— CHAPTER FOURTEEN —

Lupin's Guide to Losing

March began strangely. Clearly there was some sort of flu going around Hogwarts; many people began skipping classes because they were too ill to attend. Peter was the most recent victim; that morning James had gone to take the boy to the Hospital Wing, whilst Remus and Sirius made their way to Defence class.

"Weird how the professors have done nothing about it," said Sirius darkly.

Remus hadn't been alone with Sirius since they'd had a row (one-sided or otherwise), so it was still a little awkward to walk with him in that first-floor corridor. Nevertheless, he said, "Right. I feel like they've been distracted lately."

"Whatcha mean?"

"Urgh," Remus said, bumping into Sirius to avoid a swarm of insects skittering across the castle floor, into the flagstone crevices. "Sorry."

Sirius looked at him expectantly, clearly waiting for an answer.

Well, he really meant what he'd said about Jewel, still remembering the man's longing gazes out windows and his repeated glances at his bedroom door. But he couldn't tell Sirius about that.

"Dunno, just what I've observed," he finally said.

Sirius cocked an eyebrow. "Remus—"

The sound of an explosion interrupted Sirius. It was nearby, and strong enough to rock Remus's body. Sirius ducked down, forcing Remus to the stone floor with him.

"Are you all right?" asked Sirius after a few moments.

"Yes," said Remus, though he was a little shaken. "What was that?"

"I don't know," said Sirius, standing up. "Let's find out."

"Are you sure?" Remus asked, but Sirius was already moving.

They walked cautiously in the direction of the noise, rounding corners of the corridors with a slow but measured pace. Soon, they began to follow the direction of smoke, which surely had come from the explosion. The only thing that curbed his fear was his curiosity.

The final corridor they turned into was dark, with no torches to light it up. When Remus's eyes adjusted to the smoke, he gasped.

To his horror, there was a shadowy figure vaguely visible in the smoke. They leaned over something, but Remus couldn't make anything out clearly.

"Who's there?" Sirius demanded, running forward.

Whoever it was, they looked up at Remus and Sirius, and promptly ran away into the shadows.

"Lumos!" said Remus, holding out his wand as they followed. Sirius tried to chase after the figure, but Remus pulled him back. "Watch it!" Remus pointed his wand to the ground before them, where there was a great chasm in the floor, bits of stony rubble littered all over the place. Sirius had almost fallen in.

"Bloody hell, what is that?"

"It's another one of these holes," Remus realised.

"You've seen shite like this before?"

"Yeah, with Lily, and then with James—"

"Shh, I think some people are coming—"

If the Marauders excelled at one thing, it was escaping trouble. Sirius pulled Remus away from the hole in the ground and hid them in an alcove a little way away, but still close enough to overhear anything that might happen.

"…damn this smoke," Slughorn was saying through coughs. Remus wondered whether it was because of the fumes, or if Slughorn was another victim of the flu.

"Incendio!" Dumbledore's voice rang out, and the previously unlit torches burst into flame once more.

"Oh, goodness … it's this again, Albus!" McGonagall said, sounding uncharacteristically anxious.

"These holes," Sprout was muttering. "So strange!"

"Whatever could it mean?" McGonagall said.

"It means," Dumbledore said calmly, "that there is something beneath Hogwarts, and someone intends to find it."

Remus and Sirius exchanged a wide-eyed look at that.

It wasn't long before Remus decided they should stop eavesdropping and get to class before they were caught. Flitwick had just cast, "Nunc Nonsensare" on the chasm when they'd left, and Sirius immediately began hissing questions at him.

"What was that all about? What are those holes? Why haven't you told me about them?" Sirius almost sounded annoyed.

"Look, I know as little as you do, okay? And I just happened to be with them those days. I haven't told James or Lily or Peter anything I haven't told you."

Sirius looked slightly mollified at this. Remus was glad; he was sick of Sirius nagging at him all the time about something or other. If they could go back to normal, Remus would be the happiest man alive.

