Chapter 21

Poor Deprived Child

Early December found James and Sirius sitting in the common room copying Remus' HOM notes, James had given Remus a chocolate frog to be allowed to do it. Remus and Peter were studying for a Transfig test the next Monday. James groaned when he came across an exceptionally difficult lesson.

"I can't wait till Christmas vacation." He slammed his head on the table in an effort to prove he was tired of school.

"Watch out James or you may just kill what few brain cells you have left." Remus teased they stared at him in shock for a second. Sirius quickly began laughing his head off. James smirked.

"Woohoo! Remus finally made a joke!" Remus blushed and hid behind his Transfig book when they started clapping. He was relieved when Sirius changed the subject.

"You can't wait for what?" He asked James.

"Christmas vacation."

"You're going on vacation?" James' eyes got huge when he heard this.

"Ya, we all are. Don't tell me you didn't know that we got two whole weeks off of school." Sirius looked confused.

"We do?" Sirius was starting to get excited. Remus answered him; worried that James might pass out.

"Yes, we get two weeks to go home and celebrate Christmas with our families."

"What's Christmas?" Sirius's excitement dropped. He couldn't go home! He had been counting on waiting till June.

James quite literally passed out. Peter and Remus just stared at him for a minute.

"You don't know what Christmas is!" Peter said as though it was like a crime or something.

"How can you not know what Christmas is?" Remus asked beginning to feel bad for Sirius again.

"Um, I don't know is it a holiday?" Sirius was very confused. If it was so important than why didn't he know it existed.

"Um, Ya! It's only the most celebrated holiday of the year." Peter looked ready to join James on the floor.

"My family only celebrates Halloween. No other holidays." Remus sighed; it made sense, as Christmas was mainly a Christian holiday. The Black family has about as much to do with the Christian religion as McGonagall has to do with Divination, which is as little as possible.

"Just Halloween, that would stink. What about your birthday's and stuff?" Peter asked.

"What about them?"

"Don't they celebrate your birthday?"

"No, why should they?" Peter finally joined James in the world of the unconscious.

Sirius turned to Remus with a worried expression in his eyes. Remus was very careful to watch his own expression. He had begun to pity Sirius and he had to be careful not to let that show. He knew Sirius would get angry if he felt he was being pitied.

"Most families celebrate when a child gets older. They have a party and give the child presents. It is supposed to make them feel loved, that everyone around is happy that they were born and stuff like that." Sirius frowned and looked at his hands.

"Does yours?" Remus nodded trying his hardest to keep the pity out of his eyes. Sirius thought about this for a moment.

"What do you do to celebrate Christmas?"

"Give each other presents." Remus though once again about just how lucky he was. He had been doing that a lot since he met Sirius. On more than one occasion he had written his parents for no reason but to tell them he loves them. He had always thought that because of his lycanthropy he was one of the most unlucky people in the world. That his life had become nothing short of horrid because of his monthly transformations. Sirius had made him realize that this isn't the case. He had parents who loved him. That was more than enough to make him lucky. He never had to worry about making a mistake; he knew that no matter what they would still love him. He had always taken that for granted, but not anymore. He was determined to be thankful for what he had.

"And I thought I had been spoiled." Sirius laughed. Remus attempted to laugh with him, Sirius didn't even seem to care that his parents seemed to hate him. This made Remus feel worse. He was so lucky and he had complained, while Sirius who truly didn't have hardly anything merely joked about it.

Sirius was attempting to ignore the look in Remus' eyes while he tried to wake James and Peter up. He knew Remus was pitying him, but he also knew Remus was trying hard not to. It was the only reason Sirius was able to hold off of yelling at him. He hated pity, it never got anyone anywhere.

When Sirius finally managed to wake James and Peter they walked down to lunch. James had a lot to say on Sirius' lack of holiday knowledge.

"I mean come on! Who doesn't celebrate Christmas?" James ranted.

