Remus's Rabbit
By Matelia-legwll
Disclaimer: This is fanfiction so I own nothing that is in the Potterverse. Jo owns that.
Summary: Furry little problems and rabbits combine with chocolate and Transfigurations to make this a all-around fun one-shot about Remus.
Rating: K
Genre: Friendship/General
A/N: I wrote this story for the November Fanfiction Contest that is a part of the Gaia Online guild called the Haven. The prompt was simple. Remus Lupin. I love the quote from HBP, and decided to explore how that played out. I've never before had a one-shot take on a life of it's own like this. And so, I bow to the characters that insisted I write it this way.
I chuckled to myself as I left the Burrow. A 'normal' Christmas indeed. Sometimes Harry reminded me so much of James, and I couldn't express that thought enough to him. It was not just in looks, either, although that part is rather disconcerting. I recalled my words to him that had seemed to cheer him up momentarily, and the story behind them and chuckled once more.
"Sometimes you remind me a lot of James. He called it my 'furry little problem' in company. Many people were under the impression that I owned a badly behaved rabbit."
It must have been our third year when I first heard James use that term to describe my lycanthropy. I was feeling rather depressed as the moon had waxed and would reach its full hideousness in less than four days. I was sitting in a corner of the Common Room, my head buried in a text, a serious expression on my face. No one dared approach me.
No one that is, except James.
"Remus? How are you this marvelous day?" he said.
"Fine," I said shortly.
"What are you working on?"
"Potions."
"Do you want to take a break? We could play some chess."
"No."
He was silent for a moment. I felt his eyes on me and turned to meet his gaze. He half-smiled and flung himself into a nearby armchair. The chair rocked, and actually scooted back a couple of inches before falling back into place. I turned back to glower at my book when James tried to start a conversation again.
"Your furry little problem is getting you down, isn't it, Remus?"
"My what?" I straightened, confusion sweeping through me as I glanced toward him.
He grinned. "You said more than one word," he started to gloat.
"My what?" I slowly repeated. Surely I had heard him wrong. Surely he wouldn't choose such an obvious nickname for my condition.
"Your furry little problem," he announced, quite loudly, to my chagrin.
Biscuits. Exactly what I thought he said.
"Have some chocolate," James said, holding out a bar of Honeydukes' chocolate.
How? How does he know? How in Merlin's name does he know exactly what to say that will both cheer me up and leave me speechless?
"Go on, take it."
Was he such a natural at friendship, or did he practice these lines? I tried to imagine James sitting around practicing lines to say to me, and a smile found its way to my face. There was absolutely no way that would happen. It must be natural.
"I haven't poisoned the chocolate, you know. Take it already. My arm's getting tired," he started to complain.
I set my Potions book down on a side table, took the chocolate from him, and held it in my lap, looking down at the still wrapped chocolate. When did he figure out my weakness for the sweetest of desserts? I liked chocolate almost as much as I liked a nice juicy rare steak.
"It works for dementor effects, it should work on cheering you up. Even with your furry little problem."
Was it just me, or were the last three words louder than any other words in that sentence? I winced.
"Stop calling it that," I requested, fingering the wrapper of the chocolate bar.
"Why?"
The matter-of-fact question took me aback for a moment. "Someone will hear," I protested.
"No one will guess right. No one ever does," James reasoned.
"You can't know that," I pointed out logically.
"Wanna bet?" asked James in a whisper, leaning closer.
I pursed my lips. If it was about anything other than my secret, I would bet with him, but I wouldn't want to win that particular bet. I shook my head. James shrugged.
Two weeks later, James mentioned the term in another conversation with me in the Common Room. This of course was during the time when the moon had faded, and almost disappeared in the new moon, so I was quite a bit more cheerful and was playing chess with James at the time.
"So, your furry little problem isn't acting up now, is it?"
I rolled my eyes, looking up from the chess board. "Again with the name?"
"What? It's a good codename," insisted James. "It's little, and furry, and causes a bit of a problem at times. A furry little problem."
