When It Rains, Part III: Thunder & Lightening
It's raining when Remus wakes up in the infirmary.
His first thought is to wonder what Prongs, Padfoot, Wormtail, and Moony had been up to last night. Memories of the full moon are always a little blurred. Today he wakes up not remembering a thing, but he hurts all over as though every inch of him had been torn apart and haphazardly thrown back together. He lies completely still, afraid if he moves he might rip open his skin, and waits for Madam Pomfrey to come and find him.
"Remus."
He knows that voice.
"James?" Remus's throat feels just as raw as the rest of him. He tries to swallow and it burns the whole way down. Eventually he just gives up, letting the spit collect on his tongue.
"Remus?" It takes Remus a few tries to open his eyes. Once the light stops burning Remus sees James hovering over him. His face is covered in bruises and his hair in mud.
Remus takes in a deep breath that is filled with the smell of sterilized glass and the strong tinge of healing potions. The rain is slamming against the roof and windows. Remus finally realizes that he's in the infirmary.
A flash of lightening makes James look pale and old.
"I..." Remus trails off. His mind is reeling much to fast for him to keep up with every thought that flies by. He tries coming to terms with his surroundings, with the pain, with the way James looks as though he just barely escaped with his life.
"Are you okay?" James asks. He doesn't add that Remus looks like utter shit, but Remus knows that without even looking because he feels like utter shit. The fact that James doesn't tease about it at all only makes Remus more worried.
"Are you?" He croaks, and ends up chocking on a lump of saliva he'd been refusing to swallow.
"Yeah," James says. He looks out the window. He looks at the other empty beds. He looks at the candles lighting the room. He looks everywhere but at Remus. "Do you need me to get Pomfrey? She told me to get her when you woke up I just..."
There's another flash of lightening, and the thunder follows so quickly that it's barely a warning. Both boys jump.
"Where's Peter?" Remus asks. James shrugs. He runs a hand through his hair and it has nothing to do with Lily.
"I don't know," He says. "In the commons I guess. I haven't really... Haven't... you know."
Remus doesn't know. He has no idea at all what James is saying.
Remus decides to ignore the feeling in the pit of his stomach that is half due to nerves and half to do with the pain stinging his abdomen. "We must have had some adventure last night," he says, trying his best to smile. "What happen, exactly? I never can remember much..."
There's another flash of lightening, and this time James's face is unfamiliar. It's as if someone has taken away every drop of childhood and laughter and marauding and replaces it with something Remus refuses to recognize. Only because he recognizes it all to well, having seen it on his father and his mother and himself.
The pain is forgotten and replaced by panic. "Did I..." Remus can't make the words leave his throat, aching from the night and dry from lack of spit. "Did I bite... someone?"
He doesn't say what he's really thinking. Did I bite you? Did I hurt you? Someone makes it sound a little less personal so that, if only for a few more seconds, Remus doesn't have to think about the truth.
"No, no," James shakes his head. His whole body is shaking. "No, you didn't-"
Remus is too panicked to listen. "Sirius!" James jumps at the name, and Remus knows he's right. He's done something to hurt Sirius. "James, where is Sirius?"
James looks like he's about to be ill which is exactly how Remus's feels. With the pain and the guilt and the lack of air he was going to choke on his own vomit. "He's with Dumbledore," James is saying and it's hard for Remus to stop panicking long enough to hear his friend. "In Dumbledore's office. Perfectly safe," He adds quickly.
Remus tries to nod. He can't get his head to move that way, and something tells him that if he tries he will regret it.
James takes in a deep breath. The thunder, lightening, and rain have become nothing but background static. Remus is concentrating so hard on James he's surprised his body can remember to breath for him. "James?"
"Remus..." Remus thinks of his father standing over his bed at Saint Mungo's. He thinks of the look in his dad's eyes when Remus finally wakes up from that night. The actual pain isn't so much a memory as how much pain the boy in the mirror looked like he was in. The actual words weren't so much a memory as the way his father had looked when he'd told Remus how he'd never be normal or loved or accepted or a kid ever again.
Right now James looks a lot like his father. "Sirius... Sirius is an idiot." Remus isn't sure if he was supposed to agree or not. He isn't sure he can speak at all, so he doesn't try to. "He does these things... These really stupid things and I don't know why."
"James..." Remus has to interrupt. His heart is beating ten times to fast for his chest to hold back, and this rambling build up isn't helping. "Did I hurt Sirius?"
"No," James promises. "You didn't hurt anyone. You couldn't hurt anyway, Remus. That's why you're Remus. You wouldn't even let us put those snapping socks in the first year's drawers for fear of them getting their toes bit off, remember?"
Remus nods, but James has neither of them convinced.
