A/N – I was really bored today, and I re-read this chapter. I couldn't believe some of the things I left out, I mean, it wasn't anything big, but the some things didn't make much sense. So I went over it and patched it up. I may do that with the other chapters, I may not, so who knows. : ) Anyway, that's it, back to the old a/n. Thanks to everybody who reviewed! I really, really, really appreciate it. I can't tell you enough how much they mean to me. *sniffs* They make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Ok, ok, enough of that. : ) Flyingphilosopher, thank you for your constructive criticism, I've been trying different ways to expand the characters, but I think I'll have to spend one chapter on each, which is kind of what I was planning to do in the first place. Ciria, to me, Filch is just a mean, nasty guy who has mean, nasty cats. : ) I'm sticking with the books in that James hates Snape the most, and Peter doesn't do well in anything really, but that will change, I promise. Thanks also to Nina and Rena Lupin for your reviews! Now, on with the story.
~~~~*~~~~
The boys, minus Peter, continued to make their nightly trips through the castle. They had never gotten caught, but they had many close calls, like the time when James accidentally tripped Filch. One night, James and Sirius went out by themselves, because Remus had taken ill again, and they ended up in a hallway full of paintings. The two boys stood looking at the different works of art from under the cloak.
"We should come back here when Remus is feeling better; he would like to see this." Sirius said, and James nodded in agreement. The boys had often seen Remus drawing in his spare time, and they knew that he liked art. Sirius was now looking at a painting of a bowl of fruit, and he felt his stomach give an unpleasant twist.
"You know, we should try and find the kitchens sometime, James. I'm getting really hungry." Sirius said just as his stomach gave a loud growl. James grinned at Sirius and then jabbed him in the ribs.
"Your stomach better get quiet, Filch may hear it." James said, still grinning.
"Who cares? I'm hungry!" Sirius said, and he ran out from under the cloak to the painting of fruit.
"Oh, pear, if only you were real!" Sirius said as he put his hands against the pear, hugging it. James only shook his head and pulled the cloak off of him.
"Whoa!" Sirius said, and James ran over to him.
"What?" James asked, and he looked down at Sirius's hand which was now grasping something. Sirius just looked at James and pulled the handle that he was holding. The painting swung forward, and the two boys stood in amazement. They walked inside, James clutching his cloak, ready to throw it over them if necessary. They walked into a room that rivaled the size of the Great Hall. Sirius stuck his nose in the air and breathed deep the aroma of the room.
"Excellent, food!" Sirius said, and hundreds of little faces turned to them.
"House elves? I didn't know house elves worked here!" James said, and the small creatures made their way towards them.
"Who cares who cares who cooks the food, it's wonderful, and it would be even better right now!" Sirius said, grabbing up small cakes that the elves were offering to them. James watched as his friend starting eating like he hadn't eaten in weeks. Feeling a tug on his shirt, James looked down to see a house elf holding a tray with different foods on it.
"Some food, sir?" The elf squeaked. James then felt his stomach twist in hunger and then proceeded to help himself.
A while later, Sirius and James left the kitchens, pockets and mouths stuffed with food, and they returned to the empty Gryffindor Common Room.
"We are definitely going to have to remember that." Sirius said before eating another pastry.
"We should make a map." James mused as he rubbed his full stomach. Sirius nodded in agreement, but they quickly forgot about the idea.
~~~~*~~~~
Classes went by very well for James, Sirius, and Remus. James, with the coaxing of the other boys, started to relax more, which meant that he pulled more pranks in class. The boys, especially James and Sirius, were getting more and more points taken away from Gryffindor, which made the other students in their house rather unhappy. But they also received plenty of points by doing well in class to make up for the lost ones. The other Gryffindor students quickly learned to leave the pranksters along and let them have some fun. James and Sirius were soon being talked about and admired by other students, after they turned Professor Dumbledore's beard bright orange during the Halloween feast. They had also started keeping a record of their detentions, deciding to try and break their record every year. The boys also started to meet other people, and they quickly made many friends. Although, Peter still followed James around, and James and Sirius were always found together.
