For the first time ever, the other Marauders were spending their evenings in the library with Remus—though while Remus and the rest of the students around them were studying for finals, James, Sirius and Peter were learning up on Animagi. It was surprisingly difficult to find the information they were looking for—there was plenty to be found on recognizing Animagi or the theories behind animal transfiguration, but little on the mysterious potion required for the transformation and certainly nothing about a transformed Animagus's susceptibility to werewolf attacks. But the others were determined, even to the point of sneaking books out of the Restricted Section late at night under James's cloak, and Remus didn't try to stop them. It was a passing fascination, he thought; they would have forgotten all about it by the end of the summer.
Gryffindor won their final Quidditch game—a match against Slytherin—though James was far from pleased with himself afterwards. "I only scored twice the whole game," he complained to his friends. "Twice. Even Snivellus could've done better. Ramsey's probably looking for my replacement already."
"Come off it, mate," Sirius said. "Mary only scored twice, too. Slytherin's got the best Keeper in the school; you know that."
"And Snivellus could not have done better," Peter added. "He flies about as well as I do." James threw back his head with a laugh at that.
All four of them passed their finals, with Remus and James doing particularly well in Defense Against the Dark Arts and even Peter managing to eke out acceptable marks in Potions. And then it was suddenly their last day at Hogwarts, and Remus and his friends followed the stream of eager students down to swim in the Great Lake just as they had the year before. Remus sat cross-legged at the edge of the water and watched the others—James and Sirius were spitting jets of water into the air, Peter judging carefully which of their streams arced higher, and Lily and Mary were not far away, joining a group of students lining up to dive off of a levitating wooden board kept aloft by a pair of Gryffindor fifth years. Remus lifted his face to the sun and smiled, closing his eyes as the warmth and light seeped through his skin. He always felt better under the sun, perhaps because it was the opposite of the moon that so greatly controlled his life. No one turned into a monster in the light of day.
"Hey, Re." A wet finger tapped against Remus's skin, pulling him out of his reverie. It was Sirius, sitting beside him with rivulets of water coursing through his long hair. "Come in with us."
The smile sunk off Remus's lips. "I can't," he said quietly. "You know why."
Sirius tilted his head to the side. "I don't, actually."
"You've seen my scars, Sirius." He pointed to the long one down the side of his face. "This one's already bad enough. If people were to see all of them…."
"If anyone asks, we'll tell them you got into a nasty fight with a Manticore." Now James had pulled himself up out of the water, too. "And no one will ask—people at this school get into all sorts of things."
"Especially when they're a Marauder," Sirius added, elbowing Remus in the side. "Come on, you git. It's the end of the school year. You've got to let yourself have some fun. Everyone does."
Remus met Sirius's eyes, gray and bright and encouraging; then he rose slowly to his feet, shrugged off his robes and slipped out of his clothes until he wore only his boxers. The scars crisscrossing nearly every inch of his body shone white in the sunlight—they looked so different in the daylight than they did behind drawn curtains.
With a giant grin, Sirius grabbed Remus's hand and led him into the water. It was cold enough to send shocks of pain up Remus's legs, but he didn't mind.
His parents would think he was crazy, showing off his marred body in public as he was. And they would be horrified to know that the friends laughing at his side had figured out his secret, that he'd failed to hide something so potentially catastrophic from them. But the Marauders weren't going to tell anyone about him, and no one was watching him as he dove through the water, as light and carefree as all the other students at the end of a long school year. For a moment, he could be just like the rest of them.
And maybe he could have some fun, at least for a little while.