"Everything that happened," James says. "It's all Sirius's fault. There was nothing you could have done, and we... I don't blame you. For any of it."
"What happened?" The conversation is being carried in hushed voices like they're speaking of the dead. Remus isn't sure he wants James to say anything more.
"Snape's an git, too, of course," James says, apparently ignoring Remus's question. "The world would be better off without him but... I couldn't..."
James takes a deep breath.
Madam Pomfrey appears in the doorway.
"What are you doing out of bed?" She asks, running over to James's side. She glares at Remus as though it is his fault James is up, but the look softens to one of pity before Remus can even feel guilty. She turns her attention back to James, showing him back to his bed.
"After a beating like that you should rest a while," She says. "Dumbledore says I'm to let you go in the morning. Says it will be too much talk with you, Mr. Lupin, and Mr. Snape were all to stay the weekend. Still I think it-"
"What does Snape have to-" Remus tries asking but he's silenced quickly.
"You should be asleep," Madam Pomfrey says. "Professor Dumbledore will want to talk to you as well. See if you remember anything, I suppose, or ask how Mr. Snape knew about the willow in the first place." She gives Remus another look that quickly fades into more pity and Remus's stomach feels like it's been tied into a million knots.
"Snape?" Remus clutches his stomach and wonders if it's possible to throw up and pass out at the same time. "Found the willow."
"Lucky Mr. Potter was here to save him." She speaks about James as though he's a hero and James is blushing a deep red.
Remus is still trying to fit everything together in his head. Snape finding the passage under the Whomping Willow. Sirius in trouble with Dumbledore. James saving Snape's life.
"Both of you need sleep," Madam Pomfrey is saying as she tucks the blankets under James's arms. "Tomorrow is going to be a long day." She blows out the candle and leaves the room.
The thunder prevents either boy from having to say anything.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
"We better get on board, quickly," James says, leaning over to stare out the window of horseless carriage. "It's raining pretty hard."
Remus is lying against the door so that he can hear each raindrop against the stagecoach's roof. With his eyes closed it sounds like someone is knocking against the black wood of the small carriage, trying to get in. It's lulling him to sleep.
Everything makes Remus tired lately. The usual things, of course, like the smell of food or a nice warm fire, but also things like lessons and good books and cold wind slapping him across the face. Everything makes him feel drowsy and no matter how long he sleeps he feels like an insomniac, walking around only half awake.
"It's the potion," Madam Pomfrey says as she forces another vial of the foul tasting brew down his throat. Remus chokes and gags and smells of rotten eggs from thirty minutes afterwards.
"It's Sirius," James says late at night when no one else can hear him but Remus and the few portraits they are passing on the way to Gryffindor Tower. "You feel bad about yelling at him, you know. And he... He feels bad, too. About this whole thing."
Remus considers this possibility. He's horrible at holding grudges and knows, reasonably, that the anger he feels for Sirius will sooner or later ebb away. He knows this, yet he still wants to be angry with Sirius. He wants to hate his friend, to feel betrayed and used because his secret was thrown away like a dung bomb for nothing more than some a schoolboy prank.
The more he thinks about how much he wants to hate Sirius, the less realistic the hate seems. It becomes more abstract so that Remus feels less like he hates Sirius and more like he hates that particular night. It's exhausting, trying to separate the Sirius he loves and the Sirius from that night. It's even more tiring trying to make those two boys into one so that he can keep his righteous anger.
Remus thinks James is probably right, and it's probably best to just get this over and done with.
They get back to the commons and Sirius is surrounded by a group of girls. Girls he usually pays no attention to even when they're following him about school giggling at him and blushing whenever he passes them by. Now he is sitting in the center of them, telling them some wild tale and letting them fawn over him to their hearts delight. He turns and calls James over, whispering something in Fayette's ear that gets her to giggle.
Remus tells James that it isn't always about Sirius, that he could care less what the other boy did and he certainly didn't feel a bit sorry for finally forcing some sense on him. He storms away to the dormitory and doesn't see the looks James and Sirius exchange behind his back.
Then everything gets worse.
Remus is more tired, Sirius is more of a flirt, and James and Peter are trying their hardest not to pick sides. The two boys seem to come up with a plan of sorts. James watches over Sirius, makes sure he doesn't get himself expelled, telling off the girls that he is encouraging along, getting him back to school when he's drunk, and all the things one expects a best friend to do. Peter plays eager nurse to Remus, asking him if he needs food or something to drink or wants him to pick up a book from the library for him.
Lily Evans decides that since Remus is no longer talking with Sirius he's now in the market for a new best friend.
