Chapter 127

Honesty

They used the tunnel to Honeydukes this time. They didn't use it often because it was farther away from the Gryffindor tower and it's exit was further away from the Three Broomsticks then most of the others, also, Peter had sticky fingers when it came to the sweet shop.

But James' destination wasn't the pub.

"James, what are you looking at?" Remus asked when the future-stag stopped in the middle of the street looking in a different direction than the one they meant to go in.

"Let's go," James said bouncing on his feet.

Sirius tried to think of what was in that direction. The hog's head pub wouldn't have caused that much excitement and Sirius refused to step into the establishment anyway. The shrieking shack, however...

"No," the werewolf realized what his big brother was taking about at the same time.

"C'mon! It'll be fun," James grabbed Remus' wrist and pulled him in that direction.

"No, I seriously doubt it." Remus gave a sigh but consented to be led.

Sirius and Peter glanced at each other and the former shrugged before they both followed.

"Where are we going?" Peter asked him as they walked, the other two Marauders were farther up ahead.

"The shrieking shack." Sirius rolled his eyes when Peter gave a frightened squeak. "Oh calm down it's not even really haunted."

"But.." Peter started.

"All those noises everyone freaks out about are just Remus being noisy." Sirius shook his head watching the werewolf's retreating back. The idea that Remus, of all people, could be scary was laughable. He'd seen Snape running in a frenzied panic and, more importantly, he'd seen James' pale white face after he'd seen what Remus becomes, but Sirius just couldn't picture it. He knew what werewolves looked like, he'd done plenty of research on the subject, but they didn't look frightening to him. They were just extra large wolves and even wolves will eat a person if they're hungry enough. Sure, a wolf can't bite you and turn you into itself, but that really only happened when the werewolf intended for it to happen. Remus would never do that to someone, so what was there to be afraid of?

He just couldn't understand.

"Hurry up guys!" James called as he and Remus reached the shack before them.

"I don't know why you lot are so interested in this. It's just a crusty old shack." Remus grumbled as they caught up.

"Come on, Moony. It's cool and we've never been." James ruffled the werewolf's blond hair. The gray was starting to show again, Sirius would have to fix that.

"Lucky you," Remus replied merely tolerating his brother's obsession with playing with people's hair.

"You're not going to stop him, Moony, you might as well grin and bear it," Sirius added, climbing over the recently added fence surrounding the shack. The others followed, though Peter was hesitant and Remus climbed under, rather than over.

"I'll bear it, but don't expect me to grin. I'm already there more often than I'd like," he pouted lightly.

"Aw, don't be such a sourpuss. It'll be an adventure." James said laughing at Remus' moodiness. Remus had to fight to keep a smile off his face.

The front door was boarded up, so they climbed in through the back. There was a spell keeping the door shut but Sirius made short work of that, and they climbed in.

The shack was everything he imagined it would be, rundown, dirty, and trashed. Furniture was in pieces all over the floor, there were scratches along the walls and he was pretty sure those stains on the floor were blood.

"Can we leave now?" Remus asked his arms crossed over his chest as though he was cold.

"Are you kidding? This is awesome." Sirius took a step further into the house of horrors. "Is that blood?"

James laughed at his eagerness though he'd been just the same a moment ago. "You wanna give us a tour, Moony?"

"No! I want to leave." The werewolf shook his head but sighed. "The sitting room is this way, good luck finding a place to sit, though."

Remus led them into another ruined room. There was a couch, or half of one anyway. The other half they found in the bedroom, looking surprisingly okay when you considered that it had been dragged up a flight of stairs by canine teeth and just thrown against a random wall.

"Merlin's left trainer, he's an interior design genius." James teased giving the genius in question a cheeky grin.

"Eh, for a crusty old shack maybe, but for a werewolf's lair, it could use a little more gore. A severed limb here a rotting half-eaten corpse there..." Sirius added with a grin of his own. Remus raised an eyebrow at him.

"Really? A half-eaten corpse, huh?"

"Well yeah, you'd be surprised what a few small touches can do for a room." Sirius continued the act. James had made himself comfortable on the blood-stained bed while Peter was inching as far away from any of the dried red liquid as he could. James was looking at Remus as though he had something else entirely on his mind.

"You really think a werewolf would leave a person only half-eaten?" Remus had a small smile on his face.

