Author's Note: Thanks for everyone who's been reviewing! Here's the next chapter . It becomes kind of slow and boring... for a while... and I find the ending... rather weird as well. Tell me what you think please! JKR has claim to everything Harry Potterish.

Chapter Fifteen: Coincidence?

The days went by excruciatingly slow after that day. Valentine's Day passed without as much as a hello and good bye for James, and it seemed as though the days ahead weren't going to becoming any brighter. The phrase Remus had to him he said haunted him at night and pressed against his mind during the day. None of it made any sense. Because of these thoughts that ran through is mind, James became extreme depressed. Nothing, not even his best friends could cheer him up.

Sirius had tried, but eventually gave up trying. He even stopped hanging around his good friend, and was often seen walking around aimlessly with Peter along tagging behind him. Remus had also begun to keep his distance; the boy was now very reluctant to speak toward anyone.

The beginning of Magical Mischief-Makers seemed to be coming to an end already. From time to time James would think about what drove him to become so far removed from the people around him; was it because of Voldemort? Or maybe it was because he wasn't sure if that dream was predicting his own death or not. The more he thought about it the more depressed and deprived he became.

James sighed as he stared up at the light blue sky, one Saturday afternoon. A week had passed since that day, and he lazily sat under the same oak tree as usual, though he was no longer in the company of his three other friends. The loss of his companions disturbed him greatly and wondered if Sirius would still enjoy visiting over at his house. Then again, he was the one who had been telling Sirius to leave him alone for four days straight. If Sirius refused, James couldn't blame him.

The blue sky began to grow darker as time passed, but even so, James didn't seem to notice it at all. The wind seemed to blow soothingly through his messy hair, calming him ever so slightly. He then sat up; he was far too young to be moping around like this. People would think he had gone mental or something. If Severus Snape ever caught him on a day like this, the lad would probably be able to reveal to all what a fraud James' really was inside.

"I wonder what Remus, Peter, and Sirius are up to…" James wondered aloud, rumpling the back of his hair as usual.

It had become far too awkward between the four of them; at one point James tried starting a conversation with Remus, but the both of them had been extremely reluctant to say anything except a decent greeting. James' relationship with Sirius was far worse though; Sirius wouldn't even stand to look at James at all! Peter seemed neutral in the whole thing, but didn't dare talk to James because of Sirius.

He shrugged at the thought of it all; it didn't have to be like this. He regretted ever telling Sirius to leave him alone, but it was much too late to change any of it now. An apology would be best during a time like this, but James just didn't have enough courage to walk up to his old pal and tell him either.

He stood up without another thought. The poor boy felt hungry anyway; dinner was going to be served soon so he might as well just go down to the Great Hall and wait. If he was going to think about extremely horrible things for the rest of his life, he'd probably die from depression before that Voldemort guy even got a chance to reach him.

As James walked across the freshly cut grass of the Hogwarts' grounds he suddenly got an odd feeling that someone was staring down at him from above. Blinking, he stopped and looked up; he saw nothing but clouds in the sky and the castle's tower that towered over him. The Gryffindor Tower, James thought to himself, I wonder where my dormitory room is. He stared around at the tower for what seemed to be a good five or six minutes until his mind finally pointed him to a small window, which appeared to be pretty high up.

James had no apparent reason for looking up at his own dormitory room except for the fact that he wanted to get a look of it from the outside. If he had a broom right now, he could just fly up there, but then again, he'd risk being expelled. James realized that he couldn't see the inside of his room from where he stood and so, being as curious as he was, he began to slowly step backwards.

One step…two step…three…four… James thought to himself as his slowly and steadily moved backwards, come on! I should be able to see—Gah!

Out of pure clumsiness, and the fact that he wasn't paying any attention to where he was walking, James had run into someone causing both of them to stumble to the ground.

"Ow! Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to run into you, honest!" he exclaimed standing up. Looking down at who ever he walked into, he gulped, "A—are you alright, Evans?"

