Chapter 1 – Halloween Eve
Requisite Author's Note: This is the same story that it's always been. I have merely changed a few things that, a year later, strike me as not quite sound writing, and I also eliminated those annoying author's notes. Okay, almost all of them. I still love this story and I still keep hoping that someday more than five people will read it. I hope you are number six.
Requisite Disclaimer: I did not make any of these characters up. I just found out one day what they looked like, and I sat down to write about them. This is the result. I do not claim to know how this happened or if, in fact, it will ever happen again. Enjoy, and don't sue because this isn't making me a penny.
* * *
Sirius was sitting at a table in the common room, smiling bright as his namesake at no one in particular.
"What is it, Sirius? You finally get a girl to talk to you?" Remus wanted to know.
"Better. I just aced my Potions test," he said dreamily.
"But we only just took it – oh, never mind."
Sirius had a mammoth crush on Professor Paquerette and the entire student body knew about it, including, Remus sometimes suspected, the professor herself. Why else give her star student detention, even if he did have an odd sense of humor when it came to potion ingredients? Remus smiled involuntarily as he remembered the previous week's Potions incident. Sirius had used a series of ingenious charms to make his desiccated mayflys hover around Snape's head and refuse to be shooed away. Finally Snape had been forced to squish them by hand (they were somehow impervious to Snape's spells – Remus reminded himself to wiggle that useful little charm out of Sirius). All four of them had been dangerously close to strangling on their own laughter.
Sirius was looking sulky, and with good reason. When Remus smiled the way he did, half the girls in the common room sighed. He was good-looking, endlessly charming and had a reputation as a man of mystery since he refused to date, deeming lycanthropy too dangerous to indulge in moonlit tête-á-têtes. In his early twenties, when the glasses, the braces and the stigma were gone, Sirius would earn the reputation of being something of a ladies' man. But now, in their seventh year, Remus had the valentine cards and the admiring looks and the envy of every Gryffindor male. And to everyone's continual astonishment, he didn't seem to notice.
"Don't do that," Sirius said grouchily.
"What?"
"Smile."
"Well, it was funny," Remus said defensively.
"I know," Sirius said, without any idea what Remus thought was so amusing. "But none of the girls can get any work done when you smile like that. I don't think they appreciate it very much."
"Sirius, you're such a kidder," Remus said lightly. "I wish I could think up stuff like you do."
How does he do that? Sirius wondered. He can make anyone feel like someone. Sirius wished to be a girl for a fleeting second, just to see if Remus would make as good a boyfriend as he did a best friend. Not that his bread was buttered that way, but still.
"It's five till six, Sirius," Remus said. "We'd better get down to supper. I hear the house-elves have orange marshmallow cake for dessert."
Remus hadn't been through the secret kitchen entrance for two days, as far as Sirius knew. Once again, he wondered how Remus did it. It was magic the like of which Sirius had never even seen in Potions class.
James and Peter were already there, the two empty seats across from them clearly meant for Remus and Sirius. They took them and, under cover of the usual dinnertime clangor, James brought up the subject of their plans for the evening.
"Sirius, Peter and I decided we'd better leave as soon as possible after supper's over."
"What?" Sirius looked highly disappointed. "I'd planned on spending the evening trying some new combinations. I think I've finally found the key ingredient –"
"Not tonight!" James hissed. "Honestly, were you even paying attention when we discussed this? Peter and I need your help, so we can get everything out in one trip."
"Why can't Remus stay in the Shrieking Shack tonight of all nights?" Sirius whined. "When all I'm trying to do is control the problem in the first place…"
"You explain," James snapped at Peter. "I am so sick of this."
"It's the night before Halloween, Sirius," Peter said. "Everyone in Hogsmeade
is celebrating already, and you know they like to dare each other to go into
the Shrieking Shack."
"Among other things," Remus muttered.
"Imagine them meeting – er, a particularly violent spirit or something." Peter glanced perfunctorily around the table; in public, they either avoided the subject or called upon their vast vocabulary of euphemisms.
"Oh, that's right, I almost forgot about Halloween, seeing as how we can't even go."
All four of them flinched as Sirius realized too late what he'd said. "Oh, God, I'm sorry, I really don't mind."
