Mercury Lies
Chapter 18: to deracinate

Unfortunately for James Potter, everyone at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry knew of the Marauders, and once the news that his father had fallen ill filtered through to the student body, the rumour mill, fuelled by both the students' curiosity and their raging desire for sensation, ran rampant.

And so the month of May began, thorny and sharp like the branches of the hawthorn trees which had began to bloom near the entrance of the Forbidden Forest, while the story about Fleamont Potter spread through the castle like wildfire, until most everyone — even the occupants of the portraits lining the stone walls — knew about it. When a fellow Gryffindor revealed on a Tuesday morning, two weeks later, that James Potter had been given special permission to leave the castle to visit his father by the Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, the fire burned brighter, hotter, faster, and the rumours grew progressively more persistent.

As always when rumours abounded, Remus disengaged himself and managed, without too much effort, to sidestep anyone who attempted to draw him into a conversation about Fleamont Potter. After a longer-than-usual Prefects meeting — during which Remus and Dahlia Parkinson had to, again, firmly remind their Prefects that the Graduation Ball was fast approaching, and that the committee reports about the theme, the decorations, the menu, and the guest list were due Tuesday next — Remus made his way to the library.

The oak doors were heavy to push open, and they made a sound of careful finality when Remus allowed them to fall back shut behind him. Madam Pince was stacking books near the Charms section, and she gifted him with a rare smile when he passed her. He had been in the library more often than not lately, and she, inexplicably, had seemed to appreciate this and had begun to thaw towards him. He nodded once, in greeting, and then found his way to his regular table by the History of Magic section. When he reached it, he found himself suddenly overcome by weariness, and rather uncharacteristically, he spilled the books he had been carrying onto the table and sank down into his chair. He tilted his head all the way back, until it was almost too uncomfortable to bear, and sighed, drawing in a deep breath.

'There you are,' said Sirius Black, and Remus snapped his head back up.

Sirius Black was sitting in the chair across from him, his long legs stretched out across the table, hands laced together in the nape of his neck, elbows sticking out to the side. Remus realised that he had no idea how long Black had been sitting there; he had not even heard him approach the table. He then realised, perhaps a bit belatedly, that he was staring, and he averted his gaze, almost apologetically. When Remus had last seen him, Black had engaged him, very casually, in a conversation that had almost —

Remus stopped himself and straightened, righting his back against the chair, meeting mercurial grey eyes across the table. 'Black,' he acknowledged, levelly.

'Lupin,' Black responded, his tone equally polite, but there was a twinkle in his eye and then, unable to control himself, he laughed. 'Christ, a few days away from us and you turn right back into a crashing bore.'

Remus narrowed his eyes, feeling slighted, but he was careful to quickly iron out his expression. He should not allow himself to be affected in his way by the things that Sirius Black said. Had he not so firmly decided, that day in the Forbidden Forest, to rely only upon himself, and to do, therefore, without Sirius Black's friendship? How fragile his resolve was. Sharply, Remus reminded himself of the fact that Black hadn't spoken to him in nearly four weeks; loath as he was to admit it to himself, he had been grateful for Black's friendship, but that did not mean that he would allow himself to be someone Black could treat in whichever way he fancied.

Remus looked down and began to gather his discarded books with a neat efficiency, stacking them to the side of the wooden table. He lifted the strap of his book bag off his shoulder and pulled it, in one graceful movement, off over his head, placing it on the table to find what he needed: the new bottle of jet-black ink he had ordered from Scrivenshaft's, a few new rolls of parchment paper, tied together with the characteristic black bow, his new eagle-feather quill, and finally, his diary. He was oddly conscious of Black's presence and of his eyes, which followed Remus's movements with careful consideration, but he found himself a little too eager to ignore it. Perhaps, if he remained aloof enough and did not allow himself to be baited, Black would get bored and find someone else to sit with.

He opened his diary, turning the pages until he found what he was looking for. On the two final pages, which had been lined but blank when he received the diary last Christmas, he had written down what he had privately referred to as The List. Born out of necessity and Remus's increasing need for organisation, The List was simply a collection of everything: it housed all of Remus's tasks, commitments, deadlines and projects. More than once, he had had to cast an Extension Charm on the page, so that it could grow at the same rate his work did.

