The Journey to the Infirmary

Sirius Black contemplated the options which lay before him: looked shocked, but say nothing; looked shocked, but yell incoherently; look angry, and yell coherently... well, maybe he didn't really think about it. Being the impulsive lad he was, Sirius strode up to Remus, took the other boy by his shoulders, looked him up and down, and made the statement, "You really are a girl! But, you weren't one yesterday..."

"No, Sirius, I wasn't," replied Remus blandly; his voice was slightly higher pitched, but not by much.

"Wow, what brilliant deductive reasoning you have, Padfoot," was James' sarcastic reply.

Sirius, who wasn't listening, whipped around and declared, "Who ever did this is going to rue they day they were born!" and he then proceeded to stomp out of the room, in high drama.

"Sirius wait!" called James while he grabbed his friend and held him back, "lets think about this logically."

"Wow, Potter thinking logically, I'm stunned," stated lily sardonically.

Ignoring the cynical comment James continued with a statement, "Lets not make a scene, we ought to get Remus to the infirmary."

"Really, I thought we should parade him about the great hall, "Lily muttered under her breath with a hint of contempt aimed a James.

"We need to act like nothing's wrong…" James glanced at Sirius then continued, "Pete and I will go down to the great hall, Sirius, you can take Remus to the infirmary."

It probably wouldn't have worked any other way.

After James and Peter left, Lily turned to Remus and said, "If any of the boys give you a hard time, come tell me and I'll beat the shit out of them," that said, she spun on her heals and left the dorm.

While standing about awkwardly for a few moments after she left, Sirius kept glancing at Remus and then looking away. "So… shall we go then…?" Sirius asked with obvious uncertainty. "Ya," answered Remus softly.

They walked down the corridors carefully avoid the other students, Remus keeping very close to his friends side and back, trying to shield himself with Sirius's greater height. It was almost like the times when they'd snuck around after a successful completion of a prank, or after setting one up. Except… this time there would be no triumph at the end of the journey.

Sirius was glad when they finally reached the infirmary stairway, if anyone had spotted Remus and made fun of him… well, they had better be glad they hadn't.

"Are you okay?" That brought Sirius out of his thoughts, he hadn't realized he'd been clenching his fist until he felt his nails digging into his palms. "Oh… it's nothing Moony," the animagus muttered. Remus still looked worried, but Sirius ignored him.

They opened a door to an empty infirmary. Sitting on one of the beds, they sat in strained silence, looking anywhere but at each other. It wasn't as if either of them hadn't been here before, numerous times on both their parts, actually, but the room looked different in the morning light with no patients in the beds. With the bright morning sunlight slanting through one of the windows, the clean white sheets tucked into the beds, the scene was surprisingly peaceful, Remus even ended up yawning. Sirius reflected that Remus was probably more accustomed to the room than he was because he often had to visit to tend his wounds after the full moon…

Before either of their thoughts could continue Madam Pomfrey came in and said, "Well, what have you two done now?"

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A/N: Well, that took too long and I'm sorry I don't have all that much to show for it. School got the better of me. I know it's not very long, but I'm not used to writing long stories and I've never been very good at knowing how to divide up my chapters. Oh well, I hope this is okay and I'll post the next part as soon as a figure out what their going to say to Poppy… and get around to writing it down. Blergh, honors English is killing me… not really, just the memorizing what 22 words mean each week. Luckily I already know some of them sometimes.