"Yesterday is a promise that you've broken. Don't close your eyes... This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be?"
-Switchfoot, This Is Your Life
Things were going well as far as I could figure between Sirius and Cherry. Judging by their obvious sneaking off to snog and/or shag they'd sorted things out quite well, and Ashley and I congratulated each other on a job well done once Madam Pomfrey decided she had no choice but to buy the pathetic story that I'd fallen off my broom and was just shaken up.
Finally, I knew things were going well because Sirius and Remus sat Cherry and I down in a room in a remote part of the castle one afternoon, grins on their adorable faces. Cherry and I raised our eyebrows at each other. Whatever it was, the boys were very excited about it.
"We have some things to tell you," Sirius said. "It's big news, so be prepared for exciting surprises."
"You're pregnant?" Cherry suggested dryly. I snorted.
"Very funny," Sirius sighed. "Remus, you should go first. I can hardly explain mine properly without yours."
Suddenly, it occurred to me what they were on about. They'd talked about it so long ago and so cryptically that I'd forgotten it completely with everything else that had come through our lives since then. I sat forward.
"Wait, James said you could tell Cherry?"
"Not exactly," Remus admitted.
"Tell me what?" Cherry asked, bored.
"We sort of tricked him," Sirius explained, waving off the issue. "Remus?"
"Right..." Remus muttered. "Erm, I'm a werewolf."
Cherry blinked, looked at me, back at Remus, back at me.
"Is he serious?" she asked.
"No, I am," Sirius said happily, but Cherry smacked him.
"Yeah," I said.
She blinked again.
"So you knew this? You willingly had sex with a werewolf?"
I flushed with building rage and said, "So?"
Cherry just shook her head, smiled, and said, "So I'm thinking I grossly underestimated you when we first met, sunshine."
I felt strangely proud of myself, turning back to Remus and Sirius with a barely concealed smile twitching at my lips. She turned to Remus and said, "Is that all for your part of show-and-tell, then? Or do you sprout an extra toe when you put your feet in water or something?"
Remus gave an uncomfortable chuckle.
"Ah, no, interesting as that sounds, lycanthropy is all I've got."
Cherry nodded and said sharply, "Whether you mean to or not, if you ever hurt Ali, I'm going to rip you into pieces and feed you to baby squirrels in the park. Just fair warning. I realized I never properly threatened you before and this seems like an appropriate time for throwing that out there."
Remus paled a bit and nodded frantically. "Of course. Sirius, I believe it's your turn."
"Right," Sirius said happily, as though Cherry hadn't said anything remotely troubling or concerning. "Pay close attention, both of you."
We nodded, watching.
One minute, he was standing in front of us, the next a large black dog was standing in his place. I blinked.
"Sirius?" I whispered. "Is that you?"
My question was basically answered when the dog put its paws up on Cherry's lap and began frantically licking her face.
"Oh, yeah," she said dryly, scratching him behind the ears. "Nobody else would dare assault my face like that, especially with a possibility of Sirius catching them at it."
The dog backed off and suddenly Sirius was standing before us once more.
"Sorry," he said in a completely unapologetic way. "The puppy in me sort of took over and was really excited to see you."
"I'll bet," Cherry said in a flirtatious tone that made Sirius make a sort of strangled moaning sound and Remus turn bright red.
"Wait, so you're a dog?" I asked, feeling that the conversation had gotten a bit away from the point. "When did this happen?"
"Well," Sirius chirped, "when we found out about Remus, we resolved to find a way to make things easier on him, so since we couldn't be around him in human form, we spent three years devoted to the study of becoming Animagi."
"You're speaking in plurals," I pointed out.
"Yeah," Sirius said, frowning slightly.
"Are you telling me," I continued, "that James and Peter do this too?"
"Well, yeah," Sirius said. "James is a stag and Peter's a rat."
"A rat?" Cherry said, raising her eyebrows dramatically. "Are you telling me that the little pervert turns into a small, easily hidden rodent?"
"Well, I guess if you look at it that way," Sirius muttered.
"We're not shagging without full check of the area for rats," Cherry spat.
"Oh, like he's any worse than Jasper!" Sirius snapped.
I raised my eyebrows at Remus, who just shrugged. Who the hell was Jasper?
"Except Jasper doesn't have a human brain!" Cherry hissed. "Indulge me, love. I keep Jasper away from you, you keep Peter away from me."
"I suppose that's only fair," Sirius muttered begrudgingly.
"So, Ali," Cherry said, suddenly changing the subject and her whole demeanor as she turned to me. "You're going quite well at ignoring Ginger Hellspawn and her Bespectacled Buffoon."
It was remarkable how quickly she reverted to form. Almost enviable. I sighed.
"Yeah, I'd say so. I haven't said a word to either one in ages. Poor Marlene just doesn't know what to do, so she's hiding from us."
"You mean she's hiding from Lily," Remus pointed out. "Lily's trying to force Marlene to take sides, so she's having Peter and I help hide her."
"That would explain her lack of presence in our dormitory," Cherry said with mild interest.
"When were you in your dormitory?" Sirius asked.
"I have to change clothes sometime," Cherry said dryly.
