Author's Note: I re-vamped the chapter structure on July 15, 2020, to go from 11 enormous chapters to 25 reasonably sized ones. I didn't change or add anything, except fixing some typos or grammatical things, so there is no need to re-read.

Apologies if you got a message and though there was an update to the sequel. There will be one in the next day or two!

Sirius had thought that his efforts to procure potions ingredients over the break would be enough to convince James that it was unnecessary to sneak into Hogsmeade. He was still hesitant to make the leap from more-or-less harmless pranks to breaking serious rules and committing crimes, especially since he was already on such thin ice with his grandfather, but James was still insisting that there was no other way. Sirius, unfortunately, hadn't been able to come up with a viable alternative for obtaining a few of the most highly controlled substances, but he still hated to admit that James was right.

His fate was sealed the second Saturday in March, when Remus failed to return from his transformation. Normally on days after a full moon he would make his way back to Gryffindor Tower by mid-morning and spend several hours resting in their dormitory, only emerging after his friends had brought him lunch in bed. On this particular day, however, he still hadn't turned up by lunchtime, and they were all rather worried.

Professor McGonagall looked less than impressed to have three insistent third-years piled into her office demanding answers. Although it must be said that it was infinitely preferable to have them in her office because they were demanding answers from her, than to have them in her office because she was demanding answers from them to get to the bottom of whatever they'd done, which was the usual way of things.

"Boys, I can assure you that Mr. Lupin is just fine," she repeated for the third time, though by then her patience was wearing thin and so was her veneer of polite professionalism. "He has permission from the headmaster to visit his ailing mother—"

"Professor McGonagall," interrupted James, "we know that's not true."

She looked taken aback for a moment, her nostrils flaring and her eyebrows lifting on her high forehead. She gave James a pointed look. "You—you allknow?"

"You mean did Sirius Black notice that his roommate was always missing on the full moon and not ask his grandfather to have the beast executed forthwith?" demanded Sirius. The normally open, cheerful expression that he found himself wearing around his Gryffindor friends had closed off into the cold, haughty mask that his family had cultivated since his childhood. The guilty expression in the professor's eyes was enough to confirm his suspicions, and Sirius wondered again at the fact that his fellow Gryffindors still thought the worst of him because of his last name and automatically assumed that he would revert to what they thought of as Slytherin proclivities as soon as something bothered him.

McGonagall appeared to think it best to neither confirm nor deny his accusation. Instead she said, "Very well. Mr. Lupin is still under Madam Pomfrey's care, but she tells me that he will be released this evening."

"Oh, well, we'll just go see him, then," said James, already turning towards the door.

"Absolutely not!" declared Professor McGonagall. "Your friend needs rest and relaxation, and you two"—here she narrowed accusing eyes on James and Sirius—"are the least relaxing set of miscreants I have ever met."

"But—" they both began at once, but their Head of House was having none of it.

"Do not test me, Mr. Black and Mr. Potter," she said with a severe frown. "Now, off with you! And I had better not hear that any of you were within viewing distance of the infirmary."

A significant look passed between James and him when Sirius turned in the direction of his friend to make his way out the door. The three boys turned as one down the short corridor back towards the main staircase, conscience of the fact that Professor McGonagall might well check to make sure they'd gone in the correct direction. They went a couple of corridors further than strictly necessary before turning to head back towards the hospital wing.

"What are you doing?" demanded Peter. He had stopped in his tracks as his two friends started into one of the secret passages behind a portrait on the fourth floor.

James looked at him with the part pitying, part annoyed looked that he seemed to have developed just for Peter's sake. "We're going to see Remus, of course."

"McGonagall said—" began Peter, but James quickly cut him off.

"You're not afraid of a little trouble, are you?" he challenged.

"I don't want to get in trouble for that—" Peter started, and Sirius knew that he was about to say aloud that he didn't want to risk his own neck on account of a werewolf. Fortunately, he caught Sirius's wide-eyed glare from behind James's shoulder and instead said, "that, er, silly of a reason. McGonagall said that he's fine, and we'll see him later today."

Peter's prejudices against werewolves had hardly abated over the months they'd all been friends, though he tolerated Remus's presence for the sake of being friends with Sirius and James. Sirius had privately assured him that he also hadn't forgotten what Lupin was, and that was partially true. The other half of the truth, which he hadn't told Peter, was that hanging out with Remus had made him begin to seriously reconsider whether everything he'd been taught about werewolves was entirely true. He was still somewhat uncomfortable with the idea, but the largest part of Sirius's tolerance for Remus was some mixture of longing to belong in Gryffindor and a newfound hatred for all of the rules imposed on him from all sides. If James thought that being friends with a secret werewolf was fine, then Sirius would play along for the sake of maintaining his recent increase in status. And if everybody around them thought that being friends with a werewolf was dangerous and simply not done, then of course Sirius had to do it.

