Previously in the Darklyverse: Masquerading under the moniker Order of the Phoenix, the Gryffindors sought to incite the student body to action against the Death Eaters, starting with a series of pranks to raise awareness and initiate inter-house unity and, most recently, by jinxing all the common rooms but Ravenclaw's (CH29). James dabbled in alcoholism (CH29), Remus agreed to test Damocles Belby's cures-in-progress for lycanthropy (CH16, CH22), and rumors flew about the trustworthiness of Slytherin and Head Girl Dorcas Meadowes (CH2, CH8, CH14).

xx

March 4th, 1977: Remus Lupin

On the upshot, it looks like it's working. As they dizzily surface at the top of the stairs, the Ravenclaw common room door is swinging open to welcome a handful of relieved-looking second years who whip around at the sound of footsteps and bashfully hold it open for the Gryffindors to enter. "Your first time coming up here?" Remus says with a faint smile. They nod. "Ours, too. Good on you for getting the riddle."

"Thanks," says the shortest, but before he can scramble away, his frowning companion asks, "Aren't you lot from Gryffindor? Only Timmy says you're the ones doing all this—"

"Your mate Timmy ought to get his facts straight before he parades them around the castle," Sirius says brusquely, shrugging off the warning hand Remus raises to his shoulder. "C'mon, let's try and find the others…"

The tower's not crowded yet—it's early enough in the day that most of Hogwarts is in class or else roaming the castle—but it's obvious enough that the houses are already mixing; it seems like every student lounging in one of the mahogany chairs is talking to another who's perched across the study table and flinching every time the door opens, as if Flitwick's about to waltz in and expel them all for trespassing. But laughter still ricochets off the walls, ivory and stretching high above, and the sheer drapes over the full-length windows are thrown open, and they're all doused in the wintry-cold sunlight. "This must have been Peter's and everyone's doing, right? It's lucky they thought of it; I was worried that…"

"Relax, Alice, you did great. Let's not talk about it here," Lily tells her. Alice's shoulders stay tense through her smile as she catches sight of Mary and leads the way to the table where she's seated with Amos Diggory and Samantha Spinnet.

"I miss Gryffindor. It feels like a library in here with all the bookshelves and no armchairs," Mary blurts by way of greeting as they crowd in, grudgingly dropping her feet from the table as Marlene hops on top of it to sit. "How was Potions?"

"All right. Uneventful," says Marlene, trilling "thank you" to Mary while she gets comfortable.

To the contrary, it was quite eventful—James's absence has Remus alarmed and left Lily to contend alone with Snape's bitter glances, and Belby slipped him the latest recipe of the month that he's got to find time to look over by tomorrow night's full moon—but it's not like they can exchange any of it or ask after James's whereabouts in the present company. "When did you come up here?"

"Pretty soon after breakfast, actually," answers Diggory, nodding to them. "I think Em Vance thought to come up here to see if she couldn't take refuge in Maggie McKinnon's dorm until the password thing gets figured out, and people just sort of—trickled in after, once they knew the Ravenclaws were letting them and Meadowes gave the go-ahead."

"Meadowes approved it?" asks Lily.

"Yeah, surprisingly. She's not here anymore, though; she went off to find Shacklebolt now that he's getting out of class."

Remus doesn't miss Sirius's scowl, but he doesn't mention it, either. "Sort of wish she hadn't," Spinnet says. "Not everyone's thrilled about it; Dana's not going to let anybody hear the end of it, I don't think. Mentioned she wants to complain to Kingsley right away once he's back. You'd think people wouldn't care so much about keeping other people out, but if it's going to cause this much conflict—"

"Why should it, though?" Marlene interrupts. "Whoever's behind it must be doing it because stuff like this is such a big deal to so many people, to try and change it, I mean. It's got to be the same as whoever's doing the other pranks, don't you think?"

"Yeah, maybe," says Spinnet. There's a thick silence until Remus fishes a deck of Exploding Snap out of his robes and proposes a game.

He steals off with Sirius after lunch, and although James has got the Map, they think they've got an inkling of where Peter may have made off with him if he's found him—that spot they always go to when it's daytime and they're up to no good. The hallway stretches behind them far wider than Remus's comfort zone as they approach the mirror. "We've got to stop defaulting to this place before somebody else finds out about it," Remus says. Sirius narrows his eyes and flicks his wand just to the left of the blemish where your reflection goes blurry.

