After three or four hours of lying awake in their beds without a whispered word passing between Sirius, Peter and James, the little tin alarm clock on Peter's bedside table sounded a shrill ring, signalling that it was nine o'clock and that if they weren't up by now they were in trouble. Peter rolled over, and knocked it off the table with a deft sweep of his arm. It rolled under Sirius' bed, but did not stop ringing. Exhaustedly, Sirius tried to reach into the uncharted depths of two years of 'tidying' but simply succeeded in overbalancing and landing on the floor with a thud. He groaned, and then he continued his quest to bring a halt to the infernal ringing which so inconsiderately decided to awaken him.
Several minutes later, when the sound had finally been silenced, the boys were back to lying on their beds staring up at the ceiling. With an air of supreme tiredness James half-sat up on his bed (more than a little reluctantly) and turned his puffy eyes to the others.
"You know, we should probably get up." He muttered, sleepily.
Sirius turned his head, with great effort, to look at him with distain. "Why?"
"Want to see Remus," he said, simply. Words were not to be wasted so early in the morning.
Sirius collapsed on his bed, took a deep breath, then by some miracle he managed to leap to his feet. James looked at him in amazement as Sirius began to hurriedly dress himself before he lost his steam and fell in a heap on the floor.
Following Sirius' example, James also tried to leap out of bed. He was the second person that day to become acquainted with the underbelly of Sirius' bed.
"Urgk," James said articulately as he heaved himself up from the floor.
Sirius, now fully dressed with his shirt on back to front, poked the Peter-lump on the bed. It did nothing. He poked it again.
No response.
Contemplatively, Sirius stared at the small mountain of bed clothes blearily. Then, with great precision, he drew his wand and muttered a simple spell ('agumentia').
Peter jumped out of bed with such force that it surprised even James, the initial instigator of the up-getting procedure. Sadly, since he had had not time to aim his leap, he landed in a groaning heap on the floor at the foot of his bed.
Sirius nudged him with his foot, "Get up, going to see Remus."
Peter got up with another groan and pulled a robe over his head, on top of his pyjamas (which were a rather unfortunate combination of multicoloured stripes, given to him by some elderly relative as a Christmas present). "I'm done!" He proclaimed, rather more jubilantly that expected at such an hour.
James, also dressed, looked him up and down. "Might want to put some shoes on first, Pete,"
"Shouldn't we, you know, go to lessons?" Peter looked worriedly around at the empty corridor, then to Sirius and James, who looked like zombies. "I mean, we do have Transfiguration first and McGonagall will be really angry..."
Sirius turned to him. He began to raise his eyebrow, but decided that he couldn't be bothered to do so. "We had Transfiguration, Pete. We are now late for Herbology as well."
"There's no point going now, we might as well see how Remus is doing." James backed up his best friend, and they continued to march through the empty corridors solemnly. They hardly spoke, as though they were saving their words for when they would be more sorely needed. Peter could not help but be on his guard as he feared they would be caught by a teacher and punished again- it was not be the first time they had missed lessons. Usually, however, they would be slightly more joyful to have skipped an hour or so of lecturing to spend time together as a group, as the Marauders, but today's skiving had a much more sombre mood. Peter couldn't help but marvel at what one little word could do.
It was not long before they arrived at the Hospital Wing. They might have wished for a little more time to collect themselves but Sirius, holding firm the belief that there was indeed no time like the present, roughly flung the door open with one hand and strode inside. Peter followed close behind in his usual fashion, but James was more hesitant. In fact, it was only when Sirius looked back at him and slightly raised his eyebrows that James followed.
Madame Pomfrey, hearing the commotion of the door opening, was on them in a second. "What on earth are you doing here now? You should be in lessons- get out!" She blocked their path and made to usher them out into the empty corridor once again.
Sirius was adamant, though, and refused to move. "No, miss, we want to see Remus, and we won't be leaving until we have." His challenge was carefully phrased and kept as polite as Sirius felt possible under the circumstances, but a challenge nonetheless. It raised Madam Pomfrey's hackles, and her words were biting.