Lily Evans was the last person James thought he would run into, literally, on a day like this. All the books that she had been carrying in her extremely little handbag were now scattered all over the floor. Feeling excruciatingly guilty for knocking her down, James helped her up then quickly set off to pick up all of her books.

"I'm fine," she replied. "But you really should watch where you're going next time, Potter."

"Right, sorry." James mumbled, as he struggled to get another large book into his arms. It really amazed him to see this many books in one place; Evans' collection would deffinitly put Remus' to shame. "Here I got seven of your books, how many more do you have?"

"I was carrying twenty-one in my bag." She replied to him, taking the seven books from him and shoving them in her small handbag.

James stared at her for a brief moment then asked, "Twenty-one books in a small bag like that?! What do you need them for anyway?"

"I used a Compressing charm," she told him smiling, "I thought it would be a good idea to read ahead during the weekends."

He smiled back at her then went to collect the rest of them. It must have taken them about twenty-five minutes to gather all they could find, but when they placed them into her handbag they only contained twenty of the twenty-one books.

Evans looked through her small collection to see what book was possibly missing from her collection while James glanced around for it. Seeing that James had really keen eyesight, he was able to spot it almost instantly.

"Found it!" James exclaimed, picking up the last book and flipping through it, " History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot, eh? You know, Remus has thi—" he stopped mid-sentence and stared at the book. No matter what he did, he couldn't bring himself to forget about them.

Evans caught James' sentence and looked at him curiously, "Lupin has what…?"

"This book." He replied plainly, and gave a sigh of remorse.

The red headed girl looked at James sadly, her brilliant green eyes looked as if she had been hurt just as much as James. James noticed this immediately and tried to change the topic, "Where are you heading? The common room?"

Evans, her face still up in concern, took her book from him and placed it within her bag. She had apparently realized that James was trying to change topics; she didn't seem very pleased with him about it.

"Why are you so full of yourself?" she wondered aloud; she obviously said it loud enough for James to hear since he was taken aback by the insult.

She glanced back at James, who had his mouth hanging open, and then strode off as if nothing had ever happened. Usually when someone insults him like that he'd get all angry, but for some odd reason he didn't feel like doing a single thing about it; instead, for some strange reason it gave him an eerily good feeling.

It wasn't until James heard his stomach rumbling that he was finally awoken from his daydream. With Evans completely out of sight now and no one else around, it was only necessary for him to go down to the Great Hall.

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James wasn't very surprised when Sirius, Peter, and Remus didn't show up for dinner; it really didn't matter much to him anymore. He found the fact that Evans kept glancing toward him to be more interesting to him than his friends not being here. Even so, he knew the reason she was looking at him; she was worried, not only for him, but for Sirius and the others as well.

"Why doesn't she mind her own business…?" he murmured to himself as he rested his head on his hands after finishing his meal.

He yawned; it was getting late, but he didn't feel like going back to the Gryffindor tower just yet. He didn't feel like facing Sirius in the state he was in right now.

The lonesome James Potter stood up from his seat and walked out of the Great Hall's humongous double doors, dragging his feet ever so slowly. Not very many people seemed to notice him, and he felt as though he was still wearing his invisibility cloak. As he walked through the corridor, he looked out at the sky outside. The sun was finally setting and sky was the brilliant color of crimson; it was an extremely beautiful sight to see.

A nice stroll outside should do me some good, he thought as he sloppily dove his hands into his front pockets, mindful that his wand was poking out from one of them. The night air calmed his mind, and he was able to catch sight of the first stars to be shown in the sky. As much as he loved being outside and continue stargazing, he knew that he would have to head for the common room in a few minutes.

Just as he was about to head toward the first floor corridor, a dark figure of a person emerged from behind one of the nearby trees. James froze; he stared at the figure as it walked out of the shadows and into the open. The moon apparently, hadn't risen into the sky yet, and because of James' dark clothes it was really hard to notice him standing there. The figure apparently hadn't seen him since it didn't even take the time to glance back at him; there seemed to be more import things on its mind.