The List housed simple things, like the list of books he would need to read for his Ancient Runes essay and possible passwords for the Gryffindor common room, but also more complex things, like the inevitable ideas that had sprung to mind when he read something that would be useful for the Map. He had even, in a display of rare brilliance, managed to incorporate a few nifty spells, so that he could write down the tasks on the left page, and they would order themselves into colour-coded categories on the right.

He had taken to keeping his diary close-by at all times, for whenever an idea or task sprang to mind, and he wrote in it constantly. During yesterday's Potions lesson, he had been briefly distracted from his rather dismal attempt at an Alihotsy Draught by the thought that The List would work even better if he could come up with a spell that would filter out the tasks by priority when he tapped his wand to the page. But, Remus admitted to himself later, perhaps that was a bit too much of a good thing. As his eyes glanced over the neat columns, he expelled a long breath. In all honesty, it probably did not really matter how clever his spell-work was, or how well he managed to keep track of everything, because the fact remained that he still had a ridiculous amount of work to do.

He decided that, for today, it was best if he got the stack of reports that needed to be proofread out of the way first. Every week, the Prefects who were on duty to patrol the castle had to write up what essentially boiled down to an incident report: which students they had come across, which rules the students in question had broken, if any school property had been damaged, and if any points had been taken for the offence. Once filed, the reports would be kept in Head Rooms, a set of joined rooms that served as the primary meeting location for the two Head students and all twenty-four Prefects.

Remus knew that, once, the Head Rooms had been larger – had, in fact, taken up most of the tower wing, encompassing an entire common room, a private study room, and two private dormitories and adjoining private bathrooms for the Head Boy and Head Girl – but the practise had been abandoned early in the 1940s, after a particularly bad incident involving a Slytherin Head Girl and a Hufflepuff Head Boy, whose names were tactfully abbreviated in any and all reports about the incident.

Now, the largest of the two rooms, which had once been the common room, served as the backdrop to all of the Prefect meetings. It was circular, looking out over the Quidditch pitch, and it was appropriately decorated with all four of the house banners hanging low from the ceilings, cosy armchairs, and sofas. But the soaring chimney wall above the fireplace was, in Remus's opinion, the room's best feature; it was dominated by a golden-framed, painted landscape of the Rhondda valley, and its glimmering green hills and blue skies reminded Remus of his grandfather in so many ways.

The room decor gave all Prefect meetings a certain informality, which sometimes helped if the subject that was being discussed was particularly boring, but it contrasted sharply with the adjoining room. The smaller room had once been one of the private bathrooms, but it had now been stripped of all its plumbing, leaving only the lingering smell of damp, and it served as a storage room, holding large bookcases for all of the reports, notes, confiscated items, and various bits and bobs belonging to previous Head students and prefects. The rows of shelves were alphabetised, carefully labelled with brass copperplate tags, and the room was always, inevitably, a mess.

Remus pulled his attention back to the stack of reports and pulled them out of his bag, putting them on the table. Dahlia and he always divided the work between the two of them; there would be twelve Prefect reports in total, one for each pair of Prefects on patrol duty, and he had been given six of them. Before the reports could be filed, they had to be proofread and corrected, with any rules broken and points taken checked against the official Hogwarts rulebook and house point guidelines, before they could be signed by the Head student in charge.

If anything turned out to be out of order after a report had already been filed, students would be able to file an official complaint. Although a committee of Prefects had been appointed to review all official complaints, time was a precious commodity even to them, which usually meant the report would simply be overturned. And, subsequently, any point deduction would be applied to the Head student who had signed off on the report. It was a fair system, and Remus was quite partial to the Ravenclaw Head Boy who had introduced it before him.

Despite this, most Prefects were decidedly sloppy about their reports. The fifth year Hufflepuff Prefect, Diggings, was notorious for simply scribbling down series of unintelligible words, and would be hard-pressed to remember any details when questioned. Earlier this year, Dahlia and Remus had therefore required all patrolling pairs to carry spare bits of parchments with them, and any and all points taken were noted down and sent as a memo directly to the Head Rooms. It had been Dahlia's idea, inspired by the memos her father sent at the Ministry of Magic, and it had been brilliant. At the end of the week, all memos were bundled and written up into a report by one of the Prefects.

