Chapter 13: the Mystery Of Remus

Disclaimer: this does not belong to me, it belongs to J. K. Rowling, and I'm just playing with her toys.

Dedication: to Lili, who will hopefully never find this, because I think she would be quite frightened. But if you do find it, Lili, it was your birthday yesterday, and I wanted to say 'ta for bein a great mate!'

                It was the 29th of March, Remus' birthday, and of course his four friends had planned a party for that night. A private one, this time; they still remembered the disaster of Peter's birthday. They were more organised this now as well, because they already had all the non-perishable food stored up in Kirrin. They were currently raped in the common room, admiring themselves and their foresight, when Remus rushed in.

"Oh my god," he panted, clutching his sides. "It's my mum, she's been taken ill again. I have to go right away!"

His friends looked at him with concern, and to be honest, a bit of selfish disappointment that their work had been for nothing.

"Of course, Re," Lily exclaimed, pushing the selfish feeling aside. "Do you want help packing?"

"No, no, I'm fine," Remus replied, looking rather worried at that.

"We'll help if you want," James insisted.

"It's horrid that it had to be your birthday!" Sirius said.

"I hope she's ok," Lily said softly.

"Thanks," Remus called back over his shoulder, having already disappeared up the dormitory stairs.

"Poor Re," Lily said, shaking her head.

"He seems to have an awful lot of family problems," Peter said.

"His mum's been sick as long as I can remember," James explained sadly.

"Yeah, but who was it last month? His uncle?  And before that, it was a funeral, or something, am I right? And in December it was his mother. Every month it seems something happens to Re's family and he's called away," Sirius concluded miserably. He hated to see Remus upset, they all did, and Remus seemed to return from these trips exhausted in both body and spirit.  'Every month, poor Re,' Sirius thought. 'Every month.' There was something vaguely familiar about that, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. So, being Sirius, he ignored it and began to think of something else. Namely Lydia Matthews.

                Eventually, he became aware of Lily and James sniggering at him.

"What?" he snapped, annoyed that they had interrupted his daydreaming.

"You had that look on your face…" James said dreamily. 

"The one you get when you're thinking of Lydia naked," Lily added. They both burst into laughter again, and Sirius blushed. "I was not thinking of that," he said defensively.

"So your intentions are purely noble, are they Siri?" James grinned.

Sirius went even redder. So what if he liked how Lydia looked? He was a teenage boy, wasn't he? Or at least he was almost a teenage boy.

                Luckily for him, Remus chose this moment to down the stairs with his bag. "See you guys," he said sadly.

"Bye, Remus!" they chorused.

"We were just teasing Sirius about Lydia. He was thinking about her naked," James laughed, in the hope of cheering Remus up.

Remus managed a weak grin and said "Keep your hormones under control, Siri, she's your brother's girlfriend." Needless to say, Remus glared at him. "Bye, all."

"Hope your mum gets better," Peter said.

"Give her our love," Lily added.

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                There was a thunderstorm that night. Asleep in her own bed, in her own dormitory for once, Lily woke suddenly. At first she could not work out what had woken her, but then she remembered James. With a sigh she got out of bed and pulled on her slippers, careful not to wake any of the other girls, and left the room. She might not always get along with James, but he was still her friend and she hated seeing him in pain not caused by herself, so she quietly made her way to the boy's dormitory.

                 In the common room, two profiles were visible in front of the fire, immediately identifiable as Orion and Lydia. They had their arms wrapped around each other, and exchanged kissed every so often. Lily thought of Sirius and grimaced.

                She crept up the stairs and entered the room. Nothing was immediately out of place; there were no sounds, and nobody seemed to be awake. But when she listened properly, she could hear the soft, barely audible sound of James crying. Hearing this, Lily heaved a great sigh and went over to his bed. "Jamie?" she said softly, pushing back the covers. Her friend was huddled up under the covers with a pillow over his head, trying to muffle the sound of his crying. "Budge up," Lily said, climbing into the bed beside him.

