A/N: I'd like to apologize IMMENSELY for my lack of updates on ANYTHING. I've FINALLY managed to get SOMETHING done, though, so here it is! I've just been SO BUSY with the college stuff. I'm starting to decide what colleges I want, and what to put in my portfolio, and all that good stuff... it's kinda stressful, and so I'm REALLY sorry, but I can't be updating my fanfiction too much. I just don't have the time, otherwise I'd be writing 24/7!! I finally have chapter 11 here, though, so... yay! Enjoy!!

My conversation with Lily Evans turned out to have a beneficial impact. Lily had begun to smile at me in the corridors, and she even helped me during classes. She was not about to back down when the two of us knew the answer to a question, but she was at least forgiving if I got it right before she did. I could tell that such courtesy was new behavior for her; after all, she was still having difficulty being friendly to most people who were not me or Snape.

Despite the fact that Snape had insulted Lily, she was still polite to him. She and Snape certainly seemed friendly enough with one another that any onlooker would think them the best of friends. Weeks later, this fact had still not yet ceased to infuriate James. As a matter of fact, my increased contact with Lily Evans had made him reprimand me one night with the idea that I was "getting too close to our enemy."

"She's not our enemy," I said defensively from across the chessboard as one of his pawns wrestled one of mine.

"Anyone who threatens us by being a teachers' pet is definitely our enemy," he snarled.

I sent my queen after his pawn that had just easily defeated my sad ruin of one. "She's not threatening us," I said blankly.

"She is!" James cried indignantly. "You know that if we were to put a single toe out of line, she'd go running to McGonagall." He crossed his arms. "She's worse than those damned prefects."

I merely shrugged and turned back to the chess board. I stared as his queen checkmated my king. Moving my queen had gotten me into trouble.

James was right, of course. He was not right about Lily being our enemy, but he was right that her inane obsession with following rules could easily result in trouble for us if I let her get too close as a friend. My friends' love of breaking rules made a friendship with such a girl nearly impossible. Still, I had no particular attachment to the girl, so it didn't make much of a difference. Besides, I was not about to simply stop being kind to Lily just because James told me to. He should have been glad I was becoming friends with her; after all, James had a crush on her. He should have been viewing my friendship with Lily a way to get closer to her. James, however, was not quite that optimistic.

"Whatever," I sighed. "I'm not going to stop being friendly with her. She feels alone, and that's not a good feeling." I swallowed. "When you're alone, it helps to have someone who understands, and that's what I am to her: someone who understands. If you would take the time to be more sensitive toward her, maybe she'd want to get close to you as well. That would make you happy, wouldn't it?"

He ignored most of my speech, and merely remarked, "You're not alone!" He stood. "You have us!" Peter and Sirius nodded adamantly from behind him.

"I know," I said. "I know."

A moment of silence lingered between the four of us as James cleaned up the game from between us. After a minute, he stopped, and let his hands go limp and his face go slack with sympathy. "Listen," he said in a voice full of concern that seemed extremely out of context, "Tell us what's been going on with you. Why are you always getting sick?"

"I'm just a sickly person, I guess," I said quickly, getting to my feet as well.

"Oh, come on, Remus," Sirius said. "We all agree that you must be hiding something. No one gets ill that often… at least not ill enough that you have to leave school so much!"

"Yeah," Peter squeaked. His eyebrows were raised and his eyes were wide, clearly showing his nervousness at speaking up on this issue. He continued bravely anyway: "You get sick so much, I'm starting to think you're dying."

"I'm not dying," was all I could say.

"So then there is something you're hiding?" James questioned.

I was starting to sweat. "Can we please not talk about this?"

"Come on, Remus!" Peter squealed. "We're your friends! You can tell us."

"I would really prefer it if we just dropped this," I said, my voice now starting to shake.

"Please, Remus," James cooed. "We just want to help you."

What harm would really come of telling them?

"I…" escaped my throat, but nothing else came out. My brain was working in overdrive: if I told them I was a werewolf, they would abandon me like all my childhood friends had; if I told them, they would hate me the way everyone else did. I couldn't tell them. I just couldn't do it.

"I can't," finally fell from my lips.

"Why not?" Sirius pestered. "We're your friends, and…"

"I know all that, okay, Sirius? Just… drop it, guys. Alright?"

They fell silent. Perhaps my tone had been harsher than it was meant to be. "I'm sorry, but I just… I can't," I told them.

They were very quiet, but looked resigned to accept that I couldn't talk about it.

"Okay," James said submissively. "I'm sorry I started talking about it."

"I second that," said Sirius apologetically. "I'm sorry too."

"Me too," Peter sighed.

I looked at the group with an awkward smile. "It's okay," I told them. "Really: Thanks for understanding."

"We try, man," Sirius said with a grin and a slap on my shoulder. The air was lightened, and the tension that had been hovering there a moment ago ebbed away. Sirius was good at doing that. I smiled appreciatively at him, and laughed.

New Years had passed uneventfully. January came and went, and as the full moon rose the one night, late in the month, I told my friends a dramatic tale about how my father was in St. Mungo's for having an owl fly into his head and somehow manage to attach itself to his ear. The days of my absence were met with suspicion as usual, but my return was greeted with relief and sympathy. The three sets of eyes upon me made the guilt only increase, as they bore into me as though they knew my secret. It is the power of a true friend, I suppose, that is able somehow to make a person feel like admitting the baggage buried in the very deepest, darkest of corners in their mind.

February began, and tension rose as the end of the second week neared. February 14th was not to be highly regarded, but Professor Dumbledore certainly seemed bouncy on the day.