I laughed, and dropped the subject. James could call my lycanthropy whatever he wished. He never looked down on me for what I was. Although, when I started to get approached a couple of months later after the full moon, I began to wish that he had chosen a different term.
"You shouldn't worry so much about your rabbit, Remus. You're looking dreadful. Get some sleep."
"Your rabbit will be just fine, it always is."
"You look like your rabbit just died. It's still all right, isn't it? Well, I mean, besides the obvious bad behavior."
"Rabbit giving you problems again? Just lock it in its cage for a day without any water. Clears up any lingering rebellions in those types of domestic animals."
I was confused by all these comments. Since when did I have a rabbit? And since when did everyone know about a rabbit that I never owned? The clincher came when Lily Evans approached me. I could no longer just accept these really mental comments.
"Remus, have you considered the possibility of releasing your rabbit to the wild? It might be easier for both of you to just let go."
"Lily, from whom did you hear that I had a rabbit?" The question burst from me, without my consent.
"Emmeline. Why?" Her green eyes bore into my face curiously.
"Er, never mind." I shook my head, and went off to find a certain girl by the name of Emmeline. I was going to get to the bottom of this ridiculous rumor.
"Emmeline, from whom did you first hear that I had a rabbit?"
"Marlene's the one that told me," shrugged Emmeline.
Time passed as I tried to track down how the rumor had passed from person to person.
Finally catching up to the latest person, I huffed, "Mary, from whom did you hear that I had a rabbit?"
"I actually heard it from Bertha. Bertha Jorkins."
Was there any other Bertha? I winced. Just lovely. The entire school knew the rumor if Bertha knew the rumor. Sighing, I went down to the Great Hall to try to find the gossip queen of Hufflepuff.
"He was kissing Florence, I'm telling you. Florence," she was emphasizing to a second-year Ravenclaw as I approached her table.
"Bertha, from whom did you hear that I had a rabbit?" I interrupted.
She turned around and turned her calculating gaze on me. I leaned onto the table; I was not about to back down for I had been looking for the originator of this rumor for over six hours.
"From whom?" I repeated.
"Frank Longbottom," she said slowly, drawing out the name in an insolent tone.
"Thank you," I replied sarcastically.
I turned around and went to find Frank. This was getting way too complicated. The sooner I found the culprit, or at least how this ridiculous rumor started, the happier I would be.
"Hey, Frank!" I called as I found him on the sixth floor and caught up with him.
"Hmm? Oh, hello, Remus."
"Hello. Let me get straight to the point, Frank. From whom did you first hear that I had a rabbit?"
"Er, Bertha. She's the first one that told me. How is it doing, by the way? Behaving now?"
"It's just fine," I shook my head, feeling confused, "but Bertha just told me that she heard it from you."
His brow furrowed for a moment, then smoothed out. "Oh. She must have done that 'protecting her sources' thing she picked up from the Daily Prophet."
I felt so much frustration well up inside of me, that I let it out by slamming my hand onto the stone wall of the corridor we were in. When I turned back to Frank, he was looking at me, quite concerned. I understand why, of course. I rarely lost control like that.
"Whatever is the matter?"
I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose between my forefinger and my thumb. "Would you happen to know how the rabbit story got out? Why does everyone think that I have a rabbit?"
"Don't you?" he asked. I shrugged, and he continued, "Well, I think it was because James said—well, I overheard someone say (I don't remember who it was now) that James said that you had a misbehaved rabbit. But all I heard James say were the words 'furry little problem.' So, I don't know where they heard James say that it was a rabbit. Bertha Jorkins told me that she had verified proof that you had a badly behaved rabbit. I was trying to ignore her though, and so I didn't ask for more information. Sorry about that, mate."
I shrugged and sighed again and started to mutter to myself. "The rumor chain at Hogwarts—quite exhausting. Oh well. Shan't bother about it anymore. I had my—but it doesn't matter. Hm. That's one bet I would have lost, then. I'm glad of that."
"Glad about losing your bet?" Frank questioned, trying to follow what I was saying.
