothing," Sirius quickly assured him. "James was messing around and I got a tail. It's fine now, in the sense that it's gone."

There was something in Sirius' voice that told Remus that whatever they had been doing, it wasn't 'nothing'. He had no idea what they could be up to, though.

"You had a tail?" He asked.

"Yeah, it wagged and everything." James grinned. "How are you feeling?"

Remus had the distinct impression that James was trying to change the subject on purpose, but he was too exhausted to say anything about it. Instead, Remus made an attempt to sit up, though he soon stopped after it caused his head to spin and pain shot up his arm. Remus breathed inwards sharply.

"Remus?" Three pairs of eyes all turned to him, concern reflected in each of them.

Remus lowered his eyes under the gazes of his friends. "I'm fine."

"Give us some credit, Remus. We're not stupid."

"I hope you're not including yourself in that."

James laughed, and Remus couldn't help looking up with a grin on his face to see Sirius acting offended at Peter's comment.

"At least I've never managed to shrink myself down to – what? Oh." Sirius stopped speaking after a meaningful glance from James. He looked around awkwardly for a minute, obviously trying to think of something new to start a conversation with. "Evans came to see you before."

"What?" James spluttered before Remus had the chance to speak. "When was this? Why wasn't I here?"

Sirius sighed and gave James an annoyed look. "It was before, when you'd gone out to snog whichever unfortunate girl you're using this week to try to make everyone think you're not obsessed with Evans."

The tops of James ears went pink and he started playing with his glasses. "Her name's Cara."

"Whatever. Anyway, Evans wanted to know something about Prefect duties, wouldn't tell me what exactly because apparently I'd use the information against her."

Remus hadn't been listening to Sirius and James banter, or Sirius telling him what Lily had told him.

"How did she know I was here? What - ?"

"Relax Remus. She doesn't know," Sirius interrupted before Remus could get worked up. "She said she'd heard us talking about visiting you, and I told her you'd come down with something last night. It's fine."

Remus did relax at Sirius' words. He liked Lily; she was the only friend he had outside of the four of them, but he didn't know how she would react if she found out he was a werewolf. She was Muggle-born, so wouldn't have been raised with the prejudices of the Wizarding World, but that didn't mean she wouldn't be terrified of him, or tell her friends.

"Of course. I'll talk to her when Pomfrey lets me out. I don't suppose you know when that will be?"

"Nope, we've barely seen her. Just as we were coming in a bunch of third years came in with pumpkins for heads." Peter leaned back so he could see around the screen. Remus narrowed his eyes at James and Sirius, who were trying to look innocent. They might have succeeded if Remus hadn't known them for four years. "Still got pumpkin heads."

"Really?" said Sirius, a grin spreading across his face and Remus' suspicions were confirmed.

"Why did you turn their heads into pumpkins? Wait – don't tell me, you were –"

"Getting into the Halloween spirit, it's tomorrow, you know." James looked oddly smug at proving Remus half wrong. "Honestly, you think we torture the little 'uns for no good reason except that we're bored."

"Were you bored?"

"Sirius was."

Remus groaned. He had no idea why Dumbledore had bothered to make him Prefect, there was no way he was going to be able to control Sirius and James, and Peter to a lesser extent. There might as well not be a male Gryffindor Prefect a lot of the time, Dumbledore would have been better off appointing two female Prefects instead, and they would have had much better bribing tools than Remus did – saying he'd do their homework if they promised to not hex the first years only gave Remus too much work and James and Sirius more free time. Sometimes Remus felt bad about not trying harder to make his friends toe the line better, then he would remember times like now when they came to visit after his transformations and he'd want to cut them some slack, knowing that they had good intentions the majority of the time.

"I can't believe you're missing the first Hogsmeade weekend," Peter said, disrupting the silence that had momentarily fallen upon the four of them.

"I'll cope. It's not like I've never been before." Remus shrugged.

"We'll get you some chocolate from Honeydukes to cheer you up."

"But I'm not upset about missing it."

"You should be; it's the first trip of the year. We were going to stock up on Zonko's stuff: dungbombs and fanged Frisbees and ever bashing boomerang…"

"Are you actually trying to make me want to go by making my inner Prefect cringe at the thought of you three buying all those things?"

"Maybe."

"It's not like I have a choice in the matter. I'd love to dissuade you from buying all that stuff but I'll just have to confiscate it when you get back."

Remus watched with amusement as the expressions of his three friends fell.

"You wouldn't really do that, would you, Remus?" asked Peter. "I mean, I know you're a Prefect now, but you aren't going to go all Evans on us, right?"

"Hey!" James looked affronted. "What's wrong with Lily?"

