After the night they went out and talked, Sirius woke up with a terrible hangover and looked a little as if he had been run over by a centaur. He had approached Remus the next day in the hall.

"Look, Moony," he had whispered, "about last night-"

"It's fine, Sirius."

"No, no. I am sorry. I acted terrible. I'm pretty terrible. But um. Would you mind keeping quiet about what I told you?"

"I won't tell anyone you're queer."

Sirius, to Remus's surprise, had shrugged at that. "I doubt anyone would believe you anyway," he said. "I meant about Regulus. I don't want his Slytherin friends teasing him or giving him any bullshit about his—his problem, whatever it is. They would, you know."

"Of course, Sirius. I wouldn't mind."

Sirius had smiled, and wandered away, looking haggard. Since then, he and Remus had gotten on terrifically. They shared a secret, now, one which Peter and James knew nothing about, and this made Remus feel as if he was important. Sirius had let Remus know where he kept his supply of magazines—a cabinet on the seventh floor that one had to walk past several times while thinking of it for it to appear. Remus had investigated and found a supply of intensely boring magazines full of airbrushed photographs of nude Muggles. None of them had any pubic hair. Remus hadn't told Sirius his pornography was boring. He appreciated being let in on the secret. Sirius had a way of being able to make people he liked feel as if they were the center of the universe.

"Let's go to London over the Easter vacation, Remus," Sirius said the Friday after their talk, coming up behind Remus just after his Muggle Studies class. Remus jumped in his shoes.

"I was planning to stay at school and study," Remus said. "O. are right after the break, and I've not nearly caught up with my reading for Care of Magical Creatures."

"You can spare a few days, Remus," Sirius laughed. "Nobody's going to think any less of you if you don't get an Outstanding on caring for hinkypunks or whatever."

"I know all about hinkypunks, Sirius, I'm more concerned on the segment on dragon differentation that Kettleburn said would be so crucial-"

"Oh, come on," Sirius said, putting an arm unexpectedly around Remus's narrow shoulders. "You can study on the train. We can stay in a youth hostel when we're there, like Muggle tourists from America. I've got it all planned out—a muggle-born first-year lent me his dad's map of the thing they call the Tube. Told me about this shop where they sell motorcycles."

"I'm sure you're excited, Sirius, but this is a terrible time to do this. Can't it wait until summer?"

"It bloody well can't," Sirius said, still grinning, but with that edge in his voice.

"I'm sure James wants to be with his parents," Remus hedged. "They celebrate Easter, don't they?"

"James doesn't have to be there," Sirius said. "We can go just us. Parentless no-good juvenile delinquents should stick together, shouldn't we?"

Remus had felt the blood rush to his face in waves. "I don't," he had managed, and then spluttered for several terrible seconds, amusing Sirius. Students walked around them quickly, making a flowing pattern of movement, like a river parting. Remus didn't think Sirius entirely understood what an immense thing it was to be separated from the other Marauders, singled out in this way. Eventually, he had pulled himself together enough to tell Sirius that yes, maybe, he would think about it. That night he wrote home to his father and asked if he could go on a trip over Easter vacation. The full moon wasn't until just after the O. were over, he reminded his father. It was perfectly safe. He would be with a good friend. That week he gained back the five pounds he had lost during the week of the full moon. He ate ravenously at breakfast, drinking tea with immense amounts of cream and sugar. He had a huge appetite for everything, suddenly. His body, which had been in such pain during the last month, suddenly no longer seemed to be at war with him.

For a while there was a lull; they all fell into the habitual and frenetic pattern of studying as the days grew warmer. Remus was studying for both himself and the others, because he knew that none of them were very good at taking notes and wouldn't remember the names or dates of anything. But for Remus studying was something to do which took his mind off worry, and allowed him to feel as if everything was manageable if he prepared well enough. A tension that had pervaded Remus's life lifted, somehow, and he felt more at ease in the world. Evidently, Sirius felt the tension lift too. He shifted from the sulking, miserable person he had been just before the last full moon and became, once again, an electric rod of energy and ideas. It would have been overwhelming had Remus not known that it meant Sirius was at least feeling better.

The peace was broken abruptly one day at breakfast a two and a half weeks after Remus and Sirius had talked. It was not a day that one would have expected something bad to happen on. The sky was a clear pale blue, the color of a fish or a gleaming clean lake in the summer, and as Remus awoke the fresh air that blew into the courtyards and towers from the forest seemed to promise fullness, happiness. But bad news, Remus reflected later, does not care all that much for whether it is preceded by sufficient foreboding omens.

It began when a large black owl—Remus was not at all sure what sort of owl it was—flew in through the windows with the morning mail rush and dropped a newspaper on Headmaster Dippet's table. This was not unusual. It was Headmaster Dippet's habit to read the paper every day over breakfast. What was out of the ordinary was that Dippet looked down at the paper, jumped as if he had been prodded with something sharp, and lifted the paper up, leaving the table and pacing quickly out into the hall. The Headmaster never left the Great Hall without warning or explanation during a meal. At his exit, several other professors stood up hurriedly and followed him out. This threw the hall into an uproar as prefects rose to try and control the tables and other prefects ran out to try and find out what was wrong from the professors.