******************

                It was a few hours later, and Lily was awake again. The moon had set and the sky was much lighter. Lily couldn't sleep and she needed desperately to move. It might only be six am, but she had the strangest urge to jump up and down. As the minutes ticked by, it became obvious she wasn't going to get back to sleep, so she untangled herself from the still sleeping James and bounded out of bed. Feeling she might as well do the thing properly, she bounced all around the room and ended up in front of the window. The weather was so much better than the night before, and Lily opened the window to breathe in the morning air (and to annoy her friends, who would not want to be woken up).

                Suddenly she caught sight of a figure walking slowly from beyond Hagrid's hut. She looked again, unsure why anyone would be up and out at that time in the morning. The figure was vaguely visible, and Lily watched as they came into view. She couldn't believe her eyes, and continued to stare. There was no way on earth it was Remus. Remus was in Wales, visiting his mother. But there was no way she could mistake him for someone else either.

                Remus was walking through the school grounds alone at six am in the morning.

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                Lily called a group conference in the dormitory that morning. It turned out to be quite late in the morning because Sirius and James had proven impossible to wake. Eventually they were all washed, dressed and fed (a necessary requirement when Sirius was involved). Frank had been kicked out and they had the room to themselves, but even so Lily was taking no chances: they were all huddled on Remus' bed, which was the farthest away from the door.

"So?" asked James. "What's all this fuss about?" He was clearly still irritated from being woken up.

"You can help me actually, James. Remus has gone to see his mother cos she's sick, right?" Lily asked. James nodded. "Hasn't this always been the case?"

"Well, yeah, every couple of months or so," James replied, utterly baffled at the line of conversation.

"And this would mean he wouldn't be on school grounds?"

"Of course!" they all replied, with annoyance.

"But he was," Lily stated. This simple statement caused uproar.

"Of course, Lily. And you love Snape," Sirius said patronizingly.

James and Peter exchanged startled looks, and then James tapped his own head significantly in a gesture that said he thought Lily was mad. Peter looked pleased that someone else was behaving like an idiot for once instead of him.

"Shut up," Lily said sharply. "He was here, I definitely saw him. Walking across the grounds at six o'clock this morning. Alone."

"But Lily, Remus-is-in-Wales," James said, as though he was talking to a very small child.

"No," Lily said with finality. "He's here."

"That is just so much bullshit, Lils, and you know it. You must have been mistaken," said Sirius.

"Sirius Black, Remus is one of my best friends!" Lily shrieked. "I am not going to mistake him for someone else!" Lily sounded slightly hysterical, and her friends looked worried.

"Ok, lets just say, hypothetically-," began Sirius.

"Ooh! Big words!" James interrupted.

"This is serious, James," Lily scolded.

"No, I am." Sirius quipped, then continued. "If Remus is in school, why? And why would he lie to us? It's just not possible, Lils, Remus wouldn't lie to us."

"Well, I saw him. Therefore he must have a really good reason for lying to us. He'd better have a really good reason for lying to us," Lily almost growled.

"I just can't think why he would," Sirius said, looking hurt.

"Lets look at the facts," James said in a matter-of-fact voice. "Remus goes away apparently, but really stays at school. Therefore we can assume that this is the case every time, which is about once a month. So what can possibly cause him to do that?" By now, James also sounded hurt. He had known Remus since they were small children, and it now seemed as if Remus had been lying to him all that time.  He wanted to know why.

"Well it has to be something really bad, because obviously the teachers play along with it," Sirius said, biting his lower lip.

"And his parents must know," Lily added.

"Once a month," James mused. "That's oddly familiar."

                Suddenly, Sirius clapped a hand to his mouth. He had gone pale underneath his dark skin, and his eyes were wide with shock. "Shit!" he whispered.

"What?" the others immediately demanded.

"Lily," Sirius said, turning to her.  "What moon was it last night?" He stared deep into her eyes, and it suddenly clicked with both her and James.

"Oh my god," James muttered, while Lily froze in shock.

"What?" Peter insisted again.

