I'm back at last!

This chapter is a little shorter than most but I do hope you'll bear with me until the next chapter. Which certainly won't be so far away!


The Call of the Moon

Chapter Nine

"I have to say I was very impressed with all of your 'lumos' charms last lesson, you've all improved vastly. Well most of you…" Professor Helvia Ambrosia paused in her travels between the rows of desks as she paced the room. Stopping right beside Peter Pettigrew and looking pointedly down at him. "I suggest that some of you keep practicing." Sweeping her deep crimson robes around her ankles as she turned on her heel and strode back to the front of the classroom, the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher smiled and tapped her wand on the pile of rolled up essays on her desk which immediately began to distribute themselves to their authors.

"Overall, I was relatively pleased with your essays…however…some of you certainly have more work to do."

There was a rustle of parchment as the mixed class of Gryffindors and Ravenclaws unfurled their scrolls. A mixture of sighs, groans and pleased reactions momentarily filled the classroom as students checked their grades.
"Hey!"

"Yes, well done Mr. Black…see, you can do well when you apply yourself." Professors Ambrosia smiled, paused beside the desk that Sirius was sharing with Remus and tapping her wand on his desk.
As soon as she moved away, Sirius packed up his essay and leaned over to nudge Remus. "Yeah, but who can be bothered to apply themselves?"

Remus smiled and rolled up his parchment modestly without sharing that he had received top marks, and leaned down to tuck it into his bag on the floor before leaning forward to rest his elbows on the desk as the Professor made her way back to the front of the classroom again.

"Now…today I'll be giving you an introduction into a topic which we won't be exploring again until third year and today we won't be going into any great depth on it…" She paused to cast her blue eyes around the room at the class whose chattering was slowly beginning to diminish. "Werewolves."

Snap. Remus' hand tightened reflexively on the quill he had been holding and before he realised he was doing it, it had snapped in two in his fingers. He could feel Sirius staring at him, and the Ravenclaws on the desk to his right curiously doing the same.
His face flushed a violent red as he lowered his head to hide and murmured quietly. "Oops..." Before he could hide and bury himself in his bag to find a new quill, Sirius nudged him.

"Here…" He whispered, holding out his quill to Remus who gratefully took it. "What was that?"

"Specifically, werewolf bites."

The room might as well have shrunk to the size of a matchbox around him, Remus hardly dared to breathe for fear of using up all his oxygen and fainting on the spot. He lowered his head, holding Sirius' quill loosely in his fingers as he busied himself with scratching the words down onto his parchment.

Professor Ambrosia flicked her wand at the blackboard at the front of the classroom, upon which quickly appeared the word, "Werewolves", in large, cursive lettering.

"A 'werewolf', as I'm sure many of you are aware, is a human being who-"

A Ravenclaw girl with blonde pigtails raised her hand, and without waiting for Professor Ambrosia to call on her, chimed in. "-Who has been infected with lycanthropy, Professor, and becomes an extremely dangerous near-wolf on the full moon."

The Professor arched a raven eyebrow and fixed the young girl with an amused stare. "…Correct though you are, Miss. Alistair, I was not aware that I'd asked a question."

Alicia Alistair turned a bright shade of pink and shrunk a little in her seat as a few students, including James, snickered behind their books.

Clearing her throat to restore her class' attention to the lesson, Ambrosia strode around her desk to stand between it and the blackboard. "As Miss. Alistair has so kindly explained for us, a 'werewolf' is simply a human being who suffers from lycanthropy. A condition which-"

Remus hardly dared to keep his eyes fixed on the front of the classroom. He imagined the Professor's eyes boring right through him, and in a terribly moment of panic he was quite sure she was about to say "-which one of your classmates in this room suffers from". But she didn't.

"-is only transmittable through the bite of an existing werewolf." As she spoke, notes began to scribe themselves onto the board behind her.

Another Ravenclaw, a very slight, nervous looking boy with dusty brown hair and a pale complexion raised his hand and Professor Ambrosia nodded her heard to him with a smile.
"Mr. Quirrell?"

"M-My m-mother…" He began, stuttering a little nervously. The boys behind him snickered and the teacher shot them a warning look.
"Go on, Quirinus."
The nervous boy took a breath and started again. "My mother told me that sh-she met a wizard once who had b-been attacked by a werewolf….he wasn't bitten but she saw the scratch on h-his arm. He said he always ate his meat raw after that."

A series of disgusted "Ughs" spattered throughout the room and James called across the room, "You're making that up…"

"Thank you for that assessment, Mr. Potter." Professor Ambrosia raised her eyebrows at the class and waited a moment for silence to fall before she continued. "Mr. Quirrell has raised an excellent, and very likely true, point. The victim of a werewolf attack may only become one themselves if actually bitten by a transformed werewolf. However, it's quite likely for someone who has been scratched-or in exceptionally rare cases, injured by a werewolf who is still in their human form- to develop some 'wolfish' tendencies themselves. Such as a taste for rare meat."