"It's possible. If you transformed back in the middle of dinner it would have rotted boy the time it came back." James laughed, snapped out of his revery. It wasn't often Remus joined in on their jokes about his condition.

"Hey, picture that Wormtail," Sirius said bringing the already frightened boy into the conversation just to scare him more. "Waking up face first in someone's intestines, blood absolutely covering your hair and face, and bits of their lungs stuck up your nose as their face still has the fear of their final moments written all over it."

Peter squeaked in horror and half hid behind the couch. James was quietly giggling on the bed and Remus rolled his eyes. Sirius wasn't sure if it was the joke itself he was annoyed with or the fact he was teasing Peter with it.

"Should have told us we were coming here, Prongs, Wormtail could have brought an extra pair of trousers," Sirius added, encouraged by James' appreciation for his joke, at least.

"If I had Moony wouldn't have come." James shrugged and stood, checking the back of his trousers for anything that might have rubbed off the bed and onto his butt.

"Oh yes, because it would have been impossible for you lot to come without me." Remus sighed and shook his head.

"Of course," James said and Sirius knew they were getting to the reason the older boy had dragged them there in the first place. "That would defeat the entire purpose."

"What purpose?" Remus' expression was one of incredulous confusion but Sirius could see him watching James. He'd also noticed the change in their brother's body language.

"This," James said casually before punching the werewolf.

It wasn't hard. In fact, Remus' pain tolerance was high enough that it probably didn't even sting, and James deliberately avoided the eyes, nose, and mouth. Even so, though, it caused them all to jump.

"Did I deserve that?" Remus asked genuine confusion written all over his face.

"Yes." James nodded solemnly.

"I'm sorry." Remus rubbed his cheek and Sirius was under the impression he was rubbing out the feeling of being punched rather than any actual pain.

"You're forgiven." James nodded satisfaction showing in his smile.

"What did I do, exactly?" Remus asked his own smile was small but there nonetheless.

"You could have died, you do realize that all because you wanted us to go to a stupid game. You knew full well you weren't up to coming!" James' smile vanished and Sirius finally understood. In all that had happened, Sirius had forgotten about what had started it all. Remus had pushed himself too hard in an attempt to get Sirus and James to relax at a good-old fashioned quidditch game. It had worked until they realized just how bad of a shape their werewolf was in. It had been stupid and ultimately pointless.

"You weren't going to go."

"Of course, we weren't going to go. We were busy."

"You're always busy!" It was the first time any of them had heard Remus scream in anger. Even when sick and tired with the approaching full moon his anger was always expressed through sarcasm and rudeness. Remus Lupin never screamed in anger. They all just stared at him, successfully silenced, as he continued at a lower volume. "You're always busy and it's not from school work because your grades are abysmal."

"We told you..." James began and Sirius could see his temper rising as well.

"Yeah, you told me it was dangerous and illegal. Not the most comforting knowledge." Remus' fists were tight and his eyes were shining. Sirius panicked, Remus can't cry, not because of them.

"That doesn't mean you can just put yourself at risk like that!" James' voice was getting louder but not to the point of yelling yet.

Peter, sensing that the argument was going to turn into a full blown fight, hid in the safest spot in this building full of furniture shrapnel and blood stains he could find, behind Sirius. Sirius jumped at the appearance of the rat behind him but allowed it just this once. He had more important things to concern himself with. Because if Remus started crying there was going to be a problem.

"Why not! That's what you're doing isn't it!" Remus yelled again and, again, the other Marauders froze in place, frightened that he'd figured out what they'd been trying so hard to hide.

"What are you..."

"I'm not as stupid as you think, y'know. I know what you're doing and I can't just ignore it anymore!"

"Oh, yeah? If you're so smart, enlighten me, what are we doing?" James said a challenging smirk on his face.

Remus hesitated unsure of himself. He had, no doubt, expected James to outright deny it. James' confidence made the werewolf doubt himself. That wasn't an uncommon occurrence.

"You're trying to find a cure, aren't you, or make one anyway. That's why you won't tell me." Remus' eyes jumped between them judging their reactions. Sirius couldn't help but wonder what he was finding because he had no idea. He didn't even want to know what expression was on his face at the moment "I can't just watch anymore. That's all I've done my entire life, watch. I watched dad run us into a financial hole trying to find a cure for almost five years for nothing and now you're doing the same thing. There is no cure! I can't watch you guys kill yourselves for me... I can't..."