Despite the introduction of the memos, there were some Prefects more gifted at writing reports than others and, as Remus cast a cursory glance over the reports, he discovered that he had lucked out. Four of the reports had been written by Regulus Black, who had not only been gifted with an extraordinary memory, knowing the Hogwarts rulebook and house point guidelines like the back of his hand, but he was also a very talented writer, each sentence dripping with his customary dry, scathing wit. It was one of the reasons Regulus Black was a popular patrol partner, unlike poor Diggings, who, despite Remus's best efforts and repeated reminders, always forgot to send the memos to the Head Room after he had docked points, and was always getting himself, and his patrol partners, in trouble for it.

Remus sorted the reports by date in front of him, and unrolled the parchment of the one from last Friday. He was halfway through an amusing anecdote about an illegal Potions shop, which had apparently been discovered in an abandoned classroom on the fourth floor – "the walls were spelled a ludicrous shade of pink, the kind even your granny would be ashamed to know the name of " – when, with a thunk, a surprisingly homely package, wrapped in parchment paper and tied together with a red-and-white ribbon, landed on the report. Remus looked up, startled.

He had, quite frankly, and a little inadvertently, forgotten that Sirius Black had been sitting opposite him, but Black evidently hadn't. He had unpacked his own book bag, and had been working, hard, at something Remus guessed to be a History of Magic essay, if the stack of books he had carried to the table was anything to go by. Remus raised both his eyebrows and found, to his surprise, that Black looked a little like he had been put in his place.

'They're from Euphy,' Black said softly, gesturing at the package, and then added, obviously for Remus's benefit, 'Potter, I mean. Euphemia Potter,' even though Remus had spent two separate occasions in Euphemia Potter's company, and could have distilled that very tidbit of information perfectly on his own. 'She – she's been making quite a lot of it, since Fleamont likes fudge so much and it's one of the only things he's still eating, and our bedside tables are already bursting at the seams, and I mean, you can't exactly turn it down, can you, given the circumstances, so Jamie and I said we thought you'd might like some, and she was delighted and she made you this. There's vanilla, coffee, chocolate and … raspberry, I think, but I'm not too sure about that.'

Remus carefully unwrapped the ribbon, and the smell of sticky, warm fudge overwhelmed him almost instantly. Black was still looking rather sheepish, and Remus hadn't the heart to tell him that he had never truly liked fudge very much.

'Will you thank her for me?' he requested, quietly, and Black smiled at him, a beautiful, amazing smile that Remus had somehow, in these last four weeks, come to miss a little.

'Will do,' Black said, and returned to his essay, his shoulders looking a little less tight at the edges.

Remus sighed inaudibly, sticking a piece of vanilla fudge in his mouth before neatly securing the package again with the ribbon. The fudge was sticky, sugary, creamy and sweet, but despite all that, he found that he liked it.

It was painfully obvious to Remus that, now that James Potter was out of the castle most of the time, Sirius Black was in need of a friend. In order to facilitate this, he had chosen to shelve whatever suspicions or thoughts he had had about Remus. So, by taciturn agreement, neither of them mentioned the conversation they had had in the Forbidden Forest, and their friendship merely carried on as if it had never happened. The result was a pleasant kind of stasis, hazy and sunlit with the early rays of spring.

The only odd thing, given how their friendship had previously unfolded, was that Pettigrew was careful – a little too careful, in Remus's opinion – to keep his distance from them when James Potter wasn't around. He expressed this in a myriad of ways, like shooting them awkward looks when he saw that Black had taken it upon himself to sit next to Remus at breakfast and, when he passed them walking together in the corridor when Black was on his way to Charms and Remus to the library, he heaved a pointed sigh and shook his head. Remus had attempted to talk to Black about it, but the latter had been dismissive and short whenever the subject of Peter Pettigrew was broached. So, a bit cowardly, Remus stopped mentioning Pettigrew's name, and Black seemed happier and more relaxed than Remus had seen him for it.