Being as nosy as always, James' initiative was to follow this suspicious character. He trailed, not too far behind, but tried to keep his distance just in case it was Voldemort or something. As he crept closer he realized that the features of this person were quite familiar and became quite shocked when he saw who it turned out to be.

"That can't be — Remus?" James gasped; he said it rather loudly so he had to quickly clasp his hands over his own mouth.

The suspicious character jumped, turned, and looked frantically around as if he had heard his own name then sprinted away. James' question had been answered. It really was Remus, James could recognize his tired eyes and light brown hair from anywhere; the only question now was what he was doing and where he was going. Unfortunately, he was unable to answer these two questions for trouble once again bumped into him.

"Well, well, well… What do we have here, huh Rodolphus?" remarked Bellatrix, a sly smirk appearing across her face. "One of the so-called Purveyor of Aids!"

James narrowed his eyes, but didn't dare say a thing. Bellatrix and Rodolphus were among the people he had seen in his dream, among the group of Deatheaters that laughed at him…

"It seems the leader has been dismissed from office!" Rodolphus added in, his eyes seemed to be shining excitedly, "They don't talk no more, do they? Almost everyone's noticed it!"

Bellatrix cackled and exclaimed, "Maybe now Sirius will act like a real Black! I tried warning him not to hang around with blood traitors, half-bloods, and mudbloods! You get lost in that kind of crowd and you'll just get trampled!"

"We tried telling him to forget about you, Potter. That you're not worth of becoming his friend." Rodolphus said to James, frowning, "But he wouldn't listen! He still insists that you're his friend."

James was really surprised by this; Sirius still insists that they're friends? He had been a fool to think that Sirius would never forgive him, a fool for being too scared to see it.

"Don't worry about it, Rodolphus, Sirius'll come around." Bellatrix said smugly, "At the rate this idiot is going, Sirius will never forgive him."

James' folded his arms and grinned largely. He had never felt so angry and satisfied in his entire life and he just wanted to say something to let out all of his anger, "Is that so? I beg to differ. If all you're going to do is insult me all day you'll have to excuse me because I have much more important things to attend to."

James knew he had said much too much, and if he was run away now they'd only jinx or hex him so he would get away. James, who still had his hands in his pockets from earlier, fingered his wand gently from beneath his cloak; he was trying not to make it look too obvious. Being as clever as he was, he already had a plan to escape from them.

"How dare you speak to me like that you blood traitor!?" Bellatrix screamed, pointing her wand at James' torso.

This deffinitly reminded him of his nightmare, and he wanted to get out of the way as quick as possible.

He slowly pulled his wand from his pocket, poked the very tip of it out of his cloak so it wasn't seen completely and yelled, "Expelliarmus!"

Both Bellatrix's and Rodolphus' wands went flying out of their hands and landing some twenty or thirty feet away from them. With the wands away, James was free to run; and that's exactly what he did. Not that he wanted to act like a coward, but because Sirius would have wanted to be the one to beat up on them.

"YOU!" she screeched, trying to chase after him. "Rodolphus get our wands, now !"

Rodolphus was quick to oblige as she tried tackling James. She missed by only centimeters, and James was rather thankful for the fact he could run pretty fast; any slower and he would have been crushed by Bellatrix' great weight.

Without a second thought, James ran straight to the Fat Lady, screamed the password ("GODRIC GRYFFINDOR!"), ran through common room, passed all the busy students, up the stairs of his tower, and into his dormitory room. Upon slamming the door behind him, the exhausted, messy-haired boy collapsed to all fours. He expected neither Peter nor Sirius to tell James anything, but oddly enough they welcomed him in with great applause.

"James! That was amazing!" squealed a voice that was most definitely Peter's.

"Amazing…?" James huffed, "What was…amazing?"

"You were," said Sirius, a large grin appearing on his handsome face. "I told you not to stand up to Bellatrix, yeh stupid git. Even so, I must admit that it was still bloody—"

"BRILLIANT!" exclaimed Peter, the tone of awe and excitement in his voice.