The boys started to notice the almost routine illnesses that befell Remus. James had pointed out to Sirius that Remus always carried spare robes with him when he went to the hospital wing, and, one November night, James stopped and asked him about it.
"Hey Remus, why do you always take robes with you when you go to the hospital wing?" James asked, eyeing the very worn robes that Remus had under his arm. Remus became very pale, and he started to stumble over his words.
"I, uh, wear these in ca-, uh, instead of my sch-, robes." Remus managed to say, and Sirius, who was sitting on a nearby couch reading, looked up at his friend with raised eyebrows.
"What?" Sirius asked, and Remus felt his throat go very dry. He kept trying to say something, anything, but nothing came to mind. James looked over at Sirius and then back to Remus.
"Uh, are you ok, Remus?" James asked, and Remus shook his head.
"No, I think I need to get to the hospital wing." Remus said, and he ran out of the Common Room.
Sirius looked over at James and said, "Do you think he was about to be sick?"
"Yeah, that's probably it." James said, and he returned to his homework.
Remus stopped running when he reached the hospital wing, and he leaned against a wall panting for breath. His emotions always seemed to get more and more extreme when the full moon approached, and the questioning by James and Sirius unhinged him completely. He struggled to get a grip on himself before he walked in to the infirmary, he didn't want Madam Pomfrey to know anything was wrong, or she would bug him until he told her. Once he had steadied his breathing, he walked in to the hospital wing, and he spotted Madam Pomfrey already wearing her scarlet cloak.
"Are you ready?" She asked, and Remus nodded.
~~~~*~~~~
After the awkward questioning by James and Sirius, Remus never felt comfortable around them after that, afraid they would learn about his secret. The other two boys picked up on his behavior, and they were very puzzled as to why he was acting that way. A few nights later, the four boys were sitting at a table in the Gryffindor Common Room doing there homework. James looked up from his Charms essay to see Remus busy working on his own.
"Er, Remus?" James said, and the other boy looked up.
"Yeah?"
"Uh, Sirius and I found this neat room full of paintings, and we thought you'd like to see them." James said, careful to exclude the part about finding the kitchen, or else, he feared, Peter would want to go.
"Really, where at?" Remus said slowly, seeing where James was going with this.
"Oh, it's not hard to get to, you want to see it tonight?" James asked, and Sirius looked at Remus and nodded.
"Yeah, you'll like it." Sirius said. Remus looked at the two boys who were waiting for his answer. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and adverted his eyes back to his essay.
"I don't know, I mean, I have to finish…" Remus muttered, but was interrupted by Sirius.
"Oh, come on Remus! What's going on? You're acting weird, you're avoiding us, and you won't do anything with us anymore. What happened, did we say anything? Did we do anything to make you mad? Tell us!" Sirius finally asking the questions that he and James were wondering for the past few days. A couple Gryffindors sitting nearby turned their attention to the boys, making Remus feel more uncomfortable. Sirius and James didn't seem to notice this, and they sat waiting for Remus to tell them something, but, instead, Remus got up and went up the stairs. Sirius's jaw dropped after Remus left, and James sat back with a sour look on his face.
"Well that didn't help much." James said.
~~~~*~~~~
Remus was now avoiding the other boys at all costs. He was deathly afraid that with all of their questions they would be able to work out that he was a werewolf and then tell the whole school. He had never felt so lonely in his life than he did now. Before, he had his parents at home, and up until now, he had friends at school, but now he was all alone.
He sat at breakfast by himself, purposely waiting until the other boys left, so he wouldn't have to sit by him. The first day he did this, James and Sirius promptly got up, with Peter following behind, and sat by him. But Remus didn't say anything to the other boys, and they had left him alone ever since then. Remus hated it, and he wanted to talk to them again, but he knew they would ask questions, and that was what Remus feared. As he sat at the Gryffindor table, a good distance away from everyone else, he saw someone stop in front of him. He looked up, expecting to see one of his former friends, but instead he saw a first year girl, with deep red hair, standing in front of him, smiling.