"I know what that Black boy did," she tells him when they're partnered together in charms. What she means is that she heard one of the one hundred versions of what happened going around school. Remus, having no idea of which version she'd managed to get a hold of, simply nods and goes back to trying to create a small rain cloud. For some reason he keeps getting the rain but no cloud, and the water is a dark, black color. "I think it is absolutely horrible," Lily says, her cloud is almost perfect, bobbing up and down a few inches from their desk with a small puddle gathering underneath it.
Remus looks over at the textbook to see if he's left something out. "Yes," He says. "Horrible."
He hopes the conversation is over. Across the way James keeps looking up from his work to stare at Lily and Remus knows he's going to have to go over his entire conversation with him later. "I don't see how you can be friends with them," Lily says. "They're so..."
"James isn't that bad," Remus says it automatically, because whenever Lily brings up the subject of Remus's friends he is required to defend James. Then he remembers that James actually has grown up, and all the steps he's taken to not act quite like a wild second year with a load of dung bombs in his pockets. Remus feels guilty for sounding so casual. "I mean he's really-"
"You need to add more of a swish," she says. "Like this." She does a swish and a little spark of electricity clashes from her cloud.
"He's gotten a lot less... Arrogant," Remus says, adding more swish to his spell. A small cloud starts to gather around his wand tip.
"I'd rather not talk about Potter," she says, and they promptly spend the rest of the class period asking questions that in no way have to do with James Potter.
Remus isn't sure how he should feel about Lily's sudden openness, but James loves it. Loves it so much that he opted out of riding to the train with Sirius (and his fans) so that he could spend more quality time with Remus.
Never mind the fact that Lily was riding in the same carriage.
"Afraid of getting wet, James?" Lily asks. James bounces out of his seat. Last time Lily used his first name he fell down a flight of stairs. The hitting of his head on ceiling is an improvement. "You're not going to melt, are you?"
"Melt?" James asks, tilting his head to the side in a way Lily told Remus she found endearing and that James now does much to often. "Why would I melt?"
Remus sighs, rubbing the sleep away from his eyes. "Are we there?" He asks, stifling a yawn. Peter presses his face against the window.
"All I can see is rain," he says. "And more carriages and oh - lights!"
The stagecoach comes to a stop. Peter gathers his robes over his head, "Last one to the train is a rotten dung bomb," he says before running out into the rain. Remus doesn't bother covering his head. He thinks that maybe the rain slapping his face will help him wake up.
Behind him, Lily and James are sharing an umbrella. They duck into a compartment and Peter tries to follow, but Remus stops him. "Come on," He says, pulling Peter along after him. "Let's sit some where else."
Peter and him walk a little further down the aisle. "There's Sirius," Peter says, pointing to a gaggle of girls. "Maybe we should sit with him."
Remus considers cutting his toes off and wonders if that would be less painful then sitting through a whole train ride with Sirius and his groupies. Before he can vocalize the thought Peter is dragging him towards Sirius's compartment and Remus isn't left with much a choice.
Before they get into the compartment Celcie Hawthorn places a hand on Peter's chest and gives a push. "No room," She says. Behind her Sirius is too busy keeping Jillian Trey on his lap to notice his friends. "Sorry."
Remus should be relieved. The emotion he actually feels seems a lot closer to indignation than anything else. "Is that so?" He asks, crossing his arms over his chest.
Peter takes a step back, tugging at Remus's sleeve. "All right then," He mutters. "We'll just go."
"We certainly won't!" Remus says, and now he has Sirius's attention. He has everyone's attention, a whole compartment full of girls staring at him like his face has been turned purple with color changing polka dots again, plus one boy who is looking him up and down. Remus wonders if his hair looks like a drowned rat and then remembers that he doesn't care if his hair looks like a drowned rat or not because he's here to get anger at Sirius, not to impress him. "We'll be sitting in this compartment with our friend, so all of you can just clear out of here and make room!"
Celcie opens her mouth to say something but not before Sirius speaks up. "You heard him," He says, removing Jill from his lap. "Clear out, then."
"But Siry," On girl whines, drawing out Sirius's name in a way that makes Peter cover his mouth and choke with laughter. "You said we could-"
"He said clear out," Sirius stands up, shooing the girls from the room. Remus and Peter stand back as the girls are ushered into the hallway, and Remus has to stop himself from sticking his tongue out at the group as they whine and dragged their feet by him.
Soon it is just the three of them.
Peter looks between Sirius and Remus, ringing his wet robes so that a puddle starts to gather at his feet. "I... Um... I promised Holly I would sit with her," He says and rushes of to find his almost-girlfriend.
Then it is just the two of them.
"Black," Remus says, sweeping past him and into the compartment. Sirius holds the door open as he passes, letting it fall shut with a loud, final sounding thud which gives Remus the frightening feeling of being trapped.
"Remus." Sirius sits down directly across from Remus. Remus refuses the urge to scout to the other end of his bench to make sure there is as much room as possible between the two.
