A/N. ANOTHER CHAPTER!
This chapter is going to lack comedic stuff (I know, I'm so articulate because "stuff" is obviously and intelligent word). It's a bit dramatic and I really wanted for their to be an obvious growth in all of the characters by the end of the chapter because they're nearing the end of their time at Hogwarts and have to prepare themselves for war.
Also, my FOMB, (his name is March) brought home a cat today... The idiot says "It was on the side of the road and shivering. You think I can deny shivering kitties?" -_- idiot.
ENJOY!
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Wolf's Den
Mud splashed up her legs as Hermione sprinted toward the Whomping Willow. With all of the rain, she almost slipped and fell on the grass three times, but she was too frantic to slow down or care.
It wasn't until she was halway to the hidden entrance in the tree that she realized she hadn't transformed before slipping under the Willow's perilous branches. And by then it was too late. One of the thick and spiky boughs dove down and into Hermione's side, knocking her several feet. With a grunt of pain, Hermione quickly and clumsily picked herself up from the muddy ground to try run for the trunk again. A second branch swung down and she dodged it, only to fall backwards into another.
"SEVERUS!" she screamed desperately, hoping he would hear her voice as she leaped over another branch, ducking under angry limb after angry limb. She felt like she was going to a vicious, paniful pinball machine, being knocked from side to side and continuing to bounce back and up.
With a push of her legs, Hermione leapt for the entrance at the base of the Willow and narrowly made it. She frantically crawled down the dusty, cramped tunnel to the Shack, screaming for Severus.
She found Severus a split second after he opened the door to where she knew Moony was being caged.
She only heard Moony's snarl as she tackled Severus to the side. "RUN, SEVERUS!" she shouted, shoving him harshly towards the exit. Severus looked a mixture of petrification and disgust. He was too transfixed by the monster to move fast enough.
Moony was rearing up and howling. The open doorway between he and the humans was too narrow for him to get through. Remus's wolf form was very large - one of the distinguishing traits between he and a natural wolf. His huge paws swiped through the opening, clawing at his prey and the doorframe.
With a wail that shook the entire house, Moony broke through the frame.
"OUT!" Hermione hollered again.
In the same second that Severus began really hawling his way out, Moony's great paw crashed downward and ripped through the flesh of Hermione's back.
White hot, searing pain went through Hermione as she shrieked in time with Moony's howl. She went to the floor, but before the werewolf could come down on her again, Severus grabbed her roughly by her arm and
Now there was blood in the air and more than she knew the agony of her shredded skin, she knew blood was bad in the Shack. Severus was saying her name over and over, trying to pulled her with him as they made it through another narrowed doorway.
They scrambled the rest of the way out, yelling incoherently as they went.
When they surfaced underneath the Willow, Severus and Hermione ran for their lives, but halfway the Hogwarts the blood loss was too much for her. The edges of her vision went fuzzy and the last thing she saw was the ground.
...~oOo~...
Sirius Black did not enjoy seeing his Transfiguration professor in her nightgown and cap as much as he should have.
Mostly because he had never received such a vicious scolding in his life. Walburga Black had nothing on Minerva McGonagall, that was for sure. After the berating she gave him for doing such a foolish, insensitive, insane, disrespectful, illegal, awful, inhumane thing as pull a prank of such terrible volumes on Snape. After a while, she had just been spitting out adjectives that he didn't know existed which was enough to have him god-smacked.
The lecture had hit Sirius really hard considering only moments before he was treated to the horror of seeing his sister, limp and soaked with red, be carried into the Infirmiry by Hagrid - also in his nightclothes - and followed by Snape who was even more pale than he usually was.
Sirius could have sworn she was dead and he knew he had been responsible for it.
He'd freaked out. Screaming, he'd thrown himself out of bed on his recently magically-mended knee cap only to be shoved back onto to by a horrified-looking James. His best friend had been the one to fetch the teachers the moment Sirius let slip during their sleepover in the Infirmiry what he'd told Snape when the Slytherin brough him his potions.
"She's alive," James had murmured, still looking petrified. "But...she's lost a lot of blood. Moony got her."
"Oh Merlin, is she -"
"She wasn't bitten," James hastily added. "Just scratched. She should be safe..."
"Should be?" Sirius demanded, his voice raising to a pitch he hadn't had since he was thirteen.
"Depends..." James had mumbled. "Lycanthropy is transmitted through exchange of saliva, so if Moony, say, licked his paw..."
And then McGonagall had laid it into him, so really the entire evening had made Sirius want to throw himself from the highest hoop on the Quidditch pitch - oh, wait, he already did that earlier in the day and he'd survived. Astronomy Tower, then.