"Relax, Moony, do you really think anybody else would be clever enough to go looking where we've looked? I still reckon there are secrets in this castle that still haven't made it onto the Map after scouring the place," dismisses Sirius, continuing to tap out the right pattern as Remus casts a wary lookout behind them.

"You can never be too sure. Hurry up before somebody passes, we're in the middle of a central corridor, for Merlin's—"

"Oh, relax and get in," says Sirius, and with a tug, he falls through the glass, feels the shards in its eyes even as it shimmers without fracture and solidifies again behind them, a one-way mirror, the light of the corridor toppling behind them onto the crumbling stones of the passage.

He'll never get used to looking out and knowing no one's going to look back, he means to say, but then he opens his eyes again and sees. "James." He dashes forward to crouch beside Peter, who's looking somewhere in the space between anxious and panicked.

"'Ello," James croaks. "You didn't happen to bring water, did you?"

"He's just waking up again," says Peter, rubbing the gooseflesh on his arms.

"No luck, mate," Sirius says, then adds, "Saw you got into my stash last night."

"Noticed that, did you?"

"Regretting it now, are you, from the look of it?"

"Shut it," says James, bumping a loose fist halfway up Sirius's chest, as high as he can reach.

"It's the third time this week," Remus tells him, glancing at Peter and back. "Not that it's at all the most reckless we get up to sometimes—" James snorts "—but if there's something going on, it's all right to bring it up, and if you're really just getting wasted over Lily, then we've definitely got to talk, James, because some witch is possibly the most rubbish reason you could come up with to get smashed."

He snorts again, dissolves into a coughing fit after. "Nah, it's not Lily, I can handle a bit of prolonged exposure to estrogen. Is it just—I mean, don't you ever wish it would all stop sometimes?"

"Which bits?" says Sirius, thankfully, before Remus has to come up with a response.

"The—I'm a top student, Quidditch team, strutting around with a not-so-secret notorious alias—thing, I'm safe on both sides because the Potters have a good reputation but everyone's still expecting us at the front of the liberal movement, nobody hates me but Snape and he's easy enough to toss out. Don't you want it to stop sometimes? Don't you just want somebody to hate you so you can just stop trying so damn hard and—"

"It be okay?" Remus finishes, and James colors.

"I know I'm lucky. I know that. I just want to sleep, too, sometimes, let somebody else do it. Be dispensable. Not that I'm important, but…"

Remus thinks back to those novels Marlene likes, the Muggle ones by Jane Austen, with the heroes who bitterly trap themselves in their own cells, who could get out if they decided to and concern themselves with dances and courtships instead. They concern themselves with frivolities, too, bring poltergeists to the Slug Club and snog, and debate whom to snog, then discuss their snogs over dying Muggle bodies and make pranks out of wars, mock green lights with firecracker sparks. They play politics with veelas over drinks in a bar and none of it makes sense, not really, when every four weeks he sheds his old bones and half these people would have him put down like a pet if they knew he was the one keeping them up at night in the Shrieking Shack. People die and kill and get killed and they sit there, all of it swirling, seeing it darkly, trying to stop it and not knowing how and grabbing a whiskey when they remember it's not their place. Maybe grabbing one too many, like James here, for instance.

"Come here," says Peter through the pause; "open up—come on—Aguamenti, there you go," and he rubs James's shoulder as he guzzles the spray.

"Did it work?" he croaks, water dribbling down his chin.

Remus cracks a half-smile. "The lockout? Looks like it—so far, anyway. It didn't work on the Ravenclaw knocker—they've got riddles, not passwords—but everyone's holing up in their common room now, which actually seems to be working out better than the Great Hall would have."

"Good, that's good."

"Missed you in Potions. Slughorn pitted Lily against Snape because you weren't there to partner her; it was tense."

"And Belby?"

"Got this from him at the end of class. Hold on a sec," Remus says. He scowls at Sirius, who's kicking his bag across the ground to him, then dusts it off a bit and rummages through his Potions textbook until he finds Belby's parchment stuffed in the back. "Recipe for the potion for tomorrow night. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet; we've been surrounded until now."