Around the hall, a few students who received daily papers looked at their own copies of the Daily Prophet, and spread the startling news: eight Muggles had been killed just outside of Little Whinging, and they had died from extended magical torture and Avada Kedavra.

The muggle-born students and half-bloods at the Gryffindor table looked immediately uneasy and many of them did not finish breakfast, instead talking in low voices over the table to one another. The details of the article spread rapidly by word of mouth even before the papers had been passed hand to hand. Remus listened to snatches of conversation and picked up quickly what had happened. The Muggles that were the initial victims of the attack had been Hogwarts-age teenagers, all sixteen and seventeen years of age. They had been in a park, smoking and playing with a fake magical object called a Ouija board, when the attack happened. A man living in a nearby house had run out to confront the attackers and been killed as well. His wife, watching from inside her house, had hidden in a garden shed, where Ministry officials had found her, interviewed her, and wiped her memory.

It was "fairly unclear" as to who the perpetrator had been, the Daily Prophet said. However, as Remus read over a copy of the article he had begged off a Ravenclaw seventh-year, he heard a peal of laughter coming from the Slytherin table and the group of Snape's friends who were gathered at one end. All of them were grinning horribly. A tall sixth-year with frizzy dark hair and wild eyes was standing on a bench and reading the article aloud in a mocking mock-poetic cadence, wand to her throat to magnify her voice, giggling between lines.

"The Muggle man who confronted the attackers attempted to defend the others by pulling a device known as a gun on the attackers," the girl cackled loudly enough for nearby tables to hear, "evidenced by the fact that the remains of this device were found near the site."

"That's so much for the Muggle tech defeating our outdated magical culture, then," a small Slytherin—Remus believed he was called Amycus—piped up. The other gathered listeners laughed and clapped him on the back in a fraternal way that made Remus's blood slightly cold.

"Listen to this," the orator continued. "They say a mysterious symbol was floating above the dead at the time of discovery-"

Someone laughed. "Oh, yes, very mysterious..."

"-at the time of discovery, which appeared to be in the shape of something like a head or a skull, with a worm, tongue or snake coming out of the mouth—if nobody objects to my saying so, this reporter seems a bit fuzzy, it may well be there was some kind of Confundus on the area from how vague they're being..."

The whole end of the table exploded into laughter. Remus looked around and caught Sirius's eye. Sirius grimaced. He looked away from Remus and down at the floor. Remus knew it was because Regulus was at the table with Snape's friends.

"Beware, Mudbloods!" one of the older Slytherins shouted. He was quickly shushed by a prefect, but everyone had heard him. Some of the first-years at the Slytherin table—many of whom were half-blood—looked as scared as any of the others in the Great Hall.

Peter was silent and very white. He stood up suddenly from the table and grabbed his bag, running out into the hall. James, Sirius and Remus looked at one another.

"I'll go after him," Remus said, and stood dutifully. He had not finished his toast, but he was no longer hungry.

Peter was only a few steps ahead of Remus, but Remus made no effort to catch him, instead following him and waiting for him to stop or slow down. Eventually, Peter turned and raced up the hallway to the library. There Remus found him crying in between the stacks of books.

"Hi," Remus said. "That was a lot to happen one breakfast, huh?"

"Ugh," Peter said. "Those fucking—they're beasts, all of them. Did you hear that girl laughing about it? Laughing about people dead-"

"It's terrible," Remus agreed. "And frankly, terrifying."

"I hate Slytherins," Peter mumbled. Fat tears were rolling down his cheeks and he tried to wipe them away.

"Not all Slytherins are like that," Remus said gingerly. "Some of them are muggle-born too, you know. They've got it worse than any of us, having to live around that lot and cheer for some of them at Quidditch."

"All right, I hate Purebloods," Peter amended, in between things that were either sniffles or sobs. "Did you see James and Sirius? They looked so- so bemused. The way James raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes..." and Peter here moaned. Remus looked down at him and wondered what to do.

"Sirius and James and the other purebloods don't understand the fear that everyone else is living with," Remus agreed.

"My mom lives near there," Peter muttered under his breath. "Near Little Whinging."

Remus didn't know what to say to that.

"If people are being killed around there..." Peter trailed off and let out a miserable cry.

Peter looked terrible. Remus sat down next to him. For a while they were still, the early morning sunlight streaming yellow through the long windows at the end of the room. Peter's shoulders shook and his sobs quietly folded in on themselves until they became muffled, squeaking whimpers. Remus was moved to something more than pity, for an instant. After all, he knew what it was like to worry that your mother was going to die. He gingerly put an arm around Peter, as Sirius had done a few days earlier to Remus. However, this did not turn out to be a good idea. Peter's shoulders stiffened and he looked up quickly, his nose red and snot tracing the patch of light fuzz growing over his mouth.

"I'm sorry," Remus started to say, and faltered.

Peter's pale gray eyes betrayed none of what he was thinking, but he shook off Remus's arm and stood up. "I have to get to class," he said. And, wiping his nose, he stumbled away.