It was already bad enough, since his last name was Lupin. Lupin already meant "wolflike". Remus, ever the pedant, pointed out that it was also the name of a flower, and so not necessarily a premonition. It was the act of choosing the first name, Remus insisted, that actually did the thing, and framed "Lupin" in lupine terms. It was clear to his friends, though, that the addition of the first name to the last made the whole business faintly over-the-top. Particularly considering unnamed circumstances related to furry little problems.

"There are so many other names," Peter said again, loudly, over breakfast. "You could have been John, or Thomas, or anything. It's not even funny." It had been six weeks since Remus's second big secret had been discovered by the others, and, as usual, Peter was not catching on that the joke, such as it was, had been done to death. The joke was that Remus had chose his own name and this made the obvious wolf pun much worse. Peter enjoyed having inside jokes with the rest of them. It made him feel that he was part of the group. Because of this, he continued to cover the same conversational ground long after the rest had moved on. Remus would have been annoyed, except that he could sense that James and Sirius were already annoyed with Peter, and he felt that Peter should not have the whole world against him.

"His name," Remus replied calmly, stabbing a sausage with his knife and gesturing across the table, "is Sirius Black." Remus hoped this would settle the subject. He looked back down at his Potions book.

Peter contemplated this for a moment, his grin fading. "I don't understand," he said, finally, defeated. James snorted into his breakfast, and Sirius grinned.

"Yeah, mine gives one some real pause," Sirius said, nonchalantly shoving black pudding into his mouth.

"I think it's the pure blood. Gives a great and terrible power for premonitory puns," James said, his mouth full of boiled egg.

"What?" Peter said.

"I should wonder that your last name isn't Cerynitis Hind, James," Sirius said.

"Fuck, can you imagine?" James took off his enormous glasses and struck a pose, gazing off over the heads of the Hufflepuffs into the distance solemnly. "I'd be a real wizard, then. I'd be such an ace, with a name like that."

"Probably in the same league as the Blacks, you'd be."

"Oh, no, light years ahead. Way off in the stars above you. We occupy," James said, putting his glasses back on, "a totally different-space."

"James, that's so bad."

"It is rather bad," Remus agreed, but he was laughing. He felt thankful that James and Sirius had managed to redirect the conversation so it no longer focused on him.

"You're all so smug about it," Peter said, petulantly. It was clear he didn't understand the puns.

"I think," James said, ignoring Peter, "that instead of the Marauders we should be called the Bad Pun Collective."

"We could form a club."

"Write a book."

"Go on tour."

"Give talks at universities and conferences."

"Impress your friends, delight your family, make your enemies giggle and howl with rage at the same time."

"We'll make a fortune."

"Get chicks."

"Oh yes," James said, "one can't forget the chicks."

"They will come in droves."

"I want to make a pun about chicks, but I can't figure out how."

"It's all right, we can't all be winners."

"Who says I'm not a winner?"

"A member of one of the most illustrious dark families in the British Wizarding World."

"Back to the chicks."

"They will be drawn to the unsavory, taboo, but irresistible allure of the puns." Both of them had stopped trying to eat breakfast, as they were talking too fast and laughing too hard.

Remus took a swig of tea. "You know what's worse?"

"Worse than my space puns?"

"What's worse, Remus?" Sirius turned to Remus, his face already anticipating his next laugh. His hair was longer than was fashionable and he blew it out of his face with a little fluffy breath.

"My mother's maiden name," Remus announced solemnly, "was Howell."

Sirius sobered immediately. "No."

"It really was."

"That just goes too far," he cried out in grief.

"That's a bummer," James agreed. "Fate has been cruel to you this day, my friend."

"Not just this day, mind you," Sirius said, with enthusiastic, increasing sadness. "That's thirty-odd years of the stars planning this day. Thirty-odd years of carefully maneuvering the lives of one Howell and one Lupin, in order to produce, at long last, the very worst example of dramatic irony in existence, that sixteen-year-old tragedy on legs, Remus Lupin."

Peter laughed, and they all ignored him.

"My life is a sad movie," Remus agreed placidly.

"It's too dreadful, I don't even want to contemplate it."

Remus glanced at his watch and closed his book. "You don't have time in any case. Potions starts in ten minutes."

"Is it that time already?" Sirius rose to his feet, hopping up on the bench as he disentangled his lanky form from it. He raised his arms, like Headmaster Dumbledore at the end of a speech and then opened then towards James theatrically. "Come, Cerynitis, we must away."

"Only too readily, my starry friend. Evans'll probably be there already."

"Starry friend? Really?"

"I used all my star puns up."

James and Sirius set off, arm over shoulder. Remus and Peter followed.