"I told you you could go," Remus said. "I don't need you guys hanging around outside the door to keep an eye on me. Listen, go tonight after you're done bringing the stuff. I can lock myself in and cast the spells and all that."
"We'd better go," Sirius interrupted, "else it'll look really suspicious, being the only seventh-years who don't go. We have a reputation at stake here, gentlemen."
James jutted out his jaw the way he did when arguing questions of morality. "In case you've forgotten, we also have a responsibility to Remus."
"Sirius is right," Remus said with such quiet conviction that the others conceded without an argument. This was, after all, his territory.
"Then we leave after supper," James said. "Sirius, you and I will get the furniture, and Peter can take the books. Anything else you left in there, Remus?"
"No, that should be it," Remus said. And with hardly a pause, the four began discussing that night's party and which of them was most likely to end up sprawled in a ditch somewhere. (The vote was solidly for Sirius.)
James, Peter and Sirius left inconspicuously and together at the end of dinner, which left Remus an hour and a half to be at Moaning Myrtle's. He decided to make himself scarce, not having thought up a convincing enough excuse for this month's absence. It would have to be a doozy to explain his missing the infamous Halloween Eve party. Remus thought he might have another great-aunt die; he hadn't used that excuse in nearly a year. With that taken care of, Remus headed for the dungeons to wander for a while. The dungeons held a strange fascination for him that he had never mentioned to his friends. Somehow, he didn't think they'd understand.
The corridors were poorly lit; several times Remus nearly tripped over a loose stone. But when he finally did trip, sprawling full length on the chill floor, an irritable voice came from the darkness.
"Watch where you're going, twinkletoes."
Remus stood up carefully and lit his wand. Rob Avery and Lily Evans looked quite comfortable in their corner.
"The Astronomy Tower finally fall over?" Remus said conversationally.
"I forgot it was Tuesday." Avery looked somewhat abashed.
"Of course. The ickle firsties have enough nasty surprises in store for them as it is." Remus smirked. "Well, I'm on my way."
Fifteen minutes later, Lily Evans caught up with him on his third circuit of the dungeons.
"How'd you know about Tuesday?" Lily tilted her head up to look at Remus and he realized that she wasn't really pretty at all, at least not in the classical sense. But she had an indefinable something that made beauty suddenly superfluous. "Everyone knows you aren't the type to know about that sort of thing."
"What sort of thing? What day of the week it is?"
"You know what I mean." She stopped walking and turned to see if he did, and for that instant Remus forgot how to breathe. If he ever had known before then.
"Oh yeah?"
Any other night of the month, he would never have dreamed of touching Lily Evans. Well, maybe dreamed, but the delicate network of inhibitions Remus had rigged for himself was out for the count. He kissed her, and worse yet, Lily didn't seem to mind at all.
"Shit!" he yelled, leaping away like a startled deer. "Lily, I am so sorry."
"For what?" she demanded. "You kiss me better than any man alive and you have to apologize for it?"
He turned and sprinted down the corridor away from her. "You don't mean that," he yelled back. "I'm just a sheep in wolf's clothing."
"It's the other way around, sweetheart," she yelled, but she wasn't sure he heard.
* * *
While Remus was locked in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, his howls deadened by several well-placed Silencing Charms, James and Sirius and Peter were roaming around Hogsmeade, thoroughly enjoying themselves. They all carried a tankard, some of which contained butterbeer and some of which did not.
James hoisted his and proposed a toast. "To all the creepy, disgusting, bloodcurdling things that walk the earth."
They drank to it enthusiastically.
"Gentlemen, we are all three quite drunk," Peter proclaimed. He tended to become grandiose at such times, imagining that he was a well-to-do baron indulging in a few with his closest friends. "Shall we not return to the castle? A game of cards, perhaps…"
"Peter," said Sirius, trying to match his style, "you are singularly boring at times, you know that?"
"I'm with Sirius," James said, stumbling over his friend's name. "We stay."
Peter looked ready to ditch his sodden eloquence for more convincing terms, but their attention was suddenly and completely diverted by the appearance of Severus Snape.
