"Speaking Up"

By Ohnann (ohnann(at)kittymail.com)

Disclaimer: All characters, settings and creatures © J.K. Rowling.

"You're a lonely little darling, aren't you," professor Sprout suddenly said, as she accepted the parchment with that week's homework directly from the young boy's hand.

Remus didn't know what to do. Nod? No, that would seem too pathetic. After all, loneliness wasn't all that bad, once you'd gotten used to yourself. The ability to make friends, something that seemed like a basic luxury to others, had yet to involve him. Not knowing what else to do, he smiled half- heartedly.

It was the end of the last lesson for the week, and his forth weekend at Hogwarts would begin as soon as he'd handed in his Herbology essay. Remus wanted to enjoy that evening; he might not have that much to celebrate the next week. He'd studied the calendar carefully, and found that he would have to face a full moon. It wasn't so bad, as long as no one asked him any questions. So far, he'd spent his free time with a book – not the most social company, but by far the safest.

"I do get along with the other boys in my dorm," Remus said, wondering at the proud tinge he could hear meddling with his small voice. Anyone could get along with others, why did he have to put it like that? Now, he'd just managed to make himself sound even more pathetic and lonely. Proud – for getting along with someone else? Suspicious.

Professor Sprout didn't seem to notice, though. She gave him a small, absent-minded smile, and reached up to brush some dirt away from her blue robes; though with her sullied fingers, she only made the mark worse. "That's nice, dear... They're nice boys."
The next afternoon, after dinner, he retreated back to the dorm. It was Saturday, and he was surprised to see that James Potter and Peter Pettigrew also returned to their beds. Peter skimmed through the Transfiguration text- book, while James simply stretched his legs out, staring at the ceiling.

After a while, there was a loud thump outside their door. Remus had to look up from his book, wondering what might have caused the sound. A moment later, Sirius Black flung the door open. Remus strongly suspected that the other boy had been in such a hurry, that he'd initially forgotten to open the door.

"Here you are! You'll never guess what I've found... Come on; guess!" He exclaimed, staring expectantly at James.

"A letter from your mum saying that she's made arrangements for you to live alone in Hogsmeade?" said James hopefully, crawling off the bed.

Over the weeks, Remus had come to understand that Sirius had some issues with his family, even if he hadn't dared to ask exactly what. Not even James Potter seemed to know everything, and he and Black were already practically inseparable.

"Nuh-uh... That has, unfortunately, yet to come true. Peter?"

"The Transfiguration test has been cancelled?" If James had looked hopeful, it was nothing compared to Peter's expression; desperate optimism made his eyes shine.

Sirius rolled his eyes. "I think it's, by now, safe to say that professor McGonagall isn't the type who cancels tests for nothing. Perhaps if we've all been infected by plague... And that's not something to hope for, Pete."

And then, what couldn't happen, happened. Sirius turned to Remus, inching an eyebrow upwards, letting Remus know that he expected a valid guess from him, too.

Remus suddenly got a tongue-tie. He would gladly have come down with any kind of plague right then and there, if he just could have said something. Anything. But it was impossible. Instead, he just shook his head violently.

Sirius rolled his eyes and turned to James and Peter again, which made Remus's gut twist with distress. It was over. They never would take him for anything else, than the only student who actually took notes during Flitwick's lessons.

He only heard fragments of what Sirius told the other two next; about how he'd found a hidden tunnel while leaning against a statue, which had looked perfectly normal.
Sirius and James seemed to plan a new prank every time they met, even if it was for just two seconds. Now, they had sat down near Remus around a table in the Gryffindor common room. Near, but not alongside.

It had just been Remus at first; freezing so much he feared that his bones would disengage from each other, he'd placed himself in the easy chair as close to the fire as possible. Using up what felt like the last of his strength, he'd pushed it a little, until it was turned towards the wonderful warmth of the fire. Then he'd crawled up into the inviting chair, pulled his knees up, leaned back, and just let the warmth wash over him, enjoying the long, pleasant strokes of heat the flames of fire brought.