Remus's second secret had been kept three years longer than his first. He imagined that he had been able to keep it so long because James, Sirius and Peter had let their guard down after they discovered he was a werewolf. In the end, Remus had told them. He had been tired of hiding things, particularly when he had to adjust stories about his childhood. It made him feel ridiculous, as if he was trying to be mysterious when really he was just hiding—well, it wasn't really that much, in the end. Only a change of pronouns, and of names, and some very risky experimental transfiguration on himself in third year which had not come off quite perfectly but hadn't turned out as badly as it might have. Remus wasn't sure that James and Sirius would take the news well, but Remus did not want to be afraid of their disapproval any more (he had never cared about Peter's disapproval, as, even in Remus's generous view of the world, Peter did not really count). So, at the beginning of sixth year, Remus began looking for an opportunity to tell them.

In the end it happened just after the Christmas holiday, as they were smoking at the edge of the lake. Really it was only Sirius smoking; James was slightly athsmatic and liked to be seen smoking but really just held lit cigarettes until they burned down. Peter attempted to smoke while not enjoying it, rubbing his tongue against his teeth to get rid of the taste. Remus stole drags off Sirius's cigarettes, a slightly erotically charged gesture which Sirius had never complained about. Sirius had just made a joke about witches which had to do with menstruating, and Remus had taken his cigarette away and told him why that was inappropriate and sexist. Sirius had asked why Remus cared. Remus, exhaling smoke into the frigid air and holding a cigarette in his mittened hand, figured that this was as good a time as any to explain, that for ten years these sorts of comments had been directed at him, too, and that it had been awful and violating, and that anyway people who menstruated weren't always reliably girls.

It had confused everyone pretty badly, and in the end it took about an hour to make sure they understood.

"No," Remus eventually found himself saying again for the third time, "I just mean that I think you could go to St. Mungo's and persuade them. I didn't dare. I just did it myself."

"I didn't know you could do magic for that," James said plainly, staring at the tip of his cigarette, which was now mostly ashes. He looked faintly confused, still, but he wasn't bursting with rage or telling Remus off, so there was that.

"Well, it's not exactly something you learn how to do in class," Remus said. "And I didn't really... I had to go to Knockturn Alley to find the book. My mom still doesn't know how dangerous it was. She's a Muggle, she doesn't really understand that kind of thing. But anything's possible." Remus tried to find the balance between explaining and oversharing.

"I read a story about something like it," Sirius said, which surprised everyone. "Though it was the other way. And Muggles. A Muggle woman—though I suppose she had been a man—got surgery. April Ashley. She's a model, I think."

"If she said she was a woman," Remus said, "she's always been a woman."

Sirius shrugged nonchalantly and lit a new cigarette, and for a second Remus was very angry. Then again, Remus thought, he was taking it a lot better than expected.

"Did it...go all right?" Peter asked, looking at Remus's trousers as if he was wondering if there was a newt under the zipper. Which, Remus reflected, there might well have been, had he been a little worse at transfiguration. Still, it was impolite to ask. Remus fumbled and stuttered.

"Of course it did," Sirius said, clapping Remus on the back. "Remus has been transforming into weirder things since he was a tiny pup, and nothing terrible has happened yet."

"Don't jinx it," Remus said.

James was still looking faintly bemused. "I never would have guessed, though," he said. "How did you get into the boys' dormitory?"

"What do you mean, how did I get in?" Remus asked. "My mother had them register me. My dad didn't want her to, but she figured out how owls worked by then and Dumbledore had already broken so many school policies to get me in in the first place that he figured that one more wouldn't really matter."

"Dumbledore, man," James said.

"I owe him a lot," Remus agreed, the words tired in his mouth. He felt tired, sometimes, of owing so much, to so many people.

"Wait," Sirius said suddenly, looking as if he had had a revelation. "Does this mean you can get into girls' dormitories, Remus?"

"What."

"Girls' dormitories. The stairs turn into smooth marble that you slide down if you're a dude and try to go up. Do they do that to you too?"

"You would think of that," James said. Remus was not as sure. Sirius seemed to be so aggressively heterosexual and so loudly focused on girls that it seemed to Remus that he was almost certainly queer.

"Seriously, Remus, this is a life-or-death question."

Remus tried to think. "I don't think so," he said slowly. "I mean, last year I think I went into the dormitories when I gave Maria Stebbins that scarf I borrowed back."

James was now looking interested. "Remus," he began, "You could-"

"I'm not stealing anything of Evans' for you, James," Remus said. "That's terrifically immoral and you need to get over her anyway."

Peter continued to look at Remus's crotch.

"Peter, you're staring at my crotch," Remus said. "Please stop."

"Yes, Peter, stop, Remus is mine, not yours," Sirius added with characteristic cheer. He grabbed Remus around the waist in a way that made Remus faintly hot under his collar, despite the frigid January air.