James looked up at them; his face was red with exhaustion from running the whole ways. He spoke in a croaking voice and asked, "You saw me, but how?"

Sirius and Peter looked at each other and laughed.

"Our dormitory has the view of the oak tree we like to sit around," said Sirius chuckling, "Don't you remember looking up? I don't know what in the world you were trying to do, but it looked like you were trying to get a glimpse of our room."

James blinked; he was trying to remember what he was doing… Then it suddenly hit him.

"You're really clumsy," said Peter smiling, "running into Ms. Evans like that!"

He found himself turning the color of pink, but refused to let neither Sirius nor Peter see it. James rubbed his face furiously trying to keep from turning really red.

"It seemed like you enjoyed it though," remarked Sirius, laughing, "I wonder what you were gazing at when she was leaving…"

James shook his head vigorously, and yelled, "I'm not that kind of person, Sirius!"

They all laughed about it in the end. James and Sirius were acting as if nothing had ever happened between them, and James was rather grateful for it. Rather than giving direct apologies, Sirius and James gave indirect looks of apology.

"That was so cool how you used that spell by hiding your wand under your cloak." Exclaimed Peter happily rushing around; oddly enough the boy couldn't keep still.

"I can't believe you two have been spying on me all this time!" James muttered, rumpling his hair.

"Worried we were." Informed Peter, "We didn't know what kind of mischief you would cause on your own."

James frowned; he wouldn't do anything if there were no one with him to share the glory of his mischievous plans. Then James remembered what he had seen just before Bellatrix ruined his moment.

"Oh yeah, speaking of which, do you know where Remus went of to?" he asked them, curiously, "I saw him rushing somewhere on the grounds just before your cousin tried to threaten me."

Both Sirius and Peter looked strangely at him, eyeing him with suspicion. James cocked his eyebrow upward; he didn't understand why they were looking at him that way.

"You're saying that you saw Remus less than thirty minutes ago?" asked Sirius trying to be sure.

"Yeah..."

"That's not possible!" Peter implored, looking at James with concern. "Remus left more than five hours ago to visit his sick mother!"

James looked at both of them strangely, "Maybe he came back."

"Remus said he'd be back tomorrow around lunch time." Informed Sirius again. "He can't be back yet, we saw him go with Professor Dumbledore—"

"They're up to something." Said James interrupting Sirius, his voice as serious as his face now. "It was Remus I saw, I just know it was. You should have seen him too!"

"We only looked out the window when we heard Bellatrix' piercing voice; she was already pointing her wand at you." Sirius replied.

James rubbed his forehead in aggravation; where could Remus be heading off to? Why would he lie to them about leaving to see his sick mother if he's still here on the grounds?

"Okay let's see…" James mumbled, as he sat down on his poster. "Right of the oak tree; Sirius do you know what you would run into if you were just to walk to the right of the oak tree from here?"

Sirius shook his head and quietly brushed some of his bangs out of his eyes.

"The Whomping Willow!" Peter shouted out, "You run into the Whomping Willow!"

Both Sirius and James stared at Peter then out the window; why was it that whenever they talked about something like this, the Whomping Willow would always come up in their conversation? It was far too obvious that almost everything revolved around this Whomping Willow; it seemed to be an important clue for the three of them.

"This is much more than just a coincidence." Stated James, furrowing his brow, "I wasn't imagining Remus there; it really was him. So whatever that Whomping Willow is hiding, Remus and Dumbledore are in on it."

"Don't forget the Shrieking Shack, James." Implored Sirius, "It just started shrieking this year, the same time the Whomping Willow was placed. What did Raven say about it again?"

"She agreed with me when I asked if the shrieking occurred once a month under a full moon." Replied James with wonder. "Speaking of which, Peter do you know what kind of moon it is tonight?"