"That's kinda gross." Sirius muttered, nudging Remus who was biting down hard on his tongue as he mumbled noncommittally on the subject.

"Who can tell me of a cure for lycanthropy?" Professor Ambrosia asked with the air of someone asking a trick question they knew no one had the answer to.

The room remained silent. A few students glanced at each other and shrugged, and Alicia opened her mouth and closed it again looking puzzled. There was no cure. Remus knew that. His father had been trying and failing for years to come up with some sort of solution. But he was terrified to say so, as if just saying that one thing would give him away beyond doubt.

After a few more seconds, Lily, sitting in front of Remus and Sirius, spoke up a little hesitantly. "Professor Ambrosia…is it true that silver would affect a werewolf?"

The Professor smiled at her and shook her head. "No, Miss. Evans…contrary to what the muggle world believes. Silver will not reverse the effects, or 'cure' a werewolf…nor will it harm one."

Her robes fluttered slightly as she turned to address the whole class again. "Unfortunately, there is no known cure for the actual affliction itself. Wounds inflicted by a werewolf, will permanently scar. /However/…" She paused and stepped aside from the board so the students in front of her could begin to copy down the words. "A mixture of dittany, and…" She glanced briefly at Lily, "powdered silver, can be used to close a wound inflicted by a werewolf and prevent death from occurring."

There was a rustle of parchment and the scratching of quills as most students began to scribble down their notes.

"As I've already said, we will not be going in depth into exactly what a werewolf is until at least your third year of magical education. Our job today, is simply to discuss how to treat those injuries. Now…for the rest of the lesson, I'd like you all to read through chapter seven in your textbooks and jot down suggested ways to treat werewolf bites."

Remus had never been so glad for one of his classes to finish that year. The moment the bell rang to signal the end of class, he quickly handed Sirius back his spare quill and breathed an audible sigh of relief as they bustled their way out of the classroom and started to trudge down to the Great Hall.

"You were quiet today, Remus." Sirius arched an eyebrow over at his friend while James and Peter trudged a pace behind them.

Remus just shrugged and tried to look as natural and relaxed as he could manage.

"Yeah, you're not getting sick again, are you?" James' lips twitched just slightly as he stuck his head over Remus' shoulder and made a show of seeing how sick he looked.
Remus sighed and sidestepped out of the way as a genuine smile finally broke over his face. "I'm fine. I didn't sleep well last night."

"Because you're sick, right?" James pushed with a grin, looking particularly pleased with himself as Peter snickered a little.

Remus looked over his shoulder and before he'd really thought it through, the retort leapt to his lips, "No. It's 'cause you snore loud enough to keep the whole dorm awake."

Sirius let out a loud laugh and hung back half a step to clap a hand on James' shoulder, who had burst out laughing too. "You know he's not wrong, James. You might get a problem."

xxxXxxx

"But what if we get caught? I don't want a detention…" Peter squeaked, looking between Sirius and James, as the four friends leaned over a table in the library.

"Oh come on, what's the worst that can happen? We have the invisib-"

"Keep your voice down, will you?" James hissed at Sirius before he could blurt out their secret weapon too loudly.
Sirius looked over his shoulder to see the librarian glowering at them over spectacles, making it clear their voices were too loud for the library. The boy flashed as innocent a smile as he could make convincing, which wasn't much, and turned back as soon as the little, old witch turned back to her task of cataloguing books.

"I kind of agree with Peter…" Remus murmured quietly. He alone of the four was leaning over a roll of parchment, his Transfiguration book open beside him as he worked on McGonagall's essay on the Switching Spell.

"Oh come on, you two…" Sirius sighed, looking exasperatedly between the two fairer haired boys and exchanging a smirk with James.

Remus looked up finally, crossing the last 't' in his sentence and setting his quill down carefully to avoid dropping ink over his essay. "You don't need four people to do it anyway…"

"No, but it's much more fun." James raised his eyebrows and looked pointedly at Remus. "And we might only be first years but you're the best at spells most of the time…" He pushed his round glassed further up his nose as they slipped slightly. "Come on…just one classroom. They'll never need to know who did it."

"Well that's not true, James…since when can you keep your mouth shut?" Sirius smirked, ducking his head to the table to avoid the quill James threw at him. "Yeah, yeah, me too. I know."

Peter wasn't too difficult to persuade. His beady eyes flicked between Sirius and James uneasily for a few moments as he chewed on his lips. Eager to please, and not wanting to let the only people he could call friends down, he sighed and nodded finally. "O-Okay…I'm in."

"Atta boy, Pete!" Sirius grinned widely, drumming his hands softly on the surface of the table before all three looked expectantly at Remus who was staring back at them wide-eyed.

"I just don't think it's a…" The young wizard sighed and blew a strand of sandy brown hair out of his face. "…which classroom?"

xxxXxxx

They waited until the Common Room had emptied, and the last few lingering students had gone up to bed before tossing off their covers and climbing quietly out of their beds with wands in hands. No one dared speak until they'd descended the stairs from the boy's dormitory and gathered close to the portrait hole in the Common Room.