"Remus…is a…werewolf," Sirius said softly.

"Oh my god," Peter breathed, looking terrified.

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                "You're sure, you're absolutely sure it was the full moon last night," Sirius demanded of Lily for hundredth time as they hurried towards the Astronomy Tower.

"Abso-bloody-lutely, Sirius, for the millionth time, but that's what we're going to check on, right?"

"So shut up, for god's sake." James finished.

They came to the stairs at the bottom of the tower and James pulled out the Invisibility Cloak. The Astronomy Tower was out of bounds for everything except classes and getting caught would not help them now. The Cloak was huge, but even so it was a tight fit with all four of them under it, and they stumbled and swore their way up the stairs. When they got there, they pulled the Cloak off and looked around at the hundreds of moon, star and planet charts.

"Oh shit," Lily said, "Why is it Remus who's good at Astronomy?"

"You have me," James said pointedly.

"Great," she replied sarcastically.

"Siri, why aren't you good at Astronomy?" Peter asked curiously, while James went to work on the moon charts. "I thought Orion and Esme were the best in the school?"

Sirius looked furious and slightly pained at this. "Oh yes," he said, somewhat menacingly. "All Black's are supposed to be good at it. Why the hell do you think we got named after stars? But I'm the odd one out, the crappy one, and my father hates me for it," he finished bitterly, cuffing his eyes with his sleeve.

                The others stared dumbfounded, totally unsure of what to say. It was Lily who finally broke the silence, saying, "God, Sirius, why didn't you tell us?"

"Well who wants to admit their parents hate them? My father hates me cos I'm the first in centuries not to have the talent, and Mum hates me cos of a trick I played on Esme when we were kids!"

"What did you do?" James asked with interest.

"Turned her into a snake!" Sirius said proudly. They all laughed and the uncomfortable mood was forgotten, until James yelled "Bingo! I have it!" with glee. But then his face fell, and he held out the piece of parchment with a shaking hand. "It was the full moon, and so was last time."

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                Suddenly faced with the concrete reality of their best friend being a werewolf, the four were uncharacteristically quiet, and in the library to boot. They had, as unobtrusively as possible, taken all the books they could find on werewolves, with some on other animals thrown in as a precaution. They were now systematically reading through them all, exchanging only whispered comments such as "It's only one day per moon," or "They're only a danger to humans," always followed by a "poor Re." Except for Peter, that is, because he looked positively terrified that they had had a werewolf in their midst for so long.

                Eventually James put his book down. "Well, what are we going to do?" he asked seriously.

"Tell him," Lily and Sirius said at once.

"I think you're right," James agreed.

"It's best for all of us that way; at least then it'll all be out in the open," Lily said.

"I just don't see why he had to lie to us," Sirius muttered.

 Lily leaned over and whispered in his ear, "In case we reacted like Peter has," indicating Peter, who was pale and trembling.

"He should be back by now," James said heavily. "Shall we get it over with?" His friends nodded their heads and they left the library, looking as sombre as anyone had ever seen them.

                When they reached the common room, they asked if any one had seen Remus. "Yeah, he's up in your dorm, sleeping," a fifth year told them.

"Thanks," Lily said. "Lets go," she said to the others, and James and Sirius put on determined faces.

"Nuh-uh," Peter said suddenly. "There is no way you are getting me to go up there."

"For chrissakes, Peter, this is not the right time," Lily muttered.

"Why not?" asked James.

"I'm scared."

"Of what?" Lily said scornfully.

"Oh just leave the little shit, and lets go," Sirius said furiously, glaring at Peter. With their own glares, the others followed him up the stairs and pulled open the door.

                Remus was lying in his bed. He looked up at them as they entered, and they looked at him, unsure how to start, before Sirius blurted out:

"Remus Lupin, are you a werewolf?"

That's the end of the most demanding chapter I have ever written. I fund it quite emotional to write, and I would like to know if I've handled the subject well or not, cos I can see more angst coming in the next chapter. So you all know what I'm going ask you, don't you? Please, Review! Be a Good person!