Peter was startled that they asked him the question and nearly fell backwards just by the mention of his own name. After finally regaining himself, Peter rushed over to his drawer and pulled out a pocket-sized book that read: The Daily Moon Phase Calendar created by Catriona Fabianus. James and Sirius laughed looking at their little yellow-haired friend trying to keep the book open, but having it close every time he did so. This explained how Peter knew what the moon phases without doing all the math involved.

"Oh! It's a full moon!" squeaked Peter frightfully.

This answered half of their questions; they knew now that the Shrieking Shack and the Whomping Willow had some sort of connection between them. What still puzzled them was why the Shrieking Shack shrieked, and what kind of weird item the Whomping Willow was trying to keep secret from everyone else. Then there was the question about Remus, what were they going to do about him? He was their friend after all, they couldn't just say they weren't friends any more; the boy would get suspicious and probably sad too.

"We're not to mention anything we found out to Remus understand?" said Sirius looking at his friends, his face looking ill. "But no matter what he's still our friend, got that Peter?"

Peter nodded, but then asked, "What happens if Remus turns out to be a supporter of that Voldemo—"

Both James and Sirius cut him off and replied at the same time, "We'll figure that out when and if we ever have to."

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Bellatrix was ever so horrified to see James, Sirius, and Peter hanging out together the following morning, but didn't dare go up and threaten them like she wanted do to so badly. It was Sunday, after all, and she had better things to do like hanging out with Rodolphus and Rabastan, her two psychotic friends, before classes started again. Sirius took the time to rub it in by intentionally bumping into the three of them whenever they happened to walk by.

Other than the fact that they were all glad that they were friends again, they were still worried about Remus. He would come at lunchtime, right? The three of them were worried about this like crazy, and they hoped that Remus really didn't lie to them. Though if he did lie and have a good reason for it, they'd understand… but that still depended upon the circumstances.

"I'm so bored!" shouted James, as they walked through the common room on their way to the Great Hall for lunch. "When's Remus going to get here!?"

Just as James said this, the Fat Lady's door suddenly swung open, and there, ironically, in the doorway stood Remus. At first glance, James was extremely relieved to see Remus back. But… when they had another good look at him, they realized that there was something wrong… very wrong.

The boy, staggered into the common room, he held a nearby wall in order to keep balance. His clothes were all torn up and he was no longer wearing any shoes. Even if the fact that his clothes were ragged was very strange to the three of them, there was something else that caught their attention… There appeared to be something dripping along both of his arms, and even his legs. Is he sweating that much…? James' mind asked him. Peter gasped and Sirius stared at Remus with fear in his black eyes.

"He's bleeding!" shouted Peter, stepping further away. Sirius was able to grab Peter by the collar just before the little boy scampered to hide.

James and Sirius (dragging Peter) rushed toward Remus and quickly helped him toward one of the red comfortable chairs. Remus' blackish cloak was torn from back to front, and it confused them as to why Remus kept it on.

"Sirius, help me get his cloak off…" James instructed, slowly pulling on the cloak.

"N—no!" Remus pleaded to them, his tired eyes looking very weary. "Don't—It's my favorite cloak! Let me wear—!"

James cut Remus off and said, "It's really hot in here, at this rate you'll come down with something. It's torn up anyway, we can always buy you a new one."

"You—You don't understand!" implored Remus; unfortunately for him, he didn't have enough strength to stop them, "I—I—!"

Before he knew it, James and Sirius had already pulled off the cloak, and they were utterly horrified by what they saw. There, along both of Remus' pale arms, were extremely large slash marks and scratches, which continued to pour out with blood. Not only did he have slash markings, but also there were extremely deep gashes along his legs.

Peter squeaked and clung to Sirius as he stared down at their friend. Remus, on the other hand, suppressed a look of pain from his face and, without knowing what else to say to them, laughed and remarked, "Just one of those days, you know?"

:: Till Next Update ::

Next Chapter: The Malfoys

Almost... We're almost going to find out about Remus.... Almost... Almost... not quite XD!