Soon enough, Sirius and James had slumped down in two other seats, Peter in their wake. Remus just sat there in his seat; the high back turned away from the table where the other three placed parchment and quills – intentionally or not, he'd efficiently shut himself out from all kind of fellowship.

To Remus, they laughed harder than they'd ever done before that evening; and even little Peter came with a contribution to the fun every now and then.

For the first time in his life, he actually wanted to speak to strangers, wanted to add something, wanted to make them laugh. Quotes from books and Muggle films washed over him, as well as single words, which he was positive would have been perfect right there... But then the moment was over, they were already talking about something else, and Remus sat there, keeping his own counsel. He did have a sense of humour, even though he just showed it to himself.

He tried to tell himself that the other boys would not appreciate his humorous quotes or private jokes, tried to convince himself that all of those jokes were too intellectual, too Muggle, too cultural, too... mature. Though somewhere deep down, he knew that the others probably would understand, anyway.

Remus pressed his teeth into his tongue. Do not get involved, he chided himself, desperately trying to silence the little voice in his head screaming: "But I wanna!" at the top of its voice, sounding much more eleven than Remus ever could. A metallic tinge filled his mouth, and Remus had to cast down his eyes, when they suddenly and unexpectedly turned wet.
Sirius and James had many ideas, and many targets, of mischief, and also on this level, Peter came with a suggestion, ever so often. Their ideas weren't exactly highly polished, and Remus often thought that they good use a couple of good plans, which weren't thrown together at the spur of the moment. His plans.

But he didn't dare to speak up and correct them when they were wrong, didn't offer to help them. He had a feeling they wouldn't welcome his assistance. They had become quite the gang, those three. He wasn't about to beg them to let him in. The fear of being shut out completely, losing the fragile acceptance he'd seemed to earn so far, simply by being himself, was stronger than his will to do them good. It clogged up his throat, paralysed his tongue. All he could do was to lean back in his seat, narrow his eyes, and fold his arms. And since when had that been of any help?

Just listening to them brought some amazing, wild ideas to Remus's mind, but he knew he would never see them carried out. Sometimes, he used to play up some scenarios, mostly involving exploding possessions and odd colourations, in his mind, while smiling to himself. Only a matter of weeks after the initial bite, the only one he'd gotten from another werewolf, he'd learnt to sacrifice his own joy for the sake of keeping others protected. He wasn't living himself, but at least, he kept others alive.
The next day, after dinner, the four boys unintentionally came across each other in their shared dormitory. Sirius and James sat on the latter's bed, while Peter leaned against the bedpost. Remus sat, with crossed legs, on his own bed, trying to stretch the half-page he'd found about the flesh eating pine tree to eight innovative inches of parchment.

"I have an idea," James announced, after a moment of silence. "I don't really like that Slytherin... Snape. He'll make things harder for us."

"I agree; he's too slimy for his own good." Sirius put in, adopting an arrogant expression.

"Well, I was thinking..." said James, and Remus was sure he raised his voice for each word. "What if something his dorm would, say, suddenly catch fire? A sock or something; just as a little warning."

"How should... someone get inside his dorm, then?"

"Can't be that hard to guess their password. Pure bloodline, noble lineage, or something like that."

"Toujours pur," Sirius muttered.

Remus longed to point out that the so-called plan wasn't very well thought out, but he simply thrust his front teeth into his tongue and continued to stare at the word – belligerent – he'd tried to get past for the last three minutes.

"What if someone should catch us...? I mean this unknown person?" Sirius asked, in a flat tone of voice, eyes on Remus.

Even though Remus had had a lot of practise in analysing people over the years, he couldn't decide whether the look on Sirius's, usually open, face was curiosity or pure malice. Remus frowned so much, that he could feel each wrinkle forming.

"The stairs down to the Slytherin dungeons are pretty steep... And I wouldn't be surprised if there was some grease on the top step." James said innocently.