James strode up to Snape and slung an arm about the other boy's shoulders. Snape shrugged off the touch with a look of loathing. Ever since their near-death encounter the year before, James had been publicly and perversely friendly to Snape, an attitude which had Remus's tacit approval. Snape's continual rejections of these overtures were understandable, but had the added value of making Snape look very bad and James, by contrast, very good. Snape knew it and it only added to his resentment.
"You're drunk," Snape said, somewhat unnecessarily. Peter was sitting on the ground, head in his hands, fighting a wave of nausea, and Sirius and James were swaying in unison.
"Yeah, we were just toasting you," James said with a
slovenly smirk. "Wait'll
you hear what I said… Peter, what'd I say?"
"For the love of God, stop yelling," he groaned.
"And that's what I think of you, my sl – my slith – oh, to hell with it." James let loose a monumental belch, and he and Sirius giggled like girls on the phone.
Snape made to leave, thoroughly revolted, and Sirius yelled, "I have something to say to you, you spineless salamander!" By the time he got the last two words out, Snape was well away, but Sirius kept yelling.
"You think you're so great at Potions, but I've got you beat! I've got this new potion, see, and it's going to make me a million Galleons and I'll be in every newspaper there is!"
Snape had stopped and was listening attentively.
Sirius remarked parenthetically to James, "Too bad I don't know how to make it yet."
Snape was gone.
Later on, they agreed that maybe Sirius shouldn't have mentioned his potion, with the exception of Sirius.
When they were all capable of walking again, they did. None of them had any idea where they were, but all it took to get back into the village was a little dumb luck, which all three of them had in abundance.
They were walking down the main street, just sober enough to think of heading back, when someone leaped onto James. He thought Snape was attacking him until she let him go just as quickly.
"Shit," Lily said. "You're not him." And ran off.
Had Remus been there, he might have pointed out Lily's grave grammatical error. But, all things considered, it was probably better that he wasn't.
"Sirius," said James. "Find out from Lily who she's looking for, and how he can possibly be better than me."
Sirius sighed; James was clearly in one of those moods. "So you can beat the crap out of him, right?"
"So I can make a Polyjuice Potion." James grinned.
Without another word, Sirius went after Lily, although he knew very well that if James wanted Polyjuice Potion, he would not be making it himself. Oh no, Sirius would. That was one of the perils of befriending the supremely self-assured Quidditch captain.
Sirius found Lily slumped against a building not too far down, looking severely depressed. When she saw him, she wailed, "Oh, Sirius!" and burst into tears.
Sirius held her as she cried, thinking bitterly that girls never saw him as anything but a trusted confidante. Merlin's sake, did he look like a walking handkerchief?
"That's the last time I mix butterbeer with Pepper-Up Potion," Lily said, still crying. "Samantha told me they'd just cancel each other out. Did you ever try mixing depressants and stimulants, Sirius?"
He certainly had not. "I stick to the depressants," Sirius said, patting her hair comfortingly. "They cheer me up."
"Poor guy." Lily smiled up at him, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. Sirius offered her a handkerchief, which she accepted gratefully. "Was it you I was looking for earlier?"
In that second he wanted to say yes like he'd never wanted anything before, but he recognized the feeling as alcohol lingering in his system. Not to mention the fact that James would personally curse him within an inch of his life. So he said, "I don't think so, but I need to know who it was."
Lily squinched her eyes shut, trying to think. It made her look, Sirius thought adoringly, like a newborn mouse. "You know, I really can't remember. He was an incredible kisser, though. It was like amazing."
Prudently setting aside his raging jealousy, Sirius asked helpfully, "Do you remember where you were?"
"The dungeons," Lily answered.
"The dungeons? That sounds like Snape," Sirius said without even thinking.
"Was it Snape? Oh, thank you, Sirius, you've been such a sweetie." Lily kissed him on the nose and walked off.
Sirius couldn't move and didn't want to. Either the world was on fire or he was. She had kissed him!!! Sirius slumped against the wall, cradling his nose, and decided to peel off the top layer of skin so he could preserve her kiss forever. He tried several charms, all of which failed, and eventually he decided to invent a potion just for that purpose. Sirius pulled out his list of potential potion ideas and added it, then set off to find James and Peter.
They were exactly where Sirius had left them. He walked up behind Peter and said, "Snape."