"Oh, I didn't know it was Lily now," said Sirius. "And don't pretend you don't know what Pete's on about, she's always getting in our way and stopping us when we want to pull pranks, it's annoying."

"Well, she does only do it when we're crossing the line a bit. I get where she's coming from."

"Says the person who wanted to charm all the Slytherin's brooms so they chucked them off mid-air."

"Yeah, well." James' ears were slowly turning pink again. "We didn't do that in the end."

"Only because Evans caught us and you do anything she tells you to."

"I do not!"

"When was the last time she asked you to do something and you refused?"

"He carried her books to Transfiguration the other day because she couldn't carry them all."

"He stopped talking really loudly in the common room when she told him that people were trying to work."

"He passed her the jam at breakfast."

"What's wrong with passing Lily the jam?" James spluttered.

"Apart from the fact that it was closer to Peter and you were mid-conversation with what's-her-face? It means you're in love, Jamsie."

"I'm not in love with her."

Remus, Sirius and Peter shared unconvinced looks. He hadn't mentioned it to the others, but Remus had borrowed one of James' textbooks and had found doodles saying 'Lily Potter' in the margins, and various other statements and drawings professing James' non-love. Nothing James could say could convince Remus that he wasn't in love with her, and an extremely feminine part of Remus - that was kept tucked deep down somewhere between his intestines - thought it to be romantic. That was, if James didn't express it by stalking Lily and sucking up to her whenever she said anything.

The four of them had had this conversation far too many times to count, and they all knew that it was no good trying to wheedle a confession of undying love out of James. For the first time since Remus had woken up, they fell into a silence that lasted longer than a minute. It wasn't particularly awkward: Sirius started rocking backwards on his chair, whistling tunelessly; Peter was playing with a stray thread that had come undone from the sleeve of his robes; James glared at the opposite wall, obviously still annoyed that the rest of them had ganged up on him.

Feeling his eyes start to droop a little, Remus rested his head back on his pillow. If it wasn't for being exhausted the next day, Remus thought he'd be able to cope with his monthly transformations – he had long grown accustomed to the pain that came with them and it annoyed him more than leaving him bed-bound.

"Do you want us to leave?"

Remus opened his eyes again. "Stay if you want, I'm fine. Weren't you three going to Hogsmeade, anyway?"

"We'll go in a bit, but we don't have to."

Just as Remus was about to open his mouth to reply, Madam Pomfrey appeared round the edge of the screen carrying a tray full of potions.

"Feet on the floor, Mr Black," she admonished. "How are you feeling, Remus?"

"I'm fine, just tired."

"No pain?" She had placed the potions on Remus' bedside table and was now taking his temperature.

"No more than usual."

Madam Pomfrey seemed to be happy with his reply, and started busily pouring out the correct dosages of potions. Remus took them without making a noise. In truth, they tasted disgusting and Remus wouldn't feed them to a flobberworm, but he had long since grown past the stage of complaining about the taste.

Out of the corner of his eye, Remus saw Madam Pomfrey watch over him as he drank each of the potions. She nodded grimly when he had drained the last goblet and turned to take the tray away again.

"How are the third years, Madam Pomfrey?" Sirius asked as she was leaving. Remus felt his heart plummet; he really didn't know how Sirius dared to ask her.

"They'll live," she answered stiffly. Something about her tone of voice told her that she knew exactly who had done it. Without another word, Madam Pomfrey bustled away.

"Do you have a death sentence?" James hissed.

"Nope. I was just making sure they were alright, didn't want them to be stuck with pumpkin heads forever now, did we?"

James shook his head, but Remus swore he heard him mutter "idiot" under his breath.

"Right, well," said Sirius suddenly, springing to his feet. "Twas good to see you, Remus ol' pal, but I think the rest of us have places to be apart from a hospital bedside. No offense."

There was a possibility that Remus would have been offended, if he hadn't heard Sirius say almost the exact same thing many times over the years, and it meant only one thing: some poor girl had agreed to meet up with him in Hogsmeade. Or rather, Sirius had accepted someone's invite, as Sirius had never had to ask anyone for a date, as far as Remus knew. If he stayed still in one place for too long then Sirius would eventually have girls throwing themselves at his feet.

At Sirius' words, James and Peter also stood up, stretching their legs, and for the first time, Remus wondered how long they had been there before he had woken up.

"We'll see you later, Remus."

"Yeah, feel better soon."

"I will."

"Bye."

Remus watched his three friends disappear behind the screen and heard their footsteps retreat as they exited the hospital wing.

He had grown used to their visits the morning following the full moon, and for the most part he didn't get sentimental about it. But sometimes Remus couldn't help grinning into his pillow and thinking about how lucky he was to have the best friends anyone could have.

Read and Review