When Remus entered the library a week after the fateful article had appeared, he discovered that Black was already sitting at their regular table, head in his hands. When Remus approached him, dismissing thoughts that Black seemed to have already memorised his entire class schedule, he heard Black muttering darkly under his breath, something about trapdoors and Severus Snape and a Dark Curse Remus had come across, once, in a book in the Restricted Section of the library.

'Wouldn't try that if I were you,' Remus said, as he sat down opposite him, 'it's illegal in at least fourteen countries.'

'Wouldn't dream of it, Head Boy,' Black said, his voice dripping with pureblood charm, and Remus raised his eyebrows.

'Sorry, he's just –' Black said, running a frustrated hand through his hair, looking up. He blinked, stopped himself, and then said, in a completely different tone of voice, one Remus had never heard him use before, 'You can come out now, Reg, I've already seen your giant feet sticking out by a mile.'

To Remus's surprise, Regulus Black stepped out from a nearby bookcase, looking a little ill at ease as he approached their table.

'All right?' Black said, with such deliberate casualness Remus picked up on it immediately.

If Regulus did, he chose to ignore it. 'Yes, thank you,' he said, but his tone was nonetheless warm and slightly dry. 'I'm just here to see Lupin.'

He didn't say the word "sorry", but it was somehow inferred, and when Remus looked at Black, he saw that he was pressing his nails into the skin of his palm. He stopped when he noticed Remus looking at him.

'Oh, you can have him,' Black said, turning his attention back to his notes and waving his hand in elegant dismissal, as if Remus was simply a piece of furniture he had loaned to Regulus, and cared very little if he got back or not. Suddenly, Remus wondered if Black had already moved into his London flat, the one he had confessed to procuring a few months earlier, and if he had yet told James Potter about it. Dismissing the thought, for now, Remus turned his attention to Regulus.

'Black, what can I do for you?' he prompted.

Regulus opened his bag, withdrew four rolls of parchment, which were tied together by a green ribbon, and handed them over. 'These are the final reports for the Graduation Ball. I just finished writing them up yesterday.'

'Oh, thank you,' Remus said, grateful to receive them, but a little surprised. 'I didn't know you were in charge of writing the reports.'

'I volunteered,' Regulus shrugged, and then gave Remus a lazy grin. 'Digging's name was originally on the roster.'

Remus winced. 'Good grief,' he said, sincerely, which, for some reason, made Regulus laugh. It was the first time Remus had heard him laugh, and he found that he liked it. It was cheerful, loud, and oddly, very similar to Sirius's. So much so, that Remus was momentarily distracted by it.

Quickly, he pulled himself together, and smiled. 'I appreciate this, Black. Truly,' he added, pushing the rolls into his bag. 'I'll read them this weekend, and we'll be able to make our final decisions about the Graduation Ball next week.'

Regulus nodded at him, once. 'You should know,' he said, and Remus was a little thrown before he realised that Regulus had addressed this to Sirius, who had noticed the shift sooner than Remus, and was already looking up at Regulus, 'that I'll be escorting Narcissa to the Graduation Ball. She's starting her social season this year.'

'Of course,' said Sirius smoothly, not missing a beat. 'Have fun.'

Regulus smiled a little ruefully. 'Thank you,' he replied. 'See you next week, Lupin. Oh, and Sirius, Mother says hello.'

He turned on his heel and left, leaving a slightly bewildered silence in his wake. When Remus looked over at him, he found that Black was surreptitiously following his brother's retreating form until he had left the library. Without meeting Remus's eyes, he turned his gaze to the window, tilting his head back and watching a flock of birds circle one of the turrets. Remus eyed him carefully, but he was clearly not in the mood to speak, so Remus left him to it.

He was halfway through proofing the reports Regulus Black had brought ( "The voting about the colour scheme lasted for four and a half hours, and yes, I genuinely wish I was lying about that –") , when Black spoke, suddenly.

'Remus.'

When Remus looked up, he saw that Black was still looking out of the window. Remus followed his gaze to where the ravens had been circling earlier, but the birds had apparently long since flown off, and the battlements – the battlements, Remus noticed suddenly, looked different, like they'd been cracked, the stones fractured and dangerous, which they had certainly not been this afternoon.

'Remus,' Black said again, voice low, and Remus filed his shock away, and pulled his attention back to him.