The atmosphere in the room suddenly changed, as if someone had reached in and muted all the lights with a flick of the wand. The room was still bright, but Remus could feel, in the pit of his stomach, that something had changed. Perhaps it was the tone of their voices, which had become more sincere, more real. He shot Peter a look. The plump boy distributed his entire weight on to one foot, then the other, looking like a jogger in extreme slow-motion. He could feel it too.

"An accident happens so easily," Sirius said, smiling wickedly. Remus had no trouble reading his face this time.

"We'd be inside in no time." James said, growing lyrical. "And I'll finally get a chance to express my malnourished love for fire."

Sirius sighed, finally looking in another direction. "James, you get into a Slytherin's dorm, and all you're going to set on fire is a sock? His bed, in the least, I say."

"Why not the entire dormitory?" Peter suddenly piped up, sounding like he read from a book. He stuttered on practically every word, but still seemed eager to get just those particular words out.

Then, Sirius passed the final frontier; said the words Remus had dreaded ever since the first mention of the Slytherin dorm.

"Where there are dorms, there's a common room. Imagine: everything Slytherin engulfed by flames – bright green ones, of course! Slytherin pride!" He squealed, making Remus chill from the hair follicles, and all the way down to his toes.

That was not a prank, not mischievous at all; just evil...just plain evil. And definitely not something 11-year-old boys should spend their free time planning.

Remus felt ready to scream out loud. He wanted to launch himself at Sirius, grab him by the collar of his scruffy shirt and shake him violently until he understood that he was wrong. Granted, Remus didn't like the Slytherins all that much either, but that did not give his fellow Gryffindors the right to plan such a horrible faith for them... The whole thing would probably culminate in somebody's decease.

Slytherins were considered outsiders by the other three houses; still, to Remus, Sirius could just as easily have kicked a tender spot with all the strength he could muster – Remus could relate to the outsiders, as he himself had been one for so long.

"Green flames!" Sirius laughed like mad, and draped an arm around James's shoulders, as if trying to coax him into laughing, too. James smiled faintly. Peter let go of the post and took a step back, clearly intimidated.

"Sweet, sweet flames," Sirius crooned,"devouring tapestries, tables..."

And then, finally, Remus could take the words, which he'd formed in his mind so many times, in his mouth and verbalize them. Before giving himself time to regret his venture, he got up from his bed.

"Stop! You can't do that; it's not right!" He shouted at the top of his voice, eager to get as much of the frustration out at once. "They might not be the friendliest folk, but that doesn't give you the right to treat them like that. It's just not right!" He wasn't used to the force of his own voice, as he seldom used it to its full capacity, and the last word rang in his ears for several seconds after he'd become quiet.

As if to state the necessity of an exclamation mark following Remus's words, the book slid down from the neat bedspread and hit the floor with a bang.

Remus, who used to recoil if a needle fell to the floor, didn't even blink at the unexpected sound. He clenched his fists, fuming, eagerly waiting for a quick retort from the witty and irritable Sirius. But none came.

Much to Remus's surprise, Sirius's face collapsed into a broad grin. "We were wondering what it would take to get you to speak up..."

Remus's jaw literally fell open, much to his embarrassment. It was as if the lights had come back on again, and he felt utterly relieved. Though at the same time, very much annoyed. "This... this was a trick?"

"We figured you simply wouldn't be able to keep shut... when we crossed the line." James explained, rising from the bed.

Remus's cheeks, already flushed with anger, suddenly took on a much deeper red.

"Sorry," Sirius said, offering Remus his patented remorseful expression, (wide eyes, trembling lower lip) which already was famous all over the school. "We didn't mean to make you that distraught."

Peter slipped down on the bed, next to Sirius, a little shyly. "You almost convinced me, Sirius. I nearly forgot to tell about the entire dormitory."

"But... why?" asked Remus, finally able to relax.