Sirius didn't want to actually visit Remus in the hospital wing any more than Peter did, but it wasn't because Remus was a werewolf. It was because he knew that the likelihood of getting a detention out of it was very high. Still, sacrifices must be made in order to maintain the peace, and there wasn't any way to talk James out of going.

He stepped forward to swing a restraining arm around James's shoulders and offered Peter a half smile full of the understanding that he knew the other boy thought they had on the subject. "I'm sure nobody will notice a quick drop in."

Everybody in the hospital wing, as it turned out, noticed their visit. This was primarily because James was completely unable to modulate the volume of his voice when he saw the state of his friend, who was propped up with an unreasonable number of pillows and covered in bandages and some sort of bitter-smelling ointment.

"What happened?!" demanded James. He reached out as if to touch the bandage that ran across the left side of Remus's face and over his eye, but smartly thought better of it and let his hand fall limply back to his side.

"Oh, you're here." Remus opened his uncovered eye. He didn't sound as pleased as Sirius would have expected. "You—you shouldn't have come."

Peter huffed from his place standing a bit behind Sirius, but Sirius didn't think anybody else heard him.

"Of course we should have come!" exclaimed James, still too loudly.

A group of girls who were surrounding one of their friends in a bed across the infirmary stopped talking and turned nearly as one to glare at him. Sirius felt a distinct desire to reach out and whack James on the back of the head as hard as he could, but he was thwarted by the sudden appearance of Madam Pomfrey herself.

"MR. POTTER!" she shouted from her office door, and every student in the infirmary swiveled around to look. She crossed the large room in less time than Sirius would have thought possible, and only when she was close enough to speak without shouting did she loose a glare on all three of them and continue. "You boys were explicitly told not to visit Mr. Lupin! He needs uninterrupted rest, and you can be sure that I informed Professor McGonagall as soon as I saw that you'd come to harass him!"

Peter groaned. Sirius was hard pressed not to follow his example, although he'd known that they would end up in trouble over this.

James, however, insisted, "We're not harassing him! We just wanted to see if he was all right!"

"Of course he's all right! He's under my care!" The matron was clearly affronted at the implication that anybody needed to double check the status of her patients.

Sirius collared James as he gesticulated wildly in Remus's direction, thankfully before he actually managed to open his mouth and retort that it didn't look like Pomfrey was taking good care of his friend. He yanked sharply on the handful of James's robes he'd grabbed and began dragging him backwards towards the doors, speaking over him as his friend tried to protest.

"You're right, Madam Pomfrey. We were just worried about our friend, but clearly he needs some peace and quiet."

She glared them all the way out the door, where James finally freed himself from Sirius's grasp and turned on him with a furious look of his own.

"What was that for?"

"Honestly, James, I'd rather not get a double or triple detention just because you can't keep your big mouth shut," Sirius told him calmly. He realized, of course, that he wasn't exactly the best example of self-control on that front, but there was no need to bring up ancient history.

"That was probably a good decision, Mr. Black," came the strict voice of Professor McGonagall just before she appeared around the corner of the corridor leading back towards her office. She was still clutching a quill in her hand, as if she had left her office in such a hurry that she'd forgotten to put it down. "You already have a double detention for disobeying my direct instructions. This Saturday—"

James cut her off with a horrified gasp. "But Professor! Next Saturday is the match against Hufflepuff, and we have an all-day practice scheduled for this Saturday!"

Professor McGonagall's frown deepened, and Sirius was sure that she was going to give them detention next Saturday as well as punishment for the outburst. Then, to his surprise, she furtively looked around and took a step closer to their group, raising her plain black quill, which was just as no-nonsense and free of embellishments as its owner, and pointed it half an inch from James's nose.

"You won't tell anybody about this, Potter!"

James, eyes shining with mischief, nodded his assent. "Of course not, Professor McGonagall."

Sirius found the quill direct at him next, and he assured his Head of House that he wouldn't breathe a word, quickly followed by Peter doing the same.

"Very well," said Professor McGonagall. "You will all report to my office on Saturday three weeks hence. And you had better squash Hufflepuff next week! Pomona is getting too big for her britches after Hufflepuff's win against Ravenclaw."