That was it. That was the end of all of Sirius' willpower. A crying Moony was more than the barely reformed Black could handle.

"Animagi. We're learning to become animagi." Sirius blurted quickly. The whole room turned to him now and Peter squeaked from behind him.

"Sirius!" James exclaimed disbelief in his eyes and on his face.

"I'm sorry!" Sirius cried back. "I'm sorry... Please just stop... stop fighting. I hear it all summer, and now here too. No more. Please."

They were quiet. Everyone, it seems, was acting out of character today. Perhaps it was the atmosphere. The quiet creaking of the wind on the loose wood panels and the echo of their voices on the bare walls made it feel like there was nothing else in the world. There was no one that could overhear what they said, no one to judge their actions, and it didn't matter if you weren't perfect.

Because what was the point of an act when there was no one around to watch?

"Animagi?" Remus turned from Sirius to James as though asking for a confirmation. "What? Why? What good would that do?"

James didn't answer. Sirius could see his mind racing in his eyes, looking for some way to salvage this situation. Sirius answered for him, he'd been the one to cause this mess so he had to be the one to clean it up.

"Werewolves won't hurt animals, and the majority of your problem is the wolf getting bored and hurting you right? So if we became animals we could keep you entertained and... it wouldn't hurt you so much." Sirius' voice became little more than a whisper. Now he was the one clutching his chest, though he wasn't cold. There was an ache there he didn't understand and he couldn't bring himself to look at the werewolf.

Remus was silent as he took the information in, it must have been a lot to absorb. It wasn't every day your friends told you they were teaching themselves to become animals at will.

"There's no point in arguing about it, it's too late for that," James added, like Sirius, he expected Remus to object. Everyone knew the animagi process was a dangerous one, McGonnagall had told them horror stories of people attempting to do it on their own in class as a way to discourage illegal activity when she'd taught the subject.

"What do you mean?" Remus managed to ask, rubbing his arm in a very self-conscious looking way.

"Once you get to a certain point in the lessons you can't turn back, if we tried to stop now it would, most likely, kill us." James shook his head and glared at Sirius for a moment. "We didn't want to tell you because we knew you'd feel like you weren't worth it. But you're wrong."

Remus looked up at him, it had been spoken with such force that no one could argue the truth of it. In this place, that reminded him of his own weakness, James would make him see that he was more than a monster. Sirius couldn't help but smile at the thought.

"This is important to us, Remus, and you aren't going to change our minds. We haven't spent the last two years working ourselves half to death for you to belittle our struggles by claiming it was a wasted effort. You are our friend so it doesn't matter how much you think you're worth because you are worth everything to us. I don't know why the two of you can't see that." James turned to look at Sirius, talking to him now too. "I don't care what you are or were or whatever! You're my friends and that's enough for me. I may not have an awful family or horrible diseases but I have friends that do and I will do anything for them. You think it doesn't hurt me too every time something bad happened to you guys?"

Sirius looked away, ashamed in the way he'd been acting lately. He'd treated James like garbage. He could hear Remus sniff, tears now falling freely.

"I guess we're even then," Remus said, wearing a small, but genuine, smile when Sirius managed to look up at him.

"Right," James answered, his smile much brighter.

"I'm sorry, James, I didn't mean..." Sirius began but James shook his head.

"I know, Pads. I know, just remember that next time, okay?" he said and Sirius nodded giving a smile of his own.

James laughed and grabbed him, causing the younger boy to yelp, and ruffled his hair before grabbing Remus and pulling him into the group hug. Sirius laughed and dragged Peter in as well only for the rodent to trip on a stray piece of kitchen table falling on top of them knocking them all to the floor in a big pile of limbs.

They were all laughing as they attempted to detangle themselves from each other and chased Peter out of the shack and all the way back to the village, not at all caring about the strange looks they were getting from the people they passed.

A/N) I want to thank you guys for the reviews recently. I've been extremely nervous about these past few chapters, it's such an emotional plotline and it's at least partly cannon and I was worried about how people would take it but all the reviews for the chapters were very positive and it's such a relief. It makes me so happy that you guys enjoyed them and it's a huge weight off my shoulders. Thank you so much! This chapter is for those of you who've reviewed lately. ^_^