One afternoon a few days later, Lily went into her Defense Against the Dark Arts class in a good mood, ready to get a big test back that the class had taken the day before. When the whole class was seated Professor Marlew picked up a stack of papers and started leafing through them. He called off names one by one for students to come up and get their tests. Lily got hers and was happily looking over her good marks, and then a moment later the teacher called, "Lupin."
Half the class turned to look for him. Then, as if he was being stupid and should have expected it, Professor Marlew said, "Oh, Mr. Lupin is absent again today."
Lily turned and looked at the empty desk where Remus should have sat. She couldn't believe it. She sighed and bent over to dig through her bookbag while the rest of the tests were being passed out and found her datebook.
She had stopped questioning Remus about why he was gone so much because she had felt the truth must be something he was embarrassed about, and for the past few months she had started collecting assignments for him to make up on those days he was absent. He had never asked her to do this, but she knew that none of the boys were organized enough to do it for him. So once again she wrote a reminder to herself on the page of that day's date: "Record assignments for Remus."
As the teacher gave out the rest of the tests Lily flipped all of the pages of her datebook back and forth in boredom. She stopped randomly at an old page to doodle on, but then something caught her eye. This page was for the sixteenth of last month, and it had written at the top, "Record assignments for Remus." Today was also the sixteenth.
As the lesson started Lily flipped through the datebook, reading all of her scribbles and notes from past days. After she had combed the last five months she sat back in her chair holding her quill under her chin, and could only stare at her writing in complete bewilderment.
Lily found the three boys gathered in the hall and easy to corner. As soon as they saw her approaching with a determined look they shot their eyes at each other uneasily as if they knew exactly what was coming.
Despite the serious expression on her face, Lily asked very casually, "Where's Remus?"
"He's sick," James said, stopping himself from adding "again" so that it would sound like no big deal.
Lily looked at all of their faces searchingly. "Where is he really?"
"Sick, Lily," Sirius said with a trace of urgency to change the subject that came out as annoyance. "Sleeping. What is this about?"
"Did you know that Remus is gone exactly once every month? How does that happen? Don't tell me he's sick."
"He has a kind of bad condition, okay? Maybe he doesn't want the whole school to know about it."
"No, I don't think I can believe that. How does someone get sick around the same day every month? Maybe you haven't noticed, but it's always a day shortly before the twentieth."
"How do you know that?"
"I kept track! Look-" She started to get her datebook out of her bag.
She was so close to figuring it out that it was almost impossible not to show any sign of panic. Sirius was the only one who appeared to keep his cool, but "appeared" was most likely a key word in describing his state at the moment.
"Lily, cut it out," he said. There was a seriousness and roughness in his voice now that made everyone suddenly very uncomfortable, and which made Lily stop going through her bag. "You're being really nosy, you know."
"And how come you can know what's wrong with him and I can't?" she demanded, obviously getting upset now. Then her expression changed. "Or maybe there's nothing wrong with him at all, and I'm worrying for no reason. It's something bad that he's up to, isn't it? That's the only reason you'd keep it away from me. Does anyone else know about it?"
"There's nothing to know!" Sirius said. "It's none of your business anyway, all right? So just shove off."
The look in Lily's eyes changed, and she stared him down in disbelief. "You're a jerk."
"Hey, I'm not the one who brought up the subject."
"Sirius!" James had to cut in, startled by his friend's resort to utter meanness, but he didn't know exactly what to say himself.
"Fine," Lily said angrily, turning away from Sirius as if she'd decided to just pretend he wasn't there. "One of you. I want to know what's going on. Remus is my friend, too, and I think I have a right to know."
The other two said nothing. Lily stood and waited with her arms crossed. "James?"
James looked at her with a sincerely regretful expression and then stared down at the floor. "I'm sorry, Lily."
"...Peter?"
But she already knew how much she would get out of him; he remained completely silent, standing with hunched shoulders and his eyes avoiding hers.
Lily had approached them with confidence, but now just looked hurt. The others could tell that Sirius felt sorry, but Lily wouldn't look at him. Not giving any of them a glance, she turned away and said with the smallest voice, "I'll see you later," as if nothing out of the ordinary had just been said.
As she walked away they watched her with their moods sinking.
"Why don't we just tell her?" asked Peter. "She'll never give it up."
"Are you crazy?" Sirius said. "It's Remus's secret to tell. And he's too scared of what she'll think, whether or not he admits it."
"But...it's Lily," he said meltingly.
"It doesn't matter who it is. We can't loosen up on our secrecy because of a pair of pretty eyes." After saying that he shot a look at James as if to say, "That goes for you, too."
"He's right, you know," James told Peter, seeing how Sirius had aimed the comment at him and wanting to assure him that he wasn't going to let anything slip either. "If she's going to find out about it, Remus should be the one to tell her. And besides," he added, lowering his voice, "we agreed when we became Animagi that it would just be us. We agreed never to let anyone else in. We're the only Marauders, we'll always be the only Marauders. So there's no reason to tell anyone anything. It's risking too much."
"But it was all right when we showed her the map," Peter said a little challengingly; it was uncharacteristic of him.
"What is this, Wormtail?" Sirius asked dangerously. He suddenly looked a lot taller than Peter and very threatening. The halls were clearing out now as the next class time got closer, but he was talking very quietly. "Are you going to betray us? I wonder, should we have trusted you long ago when you wanted to do the unthinkable and become one of us? We broke the law. We did something very few grown wizards have ever dared to do. But what mattered was that we did it together, so that we wouldn't be alone, just like Remus is alone. That makes us brothers. That binds us to eachother and makes us a group no matter what should happen to us. Now are you in it, or aren't you?"
Before Peter could answer, James was gripping Sirius's arm. "That's enough, Padfoot," he said.
The halls were completely empty now, and James was soon pulling his arm toward the class they had next with eachother. "Catch up with you later, Wormtail," he called back at Peter as they went different ways. Sirius was still casting him a warning look as James pulled him along.
"What's wrong with you?" James hissed into Sirius's ear. "You know how Peter is. How could you talk to him like that?"
"I was just scaring him," Sirius said with a sly smile. "Making sure he was in line."
"You mean making sure he's still going to go along with whatever we say and do like some inferior person who's just there to carry your books?" James asked darkly. "I thought Peter was our friend. But apparently you have different ideas about him, after all."
"Oh, don't lay that crap on me, Prongs," Sirius said, getting irritable. "I'm sorry if I'm the only one who thinks protecting Remus is more important than someone getting their feelings hurt a couple times, whether it's Lily or one of us. And you know that Peter's a pushover. He's innocent and easy to manipulate. His intentions are good, but I think he could sign a promise in blood and break it the next day if somebody who looks trustworthy could get it out of him."
"Oh yeah? Well, I happen to trust Peter. I'd trust him with my life. And to think, you talking about all this trust and loyalty stuff. I'm amazed by you."
Sirius just snickered uncompassionately as they walked in the classroom and snuck into their desks before the teacher noticed they were late.