Later, after they returned to their common room, Sirius had no choice but to admit that Remus needed help sooner rather than later. He and James covertly passed notes about their upcoming foray into Hogsmeade, as their plans had been severely disrupted by Professor McGonagall having just given them detentions on that day. Peter, for his part, didn't even bother to pretend not to notice that he was being excluded from something. His displeasure was evident to all who saw him. However, James seemed to find his silent treatment rather more amusing than anything else. Sirius felt bad for Peter, whom he knew wanted nothing more than to be respected, but on the other hand he was a bit pleased that James wasn't likely to give the smaller boy any reason to transfer his loyalty from Sirius to James.

He felt even worse for Remus when he entered the common room some time later, and there wasn't even another hand to make it better. He came in with his head down and a barely noticeable limp, and he probably wouldn't have even been noticed if he hadn't shuffled right into a passing seventh year girl, who promptly gasped and stared in wide-eyed surprise at his face in the midst of their mutual apologies. After that, everybody noticed the ugly red line that bisected Remus's eyebrow and ran along the side of his face to curve slightly over his cheek.

"It was just an accident," he announced loudly enough for everybody to hear. "I went home to visit my mother, you see, and my father is something of an inventor and I got caught in the crosshairs."

It was an unbelievable story, to Sirius's ears, but their fellow students seemed to take it at face value.

Even Lily Evans braved the proximity of James and Sirius in order to come over to their usual spot in the common room to check on Remus. "Oh, it isn't so bad, Remus," she told him, though she was clearly lying. After he gave her an incredulous look, she gave up and said, "Oh, but maybe you should go see Madam Pomfrey, just in case she can do something about it."

Remus offered a small smile in response to her efforts. "Thanks, Lily, but I've already seen her. It was a lot worse before, and she tells me that it will become less noticeable over time, but she couldn't remove the scar entirely."

The boys retreated to their dormitory soon after that, on account of Remus's clearly increasing discomfort with the scrutiny of everybody in the common room. Sirius expected that as soon as they were alone Peter would act disinterested, James would hover and demand the real story, and he would play referee as he usually did. However, James Potter's fickle attention had apparently been thoroughly distracted from his best friend's injuries and onto much more important matters.

"Lily? Lily, Remus?" he squawked as soon as he'd shut the heavy wooden door behind him. "Since when are you on a first name basis with Evans?"

Remus looked a bit hurt, if unsurprised. He settled onto his bed with a little sigh of relief before he turned cool eyes and a calm voice on his friend. "Since last year. She's been helping me with Charms and I've been helping her with Defense."

James gawked at him. "Since last year? How didn't I know about this?"

"Because Lily doesn't want anything to do with you, so we've been meeting while you and Sirius have Quidditch practice or detention."

"How come she wants anything to do with you, seeing as you're friends with James and all?" asked Sirius, before Potter could get another word in.

"We've agreed to disagree about our respective choices in friends." Remus shrugged, then winced a bit when the movement pulled at one of his bandages.

Sirius expected a further blow up, but James surprised him by turning sharply on his heel and storming out of the dormitory rather than yelling or making any accusations. Sirius was grateful and sunk down onto his bed without further comment. He really couldn't care less that Remus had been doing schoolwork with Evans behind their backs, but he suspected that James's obsession with the girl was only going to get worse after this revelation. If he was jealous of Snivellus of all people—greasy, big-nosed, ugly Snivellus, whom Evans clearly only saw as a friend—then how much more jealous was he going to be of Remus, who, for all that he was a werewolf, was a reasonably attractive boy.

"You know," added Remus, "Lily dislikes you almost as much as she dislikes James. Over something Emmeline Vance told her, apparently."

Sirius propped himself up on his elbows to get a better look at the boy in the bed next to his. "Since when do Evans and Vance talk?"

Remus's mouth twitched as if he were holding back a smile. "For a while now. I suppose you wouldn't have noticed, since you only have eyes for pranks and Janice Edgecomb."

Even though Sirius wasn't sure at first whether to believe that Evans, Vance, and Macdonald had somehow gotten over their grievances and become friends without him noticing, he was able to confirm it the next morning during Ancient Runes. Snape and Mary Macdonald had both decided not to take the class (He had heard that Snape had talked Slughorn into giving him an extra project in Potions but that the professor had only been able to accommodate him during this class period, while he assumed the Mary was just not smart enough to handle the class.), and Sirius noticed for the first time that Evans and Vance sat together at a table several rows behind his.

Remus noticed him looking at the girls and actually risked passing a note from his table directly behind Sirius's. I told you so.