Peter jumped, nearly out of his robes. He whipped out his wand and went into the defensive position before recognizing Sirius. "Oh, you're not him," Peter said, relaxing marginally. "You want me to fix that nose for you?"
"What'd I do to it?" Sirius wailed, prodding his nose. Lily's kiss contaminated!
"Please, Sirius," James said. "You can obsess about your nose later."
* * *
Two days later, when Remus was sane enough to resume his place in society, the other three told him their Halloween Eve story. When they had finished, Remus was excessively pale, but this was such a regular symptom of his transformation that none of them remarked it.
After a minute, Remus recovered himself and, in his usual incisive manner, went straight to the most urgent matter.
"Sirius," he said, "what in hell did you do to your nose?" It was still noticeably purple.
Sirius flushed and retorted, "Nothing."
"What are you all staring at me for?" Remus snapped. His monthly bouts of irritability were almost as bad as the girls'. "The fur's all gone, okay? What, d'you want me to solve all your problems for you?"
"If you could get me a few years to work on my potions, that'd be great," Sirius said.
"Just get me Lily," James said.
"That would be nice," Peter said, and tittered to himself about something.
Remus sighed. "I gotta think about it for a while. I'm not a magician, you know."
"Well," Sirius said.
"Oh, shut up."
Remus stomped out of the room, and almost collapsed from the effort. He was still more than a bit weak from the transformation, he decided as he leaned gasping against the wall. In this condition, his only two choices were the library or the infirmary, and the latter was decidedly not conducive to thought. So he set out for the library, taking liberal rest stops to make sure his lungs were still functioning. Despite this precaution, Remus collapsed in the fourth-floor corridor, and his last conscious thought was a dim curiosity as to why the floor was so cold. Freezing Charm, he thought just before he passed out.
Remus awoke to the sensation of something tugging at his ankles.
"Blast, you're heavy!" came a voice from somewhere around the region of his shoes.
Remus sat up and discovered that the speaker was a two-foot-tall fairy with orange hair wearing a skimpy yellow dress. She dropped his foot and smiled up at him.
"Hi, I'm Cilantro, your guardian angel," she said.
"Isn't that a spice or something?"
"Oh, a smart one!" she trilled. "I can tell you're going to be a lot more fun than the last one. All he ever did was gamble and cheat on his wife."
"And you're my what?"
"Guardian angel, sweetie pie. I follow you around, make sure you don't kill yourself or anything. You looked kinda dead for a minute there, so I figured I'd check in. If I let one more person die on my watch, I'm out of a job, y'know, and you wouldn't believe how few fairies are gainfully employed."
"Where were you when I almost blew myself up a couple weeks ago?" Remus demanded.
"I was shopping," Cilantro said. "Anyhow you were fine, so what's your beef?"
"Sweet Merlin," Remus muttered. "My life is in the hands of a delinquent fairy. Say, how come I didn't get a real angel?"
"Humans get first dibs on them," she said matter-of-factly. "Werewolves get what's left, which in this case means me."
"Even the Maker discriminates, huh?" Remus said bitterly.
"C'est la vie, kid." Cilantro shrugged. "Well, if you aren't going to die, I saw this really adorable dress six months ago, and I still haven't gotten over not buying it."
She had turned to go when Remus said, "Wait…"
"Yeah?"
"Do you know any genies?"
"Well, I met one once." She made a face. "Briefly. Why, d'you need a wish or something?"
"Several," he admitted.
"Don't we all. I could get you a genie if you had about a century to spare, but doxies come a lot quicker."
"What's a doxy? I never took CMC." Because, Remus didn't add, he was, legally and practically, a magical creature himself.
"Second cousin to genies. The only real difference is doxies tend to live in thimbles and matchboxes and that sort of thing. Of course, you only get one wish, and that you have to pay for somehow."
"Pay for? I'm a bit short on gold right now."
"Oh, not with money," she said impatiently. "Doxies aren't so easygoing as genies. Inbred, if you ask me. They'll grant your wish, all right, but there's always a catch. When they give, they take something else away."
"Oh," was all Remus said.
"And let me tell you, doxies aren't terribly patient. There's no way of knowing when it'll visit you, not at night or anything, but when it does, have your wish ready. A doxy isn't like to wait around while you dilly-dally."