Sirius nodded as if to say that this was a decent point. He sat down and pulled her onto his lap as Remus sat down at my feet, kissing my knee tenderly before nuzzling his face against my leg.
"So how did you trick James?" I asked, scratching Remus's head, enjoying the feel of his hair on my fingers.
"Wow, hard to believe I'm the dog," Sirius laughed, nodding at the way Remus and I were sitting. I scowled at him. "Anyway, Remus held a vote to tell you, saying that if we told you James could tell Lily, and he sort of tacked Cherry's name in right at the end of the vote when James wasn't paying attention. He was too busy trying to think of the most impressive way to tell Lily."
Cherry and I began to laugh hysterically at this. I wasn't sure what she was thinking, but I was almost sure that James though that turning into a giant, antlered woodland creature was pretty much a free pass to unlimited sex.
Actually, knowing the level of magic required for Animagus transformation and Lily's fetish for power, it might just work in his favor.
"You know," Cherry sighed, "if someone had told me at the beginning of this year that this group would be my best friends, I would have rolled my eyes and told them to lay off the weed. What a year."
"Yeah," I agreed as Remus kissed my knee again. "What a year."
She was right. I'd been scared of my own shadow and she'd been queen of the underground. Sirius had been reluctantly stuck in a relationship with me and Remus had been stuck watching and waiting for the other shoe to drop. There was just absolutely no way we should have been sitting in a room together, laughing and being friends, but there we were.
"So do I want to know what you two are doing to Lily and James?" I asked, sliding onto the floor and cuddling with Remus, who wrapped his arms around me.
Cherry shook her head, grinned, and said, "Just mind yourself, princess, and it'll all turn out right. Trust me, you want plausible deniability. Let it suffice that Lily Evans shall regret her behavior."
I smiled, shook my head, and snuggled a little closer to Remus.
"Well, she deserves what she gets," I sighed. "I just wish it hadn't come to this. I mean, you'd think that any other person would realize that if one of her friends is hiding from her and the other just isn't even acknowledging her presence, she'd figure out that maybe she needs to change her ways."
Remus and Sirius exchanged uncomfortable looks and Cherry frowned.
"What?" she asked.
"Well, I mean, things have just changed so much," Sirius sighed. "Some of it's great," he added, hugging her tightly, "but some of it's really tough."
"Like what?" I whispered.
"The Marauders," Remus explained solemnly. "We stared out as the best of friends, inseparable, envied, loyal, and always supporting each other. I'm disappointed at how fast everything fell apart."
"It's not over," Sirius insisted. "Things won't ever be the same, sure, and it's not going to be easy, but we needed to change anyway, and I think that even the King and Queen of Stubborn will give in when it's hit them the damage they've done and what they're giving up to have their way."
"I hope you're right," Remus whispered.
In spite of what Remus had said when he'd punched James about James meaning more to Sirius, I realized in that moment that it had been a sort of lie. James in particular might not have been as important to Remus, but the Marauders and what they stood for were so important. To someone who had spent almost his entire life hating himself, fearing what he became, and feeling undeserving of any good things, the Marauders had become the source of all the good he saw in himself, all the hope he saw for his own future. Without the friendship, loyalty, and unadulterated acceptance of the Marauders, I was sure Remus would never have been able to work up the courage to even befriend me, much less ask me out. As angry as I was with James, within the context of the Marauders he had obviously done a lot for Remus.
As I turned that thought over in my mind throughout the day, I began to question my decision to ignore James. If he was so important to Remus, if he had done so much for Remus and, inadvertently, me, then was I maybe being a bit hard on him?
Remus could tell that something was bothering me, and when he'd crawled into his bed with me and put up charms so that we were completely sealed off from the other boys he hugged me tightly and whispered, "What's wrong?"
I tried my best to explain the dilemma to him, and when I'd finished he nodded and said, "Darling, I love you, but you're being ridiculous."
I blinked up at him, stunned. Didn't he want his friendship back?
"Just because he's done nice things for me doesn't give him the right to mistreat Cherry or you or anyone else. It took me far too many years to figure that out, but watching him use and hurt you was the final straw." He placed a gentle kiss on my temple. "I want James as my friend, but only if he can learn to fix his faults. You're perfectly justified in ignoring him, and I hope you don't give up over something like this. You're doing the right thing, if only by making them uneasy, and I love when you stand up for things."
"Really?" I whispered, raising my eyebrows as he peeled off his shirt and crawled on top of me, kissing his way up my torso.
He nodded as he reached my collarbone and growled, "It's that loyal Hufflepuff in you that appeals to the chivalrous Gryffindor in me and turns me on completely."
I shivered as his hand raked through my hair, mussing it up and running his tongue along my collarbone.
"You taste delicious," he moaned.
We got so wild that we almost rolled off his bed at one point, which would have made all our protective charms utterly useless, but Merlin, it was worth the risk.
At the end of the night, though, we were laying placidly in his bed, completely tangled up in each other, sighing contentedly and kissing languidly.
"Is this the right thing?" I whispered sleepily. "Petty revenge?"
Remus sighed, hugging me a little tighter.
"I don't know, but there are more important questions of right or wrong, and you can't say it's undeserved."
Deciding he was right, I curled up in his strong, scarred arms and fell happily asleep.