"H-hi, Lily." Remus said, taken by surprise.
"Hi Remus, do you mind if we sit here?" Lily asked, and Remus then spotted her two friends standing next to her.
"No, not at all." He said quietly, and they sat down. Remus was acquainted with Lily Evans through Sirius, but he had never really talked to her before. Lily and her friends, Violet and Shelby, were very pretty. Remus was particularly fond of Shelby, but he had never told anyone about that. In the corner of Remus's eye, he saw Sirius looking over at them with a curious expression on his face.
"So, Remus," Lily said, "why aren't you sitting by Sirius and James?"
"We, uh, had a falling out." Remus said quickly, and Lily raised her eyebrows in surprise. Shelby shook a stray bit of brown hair out of her face and said, "It had to of been bad, right? You guys are always together."
"Yeah." Remus said and looked down at his food. He felt his cheeks burn from being acknowledged and actually talked to by Shelby, but also from the questions they were asking him. Lily and her friends seemed to notice that this wasn't a good topic to continue to question Remus about, so they changed the subject, much to Remus's relief. At the end of breakfast they walked with Remus to class, much to his surprise.
~~~~*~~~~
Sirius and James sat in the Common Room, bored and unhappy. It had been weeks now since Remus had stopped talking to them, and they never felt like doing anything without the other boy. Every time that they would sneak out, they would see something that would remind them of their friend and they would quickly lose interest and return to Gryffindor Tower. After a while, they stopped sneaking out and instead would just sit in the Common Room, like tonight.
"Do you think there's something we could do to show how sorry we are?" Sirius suggested.
"The only problem is that we don't know what we did to him." James groaned. He was beginning to feel angry, because no matter how many times he went over the conversation that had scared Remus away, nothing stood out to him as something that would offend Remus. James's thoughts were interrupted when the very boy they were discussing walked down the stairs. He was leaving, again, for the hospital wing, with a bundle of clothes in hand. He stopped for a moment when he saw Sirius and James, but he continued to walk past them without saying anything.
"Have you noticed how he always talks to Lily and her friends now?" Sirius said after Remus left the Common Room. James turned back to his friend.
"Yeah, I have. Maybe you can see if Lily will talk to Remus for us." James suggested, but Sirius shook his head.
"I already have. She said that every time she talks about us, he just doesn't say anything." Sirius said.
They sat there mostly in silence, every once in a while throwing out ideas as to how to get Remus to talk to them again. Peter, who finally finished his homework, sat by Sirius and they started to play a game of exploding snap. James, though, continued to brood on what possibly could have angered Remus. After some time, and many games of exploding snap, the three boys were left in the Common Room by themselves. James stood up and walked to the window, looking outside as if for an answer.
"What is it?" James muttered to himself as he gazed at the moon. The full moon was shining bright over Hogwarts, and James found himself almost squinting at the brightness of the moon.
"The moon is really bright tonight." James heard Sirius say from right behind him.
"Yeah." James said. They stood there looking at the moon for a few minutes, and then James turned and walked away.
"What am I thinking? The moon isn't going to answer any questions." James said as he fell into his favorite chair. Sirius turned and leaned against the wall, while Peter had fallen asleep on the couch.
'The moon isn't helping me…' James thought, frustrated, 'I just want my friend back. Back… he's gone… to the hospital wing. Or has he?' James sat up and looked again out of the window. 'The moon is full, is it always full when he leaves? Is he…?' James stopped himself from thinking the question. It was too serious of a question to think about, so he quickly pushed it from his mind.
'No, Remus can't be… Or is he? No! It's impossible! Well… there are other ways to find out…'
~~~~*~~~~
All right! I like that a lot better than the first version. What do you all think? Please review and let me know!