Something Cilantro had said suggested a rather squirmy thought to Remus. "Er – you're on duty all the time, then?"
"Supposed to be. But we need our shut-eye too. That's why people die in their sleep like that."
Remus tried, but there was really no better way to ask. "Do you even watch people in the bathroom and stuff?"
"People die in the bathroom too, y'know." She winked cheekily at him. "But if that's what you're worried about, none of us are perverts. We go through very thorough background checks. Well, I'll be seeing you. Later, if you stay out of trouble." Cilantro darted off, leaving Remus with the disturbing feeling that she hadn't answered his question properly.
He rather thought he'd be sleeping in his clothes that night.
Because he didn't have enough energy to move, Remus continued to sit there, thinking with his eyes closed. When he woke up, he knew what his wish would be.
Remus went slowly and carefully back to the common room. He hoisted himself through the portrait hole and spotted Sirius snoozing on a couch near the fireplace. His head was leaning back at an absurd angle, and his mouth was wide open. Several firsties were clustered around him, snickering silently; one of them held a quill magically suspended over Sirius's mouth. Remus plucked the quill out of the air and snapped it in half, with a look that spoke eloquently of antiquated torture spells and pain. The firsties scattered.
Remus settled down next to Sirius and promptly fell back asleep. When he awoke, his head was lolling on Sirius's shoulder, and Sirius was sitting rigidly so as not to disturb him.
"Yurgh," said Remus. "Sweet Merlin," he added, waking up a bit. "Did I drool on you? I'm really sorry." He swiped uselessly at Sirius's shoulder.
"Oh, well, what's a spot of drool among friends."
"Sirius," began Remus, putting his head back on Sirius's shoulder to avoid his eyes. Unaccountably, Sirius smirked, though Remus couldn't have known that. "Would you be mortally offended if I got a wish and didn't use it for you?"
"Oh, I wouldn't expect you to," Sirius reassured him. "Say, how're you getting a wish anyway?"
"Er – well," Remus squirmed, "I sort of met my guardian angel and she –"
"Lord God Almighty!" Sirius bellowed, thereby gaining the attention of the entire common room. "No problems here, just keep working," he addressed the room sheepishly. "Remus," he continued in a whisper, "what on earth happened to you?!"
"Nothing much, I just passed out, it wasn't a big deal, people meet their guardian angels every day…"
"None of us have!" Sirius hissed.
"Has," Remus said absently.
"No we haven't!"
"I'm just correcting your grammar, Sirius."
"Oh." Sirius thought about that. "So what was she like?" he asked finally.
"Sort of strange. Actually, she was a fairy."
Sirius looked thoughtful. "I wonder if I got a fairy too."
"No, you're human, I expect you have a real angel," Remus said somewhat bitterly.
"But you – oh. I could trade with you," he offered.
"I don't even know what kind of angel you have, Sirius," he said reasonably. "For all I know, you have some kind of angelic slacker watching over you."
Sirius looked offended. "I am still alive, aren't I?"
"Besides, you don't want Cilantro," Remus said hastily. "She seems like a real airhead. She even said guardian angels sleep at night sometimes when they're supposed to be on duty."
"Well, that's that," Sirius said firmly. "I'm never sleeping again."
Remus didn't have the heart to tell him the rest of it, so he didn't. Some things you were better off not knowing.
* * *
The first Quidditch game of the season took place on a windy Saturday in November. Remus sat by himself in the Gryffindor stands; James and Peter were both starting Chasers, and Sirius was the water boy. From where Remus sat, he could see Sirius on the bench, holding the water bucket on his lap and taking frequent sips from his coffee cup, which he'd gotten from the kitchen at four o'clock that morning. Ever since Remus had told him about guardian angels, Sirius had been sleeping about four hours a night and constantly napping during History of Magic to make up for it.
"Remus!"
He turned around and saw Lily waving at him. His heart tried to leap and sink at the same time, and ended up doing an odd little pirouette instead.
"Come sit up here with us!"
Not coming would look suspicious, Remus reasoned as he walked up to her row. Besides, she doesn't even remember about me. She thinks it was Snape.
So why isn't she sitting over in the Slytherin section with him?
