Chapter 3 – Replaced

The eight boys made sure that they were safely out of the way in the dormitory as soon as they heard the distant sounds of the carriages approaching the school.

"What's pulling them?" the other Peter asked as he looked out the window at the bustle of students and teachers in the grounds below. "We've just got regular horses pulling our carriages."

"Thestrals," Remus replied. "We've got the only tame herd in the country according to Hagrid."

"Can any of you see them?" the other James asked as he too looked out the window.

"I can," Remus admitted. "I was with my grandfather when he passed."

"The rest of us can't," Sirius said.

"Wouldn't want to," Peter muttered. "Creepy things."

"I can see them," the other James said. "I think I'll go down and take a closer look at them."

"I'll stay in here until you return," James said. "Don't take too long though. I want to see my Lily again."

The other James was gone out of the door a moment later and Remus looked steadily at his friend. "You have told him that you're not actually dating Lily, right?"

"Er…"

"You haven't, have you?"

"But he is," James muttered. "I didn't like to mention that she just refuses to spend any time with me when he's been more successful than I have."

Remus groaned and shook his head silently.

"What?" James asked.

"Nothing," Remus assured him. "I'm going down to the common room to see who else is back."

"Me too," Sirius said enthusiastically. "Unless you wanted to go take a look at the thestrals?" he asked his counterpart.

The other Sirius shook his head and turned back to the book he was reading.

Sirius stretched out on the sofa nearest the fire. Remus kicked his feet out of the way and joined him.

"Seems weird having them here, doesn't it?" Sirius said in a quiet tone. He wondered if Remus found it as disconcerting as he did to see someone who looked so like himself but acted so completely differently.

"I can't get used to seeing 'you' reading a book," Remus chuckled. "I'm trying to ignore my other self. It's like I've suddenly got an extra lunatic to try to keep in line."

"Ah Moony, you love us really, admit it."

"It's like babysitting a bunch of hyperactive hippogriffs," Remus teased with a long suffering sigh.

"Git," Sirius retorted just as the portrait hole opened.

"Hi Lily," Remus called. "Have a nice Christmas?"

"It was great," Lily said with an enthusiasm that would have fooled anyone but Remus.

"You didn't see him over the holidays then?" he asked. He didn't need to say who he was referring to, he knew that Lily would know exactly who he meant. He still felt guilty over not interceding in the incident after their DADA OWL. If he had, he had a feeling that Lily Evans and Severus Snape would still have been friends.

"Our friendship's really over," Lily said. "I sent his card back to him."

"Snivellus sent you a card?" Sirius snickered.

"Lily, sweetheart," a familiar voice called from the portrait hole. "Did you have a nice holiday?"

"Oh crap," Sirius muttered with a nervous glance at Remus.

Lily meanwhile had turned to face James. Sirius didn't need to see her face to imagine her eyes narrowing and her colour rising with her temper. He sat mute as the other James threw his arms around Lily and kissed her soundly on the lips.

"Oh Merlin," Remus whispered beside him as they watched Lily knee James in the groin, stamp on his foot and after wrenching herself free from his grasp, deliver him a resounding slap to the face.

"Arrogant git," Lily hissed as she levitated her trunk towards the staircase.

"You okay?" Sirius asked as he and Remus hurried over to the groaning boy.

"What did I do?" he asked once he'd recovered his voice.

"It's not you," Remus assured him.

"Moony's right," Sirius added. "It's just that our Lily doesn't seem to be the sweet girl that you got in your world. Our Lily is a spitfire and doesn't really like our James much."

"I thought they were dating?" the other James said. "I mean I forgot for a minute when I first saw her. I just saw her and for a minute I thought I was back with my Lily. They look just the same."

"Our James is as smitten with Lily as you are," Remus said. "He just hasn't managed to get her to agree to go out with him yet."

"Guess he forgot to mention that," the other James muttered as he limped towards the dormitory.

"Mr Black, have you forgotten everything you've ever learned over the last five years!"

Remus felt himself cringing under Professor McGonagall's harsh glare even though it was directed towards the boy sitting next to him.

The regular Sirius was excellent at Transfiguration, having spent many hours studying the subject along with James and Peter in order to become an illegal animagus.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, this Sirius and his friends had chosen not to take that route to help their Remus out on the nights of the full moon. Remus wondered briefly whether the other Remus was even a werewolf but soon pushed the speculation aside in order to concentrate on the lesson.

"Your Sirius is really good at Transfiguration?" the other Sirius asked in a whisper as they made their way to the Great Hall for lunch.

"He's probably as smart as you," Remus said with a shrug. "It's just he only studies when he wants to. He's been slacking off in Transfiguration this year anyway."

"How come?"

"He knows as much as he wants to," Remus replied. "Now he's got what he wanted from the subject he's lost interest. He only took it at NEWT because it's his best subject."

"Same as me," James chimed in from behind them. "Did you notice Moony? Ten points for Gryffindor."

"It'll start to make up for the thirty she took from you at the end of last term for charming her biscuit tin into biting her fingers."

"Ah Moony, good times," James said with a sigh of contentment.

"What are you doing?" Lily asked with a frown.

Remus looked guiltily at the stash of food he'd been in the process of smuggling out of the Great Hall. As he had a free period next he'd volunteered to take supplies to the boys hiding up in the dormitory whilst James and the other Sirius went to Potions and Peter went to the library to make a start on his homework. He'd hoped that no one would notice his pilfering.

"Just a snack for later," he improvised. "I've got a free afternoon and if I'm really engrossed in my homework I might forget to come down for dinner."