He passes it first to James as a courtesy, though Remus knows he's probably too hung over to get much out of it. It's to his surprise, then, that James hardly glances at the recipe before his eyes widen. "You can't take this," he says, feebly raising his arm to pass it to Sirius.

"What?"

"Don't take this tomorrow, Remus, he's got aconite in it."

"Aconite? But we've used that in Potions before—Belby's used poisons effectively before—" says Sirius, snatching it up and reading greedily.

"Aconite. Wolfsbane. They used it to kill werewolves in the Dark Ages; we talked about it in History of Magic a few months ago."

"Dammit, Belby," Remus says. "Here, let me see that…"

He has to squint to make out Belby's scrawl, the letters joined carelessly like this is all so natural for him, Remus's life. The passageway is dim, so he turns around to face the only light that filters through the mirror onto the crumbling stones, cold on his knees. The glass distorts the light, he fancies—bends it till it casts shadows over the parchment even as it blinds his eyes; and everything is so bright out there, blurry to him, away.

"You can sort of see why he's trying it, though, can't you?" says Peter, scooting over from James's side to peer over Remus's shoulder. "You said the Devil's Snare and silver never worked like they were supposed to, right? Aconite's obviously a lot more toxic to werewolves than silver is, but I get why he'd try new active ingredients when the old ones haven't worked for months."

"A lot more toxic—silver's only dangerous if you ingest it or if you were to somehow get it in your eyes, but I can't even touch aconite in class without having to worry about going into a coma, that's why I always have you handle those steps when we're brewing with it, Sirius."

"That little shit—"

"He ramped up the sedatives and added fluxweed and leeches," says Remus. "Looks a little like Polyjuice Potion—they're supposed to induce metamorphosis and extraction of life essence—it almost looks like he's trying to—"

"Suck the werewolf out of you and kill it with the wolfsbane?" James says, forceful even though he's still slurring all his words. "It's bold of him, to put it one way, but Remus, do you really want to be his guinea pig on this one—?"

"I don't know. I—don't know."

"It's a suicide mission."

"I know. I—should go; I need to go find Belby."

He stands. He's fine. He composedly slips the recipe back into his bag and slings the strap over his neck, and Peter calls after him as he straightens up, "Remus—"

"I'll find you later in the common room, all right? This passageway always gives me the creeps, it'll probably cave in any day now."

"But we can't get in there, we locked it up—"

But Remus is already approaching the glass, hesitating—the bright is so cold, why is it so cold and why can he never make shapes out with these eyes—and then crashing through to the other side. He blinks as Hogwarts sets back in around him, his skin warming.

xx

In some ways, Remus is surprised that McGonagall doesn't seek them out right away for the lockout. No, it's not until midway through that afternoon when "It's A Small World" starts blasting at full volume throughout the castle that the shit really hits the fan.

He's in Divination when it happens and keeps his smile to himself—Mary and Marlene delivered. Professor Shafiq breaks off her talk on heptomology with a little utterance, cocking her head toward the ceiling and then slowly laying eyes on the round table where he, Peter, and Emmeline are seated. "I don't reckon this interruption would have anything to do with the common room incident this morning, would it?" she says stiffly, but her words are barely audible over the music.

"What's that, Professor? Afraid you're going to have to speak up," snickers Veronica Smethley from the back of the classroom.

She glowers at her, then shakes her head and returns to the standing chalkboard where she was lecturing. "As I was saying," she says, raising her voice this time, "those of you who've taken Arithmancy will recall—"

But they'll have to wait before they can recall it, for when Shafiq raises the chalk to the board to add to her notes, it wriggles violently from her grasp, raps her on the wrist for good measure (she clutches the wrist to herself, her jaw dropping), and flings itself at the board, promptly beginning to scribble down lyrics in time to the music. It's a world of hopes and a world of fears, there's so much that we share that it's time we're aware it's a…

"Dear lord! I—erm—if you could pull out your textbooks, then, and turn to page 984 so you can follow along. Pettigrew, Lupin, come see me after class."