"You looked kind of lonely," Lily said, smiling at him. He found he couldn't look directly at her smile. It made him feel like an orange Popsicle sitting in the sun. Her eyes didn't help, either. "You're just lucky to have all your friends on the team."
"All except Sirius," said Remus hastily. "He's just the Gryffindor gofer and wannabe tactical advisor." That was the greatest thing he'd ever said, because it made Lily laugh, and it sounded like something really gorgeous, he couldn't quite think what.
Remus realized that it would probably be a long game, but probably still not long enough.
Luckily, the game started, which gave Remus something far more important to think about. But he was sharing his Omnioculars with Lily, which he thought might have been the greatest happiness the earth had to offer. He even missed a play handing them back to Lily, which in any other circumstances would have been inexcusable.
Gryffindor was leading fifty to twenty and Slytherin had just scored another goal when Remus saw a flash of white through the lenses. He focused in on it and caught a circular glimmer like a halo, and realized it was diving straight for the bench.
"Sirius!" he howled, pelting out of the stands, thinking only that if Sirius died, he would have to come too.
When Remus reached Sirius, he was shaking his wet black curls in annoyance.
"I was having this dream, okay," he said. "I was at this awards ceremony, and I was walking across the stage to give my speech and all of a sudden I realized my robes –" He stopped. "What're you gawping at?"
"You almost drown in a bucket of water and all you care about is your bloody dream? You are such an idiot," Remus said, highly relieved.
"Yeah, I felt someone yanking up on my head and I thought, what a drip. Was that you?"
"No, you fool, that was your guardian angel. See?" Remus handed him the Omnioculars. Sirius looked and yelped with delight.
"See, she isn't a bum! Praise the Lord, now I can get some sleep."
"Wait," Remus said quickly. "In the dream – what about your, uh…"
"My robes? Oh, they were made of Saran Wrap."
The entire Gryffindor team landed on the ground and James yelled, "What the devil is going on, water boy?"
"It was the colored kind!" Sirius howled. "And I had on those godawful smiley face boxers…"
"Did I waste a timeout on this?" James snapped.
"I think he's through dying now, yes," Remus said coolly. Sirius was curled up on the ground asleep.
"Fine. You're in charge." James and the Gryffindor team took off, leaving Remus with the unenviable task of dragging Sirius up to the dormitories. He missed Gryffindor's spectacular game-winning capture of the Golden Snitch, but he got back in time to douse James and Peter with Sirius's bucket of water and help levitate the winning team all the way back up to the common room for the traditional post-victory bash.
Normally, it would have been Sirius's job to get the refreshments, so Remus made a quick trip to the kitchen and another one to the cache of Honeydukes delicacies they kept for just such an emergency. When he returned, James and Lily and Peter were standing together. Judging by the intensity of James's expression and the pictures he was drawing with his hands, the Quidditch game was being resuscitated in all its glory for Lily. Remus was tempted to sneak away, but James caught sight of him and Lily waved him over, smiling. Reluctantly, he joined them.
"…And I yanked Sirius's head out of the bucket like that." James rescued a fictional Sirius while Lily watched and Peter ate. "He thanked me and would you believe it, he went right to sleep. Luckily, it didn't hurt our game any." Lily congratulated them both and James beamed, running his fingers through his hair the way he did when he was feeling self-conscious. Peter saved them both by acting perfectly normal; he grinned and said, "Thanks, Lily. D'you want a cream puff?"
She took one, as James turned to Remus and said, "Thanks for filling in for Sirius."
"No problem," he said, aware that this was a show for Lily's benefit and he was an extra.
"He won't be too happy about missing the party, though," James said, and they all laughed.
Perhaps tiring of Quidditch, Lily changed the subject with a question of her own. "So what are you guys planning to do after Hogwarts?"
"Play Quidditch," James said immediately. "I've got a few tryouts this summer, so we'll see how that goes."
"I want to be an Auror," Peter said. "Have since I was a kid. I'm going to take the test pretty soon, and hopefully I'll get in."
"How about you, Remus?" Lily asked.
"Me? I hadn't thought about it. Get a job, I guess."