James cleared his throat, thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets. "We've noticed some... mischievous tendencies about you. And we wondered, since you've been overhearing quite a few prank-planning sessions, if you would like to join in on a prank or two... Some time... or right now? I hope I'm making sense here."

Remus wasn't positive he'd heard right. Did James Potter just invite him to join their little clique? "Sure," he said, trying to sound casual. "I wouldn't mind a prank or two. Just no fire."

James laughed, raising his hands in mock surrender. "No fire."

"We could use a voice of reason," Sirius rose from the bed. Peter wasn't far behind, scrambling to his feet.

Remus smiled nervously. "Are you sure the spot is open?"

Smiling back at him, Sirius assured him that it was. "We've established that I'm the Prankster, James the Daredevil, and Peter best suited to be the Decoy."

"Decoy?"

"Yes, because he's got such an honest face!"

Peter blushed and mumbled something about having his parents' honest appearances to thank.

All three boys' faces were open and welcoming, expectantly turned to Remus. "I think voice of reason would suit me just fine."

"We thought so." James smiled. He opened his mouth to say something more, but was cut off when Sirius pushed past him and walked straight up to Remus, right hand raised.

Remus had time to feel a little anxious, and not so little uncomfortable, since Sirius was taller than he was, and intruding on his personal space.

"Remus Lupin," Sirius said solemnly,"I am hereby dubbing you 'Voice of Reason'." He touched Remus's shoulders, each in turn, with the tips of his fingers.

Sputtering with repressed laughter, mostly because of the amount of tension which suddenly had left his being, Remus performed a parody on a curtsey in front of Sirius, gratefully accepting the nomination.

Peter and James clapped and cheered as Sirius and Remus bowed to each other, nearly toppling over with laughter.

"So, Remus... Have you noticed some unreasonable flaws in either plan you've overheard so far, straight off, I mean?" James asked a couple of minutes later, when the boys had started a tournament of Exploding Snap.

"Have I ever?" Remus answered, keen on the undemanding glint in James's eyes. "There was this one thing about that tunnel hidden behind the statue that I really found disturbing..."
A fortnight later, Remus somehow managed to, again, be the last one to turn in that week's homework. He figured that it probably had something to do with the fact that he always seemed to carry more scrolls of parchment and more books than everyone else, and that it therefore took him longer to find the correct neatly written scroll.

Professor Sprout eyed him with poorly disguised concern. She accepted his homework with slow movements, never breaking her eye contact with him.

Remus realized that he probably should say something, but she beat him to it.

"Is everything all right, dear?"

"Yes... Yes, it is." Thinking of the mere fact that he had nearly three weeks to go before the next transformation, those words were completely true.

"And you still... get along with the other boys in your year?"

"Well, three of the Gryffindor ones, at least."

As if hearing his cue, Sirius poked his head into the Greenhouse. "Remus! We need your professional opinion again!"

Remus excused himself and followed Sirius outside, where James and Peter were waiting.

Somehow – without doubt using methods Remus not wanted to know about – James and Sirius had gotten their hands on a password the Slytherin painting would acknowledge as correct.

"So, how many pixie gnomes are we going to release in the Slytherin common room?" Sirius queried, while the group strolled across a lawn, heading back to the castle.

James immediately suggested two hundred.

Remus – who really did not want to know where they'd gotten such an amount of gnomes from, or exactly where in the castle those were hidden for the time being – understood that he, as the allotted voice of reason, was expected to participate in a bidding of sorts. "Fifty," he said.

"One hundred," Sirius immediately retorted, as if he'd foreseen Remus's offer long ago.

"Sixty."

"Seventy-five."

"Seventy, and I'll give you an alibi."

"Deal!" Sirius chuckled, and pounded Peter, who happened to be closest, in the back with his right palm.

Professor Sprout had come out of the Greenhouse, gazing after them. Even at a distance, she looked confused.

Remus smiled to himself, and offered the Herbology teacher a carefree wave. What was a part of the basics for everyone else, finally seemed to apply to him, too.
The End