Lily looked doubtfully at the huge stack of food Remus was cramming into his bag but didn't question him further.

Remus hurried back to the boys' dorm before she called him on his lie. He made a mental note to have a word with the house elves in the kitchen and see whether they could provide some food directly to the dormitory from now on.

"I win!" Sirius crowed as he won the latest round in the game of exploding snap with the counterparts of his friends. "Hey, Moony, you got lunch there?"

"Of course," Remus replied as he dug into his bag and handed out the various items of food. "How's it going up here?"

"Boring," the other Remus replied. "You mind if I go wander round the school for a bit?"

"Sure," Remus replied, waving his hand towards the door. "I'll start my homework assignments up here."

"You coming Sirius?" the other Remus asked.

"I feel a prank coming on," Sirius said with a wide grin.

The two boys left the common room and entered the main school with mischief on their minds.

"Have you ever bewitched one of the portraits?" Remus asked with a grin. "We once gave the Slytherin common room entrance portrait deafness so he couldn't hear any of the passwords."

"We haven't done that, but we did enchant two suits of armour to waltz continuously around the school."

"What do you think we should do for our first joint effort?" Remus asked.

"Never done anything in the astronomy tower," Sirius suggested. "Any ideas?"

"Might have," Remus replied as he hurried in that direction.

They arrived at the astronomy tower, empty as it normally was during the daytime, and Remus set to work on the first of the school telescopes.

"What have you done to it?" Sirius asked after Remus had stood back. "It doesn't look any different."

"Take a look and see."

"It's not going to give me a black eye or anything is it?"

"Nothing so obvious."

Sirius stepped cautiously to the telescope and looked through the eyepiece. "Whoa," he whispered as he looked at the stars dancing around in his vision. They were no longer stationary but instead were moving about in a complex and hypnotic dance. "Very pretty, but how is the class going to see anything properly?"

"Exactly," Remus replied. "I'm sure your Professor Sinistra will know how to fix it just like mine did. Wasted half the lesson fixing them all when we did this in the third year."

Remus taught Sirius the spell required and within fifteen minutes they had bewitched all the school telescopes.

"What next?" Remus asked as they made their way back downstairs.

"Invisible puddle in the entrance to the Great Hall?" Sirius suggested. "We've done it before but if you've not seen it then it should be a laugh at dinner."

"I'll be stuck upstairs though," Remus pointed out.

"Moony will be studying for hours, you can come down in his place."

"He won't mind?"

"Nah, Moony's a good sort for stuff like that."

"Why do you call him Moony?" Remus asked.

"It's just a nickname," Sirius evaded.

The marauders had discussed at length during mealtimes in the Great Hall whether to reveal the extent of their rule breaking to their counterparts. In the end they'd decided to draw the line at telling them about the illegality of some of their activities. Sirius was unsure whether this other Remus was even a werewolf, he'd certainly had an easy time of it if he was; there were no visible scars on him and he looked far more healthy than their own Remus did. Sharing pranks was one thing but none of them trusted their counterparts so much yet that they would risk revealing Moony's secret to a group who hadn't had the time to get to know him and might not want to protect him and help him during the full moons.

Remus looked like he was going to ask him to elaborate but thankfully they'd arrived in the Entrance Hall and Sirius distracted him by casting the invisible puddle spell and demonstrating it by walking water all over the floor.

"It drove Filch up the wall for hours when we did this before," Sirius said. "He just couldn't find where the water was coming from."

"Why didn't he just do a spell to find it?" Remus asked curiously.

"He's a squib," Sirius explained. "Your Filch is a wizard?"

"Yeah, 'course he is," Remus replied. "Makes it a nightmare to get away with anything around him. You've got it so lucky that he's a squib in this world."

"Well he might be a squib but he's damn good at his job," Sirius muttered. "We'd better get out of here before he comes along; I swear that cat of his can smell troublemakers."

"What next?" Remus asked once they were sitting at the side of the lake. "How about foaming the lake? We meant to do that once but never got round to it."

"Bad idea." Sirius shook his head. "We did get around to doing that one last year and lost a hundred house points and got two months of daily detentions. The mer-people who live in the lake wanted to kill us. I think Dumbledore was tempted to let them too."

"You sound like you regret that prank," Remus commented quietly.

"Don't you regret any of yours?" Sirius asked, his curiosity aroused.

"I only regret getting caught." Remus laughed and looked back towards the school. "So not the lake then. What about the Quidditch pitch?"

"We could turn the grass red and gold," Sirius suggested. "The Ravenclaw-Slytherin match is coming up and it'll put off the Slytherins no end. The flying lessons always take place in the mornings so the coast should be clear."

Remus grinned back.

Remus looked up as Sirius and his counterpart burst through the door to the dormitory.

"Made it!" Sirius said as he collapsed onto his bed. "Moony, you don't mind Remus coming down to dinner instead of you tonight, do you?"

Remus shrugged with feigned indifference. He'd not planned on heading downstairs this evening anyway but somehow, hearing Sirius's words, he couldn't get rid of the uneasy feeling that he was being replaced within the marauders…by himself.

"Told you he'd be okay with it," Sirius declared. "I'll bring you some chocolate pudding back later."

"Thanks Padfoot," Remus said, cheering considerably.

His unease returned later though when he heard his three friends and the other Remus whispering and giggling long into the night. With a twinge of regret he realised that Sirius and James hadn't tracked him down to invite him to join in any of their mischief since the other Remus had arrived.

He realised long after the others had gone to sleep that they had the Remus they'd always wanted…the one who would join in the troublemaking without censure and revel in causing chaos.

Now they had the other Remus they didn't need him any more.