They swap looks. "But Professor, we didn't—"

"Oh, just do it, Pettigrew. So you should remember…"

She's losing their attention, though, and Remus can feel Carol Davies's eyes on him from behind as a familiar ringing fills his ears—Greta and Veronica must have cast Muffliato to gossip. And hardly fifteen minutes pass before he hears a pounding at the door over the music, shortly followed by the arrival of not Professor McGonagall but Dorcas Meadowes.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, Professor Shafiq, but I need to see Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew," she says breathlessly. She looks haggard, her blonde hair frizzy and flying out in all directions. Behind her, James waves brightly at the class, visibly recuperated from earlier, then Sirius punches him lightly in the shoulder and gives Remus and Peter a wide-eyed look.

"Go right ahead, Miss Meadowes," Shafiq tells her, and with that, Peter and Remus scramble to their feet.

"Bring your things," says Meadowes, and he does so, now starting to feel a bit nervous.

They meet her in the corridor, and she wordlessly leads them into the nearest empty classroom, latching the door behind them as they enter and perching herself on top of the professor's desk, ankles crossed. "You're the ones doing it, aren't you?" she asks. She's speaking normally, but it's still hard to hear her over the bellow of the chorus.

"I keep telling McGonagall, we don't have anything—"

"Relax, Black, I'm not planning on ratting you out to her, I want in."

"You—what?" says Remus.

"I think it's brilliant," says Meadows, smiling. "Organizing students to action and giving blood politics an immediacy in their everyday interactions? I've been doing what I can from the Head Girl post, but inter-house prefect rounds and more double classes for the first years only does so much. I love it."

"But you're—you're a pureblood," Sirius stammers.

"So are you, and the Meadoweses aren't even one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight like the Blacks are—even if my grandparents have been clamoring to be added since the thirties when the genealogy came out."

"And a Slytherin!"

"Isn't the whole point of this charade that your house doesn't have to dictate your loyalties? I'd have expected better from you, Black."

Sirius is shaking his head in disbelief, fists clenched tight. Remus breathes a little easier. "So say we are the ones doing it," James says, and all eyes flicker to him. "Why approach us now about it? Why not when it first started?"

"I wanted to be sure it wasn't just some ruse of yours, that you were actually looking to take action," says Meadowes. "And I don't think you lot would be taking this risky of measures to get your point across if you didn't want to go somewhere with it. I take it McGonagall doesn't want to let you fight?"

"She seems supportive of the—perpetrators—so far, but from the sounds of it, she and Dumbledore don't want it going farther than awareness with the students," Peter hedges.

"Well, I do. Awareness is an important first step, but sitting in a circle bitching about politics only gets you so far. The murders aren't going to wait until after we graduate, so neither should we. And you can drop the pretenses, all right? I need the secrecy as much as you do—I can't have Dumbledore knowing I'm involved with an underground movement to mobilize, or Kingsley either, for that matter. Maybe he could be persuaded someday, but I don't see him changing his mind as long as he's on the Auror track. I know it's you four; you don't have to dance around that."

It's the nine of them, technically, but Remus would rather not risk incriminating five others until he knows Meadowes isn't bluffing, and the others seem to be thinking the same. "What can we do now, though? As long as nobody wants us fighting, we don't exactly have access to the information we'd need to—"

"We can get access. I mean, I know how to get you access, and you probably would, too, if you thought hard enough about it," says Meadowes. Sirius raises his eyebrows. "Oh, come on; you're a pureblood, aren't you, so I'm sure you know how to get underground. I have a few contacts who trust my surname."

"So what are you saying, exactly?" says Remus slowly.

She smirks and hops off the desk, seizing hold of a piece of chalk and raising it to the board, despite its protests. "How do you feel about counter-terrorism?"

xx

They don't discuss it yet—it's not safe crammed into sleeping bags in the Ravenclaw common room and dormitories, and if they want to meet up the next day, Remus is too busy puzzling over Belby's recipe in the library to hear about it. He's not able to seek refuge for long, though, as Sirius tracks him down shortly after lunch, probably with the Map's help. "Hey, mate," he greets Remus, pulling up a chair and leaning in closer than comfort.

"You look incredibly out of place here."

"So I'm told. You think you'll go through with it?" he asks, nodding to the (by now quite tattered) parchment before Remus.

"Dunno. Probably."

"You probably shouldn't, you know."

"You said that about the silver."

"The silver was different. Aconite could really, literally kill you if Belby's wrong about this."