"Okay, well, what Dumbledore said was mighty disturbing. What do you think's under the school? Why's that person looking for it?"

"Dunno. They can't have found whatever it is yet, right?" said Remus. "We scared them off."

"Maybe it's Jewel," said Sirius, excitement alight in his eyes. "He was one of the teachers that wasn't there just then, 'cause he was running away from the crime scene."

Remus dismissed the idea instantly. "That's rubbish. There were tons of teachers not there. You just hate the man 'cause he gave you detention last week."

"Yeah, well, you'd better hope Mr. Nice and not Mr. Naughty is our teacher today, since we're twenty minutes late to class."

Unluckily for Sirius's theory, Jewel had been in class the whole time (confirmed by the others that weren't sick and had rocked up to class.) And unluckily for them both—

"You're late," Jewel snapped when they walked in.

Remus and Sirius looked at one another and groaned.

"This better be good, Lupin," said Regulus, looking at Remus the same way one would look at a particularly revolting bug.

"It will be," said Remus confidently. He'd taken the Slytherin up to the sixth floor of the school, and after racking his brains for a few moments, remembered the particular painting he needed. It was the large one with the knights on horseback, making a row as they galloped and cheered.

"Pretty please with a fairy on top," Remus said to the knights over their din, and they all rode away, past the border of the painting, only to return to a doorknob. "Thanks," he told them, twisting the newly materialised doorknob to open it like a door.

Remus led him into the corridor that followed. The crater in the ground here had obviously been fixed magically since the last time he'd been here. Cobblestone walls and ajar doors led into warm but empty study rooms. The crackling fireplaces inside reminded him of the conversation he'd overheard between Regulus and his mum, and Remus instinctively quickened his pace.

"Where are we?" asked Regulus, not for the first time.

If Remus was honest, he liked having the upper hand on the smug, snobbish boy. "It's a study area," he said, recalling what Lily had told him all those months ago. "Nobody really comes anymore though because … well, you'll see."

"What's that smell?" Regulus's face was twisted into a face of pure disgust.

"You'll see," Remus repeated, remembering the way Lily had introduced him to this same place. (The thought of Lily shrank his smile. He still hadn't had an opportunity to talk with her since the Incident of the Paralysed Put-Up Hand. To apologise for his friends' actions. To apologise for his.)

Finally, they reached the end of the long corridor. The door to the Hogwarts wastebasket was, again, shut tight. Remus had to pull the doorknob with both hands to get it open.

"Lupin, what in Merlin's name is this?" Regulus said, pushing past Remus to get inside. The enormous room was as revolting as Remus had remembered—if anything, it was worse, since the amount of rubbish had since multiplied. Everywhere there were piles and piles of scrunched up tissue papers, torn parchments, rotten fruit, spoiled meats. Remus saw little bugs climbing the walls, gnawing at everything they could see. And the smell—the smell was overbearing.

"It's where we'll be playing our Gobstones game. You wanted a Slytherin's Pit, right? Look. It's a Bottomless Pit," Remus said, gesturing to the pitch-black, perfectly-round hole in the centre.

This is where his stratagem began; Regulus didn't know the Pit was broken.

Regulus raised his eyebrows. "High stakes. I'm impressed, Lupin. When I came to find you last week, I'd thought you were scared."

"Depulso!" said Remus, his wand pointed at the piles of rubbish nearest to the Pit. He repeated the charm several times until there was clear space that was wide enough for Remus and Regulus to play a Gobstones game. "All right, Regulus. Ready when you are."

And so, they began the game of Slytherin's Pit. Regulus's Gobstone set was admittedly gorgeous; his Serfstones were all marbled with swirls of colour, and his Kingstone was a bottle green ball that gleamed spectacularly. In comparison, Remus's set was drab, lame, faulty.

Despite this, Remus made sure to give Regulus a run for his money. Otherwise, the scheme wouldn't be convincing. They'd decided that Regulus would go first, and so, though Regulus's first Serfstone rolled quite close to the Pit, Remus's first came even closer.