"Yes," I grinned. "That was one bet that I didn't want to win."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw messy black hair suddenly vanish down a secret passageway.
"Excuse me a moment," I said to Frank as I turned to follow my friend through the winding passageway.
I emerged, not yet caught up to James, into a passageway that led to Hogsmeade. If I was correct, I was just behind the mirror on the fourth floor.
"Hello?" I called out. "James?" I looked around, starting to feel nervous. "Sirius?" I had been certain I was following James, but I couldn't see where he had disappeared to. "Peter?" I called out, half-heartedly, as I pulled out my wand to better see into the corners of the passageway.
I heard a couple of laughs that were quickly stifled. I sighed with relief. "James, Sirius, come out from under the cloak." I turned around in place, trying to spot where they were hidden under the cloak.
A slight ripple of disturbance in the corner of my right eye drew my attention. I turned towards it, focused, and nearly dropped my wand.
Hopping slowly towards the light was a rabbit, no, two rabbits! A brown rabbit and a white rabbit. The brown one paused and wriggled its nose at me for a moment. The white one hopped forward until it was right by my left leg, and started nuzzling it. As I started to move backward in reaction to the nuzzling, I felt two hands clasp both of my shoulders and force me to remain still.
"Don't want to startle them now," came Sirius's voice from my left.
"They might just start to misbehave if you do," added James from my right.
I rounded on him. "Your silly rumor—" was all I could get out before Sirius interrupted me.
"Allowed us both the time and space to get you not one, but two animals for your very own."
James jumped in, "See, look at how they are warming up to you already."
"Soon you will have a veritable zoo at your command."
I was easily sidetracked by Sirius's comment. "Zoo? But there's just two rabbits."
"One is a male and one is a female," declared James proudly. "Dunno which is which though," he added as an afterthought.
Sirius grinned. "Have you ever heard of how fast rabbits, you know, have little rabbit babies?"
I gaped at the two idiots on either side of me then turned back to look at the rabbits. "Surely you were not stupid enough to get a male and a female, but even if you were," I winced, "that still is just a whole lot of rabbits, not a zoo."
"Ah, we haven't unveiled our greatest present yet, Sirius," smirked James.
"No we haven't," agreed Sirius.
"Let me present, Sirius the Dog!" announced James, spinning me by my shoulders to face Sirius's show of bowing and blowing kisses to an invisible audience.
My jaw dropped and I said in a small voice, "You know? You already know what you're going to be? Sirius, I can't tell you—I'm speechless—Wow. Thanks. Thank you so much."
Both of them were beaming by the time I had finished talking.
"He's much too humble," commented James.
"You actually think that was the only present?" asked Sirius, somehow still sounding disappointed through his grin.
I slowly nodded. Were they implying that there was something else? Sirius sighed and spun me around to face James.
"I have the honor of presenting James the Deer," said Sirius pompously.
James bowed low, then took out his wand and held it like a trophy. "I would like to thank my Mum and Dad for always being there for me. To my best friend, Sirius: I couldn't have done it without you, mate. And to my dearest friend, Remus, for giving me the reason and the discipline to achieve this highest of honors," he said in a high, choked-up voice that was obviously faked, but still touched me just the same. He wiped away an invisible tear.
"You too?" I whispered in shock. "You both know?"
James sobered and both of them just stared at me. "Why d'you think we got you two rabbits?" asked James finally, crossing his arms. "Just for eating them on nights that you have your furry little problem?"
I had burst into laughter as I realized yet again, with renewed relief, that these two very special boys were really my friends and really accepted me for what I was.
A little over twenty years later I was still marveling over that same fact.
I missed James and Sirius, it's true. But I found laughter and solace and peace in my memories of them. Memories that were sparked by a very special sixteen-year-old boy that was James's son, and Sirius's godson. It was no wonder he reminded me of them. "Furry little problem," indeed. I laughed again, happy once more.
Note: I was second place in the popular vote, but this was fun.
Also, to my readers of Cat, Rat, and Dog, look for an update by the end of the week.
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Thanks for reading!