"My family obviously." Sirius was getting a little annoyed. He was tired of hearing about this stupid holiday. He was dreading it. If it made him go home than he really, really hated it.

"They aren't human I tell you! Not human!" James continued ignoring Sirius' attitude. "Don't worry Si I'll still send you presents. Stupid Blacks!" Sirius stiffened.

"Are you crazy! You can't send me anything!" Sirius half yelled. They stopped, wondering what was wrong. How could anyone not want presents?

"What? Why?" James asked.

"Do you have any idea what would happen if my mother found your owl in our house! She would kill me that's what!" They stared at him for a moment.

"Why are you going home?" Remus asked quietly.

"Ya, I figured you would stay here." James said not so quietly.

"I can do that?" Sirius asked. James laughed.

"Of course you can! They don't make you go home, quite a few people stay here." Sirius gave a relieved sigh.

"Oh thank Merlin! I thought I had to go back." James laughed and shook his head.

"No, you don't. Does that explain why you suddenly started hating the holiday?" James smiled when Sirius nodded and they finished their walk to the Great Hall.

Over the next week the pre-Christmas break feeling began to set in. No one felt like working the Hufflepuff vs Ravenclaw Quidditch game came and passed. It was the only thing that the students could manage to get excited about. Teachers began lecturing their classes about the lack of homework being turned in on time. If it weren't for Remus the Marauders would easily have been among those who didn't bother anymore. Remus could often be found in the common room standing over James and Sirius making sure that their homework was being done. Either that or he would be on the couch checking over their homework for mistakes. They had all given him a chocolate frog each for this. Sirius found that no amount of chocolate or sweets could get him to do their homework for them so this was the best they could get. He usually didn't find anything wrong with it, but he did it anyway. The only one he ever really marked was Peter's.

Remus decided to make a sort of schedule. It wasn't like a normal schedule it mostly just told them how much time to spend on each thing. Such as three hours days on school work, not counting the actual classes. He had been forced to put in three hours for planning pranks as well. He wasn't going to put it at all but Sirius and James threatened to not bother even using it if he didn't put at least the same amount of time doing/planning pranks as he did for school work. Sirius and Remus got into an argument over whether or not the Map was school related or not. Sirius reasoned that since it would get them extra credit that it was. While Remus thought that extra credit didn't really count. They just decided to drop it and put another hour just for the Map. They often ignored that hour though. The schedule didn't say when they were going to do this just that they had to do it at some point in the day, if they didn't Remus charmed it to wake them up every ten minutes after they went to bed until they did. If only one of them refused it would only wake that one up. Remus was quiet proud of it. It was excellent spell work for a first year.

Surprisingly it wasn't as hard as Remus thought to get James and Sirius to do the three hours of school work. He supposed that once they were expected to do things it was easier to get them to do it. They didn't like to fall below expectations, especially Sirius who had fallen so far below what had been expected of him that one would think he wouldn't care anymore. This was proved wrong when Remus caught Sirius sneaking out of the dorm.

It was only three days before the full moon so Remus didn't even try to sleep and read a book. He hadn't turned on a light in fear that he would wake the others. He didn't really need one anyway. He could see just fine in the dark. He wasn't sure exactly if it was a werewolf thing or if it was just really bright outside. It wasn't difficult to hear Sirius sneaking out, he had been trying to be quiet, but Remus had sensitive ears. Remus didn't say anything about it figuring Sirius had a nightmare or something, but Remus began to worry when he didn't come back up. He marked his book and went down to see if Sirius was alright.

He was surprised to find Sirius on the couch attempting to transfigure a cup. He had his book in his hand and was looking stressed. He considered helping him but quickly realized that there wasn't much he could tell Sirius that he didn't already know. Remus was sure that Sirius had pretty much memorized all the notes they had taken, and all his book work for the class was excellent. This had surprised Remus when he had first started going over Sirius' homework. He had thought that Sirius just didn't understand the concept but that was not true. Sirius understood it perfectly. He could tell you exactly how you're supposed to do it, and everything. He just couldn't do it himself. Sirius was the only one who seemed to know what was wrong, though that didn't stop him from getting frustrated.

