{1972}
The weak light of a cloudy late fall afternoon shone down on the castle. However, the two young boys lounging in their dorm had no way of knowing this, with the thick maroon curtains drawn over their window. Both were situated comfortably on their respective beds.
One had very regal features that were somehow reminiscent of the early aristocrats. He was ruggedly handsome in his own manner, and would quite evidently grow into the cheekbones and long nose that seemed misplaced on his recently-turned thirteen year old face. This one Sirius Black was reading, which was very impressive in itself.
The second of the boys was obviously lesser, and even he himself knew it. Small, watery eyes darted back and forth across the many pages over the lengthy yet surprisingly uncommon list of diseases contractable by humans from dragons. He was struggling with the concept, as he often did in his classes, and because the only one of his friends that put up with his confusion was currently away visiting family, he had no one to talk him through the steps. The boy, Peter Pettigrew, lay on his generous stomach and sighed with frustration. Lazy afternoons in late fall were for being lazy, not studying, or so went his philosophy.
If one had cared to listen, they may have heard the thundering storm of another boy barreling up the staircase to the room where his friends rested. They may have heard the creaking steps, the mumbles of the disturbed peers who chose to spend their time in the common room, and maybe even the sound of ancient dust motes being stirred, not for the first nor the last time. However, neither boy cared enough to have heard, and thus they didn't.
When the door was flung open, slamming into the wall and nearly becoming unhinged before bouncing back into the face of the newcomer, both boys looked up. Peter went back to his textbook rather soon, being quite used to the dramatics of the messy haired James Potter who stood in the doorway. Sirius, who knew James better than anyone else in the world, could tell that this was not the average excitement of his friend, but rather a much more frenzied, irrational fit.
This became apparent when, instead of leaving the door open as was his typical style, James quickly turned and closed it. He turned the rusted deadbolt that none of the three could recall using in all the time they had lived in the room. He began waving his arm wildly, brandishing his wand at the door, and muttered spells that would keep whatever happened inside from ever being heard beyond the heavy plank of dark wood.
Sirius cocked his head to the side, and sat up on his bed. He turned and set his feet on the ground, but didn't stand.
James walked to the middle of the room jerkily, like each of his limbs was stiff and wooden and tied to strings, controlled by someone unseen.
"Remus is a werewolf."
His voice was hoarse, tight, and decidedly un-James-like. And while his statement left no room for question, with such a strong conviction, Sirius never did like listening to what he was told.
"What?"
By then, Peter had sat up as well. His rodent-like face was pointed at the haphazard mess in the center of the room.
James spoke through a strained jaw once again. "Just come look at this."
He knelt to the warped wooden floor and began pulling lengths of parchment and aged library books from the many pockets lining his robes. These were often helpful when the group of boys had pranking to do, but the time was not one for boyhood mischief.
Sirius tried once more, as neither of the boys had any inclination to approach their agitated friend. "No. No, the parents would never allow it, Dumbledore would never-"
"Just come here, Sirius!"
Reluctantly, he slid from his seated position and joined James around his mound of used parchment and stack of books. Peter followed, perhaps with even more cautiously, muttering to the darker-haired, more elegantly-mannered boy, "Dumbledore turns a blind eye to a lot, Sirius. It's not impossible."
James began shuffling through the papers, pulling a few into separate piles and jamming them into some sort of order. Finally, with a large flourish, he pulled a single sheet towards himself, adjusted to sit cross-legged facing the other two head on, and began shakily.
"I thought I had figured it out two weeks ago. I-I didn't know for sure, so I thought I would wait, and be absolutely certain before I told anyone. I am, I swear to sweet Merlin I'm sure. Remus is a werewolf." Sirius was already shaking his head.
"That's not possible. Werewolves... they don't act like wizards. Don't act human, even. Dumbledo-"
"Forget Dumbledore! Forget the parents! Forget what you think you know! Remus is a werewolf, and you need to listen!" James watched Sirius for a moment, so as to know that he would not interrupt again, then nodded to himself as affirmation.
"Look. Remus left to visit his family late yesterday, right? Well, look here," he snatched up an astronomy assignment chart that was only partially filled in, "and tell me that last night was not a full moon."
"That doesn't prove anything," Sirius spoke defensively. "Plus, wasn't that chart due at the beginning of the month?"
James decided to not dignify his second remark with a reply, instead saying, "Then tell me that Remus hasn't disappeared every month, once a month since the very beginning? Tell me that he doesn't have moods that decline towards each full moon, and get better as the last one passes further away. Tell me he doesn't have scars, scars that come from claws, that multiply as time goes on. Tell me he won't come back tonight, exhausted and irritable, scratched and bruised, and still be completely incapable of explaining how exactly he 'tripped on his porch' and got practically mauled 'by his cat'. Go on, Sirius, tell me."
But alas, it was not Sirius, but rather Peter who spoke. While the other two sat in tense silence, the sandy-haired boy shuffled his bare feet, quietly asking, "how long have you known?"
"Two weeks, as I said."
"You've thought about it a lot," Sirius stated, his face unreadable even to his closest friend.
"Of course I have. One of my best mates, stuck shredding his own skin every month. How could I not think about it?" He sighed, shaking his head, "why? Why Remus?"
Sirius was conflicted. On one hand, he knew Remus, perhaps even more so than James. He knew the gentle, unassuming, nerdy boy who wore sweaters in late spring and preferred tea to coffee. On the other, firmer, judgmental hand that had been passed down from generations of uptight purebloods, he knew werewolves. Monsters, bloodthirsty in human and animal form, uncivilized and dangerous. Sirius knew, deep in his soul, the soul he prayed was not as dark as his surname suggested, that those two images could never be the same thing. But he was being told they were, proved they were, and therefore one of his ideas about those two things (because in his current state of mind, Remus had become a 'thing' to him) was ultimately wrong. The question was which.
Peter was not as conflicted. He had not been raised in a family of supremacists, and all he knew about werewolves was a muddled lesson in first year, when the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher had misread her own notes and given them the wrong lecture. Who Peter did know, though, was Remus.
James was not conflicted in anyway; at least, not about the benignity of the fourth party of his group. Remus was Remus, and he had been dealt a horrendously unjust hand, and James saw himself as the one meant to make it better. The uncertainty came there-how could he do anything to possibly help his friend?
The lazy, late fall afternoon soon faded to a less lazy Sunday night, complete with heavy rain and lightning and booming thunder, but none of the boys had any inkling of the storm that was brewing right inside the castle. Because, while they wasted the last few hours before Remus' return on rereading the same paragraphs about werewolf afflictions, the boy stuck in all of their minds had been released from the hospital wing many floors below.
WHEW. so. let me know what you think! these will go in no sort of chronological order and will be jam packed with fluffy bits, so be excited! {this is also on wattpad, on my account dedalusdiggle}