Remus watched as Regulus repositioned himself around the circle, an intense gleam in his stormy grey eyes, so much like Sirius's. Remus observed Regulus's poised hand, the perfect form of his fingers as he prepared to flick, the measured strength of the move. There was a small part of Remus that was so impressed by Regulus's gameplay that perhaps he hadn't even needed to engineer a victory for the first-year boy.

But he had to stay focused on his plan.

"Come on, Lupin, make your move," said Regulus impatiently.

And the match went like this for the rest of its duration. Both Regulus and Remus changed positions around the playing circle after each move. They knocked away their Gobstones with precise and practiced power, each time getting dangerously closer to the edge of the Bottomless Pit.

Remus had been relying on one major thing: that Regulus would not use his moves to knock Remus's Gobstones into the Pit. After all, that was a common strategy in any Gobstones game, especially Slytherin's Pit and Godric's Stone. If Regulus had employed this approach, Remus's plan would have fallen apart. His predictions, however, had come true, thank Godric.

He'd been quite confident in his guess, because—why would Regulus bother? Regulus, from what he knew, had never had to compete with another person his whole life. Regulus, the chess piece, the academically excellent, the rule-abiding golden child, the shepherd's favourite, and Sirius, the scorned, the scapegoat, the second place, the silver medal, the Black family's black sheep, had not been raised on equal footing. Regulus's only competitor had ever been the image his mother had crafted of him, the image of the heir. So, Remus had been confident that Regulus wouldn't waste time or turns with trying to undermine Remus's success, because he had never had to before. Regulus knew—Regulus hoped—he was good enough on his own; he didn't need to bring Remus down to win.

Soon, it was the last turn for the both of them. They only had one Gobstone left each: their Kingstone. The last turn with the Kingstone could make or break a game. Its size and density meant it could knock away your opponent's Serfstones, securing you a victory, but it also meant that it was harder to control. Often had Remus witnessed a last-ditch attempt at using a Kingstone in such a risky way, only to have it roll into the playing circle and lose the player the game.

Remus and Regulus's game was extremely close. It was impossible for either of them to know who was going to win. They'd have to wait for the post-game magical measurements, which revealed whose Gobstones had the least distance from the playing circle.

Now, in Slytherin's Pit, the advantage to going first was that you could occupy all the good spaces near the circle before your opponent ever could. Regulus narrowed his eyes, bent down, and then employed a masterful move where he flicked his Kingstone, so that it hit another one of his Serfstones; they both flew in perpendicular directions but ended up so close to the Pit that they teetered off the edge. Regulus made a satisfied sound and then sat back. There was nothing else for him to do but watch.

"You're up."

The advantage with going second, however, was that you could knock away your opponent's Gobstones after they'd been placed down. Evidently Regulus was worried about this, glaring at the faulty, second-hand Kingstone in Remus's palm. Remus knew exactly what had to be done, but he had to be as meticulous about it as he possibly could be.

Leaning down, he took in a deep breath. The rubbish, the stench, the world around him vanished and there was only him and his Kingstone. "Please work with me," he said in his head.

And then he flicked. With a squeal, his Kingstone flew in the direction of Regulus's. The Black boy's eyes widened—but instead of making contact and sending Regulus's into the hole, it narrowly skimmed past it, finally landing on the very edge of the Pit. It teetered precariously for a moment—Regulus rose from his position—and then fell inside.

Yes! the voice in Remus's head screamed.

Reach out, it added, and Remus did just that. He stretched his arm out quickly, curling his fingers over the Pit; then he dragged his arm back, his fingers scraping the floor. Hopefully to Regulus this didn't look suspicious, but rather as if Remus had miserably attempted to bring back his lost Kingstone from the dead.

He'd decidedly been defeated, so Regulus's Kingstone flew into the air and gave him a fat Globstone to the face.

"You've knocked aside the Serfstones," Regulus said, sounding miffed.

"Well, it doesn't matter, does it?" said Remus loudly, while wiping the gunk from his eyes. "I've clearly lost. My Kingstone's gone!"