Remus sighed quietly and went back upstairs. The only one that could help Sirius was Sirius.

OOOOOOO

The next morning during breakfast McGonagall passed around a sheet telling them to sign if they were going to stay at Hogwarts over Christmas break. James watched as Sirius signed his name and felt a stab of pity when he thought of how it would feel to stay at school during the holidays. He quickly got rid of it before Sirius could see it in his eyes. It wasn't that hard, Christmas didn't really mean much to Sirius. The poor bloke had never celebrated it before. He didn't know what he was missing out on. They walked to Transfig, pushing Snape down a flight of stairs on the way. They ended up running the rest of the way when Evans began throwing hexes at them. She glared at them though the entire class.

They decided the best way to avoid the wrath of Lilly Evans was to not go to the common room. Instead they made their way down to the dungeons. They pulled out their map, which Sirius had begun taking with him everywhere. They finished the first floor a while ago and decided to go down before they went up. Thus they were doing the dungeons next. Unfortunately there proved to be a bit of a problem with this. First there was the Hufflepuff common room that they couldn't get into unless it was midnight and they had a password. The password was no big deal, they saw enough Hufflepuffs entering it that they had the password memorized, the only problem was that the only way to get to it was a specific corridor which was patrolled every night, or they were pretty sure it was every night. They had checked on many different occasions and every night it had a different Prefect in it. They wondered what was so important that in that corridor.

A bigger problem than Hufflepuff common room was that there was a big gaping hole in their map. They had measured every room but the common room, but there was no sign of what was there. It was too far away from the common room to be the dormitories either. It made no sense. They stood in front of the unidentified area.

"Maybe we need to push a brick or something." Remus suggested staring up at an ugly picture of a fruit basket.

"Why would w have to do that?" Sirius asked while he and James gave Remus a confused look.

"Muggle thing." He said, but they checked anyway.

"Muggles are weird." Sirius commented. They gave up on the brick thing and stared at the ugly picture again. "I am almost sure it has something to do with this dumb picture, who paints a picture of fruit."

"I think that is a muggle thing as well" Remus said once again attempting to move the picture to see what was behind it, and once again it refused to move.

"Need I say it again? Muggles are weird." Sirius repeated flopping on the floor and glaring at the picture as if it offended him.

"They aren't weird, they're different." Remus said also sitting on the ground.

"No they are weird." Remus decided to just let it drop.

"Come on guys, let's just work on something else, there is no point of sitting here staring at this picture." James said and Sirius and Remus got up. They went to work on a different part of the map.

"Don't worry. We'll figure it out later." Peter attempted to cheer them up. Sirius sighed; this map was beginning to feel impossible. Half way through the year almost and they only had a few floors done.

"Peter is right; the longest part is already behind us. If we do the rest of the floors anywhere near as fast as we did the first one we should be fine." Remus said knowing Sirius was beginning to give up.

"What if there are more holes like that one though." Sirius asked.

"Then we will figure them out, but until then we can get the rest of the rooms we can figure out done." James said once again unknowingly using his skills as a leader. They almost instantly believed him. If James thought they could do it than they could do it. "Even if we for some reason don't figure it out, we can turn it in without it. We have already done more than McGonagall expected us to be able. She won't complain if there are a few holes."

"But then it won't be finished." Sirius complained.

"We have seven years, Si. We are bound to figure them out sooner or later." Sirius thought about this for a moment then nodded. He really didn't like the idea of turning it in with holes in it but they didn't really have a choice, and he was sure McGonagall wouldn't mind. He just felt like she would be proud of them if it was completely finished, he really wanted her to be proud of them, or really, proud of him, if he was being honest.

A/N) That little butten that is asking you to review looks really good right now, don't it. You know you want to review.