Once Hermione's entire torso was wrapped in white bandages and James, Sirius, and Severus all sat around her in pensive silence, Dumbledore said, "In the morning, we shall all have a long discussion. But for now, everyone should return to your beds and reflect on the evening."
...
The voice was apologizing over and over. It was a soft voice she recognized, but not with the dry rasp in its timbre. Hermione was awake, but floating in between dream and reality. The voice was dragged her to the top of consciousness and once she was full awake, but her eyes were closed, the night before came flooding in and her eyes snapped open and she whipped upward into a sitting position.
"Oh my God, Hermione, thank God you're okay," said the muffle voice.
Remus's head was bowed into her blanket-covered thigh. All she could see of him was his sandy hair that covered his ears and the back of his neck now and one of his large, hands wrapped securely around her ankle. She could see that his shoulders were shaking.
"Remus, it's ok-"
"If you say it's okay," he practically growled into the blanket, "I swear, I'll scream." His voice was taut as a wire and thick with loathing for...himself. "It's not okay, Hermione."
"Remus -"
"Stop. I know I hurt you. I could have killed you. Worse than that - I could have infected you." His voice trembled as much as his shoulders, but not in a weary way, but in a raging way. Remus was angry.
"Please, Remus," she begged softly. "Look at me."
Remus picked up his head and she saw three deep scratches cutting across his handsome face. They were the wounds that would become the scars she knew so well in her future.
Hermione remembered first seeing him on the train in her Third Year with Harry and Ron and seeing those thin, pink and silver scars and wondering how he could have gotten them. And then when she realized he was a werewolf, she assumed it could have been the lycanthrope who changed them.
And then, of course, she'd met him for the second "first time" and his face was clear of such marring. Now she knew that he'd done the damage himself.
The raw slices were being held together by butterfly bandage strips. Because they were done by a werewolf, there was no magically healing them. They'd have to close on their own, and even then - as she knew well - they'd never truly disappear.
"You can't blame yourself for this," Hermione told him, looking him directly into his silver blue eyes.
"I could have bitten -"
"Yes, you could have," Hermione said calmly. "But it still wouldn't have been your fault. And I would never be angry at you for something..." And then she remembered who was to blame. The curtains were drawn around his bed, but out of the slit she could just make out a sliver of long black hair.
Hermione tore out of her bed abruptly and marched across the room to the shut curtains and ripped them aside. Inside was Sirius Black propped up in his bed with his arm in a sling, James sitting next to him.
But Hermione's face was the color and intensity of fire and whatever they'd been discussing was suddenly not important at all.
"You! You worthless boy!" she spat, pointing straight at her brother. "This is entirely your fault! Do you have any clue what could have happened?" She launched herself towards him, but James and Remus were quick to hold her back until she had herself in check.
His head was bowed in shame. "Yes, I know, Hermione, you and Snape could have died and -"
"Me and Snape?" she shrieked. "To hell with me and Snape! Think about Remus! Do you know what would have happened to him if Severus or I had been bitten or killed? He would have been thrown in Azkaban! Werewolf laws dictate that he'd have been sentenced to the Kiss!" Hermione choked on her words and had to stop a moment while she gathered herself. Her eyes were welling up and the tears were starting to spill over.
She took a deep, quivering breath. Her entire body was shivering and her hands were curled into white-knuckled fists. "Even if he hadn't made it to court," she said through clenched teeth, "if no one knew it was him...can you imagine what he'd have to live with every day?" With every words her voice grew in volume and pitch. "He's too kind to ever blame you - no. He'd carry the guilt that you deserve until it drove him mad!"
Sirius's face had never been so pale. It was the color of milk.
"I actually began to think you matured," Hermione hissed in disgust, the tears still rolling over her cheeks and down her chin. "How wrong I was. How could you be so petty as to risk the life of a schoolmate and your best friend."
"I didn't know you would be there -"
"NOT ME. REMUS. DON'T YOU EVER THINK OF HIM? DO EITHER OF YOU?" Her gaze flicked between both James and Sirius. "The two of you always go around, pulling pranks, acting like nothing can touch you - but do you ever stop to think about Remus? His full moons are more than an opportunity for you to play and be animals for a few after-curfew hours! He goes through pain you'll never know and you trivialize it, treat it like a bloody game!"
"Hermione..." a strained, sad voice said behind her.
"Quiet, Remus," she said. "They need to hear this." She spun back on her brother. "I should skin you for what you did."
"Hermione," Remus said, firmer. His voice was dry and he was right behind her. "You're...bleeding."
Hermione twisted her neck and saw the blood coming through her bandages and staining her hospital gown. Moving so much and attacking Sirius probably stretched the wounds open even under all the bandages.