"Yeah, I know, I thought about that," says Remus. To be honest, he hasn't thought about much of anything, except maybe that he's not sure how much longer he wants to live like this, losing it and counting the damages after, and it'll be worth it to get fixed, but if Belby can't fix him—he needs Belby to fix him, he just does, because he's been broken for a long time now and it makes him feel a little crazy, a little trapped. "I need to get out of this," he tells Sirius, but he doesn't expect Sirius to feel that like he feels it.

Sirius sighs, toys with the edge of the parchment. "You can wait the month out, tell Belby to come up with something without aconite for next month."

"I don't want to, not if this one might be it."

He doesn't say anything for a while, watching Remus as Remus watches the recipe, as if a big, glaring right or wrong will leap out of the page at him any second now. "What happens when he goes with you?"

"What do you mean?"

"How do you get him under the Whomping Willow? Does he stay with you down there? Why don't you end up ripping him apart every month when it isn't working yet?"

He looks at him grimly, tenderly, and then unfreezes, turning his chair to face Sirius; it scrapes against he ground and echoes through the otherwise empty nook of the library he's chosen. "I told him to prod the knot with a stick to get in. He's taken a couple beatings, but it's otherwise worked all right. He stays to observe any changes in my—behavior, I guess you could say, while I'm—out. At first he was planning to immobilize me if it didn't work so he wouldn't get hurt, but that—didn't work, obviously. He chains me up now, and he's learned to be ready to set up Shield Charms and stuff if I break loose so he'll be safe. I get more roughed up than I used to because of the friction, but I'm pretty much all right—not any worse than I used to be before you and the others learned to transform. How violent or docile I get changes depending on the month, but I still can't remember any of it after—Sirius…"

And he fades out as Padfoot raises a hand to Remus's hair, tangles his fingers in it; then brushes his knuckles against his cheek and finally settles upon Remus's chest. Remus closes his eyes. He opens his eyes. "I can ask Lily to go with you tonight, if you want."

"Lily?" asks Remus, blinking.

"She knows how to heal—a little, anyway—it might help to have her on hand, in case things go badly. I know she's not Pomfrey—"

Tensing up, Remus says, "I don't want to endanger anyone but myself."

"And Belby."

He hesitates. "And Belby, I guess."

Shying away from Sirius's hand, he feels the boils in his stomach settle a bit. Sirius deflates. "Sorry. I just—I worry about you," he says, retreating.

"I know. Thank you—really—but I'm not putting Lily at risk. I'll be all right." At Sirius's disbelieving look, he adds, "I'll be all right! I will." Silence again. "I'll be fine, I'm fine, look," and he shakes Sirius's shoulders playfully till he laughs and laughs.

He's all in knots when he meets Belby that night, huddling in himself, cradling his elbows. "Wolfsbane, Belby?"

Belby grins (grins!). "You said that about the silver."

"The silver was different. You're sure about this?"

"Sure enough to brew it. Drink up," he says, and he passes Remus the flask. Just in case, he supposes he ought to see his life flash before his eyes right about now—but he doesn't, and he breathes, and he drinks.

Nothing happens. Then he jolts, and doubles over, and almost retches, but Belby rushes forward and says don't, you'll just have to drink more if you lose it, and he swallows the bile, and he blinks his wet eyes back into his head, and Belby's grip is bracing and too tight, he doesn't want him here, but when Belby draws back it's because he can feel himself lurching, can feel the breaks; he howls, he cracks, and it starts to fade out but this time it swims back forward again, why is it in focus he can feel the bones breaking and fade and back and fade and back and black and back and he tries to curse Belby but all that comes out is a roar he doesn't recognize that bounces off the barrier between them, and Belby's gripping his wand so tight Remus can see the shaking, at least he can when he sees at all.

And then he drowns in a blinding desire for blood the BOY'S BLOOD BUT HE DOESN'T WANT THIS WHY DOES HE WANT IT and he runs at the shield, crashes solid against it, falls back, stays back, tells himself he needs to stay back. It would be so easy, he senses, just a few quick scratches to his limbs and he could smell what he needs, the room is so dead and he cannot reach the boy he just wants to FEEL SOMETHING but it aches it aches to scratch this is going to hurt in the morning and he stops, he pins his wrists PAWS to the ground and he stays, he yelps with the effort, he does not want this and he stays put, why did he ever want to remember this, WHY DID HE EVER WANT TO REMEMBER THIS—