"No, you boys have done enough damage. The poor boy has been through enough without you poking your noses in and making everything worse with your ideas and your names and your prejudices. Go back to your lessons and leave Remus in peace." This apparent disgust that the matron directed towards the boys stung like little else. They were all used to the stereotyping that was thrust upon them everyday- for Sirius, he was a Black, a disillusioned and cruel pure-blood who could see no further than the end of his own nose; for James, he was the attention-seeking trouble-maker, who thought himself to be the world and made difficult the lives of any who refused to see it that way; for Peter, it was the dumb follower, the fat baby who wanted nothing more than reflected glory. They had all been hurt by it, and tried not to perpetuate it, and so to assume that they agreed with the cruel stereotype forced upon one of their closest friends was not only hurtful but also extraordinarily aggravating.
Sirius, as he had on many other occasions, allowed his anger and confusion to get the better of him. "HOW CAN YOU JUDGE US LIKE THIS! WE ARE NOT PATHETIC, JUDGEMENTAL-" He most likely would have continued in this fashion for some time, had he not been interrupted by a groan of pain from a cubicle at the far end of the Hospital Wing. It was the only one occupied that day, which was probably a good thing, as the whole ward would have been woken up by Sirius' shouting if it had been full.
"See what you've done, you've woken him up!" She hissed at them, trying to keep her voice down in the hope that he would go back to sleep. Sadly, her attempts were in vain.
"Poppy, is that you? I'd like my potion, please." A croaky voice, near dead from exhaustion, echoed from the end of the ward. It made the tiredness Sirius, Peter and James felt pale in comparison to how their friend sounded, and they began to understand the true seriousness of the situation.
"Of course, dear, I'll be right over," her voice resumed is normal cheery, motherly tone, despite the scathing look she gave to the boys. In a lower voice, she spoke to them. "You might as well come over, then, and get this over with, but if you upset him..." She let the threat hang in the air, and James nodded reassuringly at her, a nod she did not return.
They followed her to the opposite end of the room, where the curtains were drawn around one compartment. Madam Pomfrey picked up a bottle filled with a deceptively tasty-looking pink liquid from the trolley outside, and then drew the curtains aside.
Remus lay on his bed pitifully, his eyes half-open and heavy. He looked, Sirius thought, quite literally like death. His arms were bandaged now, hiding the scars and the bruises, but blood had still managed to seep through the creases. There was large gauze plaster on his forehead which was only slightly covered by his hair (which Sirius noticed with a certain fondness, despite her earlier treatment of them, that Madam Pomfrey had washed), and dark circles beneath his eyes. However, the bruises of the night before seemed to mostly have healed with a supernatural speed, and some of the smaller scratches which Madam Pomfrey had not bandaged were only faint traces now, like lines drawn in the sand.
He looked up, his eyes still more yellow than anything else, and looked horrified to see his friends standing at the foot of his bed, friends he was sure would abandon him. "What are you doing here? I... I don't want any trouble."
A tear welled in James' eye as he watched the fearful expression on his friend-of-two-years' face. He could easily see that he was expected to reject him, as so many others probably had before. He could see the reasoning behind such a decision- after all, hadn't James himself once shivered beneath his bed clothes, plagued by nightmares of snarling, blood-thirsty werewolves, coming for him, always for him? Hadn't he read stories in the Prophet of countless sprees of lycanthrope attacks, some on children, which had resulted in death or even worse- infection? Did he want to have a friend for who to kill and to maim beyond repair was second nature? The easy answer was no, to run from his so-called friend screaming, to warn everyone across the school that they were taught in the same room as a monster. That would be all too easy for him to do.
But looking into his friend's eyes, the eyes of a monster, he couldn't do it. He smiled, and leaned over the bed to embrace his friend. "It doesn't matter. All that matters is that you are Remus, and you are my friend. You are a Marauder. Nothing is ever going to change that."
"Thank you," Remus croaked, a single tear rolling down his cheek. A tear of relief.
AN: Yar. So this is the second chapter, and the shortest of all three. I know not a lot happens, but there will be a good deal more in the next and final instalment I assure you.