His name sounded smooth coming from Black's mouth, and for no reason at all, something in Remus's stomach twisted.

'I would appreciate it if you would call me Sirius.'

He didn't elaborate further, but he was politely waiting for Remus's confirmation. So Remus nodded, a little bewildered. Black nodded too and turned his attention to his notes.

It was Saturday, and the weather was bright and sunny and glorious, especially for mid-May. The Daily Prophet had predicted a warm and delightful weekend — a Hogsmeade weekend at that — but all this, Remus felt, didn't matter.

The only thing that truly mattered was the fact that he was going to murder Patrick Diggings.

Wing – book – 5 points.

Door – Runes – 10 points.

Fourth – kiss – hand – 20 points.

'What,' he hissed at the Prefect report in front of him, riddled with handfuls of such monstrosities Diggings dared to call sentences, 'does that even mean?'

'Looks like someone was having it off in the fourth floor corridor by the statue of Gregory the Bewildered. Caught kissing, his hands probably up her knickers, and your Prefect docked twenty points,' came Black's voice from behind him, airily. He was leaning over Remus, hand next to his head, effectively trapping Remus close to him. He smelled of citrus, and, vaguely, of bonfires.

'What?' Remus demanded, turning his head until their eyes met.

Black barked out a laugh. 'Christ, Lupin, you don't get out much, do you? Everyone and their mum's had it off behind the statue of Gregory the Bewildered.'

'I haven't,' Remus retorted icily, before he could stop himself.

Black flashed him a grin. 'That's because you're a gentleman, and you make up for the rest of us,' he said, smoothly, plopping down into the chair opposite him. His cheeks were flushed from the cold, and Remus noticed that he was wearing his Quidditch robes. They were stained with mud, and somewhere, in the back of his mind, Remus thought of Madam Pince, and the points she would take if she knew.

'So what's going on, then?' Black said, conversationally, and Remus blinked up at him.

'What do you mean?'

'Lupin,' said Black, as if he was being purposefully dim, 'you're here on a Saturday. I know Pince is your first and only love, but even you have to admit that's a little too keen.'

'She's not,' Remus said, dismissively, but he couldn't deny that Black had some sort of point. He hadn't planned on being here at all, today; he had planned to be sorting out the storage room. There was a stack of reports waiting to be filed, and for some reason he was yet to understand, his Prefects had increasingly been borrowing items from the archives, without filling out the proper forms and without putting them back. When Remus had opened the door to retrieve a book about dress code regulations this morning, he had just barely managed to sidestep an errant broomstick, which had made an attempt on his life.

Once he had gotten over the shock, Remus had recovered it, and propped it up against the wall. It had been confiscated, if the label was to be believed, in 1876. Remus didn't bother to ask who had borrowed it, or what they had needed it for. It was sometimes better if he didn't know these things.

He scrubbed a hand over his face. 'It's been busy,' he admitted, with a glance at The List. It had grown, in the last two days, by about a foot. Maybe by three. But it was probably closer to eleven. Remus truly believed that the tasks were multiplying when he wasn't looking.

Black followed his gaze, and raised a sardonic eyebrow. He put his Beater bat on the table. 'Is that the diary we got you?'

Remus nodded.

'Mind if I have a look?' Black asked.

Remus nodded again. Black summoned the diary with a lazy flick of his wand, and looked over it. The look on his face as his eyes scanned the page was almost comical in its disbelief.

'Is this – are you actually going to do all of this, or are you just going to pretend you do?' he said, eventually.

Remus gave him a look. 'I need to do everything on that list.'

'Lupin, you can't do everything on this list,' Black said, but it wasn't unkind. It was matter-of-fact, which, somehow, made it worse. 'I realise that you've got an affinity with trying to ensure you work yourself to the death in order to look appealing to prospective employers after missing out on being a Healer, but surely – surely even you have realised that this is ridiculous. There's only one of you, and there are a million and one things on this list.'

'There's always a million things on the list,' Remus shrugged, dismissively.

Black raised his eyebrows, and then reached over the table, and plucked Remus's new eagle-feather quill from his hands. Then, with a wave of his wand, he summoned Remus's book bag, and all of the supplies he had already gathered around him.