"Okay, so…McGonagall's classroom?" Sirius rubbed his hands together gleefully, shuffling excitedly on the spot in his black pyjamas and slippers.
James tied up his crimson dressing gown, the cloak now hanging over one shoulder which comically seemed to flicker in and out of being. "Yeah…let's get going. We'll be quick…"

"Is that even going to fit all of us under it?" Peter asked hesitantly, pointing to the cloak. A comment which James brushed off and shrugged.
"If we crouch down, probably just…and no one's gonna see our feet in the dark anyway for a second."

"Let's go…" Sirius hissed and, one by one, they crawled through the portrait hole, pushing the portrait of the Fat Lady away as slowly as they could, hoping she would remain asleep in her frame. As soon as Peter, at the rear, hopped out and the portrait swung closed, they all crowded in close together. James handed one side of the cloak to Remus and together they spread it over the four of them as best as they could.
The shimmering, silky cloak was larger than Remus had expected it to be. As they all crouched down close together, the cloak just brushed the bottom of their feet. If they hurried, the soles of their slippers may be visible but only for an instant.

Quietly, hardly daring to make a noise in case a patrolling teacher came by, they snuck down the moving staircases to the first floor. By the time they reached it, Peter was panting and slightly out of breath, being rushed along at the rear.

"Shh!" Remus suddenly hushed them, and immediately Sirius clapped his hand over Peter's mouth to muffle the noise.
"What?" James hissed, frowning at Remus under the cloak, "Did you hear-"

"Shh!" The young werewolf hushed again, straining his ears to hear what he was sure was footsteps around the corner. Sure enough, they only just had enough time to move closer to the wall, when Professor McGonagall strode by, her wand tip alight.

They collectively held their breath when she suddenly stopped and turned to look directly at the group. After a moment, apparently satisfied she must have imagined what she thought she'd seen, the tall witch strode on and out of sight down the corridor as darkness swallowed her once again.

"…That was close…" Sirius let out a breath, wiping his hand on his pyjamas and shooting Peter a look of disgust, "Calm down, would you?"

"It's right here, come on!" James suddenly hissed, pushing on the door directly behind them and rattling the handle. "…right."

"Here…" Remus sighed, holding his hand out, where it seemed to hover strangely in mid-air with his wand. Pointing it steadily at the lock he tried, "Alohomora." There was a satisfying click and the door unlocked. Immediately they piled inside, closing the door quickly behind them. James pulled off the cloak, tucking it into his dressing gown as best he could.

"Let's hurry up and get out of here." Peter chimed in, having recovered slightly as he pulled out his wand from the sleeve of his dressing gown.

"Okay…so…all of them?"

xxxXxxx

"What in the name of Merlin's hat is going on in here?!" Professor McGonagall shouldered her way through the crowd of first year Ravenclaws and Gryffindors into her classroom. She stopped dead in the doorway, her jaw dropping as she stared in shock at the scene.

The desks hovered inches away from the ceiling, upside down, inkwells had fallen and smashed on the floor, leaving puddles of dried ink staining the stone floors. Across the blackboard at the front of the classroom, in white chalk, were a number of stick figure drawings. One of whom, wearing a tall, pointed hat, seemed to be Professor McGonagall.

The class erupted into laughter, students lined the walls as they looked up at the floating furniture, pointing fingers at the drawings on the blackboard and giggling.
"Out of the way!" McGonagall snapped, brushing through a group of giggling Gryffindor girls and towards the blackboard. With a flick of her wand the drawings vanished and she whirled around with a critical eye to look over the classroom. Her lips were pressed together into a thin line and her face was pinched in barely concealed anger.

Just outside the door Sirius and James were nearly choking on supressed laughter, leaning up against the wall for support at the success of their plan. Remus, sensibly kept his mouth closed, not having any wish to suggest that he had played a part in levitating the desks.

"Potter! Black!" McGonagall's robes swished and her shoes tapped harshly against the stone as she swept out of the room in front of the group. The students surrounding them scattered, breaking off into whispers and giggles.

James and Sirius straightened up immediately with barely contained glee as they struggled to keep straight faces. "Y-Yes, Professor?"

"Might I suggest that next time you wish to con other students into joining in on your childish antics…you ensure they do /not/ leave incriminating evidence behind?" She produced a blue slipped from the folds of her robes and swirled on the spot, holding it out to Peter who jumped. "I believe this belongs to you, Pettigrew?" Sure enough, on the sole of the slipper were the initials. P.P.

Peter paled considerably and looked to his friends to aid. Sirius winced and cringed on the spot while James sighed and slapped a palm to his forehead.

"Detention for the lot of you!" McGonagall snapped, whirling on her heel and storming back into the classroom to reverse the damage.

There was a few seconds of silence before James Potter drew himself up tall and clapped Sirius on the back heartily. "Job well done, I'll say!"