Regulus stared at him for a moment, with an expression Remus couldn't quite pinpoint. "That was very unusual," he said, standing up. "I don't know why you tried to go for my Kingstone at the end. You could've won. My Kingstone wasn't so close to the edge as yours could've been if you didn't aim for it. I know it."

"Maybe, maybe not!" Remus cried out at full volume, arms thrown to the sky. "Who knows now? I've lost."

Regulus didn't look very satisfied for someone who had just won. He waved his wand and his Gobstones collected themselves in his pristine shiny set. "Well, if that's settled." And then he was off, leaving Remus alone.

When Remus was sure Regulus had finally gone, he relished in the soft, repetitive thumping noise that he'd drowned out by shouting. Then, he finally lifted James's Invisibility Cloak from where he'd placed it atop the Pit. His Kingstone—not lost after all—came flying out, since the Pit was still broken, and Remus caught it, feeling like a Quidditch Seeker.

Remus lay on the floor for a while, grinning to himself and cradling his Kingstone in his hands. Nobody, he was sure, had ever been so happy about losing.

"…yeah, and after I borrowed it from James, I had to fold the Cloak and put something inside—I put one of my quills—otherwise it wouldn't go invisible, and then I just placed it on top of the Pit. It was like it wasn't there!" Remus was saying as he walked around the dorm, which was empty save for Ruby since the other Marauders were still serving detention for their prank on Lily. "Obviously I didn't cover the whole thing with the Cloak, 'cause how else would I get my Kingstone in? I left a small gap for it to go in, and when I made my last move, I quickly pulled the Cloak over the hole, so it wouldn't go flying out. Impressive, right, Ruby?"

Ruby made a small, deflated squeak in response.

"Ruby?"

Remus turned around. He had a good look at her. She looked sickly thin, her fur matted, drool coming out of her little mouth. She could barely keep those red eyes of hers open. It was clear as day: she was dying.

"Shit, Ruby," said Remus, panic shooting through him like lightning. He was reminded all too well of the last time he had an animal friend close to him suffer from debilitating disease. How could he have let her get this sick?

He lifted her up, cradling her in his bedsheets, and ran out of the dorm and towards the Hospital Wing as quickly as he could. He didn't think he'd ever run so fast in his life.

Madam Pomfrey, though she looked extremely swamped with all the other sick students, took the time to reassure him that all was fine. That she had had experience with Healing animals, didn't Remus remember last year? That Ruby was going to be all right. Only after she'd insisted Remus go back and get some rest did he finally leave.

Reach out. Reach out. Reach out. The stupid voice in his head wouldn't shut up. He had been a piss-poor friend to Ruby, hadn't reached out once, and now she was deathly ill.

It took minutes of measured breathing and slow steps to finally make his way back to the Gryffindor common room. "Wiggenweld," he said blearily to the Fat Lady, and slumped his way inside.

"Remus? Is that you?"

The sound of Lily's familiar voice made Remus perk up. He'd been meaning to find her for a while, but now he had actual matters to tell her. The third chasm in the ground. How he'd used the Bottomless Pit—though this would mean that he had to get over his shame surrounding being in Gobstones Club, and Remus was unsure if he could do that.

"Lily, I—" he stopped himself when he looked at her.

The first thing Remus noticed was that she looked, well, like a Muggle. She'd applied makeup, something Remus had never seen on her before, darkness decorating those green eyes of hers. It was nearing night time, but Lily was dressed in a leather jacket and a red tartan skirt. She'd abandoned the school penny loafers for military boots. She even wore a black choker around her neck. Remus had to admit, she looked very cool, just completely out of place at Hogwarts. But the most drastic change in her look had to be—

"Your hair!" It had been dyed as black as the Bottomless Pit. She'd clearly done some styling and cutting herself; it was spikier before, and shaggily shorn. Somehow, she pulled it off.

She ignored him. "Did you hear that sound too? The clicking?"

"The what?"

She—and this really surprised Remus—rolled her eyes and turned away. "Whatever." She made her way up the stairs, never once turning to look back at him.