'What – what are you doing?' Remus demanded.

'I'm going to help you sort this out,' Black said, heaving a sigh.

Remus stared at him. 'It doesn't need sorting out, it's perfectly organised –' he protested.

Black, however, ignored him, casting a cursory eye over Remus's things, and then, with quick and lazy spellwork Remus was frankly a little envious of, sorted everything into neat little piles. One, Remus guessed, for each category of his tasks. Black nodded, once, to himself, glancing at the list. Then, to Remus's absolute horror, he crossed out a task.

'What are you –' Remus began, again, feeling a hint of panic thrum in his veins.

'Here,' Black said, interrupting him without even looking up, and sent a stack zooming towards him. It was small, consisting of the rest of the reports Regulus Black had written for him, the Hogwarts rulebook, and a copy of the house point guidelines, which had been the thing Remus had been looking for in the Heads Room this morning. 'You can proofread those reports. Won't take you more than an hour, and then you can send them off to be shelved later. I saw Evans do it when she was in the common room. It'll save you time.'

It made, appallingly, a lot of sense, and Remus wasn't too proud to admit to himself that he found it a little annoying that he hadn't thought about doing the same thing before.

Proofing the reports, true to Black's earlier assessment, took a little under an hour, and with Black's occasional input, Remus was able to make sense of Diggings's report in record time, even though he was, by the end of it, ready to make good on his earlier promise. Once he had signed his name to all of the parchments, he sent them off to the Head Rooms to be filed, and simply sat, watching Black.

There was something very neat and orderly about Black's movements as he worked. He had devised some sort of system, checking The List, then looking over Remus's belongings, and nodding to himself before he got to work. When he felt Remus's gaze upon him, he grinned.

Whilst Remus had been reading, Black had found all the books Remus had chosen to read for his Potions essay and had them ready and waiting, stacked neatly in a corner of the table. He told Remus to read the abstracts and the introductory chapters of each of the books to see if they were relevant to his essay. 'Just send the ones you don't want back into that collection bin nearby. Pince will deal with them.'

Satisfied that Remus was occupied, he turned his attention back to The List. The first book Remus found turned out to be surprisingly helpful, and he stood to check it out.

Black raised a questioning eyebrow at him. 'What are you doing?'

'Just going to –' Remus began, gesturing at the book in his hands.

'Check it out?' Black asked, with a frown.

'Yes.'

'Why?' Black wondered, sounding a bit confused. 'Thought it best you'd carry it around with you until you finish your essay?'

'Well,' Remus responded, wondering why that felt like the wrong answer, 'yes.'

Black sighed. 'I never check out any books from the library unless I need it for an extended period of time. It's a lot easier to note down the title, the page number, and the quote you want to use with a Quick Quotes Quill so you can directly copy it to your essay parchment. You can always double-check the information later, but I've never had to. Those quills are very reliable, especially when they're brand new.'

'I – I don't have a Quick Quotes Quill –' Remus stammered, feeling a little stung by the fact that Black's suggestion, again, made a ridiculous amount of sense.

'You can have mine,' Black interrupted him, waving a dismissive hand. 'Pete gave it to me for Christmas. Utterly shit gift, of course. Don't need one, do I, with a photographic memory.'

Remus stared at him. 'You're joking.'

Black shrugged. 'Scientia potentia est.'

'That's getting really annoying,' Remus said.

'I can say it in five other languages, if that will make you feel any better,' Black offered.

Remus shot a sharp Stinging Hex at his wrist, and found brutal satisfaction in Black's ungentlemanly yelp.

Black had eventually left to change when Remus was halfway through his seventh reference book, and had returned looking bright and clean, smelling of soap and sugary fudge. He was wearing a maroon-coloured woolen jumper, black trousers and a pair of expensive black loafers, looking, in fact, very similar to his younger brother, although Remus knew better than to mention this. As he had promised, he had brought Remus his Quick Quotes Quill.

Remus had originally planned on doing all of this reading tomorrow, since the Potions essay was due in just a few days, but now that the quill was copying the quotes for him, the time he would have to spend had been, effectively, cut in half.

Suddenly, Black made a surprised noise in the back of his throat, and Remus glanced up at him.