"Happy Valentines Day, my good boy," he said, his bright blue eyes twinkling at me. I smiled in return as he passed me to take his seat at the teachers' table in the front of the Great Hall. James, Peter, Sirius, and I made our way to the Gryffindor table hastily, to escape the squealing members of excited couples lunging at one another in the aisles.

I took my seat to James' right with Sirius to his left, and Peter across us. As the four of us began to pile fresh porridge onto our plates, a bush of red hair fell into view as Lily Evans sat beside me. She nudged my shoulder with her own in a friendly hello, and we smiled at one another. James scowled.

"Happy Valentines Day, you lot," she said sweetly as she poured herself a glass of pumpkin juice.

Sirius, Peter, and I replied "Happy Valentines Day" in return, but James merely grunted. Sirius snorted with laughter into his glass as he took a swig, simultaneously thumping James on the back with his other hand. James lurched at this, and his rounded glasses managed their way into his porridge somehow, and James groped blindly for a few minutes without aid as he struggled to return them to his face. Sirius and Peter were beside themselves with laughter, while Lily and I held our tongues despite our obvious amusement.

"I hate you guys," James remarked when he had wiped his lenses clean and placed them back on his nose. "I really, really do. I hate the lot of you— viciously."

I rumpled his hair, and Lily giggled from my right. I looked over at her in time to catch a faint blush in her cheeks as she watched James scowling in a disgruntled sort of way, his dark hair even more of a mess than it had been. "Don't kill him," she said.

I found myself no longer the only one looking at her in awe. The four of us stared openly at her. Sirius was the only one who had enough nerve to stop gawking long enough to say: "When did you start caring about what we do to James?" The rest of us nodded in agreement. James didn't move. He seemed to have shrunk slightly.

"I…" Lily was lost for words, I could tell. "I am not…" Her mouth twisted fervently as she searched for something to say. It was like watching a machine starting up, or a balloon very slowly being filled with air. Finally, she burst out with: "Oh, for crying out loud! Is it impossible for a girl to just be friendly every once in a while?" At that, she pushed herself to a standing position, and stormed off furiously, her hands balled into fists.

"Well, blimey," Sirius said breathlessly. "Did I say something?"

"No," I told him comfortingly. "She just has a problem with feeling like no one ever wants to be her friend, and I think your question just… well… added to that."

"But we were all thinking it!"

"I know," I told him. "It's not your fault."

I could tell that attempting to maintain a friendship with Lily would be difficult. She was unpredictable, and she had the temper anyone might expect from a redhead.

James reached across me, interrupting my thoughts. He pointed to Lily's plate, and raised an eyebrow at me. "D'you think she'd mind if I ate that?"

Professor Slughorn took Valentines Day deeply to heart. He handed out little heart-shaped cards to his favorite students. I was, sadly, among them, and flipped open the paper to find an invitation to a little holiday celebration in Slughorn's office. I folded it away in an inside pocket of my robes, and decided on the spot that I was most certainly not going to his stupid party.

Sirius and James amused themselves by pretending to vomit into their cauldrons as Slughorn bounced merrily around the classroom in robes far too brightly colored to even be allowed in the potions' dungeons. His round cheeks were shiny and red. We giggled silently at one another, for it was clear that the professor had drunk a bit too much fire whiskey. We could see a half empty bottle of it on his desk, sitting in plain view of all the students.

Most of the girls in the classroom were giggling airily. A majority of them were openly staring at Sirius, and laughing a bit too loudly whenever he did something stupid.

"What is wrong with the female population today?" He said, completely bewildered as a pretty girl with dark hair and glasses dropped a jar of some foul smelling liquid right by our table, blushing furiously at Sirius.

I sighed. "Beats me," I told him, though I had a pretty good idea. Even at such a young age, everyone could tell that Sirius was attractive. His dark hair fell rather handsomely in his eyes in a charming and mysterious sort of way, and it was—in Lily's words—"endearing." Lily may have hated Sirius, but it didn't stop her from having eyes, and Lily tended to say these kinds of things rather outwardly to me.

"Excuse me, Professor Slughorn," someone said meekly from the door. It was Professor McGonagall. The entire classroom looked up, astounded to see her down in the dungeons. What struck them all as odd was that she didn't seem quite as composed as usual. In fact, her eyes looked soft and tired, and her lips trembled as she scanned the room.

Slughorn looked at her curiously. "Yes, Professor, what is it?" he asked, seeming quite as confused as everyone else.

"It's nothing that needs to be announced," she said, her voice cracking. "May I have Mr. McLaggen, and his sister, too, please?"

Professor Slughorn looked taken aback, but he allowed her to summon his students out into the hallway despite the confusion plastered on his face. The girl who'd been bent beside our table wiping potions materials from the floor suddenly stood, looking frightened. She dropped her rag from her shaking hand, and it slapped wetly on the stone floor where it fell. It splashed my leg as it hit the ground, and I swooped down to retrieve it for her when she returned. The poor girl looked utterly terrified as she followed her brother, Tiberius, from the room.

The entire dungeon buzzed with the silence that filled it once the door had clanked shut. My ears were strained, as everyone else's were, listening for what McGonagall was telling the pair.

Everyone waited with bated breath. What was going on? A faint squeal could be heard. The girl was crying: "No, no, no! You're lying! Tell me you're lying to me!" McGonagall's frantic attempts to cheer her up were muffled by the girl's sobs.

The siblings did not return to the class. I clung to the dirty rag, protecting it, my heart breaking silently for the girl I did not know.