"Whatever you do, you'll be great." It was exactly what everyone said to everyone else, but she was looking at him like she'd invented it fresh for him, or wished she had. Entirely against his will, Remus went slightly red as he wondered if he'd remember that all his life, and if she might remember him. He felt suddenly as though he was flying over the ocean, and had an unexplainable desire to let go.
"Thanks," he said. "Listen, I'm going to go see if Sirius is okay, you know, breathing and all that, so I can stop worrying."
He left and James looked after him, a small frown creasing his otherwise perfect forehead. "Has Remus always been this protective of Sirius?"
"Yes," Peter said. "Why d'you ask?"
"It just seems a little strange, is all," James said.
Peter smirked. "So what are you implying?"
"Please," Lily said. "I'm sure Remus is as straight as an arrow." Why she thought so, she didn't say.
* * *
Monday the Gryffindors were in Transfiguration trying to transform one another into animals. Our four protagonists thought this was the best joke of the year. James, Sirius and Peter were occupied with turning one another into amusing or obscure animals. (Sirius was currently a blue-footed booby, which met both requirements admirably.) Remus was sitting a little to one side, swinging his feet and daydreaming. He was not allowed to participate because, as McGonagall had informed him, "things could go very badly wrong." Remus had been tempted to point out that some of his classmates were far more likely to make things go badly wrong, but he refrained so as to avoid mention of his "condition." That word always made him feel as though he should be climbing the walls of St. Mungo's. Fortunately he was distracted from this line of thought when a doxy flew in the window and announced, "I have business with Mister Remus Lupin."
The entire class looked up to stare at the new arrival, who resembled nothing so much as an oversized pink-and-green-striped bumblebee with nearly human features. "What're you rugrats staring at, huh?" it demanded.
"Professor," Remus interrupted smoothly, rising to his feet, "would you mind if we took care of this outside?"
"Actually, I'd prefer it," she said faintly.
Remus went for the door, not sparing a glance for the doxy or his friends. When they were both outside and the door shut, the doxy said, "Make it quick. I have to be in Aberdeen in ten minutes and let me tell you, it has been the devil to pay already this morning, literally. Some asshole wants to get into heaven, but considering the sacrifice, it won't be worth it."
"My wish," Remus said, "is that Lily Evans and James Potter be in love for the rest of their lives."
"You mean it isn't for you?" The doxy looked genuinely astonished. "Don't you want anything?"
"I want a lot of things," Remus said evenly. "None of them is worth your time."
"Almost no one thinks that, you know," the doxy said. "I'll try to cut you some slack here, okay, but really you don't know what you're asking. Those two were never meant to fall in love."
"Why not?"
The doxy sighed. "You gotta understand, I'm pretty low on the food chain. I got my orders like everyone else, I got my copy of the book. It says so, but hanged if I know why."
"What the devil are you going on about?" he said.
"Careful, you don't want to tick him off." The doxy shivered. "The book tells everything that ever happened and ever will, but no one can make head or tail of it."
"Really?"
"Yeah, it's total gibberish. Look at this." The doxy pulled a copy of their Transfiguration text out of thin air and started thumbing though it.
"So McGonagall wasn't kidding when she said Transfiguration held the secrets of life," Remus said, deeply awed. "No wonder I can never understand it."
"Here it is." The doxy held out the book and Remus saw rows and rows of numbers, letters, pound signs, asterisks, and symbols he had never dreamed of. In the center of the page, in crabbed, slanted handwriting, it said this – James Potter/Lily Evans: dangerous.
"Okay, they can fall in love," the doxy said. "And it'll be mind-blowing, but the dangerous kind don't ever live to a hundred twenty, see?" It looked straight at Remus and said, "That's their price."
Remus hardly paused. "Do it anyway."
"If you leave things be, you'll all be happy," the doxy said, and Remus knew without asking that it meant him, and Sirius and Peter.
"Will it be worth the price?" Remus asked.
The doxy let its eyes wander into the future. "Someday, yes."
"Then do it," he said.
"You are truly noble," the doxy said. "Or maybe not, because you have no idea what you just did." And flew away.
Remus went back into the classroom. "I think I just condemned all of us to a bleak and miserable future," he told James.
"You missed the best part," James said. "We turned Peter into a flying squirrel, and you know how scared he is of heights…"