'Why,' Black asked, with genuine confusion, 'have you put down that you need to take notes on Kovalevsky's theory about self-containment? That was on our OWLs last year. I can't imagine your Transfiguration NEWT will go that far into detail about it.'

'Oh, right. That's for Mibbs,' Remus said, returning to his paragraph.

'Mibbs?' Black repeated, blankly, and then something settled. 'Oh, right, Ravenclaw? Year below us, really great pair of –'

'– Hufflepuff,' Remus corrected him, before that sentence could end. 'She's called Evangeline. She's one of the fifth years I'm tutoring.'

'And?' Black said, apparently not following.

'And,' Remus said, with more patience than he felt, 'I've found that it greatly increases the student's understanding of the material if I'm able to break down the theory into smaller, condensed notes for them.'

Black was quiet for a moment. Remus saw him look at his diary with a thoughtful look on his face, the eagle-feather quill twisting over and under his fingers.

'You know,' Black said. 'I remember Pete said you had taken notes for him, but I thought that was a one-off, since he's particularly shit at Transfiguration, and all. But from your tone, I take it this is something you regularly do?'

'I – yes,' Remus answered, frowning. 'It's just a little background reading, and it helps me to –'

But Black wasn't listening to him. The quill in his left hand raced over The List with vigour, crossing out rows of items from where they'd been written below the blue "Tutoring" heading on the right hand page.

'What are you doing?' Remus asked, a little panicked.

'Although I appreciate the effort, Lupin,' Black said crisply, without looking up, 'you cannot single-handedly take on the sheer stupidity of ninety percent of the Hogwarts population by doing all the work for them. It's very noble of you to want to, but you should think about the fact that you're taking your NEWTs in just under three months. So as much as I love her, you're going to need to tell Minnie to piss off. You've got too much to do as it is.'

'I can manage the workload just fine,' Remus said flatly. 'She's never said anything to me, and none of the students I've tutored have ever complained.'

'Of course they haven't,' Black said, looking at him in disbelief. 'You're not only teaching them how to do stupidly simple Transfiguration spells they should and would already know how to do if they put in even an ounce of effort, but you're also doing all the extra work they would need to do in order to catch up to their regular pace for them. I mean, frankly, Lupin, if you'd've bought them a Christmas gift, you'd be their mother. You're not even getting paid for this, are you?'

Remus, a little taken aback, shook his head. 'Professor McGonagall awarded me eighty house points last year,' he said, confidence wavering a little bit in face of some of the facts he had appeared, in his enthusiasm to do everything perfectly, to have overlooked.

'Eighty points,' Black repeated. 'Wow. For reference, my parents paid Caoimhe Nott fifty galleons per week to tutor me. She said I annoyed her, and she was only ever in my presence for about thirty minutes a day. Mother always said that the Notts' summer house in Calais was funded entirely by my resentment of the runic alphabet.'

Fifty galleons per week.

Somewhere in the back of Remus's mind, a headache started to form, and he looked down at his Potions textbook, his eyes glancing over the words, unseeing. Black crossed out several more lines of tasks with more patience than Remus felt at the moment, at this whole situation, and at himself for letting these tasks grow, unattended and unregulated in the back pages of his diary.

'You've done a great job,' Black said, not unkindly. 'Really, truly, genuinely. Pete's a little bit more useful for it. Evans can perform a passable Switching Spell. But even though you're brilliant, I want you to draft a note to McGonagall that you're done tutoring, at least until you've finished your NEWTs. And actually only if they can offer you a permanent teaching position. And don't forget to include that you want her to write a letter of recommendation to support you when you're going to apply to St Mungo's. Which you should,' he added, earnestly, 'because despite you missing your Potions OWL, you'd make an excellent Healer.'

'I can't just –' Remus said.

'Yes, you can,' Black said, firmly, talking over him. 'People have passed their OWLs without your express guidance before, Lupin, and they will again.'

'Fine,' Remus said, eventually. 'Fine.'

Author's Note: The first of many thanks should be extended to the brilliant clandestine_meetings over at AO3, who is kind with her words and gracious with her time, for the advice and the beta-read. This story is all the better for your help.

Please note that all future chapters of this story will be posted only to AO3.