Sirius was not impressed, but Peter, who sat beside Remus, thought it was funny enough that Professor Dower nearly caught him snickering into his hand. Janice's soft hand brushed Sirius's as she curiously pulled the scrap of paper over to her side of their table, and she glanced at him in question after reading it. But there was no opportunity for him to explain what was going on during class, not with the professor already suspicious of them due to Peter's behavior, and after class he and his fellow Gryffindors had to make a mad dash to make it all the way from the sixth floor to the dungeons in time for Potions.

Everything seemed to go back to normal there, with Evans joining Snape at their usual station and Vance joining Macdonald, who had just come from Care of Magical Creatures, and each pair seeming to ignore the other. James, who trailed in after Macdonald, looked just as unhappy as he always did after Care of Magical Creatures. He hadn't wanted to load himself down with all of the difficult classes and hadn't seen any need to take Ancient Runes to become an Auror, but that had been before he'd realized that all three of his friends had chosen Runes instead of Care of Magical Creatures. (Sirius thought that James had the right idea about not taking difficult classes if they were going to be virtually useless in his life, but his parents and grandfather never would have allowed him not to take Ancient Runes, so he couldn't follow his friend's example.)

With a last look between Evans and Vance, and a sympathetic smile in James's direction, Sirius took his seat next to Peter just as Slughorn was bustling up the aisle towards the front of the room. James glared unhappily in return as he took his usual seat next to Remus. He was clearly still angry with the other boy.

"Do you think he'll get over it soon?" whispered Peter as soon as Slughorn turned to write on the blackboard.

"Eventually," replied Sirius. A thought occurred to him then, and he glanced sideways at his friend and asked in a tone more accusing than he'd intended, "Say, where were you during Remus's little meetings?"

Peter held up his hands in surrender. One was covered in purple goo and the other was still clutching his scalpel. "I didn't know any more than you did. He always told me he was going to the library, and of course I didn't want to go, so I just stayed in the tower."

Sirius nodded and turned his attention back to his work station, his tongue poking out a bit between his thin lips as he concentrated on holding a root still so that he could slice at it.

"What'd you do, then?"

"Mostly read my father's journals," Peter responded.

Sirius nodded again in understanding. Peter and he hadn't had much opportunity to keep up with their various Dark Arts pursuits ever since becoming friendly with Potter and Lupin the year before. There were only so many excuses they could use, either together or separately, to get away from their dorm mates without the two insisting to be allowed to come along or else getting suspicious. Sirius had taken to claiming that he was seeing Janice between classes or on evenings when he really wasn't, just so he could slip down to the dungeons for a few minutes and cast a few Dark spells to alleviate the almost-constant itch he could feel under his skin. Peter had no such excuse, but at least he was able to openly read some of his father's potions journals without fear of James or Remus looking over his shoulder, and apparently he'd been able to read the ones that he couldn't risk his friends seeing when they were all out of the dormitory.

"Here," said Peter suddenly, grabbing hold of Sirius's wrist to stop him from further mutilating his root, "you can crush them instead if all you want is the juice." Sirius tried out the technique that his friend demonstrated and was pleased to get significantly better results than he'd been getting by trying to slice it. Peter watched him with his head held by an arm propped up against their table, having finished with all of his own work already. Then he declared, "I want to know what you and James are doing."

Sirius paused in his work for a split second, but it was long enough for Peter to notice his discomfort. "We'll tell you soon," he assured. "It's just that right now the fewer people who know, the better."

"Does Remus know?"

"No," Sirius confirmed. Peter looked pleased that at least he wasn't the only one out of the loop. "Look, trust me when I say that you don't want to know right now."

That wasn't even a little bit of a fib. Sirius was quite sure that if he told Peter about their plan to sneak off school grounds, break into the Hogsmeade apothecary, and steal several strictly controlled ingredients, then his friend would immediately regret having been told. It wasn't that he didn't trust Peter not to tell; although Sirius had frequently been annoyed at the open and talkative Peter of their first year, his friend had more than proved himself by now. Rather it was that Peter wouldn't like to be an accomplice to such serious crimes. Sirius perfectly understood his position, since it wasn't like he was a Black or a Potter with a rich, powerful family standing behind him to catch him if he were to take the fall. Sirius was uncomfortable enough about it, and he did know that he'd be able to complete his education and go on to live his life just as had always been planned even if he were expelled from Hogwarts.

Peter looked skeptical at the idea that he wouldn't want to know, but his experience with Sirius had long since taught him when it was safe to question and when it wasn't. Reluctantly he replied, "Fine. But you will tell me?"

"Yes."

"When?" he demanded.

"Soon!" repeated Sirius. And the sooner the better, if he had anything to say about it. Neither James nor he were any good at potion brewing, and they would need Peter to take the lead on that aspect of things if they were going to succeed. Even if James didn't like to admit it.