There's a ten-minute silence where Remus lays his head against the window and listens to the rain hitting the glass. Sirius is watching his hands while Remus is watching the water droplets fall from the side of the train. The silence isn't one of those comfortable ones that friends can usually sit in, and neither boy is trying to trick himself into thinking otherwise.
"Are you still mad at me?" Sirius winces the second it's out but it's far to late to take it back. Remus's hands curl up into fists. This is one of the only things stopping him from jumping up and strangling Sirius.
"Mad at you?" Remus says. He's on the verge of yelling and his knuckles are white against the blackness of his robes. "Where ever would you get that idea from Sirius? All you did was use me for little game 'Let's try and get Snape killed', betrayed me without a single thought of... well, anything really which isn't that strange for you I guess, and then ignored me for two whole weeks while acting like a total prat!"
Sirius pouts and leans back in his seat, arms crossed over his chest. "Well, if you're going to get so anger at me just because-"
"Sirius!" And now Remus is yelling. "Are you even listening to yourself? Do you ever stop to think about these things before you say them? Do you ever think at all?"
"No," Sirius says, just as forcefully. "That's the entire point, Remus, I wasn't thinking. I don't think. You make me not think."
Remus sighs in frustration and raises his fists to his hair, wondering if the throbbing in his head would go away if he put a hole in his skull. He remembers Professor Binns mentioning something about healers in Egypt doing that sometime before healing potions became the norm. Then he thinks about putting a hole through Sirius's skull. That might make his headache go away considering that Sirius is the cause of the pain in the first place.
"So, we've establish that you never think," Remus says, keeping his hands twisted in his hair and his eyes closed.
"Around you," Sirius adds, and he's finally starting to sound a little desperate. "I never think around you."
"That makes no sense," Remus massages his scalp, praying that Sirius doesn't say anything else that will making the pounding in his head any worse. "You don't make any sense."
"Well, neither do you. Getting all upset over something that happened and is done with. You're acting like a girl!" Sirius accused.
Remus growls, his fingers pressing into his skin a little more forcefully. "Please just shut up, Sirius."
"You're the one who came in here and kick all the girls out," Sirius barks back. "You're the one who has been avoiding me around every corner for the last two weeks. This isn't all my fault!"
"Yes it is!" Remus snaps. He tears his hands out of his hair, ripping some from his scalp when he does so. The pain doesn't do anything to stop him. "This is all, one hundred percent your fault! You're the one who told Snape, you're the one who surrounded yourself with pretty, shallow girls so that I couldn't get close to you unless I wanted to choke on a cloud of berry scented perfume. You're the fucking arsehole this time, Sirius, not me!"
"You weren't there," Sirius whines. "You didn't hear what Snape said. You don't-"
"I don't care," Remus cuts him off. "I don't care if he called James's an idiot or Peter a pansy or me a shirtlifter or whatever the hell he did to you. It's not about Snape, it's about you and what you did to me and to James and to us."
Sirius crosses his arms over his chest and looks out the window. "Yeah, well... You know I don't always think these things through."
Remus sighs, letting his head fall back against the cool glass. Outside the rain has started to clear up enough that Remus can almost make out the sky and passing landscape. The light hammering of the rain against the window keeps beat with the pounding in his head. He lets his eyes fall closed and sighs again.
There's the sound of fabric shifting and seats creaking. "Tell your girlfriends hello for me," Remus says, sounding just as angry and bitter as he fells.
There are more sounds of movement and a pair of hands tangles in Remus's thick hair. He almost jerks backwards when the warm pads of someone else's fingers press against his temple, rubbing at the pain.
"Headache?" Sirius asks. His massages are a little to light, not hard enough that Remus can really feel the tension in his brain leaking away, so he presses closer to Sirius's hands until there's enough pressure that he starts to feel better.
"How'd you guess," Remus mutters. It's meant to sound sarcastic, but the fact that he sighs contently half way through his words ruins the effect.
"It's all that anger," Sirius says. "It's not healthy." His hands keep working through Remus's hair, his elbows resting on Remus's slumped shoulders. Between the massage, the glass cooling his hot skin, and the pitter pat of rain outside his window Remus can't gather enough strength to point out his right to be angry at Sirius no matter how unhealthy it is for him.
An hour later Peter follows the snack cart into Sirius and Remus's compartment to find Sirius with a blackened face and a game of exploding snaps set up between the two.
Remus smiles up at Peter, who reports that James and Lily still haven't left their own compartment and no one had heard screams so chances are they were both still alive. Sirius makes a quip about hearing a different kind of scream if this keeps up, and Remus laughs even as he tries to tell Sirius he's a pervert.
Sirius and Remus smile across the way at each other and everything is okay.