"I'm fine, Remus," she said softly, still crying. She looked back to her brother sadly and opened her mouth to say something more, but closed it and shook her head. She turned around and began to pad away, barefoot on the cold hospital wing floor.
Once Hermione was back to her bed, she sat on the edge of it and dropped her face into her hands to cry. James must have closed the curtains again because she she glanced up she could no longer see Sirius or him.
Remus was standing a few feet away hesitantly. He obviously didn't want to impinge on her personal space when she was so distraught.
Knowing that he wouldn't be coming any closer, she slid off the edge of her cot and shuffled over to him and wrapped her arms tightly around his ribs, burrowing her face into his hard chest.
"God, Hermione," he rasped, winding his arms around her shoulders and her lower back and pulling her in tighter. He'd needed her close - he had since he woke up in the Shrieking Shack - but he had no idea how to communicate that to her. He was so convinced she in abhorrence of him, but he should have known better from Hermione.
"I'm so sorry, Remus," she whispered. Her tears were wetting the front of his t-shirt and neither cared. "I should have -"
"Hermione," he said slowly, puzzlement in his tone. "How did you know...it was Sirius who told Snape? You'd been unconscious all night..."
Oh, no. She'd forgotten that no one in this timeline had told her that Sirius had been the one to pull the "prank" - she just knew that from her past/future. She paused and quickly fabricated a lie.
"I was sort of...in and out of consciousness," she explained quietly, hoping he didn't detect her falsehood.
"Oh," he said simply. He nuzzled his face into her wild, sleep-frizzy hair and breathed her in. But he wasn't sure whether or not she fully believed him.
...~oOo~...
Sirius narrowly missed being expelled. The only reason he wasn't was because in order to expel a student, there had to be documentation of why. That "why" would expose Remus's condition and his position in the school would be jeopardized and Dumbledore would be put in a difficult place. He would be hated for allowing a werewolf among minors and Remus would be tarred and feathered.
Sirius couldn't even be given an obscene amount of detentions, also because of documentation. The most without have to fill out forms was two weeks - and that's what he was given.
"And I do believe, Mr. Black," Dumbledore said with the most somber expression anyone had every seen him wear, "that Professor McGonagall and Miss Black gave you - and will continue to give you - enough castigation for a lifetime."
Everyone silently agreed with that.
The Marauders temporarily disbanded for two entire months. Everyone in the school saw this happen and all were extremely curious as to how the obnoxious and lively Padfoot became a sullen and depressed Sirius or how his attached-to-hip sister, the know-it-all swot, found no joy in correcting anyone anymore.
During their "break" Hermione was the one to go through the full moons with Remus. James and Lily became official boyfriend and girlfriend and got very close. Sirius decided that if his best friend was going to snog Evans instead of hang out with him, he was going to find some girls of his own to snog. He always had his reputation for snogging the random girl and never leaving any evidence of it - so much that when the girl tried to brag, no one believed them. This was mostly do to the fact that one of the biggest appeals of Sirius Black was that he didn't seem to notice girls at all and never reacted to their advances - it was a big advocate to the bad boy persona.
But now Sirius was snogging a different girl every other day, taking the free day between girls to hang out with James and Lily.
Remus and Hermione would almost always be found in the library in almost complete silence. One of the biggest theories among the student body was that Remus and Hermione's "romance" came between the brother and sister, and thus between the entire group.
They had no clue it had been something much more severe.
At the end of these two months, Hermione invited Remus to come to her common room to study for the night because it was much quieter than Gryffindor Tower. They walked through the portrait and found none other than their other lost Marauders, sitting on the couch.
Remus and Hermione stopped in their tracks as they stared at Sirius and James and they stared back.
With a deep breath, Sirius stood up and said with strength and sincerity, "I'm sorry, Remus. And I'm sorry, Hermione."
Without pause, Remus walked over to Sirius and gave him a firm pat on his shoulder. "I forgive you, Padfoot."
Everyone looked to Hermione. James looked with a cringe, bracing himself for another of her famous freak-outs. Sirius looked afraid that he'd lost her forever. But Remus looked to her with a small smile, knowing exactly what she'd say.
Hermione sighed. "Fine. I forgive you too. Not because I want to, but because of peer pressure."
Sirius let out a relieved breath. "Thank Merlin's shorts for that. I have a Potions essay that I'll never be able to finish without you."
...~oOo~...
A/N. PLEASE REVIEW! AND VOTE (check chapter 22 for voting details)!
Challnge: 1. Favorite part and line? 2. Is there anything you want to see in upcoming chapters? 3. Favorite character and couple?
~ So Long And Thanks For All The Fish ~