THC/The Houses Competition

House: Ravenclaw

Class: Herbology

Category: Standard

Prompt(s): [Colour] Orange; [Prompt] The Giant Squid appears to announce the beginning of Summer.

Word Count: 2,343

Remus Lupin was the first to arrive, as usual. Since the tragedy had happened—Filch confiscating the Marauder's Map and hiding it well enough in his office that their strongest summoning charms could not retrieve it—he had been painfully cautious about sneaking around, and he'd budgeted an extra few minutes to reconnoiter the corridors before sprinting up the restricted staircase to the secret spot. It wouldn't do to get himself expelled in the last week of school. He'd survived too much these last seven years to let that happen.

At the top of the stairs, he tapped his wand rhythmically against the heavy door. It unlocked itself and creaked open onto a narrow platform on the side of the West tower, bookended by two belching steam vents from the kitchens. The area was strictly off-limits, which meant they could stay as long as they liked without being bothered. The place had been covered in spatters of white dung and owl pellets when they'd discovered it, but they'd all pitched in and cleaned it up. (Well, Sirius had mainly supervised). Now it was their own private rooftop lounge, and it afforded a decent view of the lake.

Remus stood on the edge and peered over. The afternoon sun was low and orangey in the sky, and light fell in long golden tines between the treetops. Students swarmed like ants on the grassy slope below. Young ones skipped and shoved each other playfully; older ones strolled in pairs, holding hands or linking arms, stopping now and then to clutch each other. Someone had brought a quaffle and it zoomed back and forth amongst the throng like a fat bee.

The excited murmuring had started in History of Magic class that morning. Hagrid's heard it! He's heard the rumbling! By lunchtime, the whole student body had been raucous with the news: today was the day the Giant Squid would break the choppy surface of the lake and show herself. Remus had found it difficult to concentrate in his afternoon classes amongst the hiss of whispered planning and the air traffic of floating notes. Even with N.E.W.T.s a week away, his schoolwork had seemed irrelevant and remote all day.

The end-of-term ritual had been going on for as long as anyone could remember. In the second half of June, every morning, Hagrid the gamekeeper would lower his enormous ear to the ground outside his hut and listen. As exams grew nearer, everyone would feverishly speculate on when the big morning would come: I bet it's tomorrow, I just have a feeling; I hope it's Friday, Icarus Perkins said my eyebrows looked nice in Potions this morning and that'd just be a divine first date, wouldn't it? And one morning every year, sometime around the summer solstice, Hagrid would hear from deep in the ground a low, portentious rumbling that meant the squid would emerge that afternoon.

The squid's debut was always like a party. The whole school would gather on the banks of the lake, spread out blankets, drink butterbeer and discreetly pass round fifths of firewhiskey. Laughter made manic by the imminent freedom of summer would ring from all the little clusters of friends as they made their plans, said their goodbyes, signed the awkward fidgeting pictures in each others' yearbooks. Now and again a couple, sometimes established and sometimes surprising, would disappear into the forest and emerge some time later with leaves in their hair. Usually at least one or two students would abruptly sprint across the lawn, seize a classmate, and accost them with a hearty kiss. It was one of the last chances to indulge in such a thing before each student followed his own path home for the summer.

Remus sat down on the edge of the platform, his legs dangling over and loose threads from his trouser cuffs wriggling in the breeze. This would be the last time he'd watch the squid come out with his friends. It would be one of the last brassy-coloured afternoons they'd spend together here, with warm orange light on their faces and their shadows growing long behind them. He wished he could reach out his hand and stop the sun from setting in the sky.

Soon they would all set off into their separate futures. Remus's own future was a staticky blur when he tried to imagine it, but he could clearly see his friends: Sirius Black roaming the continent on his motorbike, turning that effortless charm on all manner of fascinating and glamourous people; Peter Pettigrew working his way up through his father's firm, perhaps finding some sense of self in the routine and productiveness of honest work; James settling down with Lily in some little place with a garden, the strange magic between them blossoming like marigolds.

Remus started slightly at the snick of the lock behind him, and Sirius skidded onto the overhang.

"Almost got nabbed by McGonagall," Sirius panted, sitting cross-legged next to Remus.

"Where's James?"

"What, am I not enough for you?" Sirius deadpanned. He craned his neck to look out on the crowd below. "Might still be down there with Evans. You know how he is."

"How am I, exactly?" countered James from the doorway. He nodded at Remus. "All right, Moony?"

Remus grinned. James was wearing the orange-and-black Chudley Cannons jersey he'd been sporting ironically ever since the team had lost one-hundred-and-eighty-to-ten a couple of years ago. A tension Remus didn't know he'd held relaxed inside him. He knew it had been hard for James to leave Lily down on the bank. He had been prepared for James to skip out on his friends and apologise later in that half-grinning way he often did. Gratitude swelled inside Remus's chest. Whatever was to become of him after graduation, he was staggeringly lucky to have had friends like these.

"Pete's not here yet?" wondered James. Sirius cocked an eyebrow at Remus.

Remus shrugged. "Haven't seen him since Charms. He said he'd be here. I made him repeat back the time and everything."

"Probably wheedling extra sausage rolls off one of the elves," said James. He patted his stomach. "I could go for one myself, if I'm honest."

"He'll eat them all before he even gets to the stairs," Sirius sniggered.

Remus winced a bit inside. Peter was his closest friend. He'd had to cajole James and Sirius into giving him a chance back in second year. Since then, he'd felt an odd sort of responsibility for Peter: Remus sometimes found himself apologising for him, making excuses for him, justifying his presence in their group. He'd be relieved, he realised guiltily, when he didn't have to do that anymore.

James might have seen something in Remus's face because he abruptly changed the subject.

"By the way, mate," he said in a low voice, leaning over to talk across Sirius. "Have you thought any more about... about what we talked about?"

Last month, James had offered Remus a room in the flat he and Sirius planned to rent in SoHo. Remus had refused—he'd only be a fifth wheel and he didn't want anyone's charity. When he'd said no, James had started insisting that Remus take some gold as a graduation present. He'd even tried stuffing a bag of galleons into Remus's robe pocket. Remus had stormed away, burning with embarrassment. James had graciously accepted his apology later that day on the condition that Remus take some time to think it over.

Under next month's full moon Moony would transform without Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs for the first time since last September. He'd no idea yet where he would go; he had sworn to himself that he'd no longer burden his parents and he refused to dampen his friends' excitement at moving out on their own. He'd no money and no idea how to land a job without ending up on the Werewolf Registry. But this was what growing up was about, he told himself. Figuring it all out on your own.

Remus was quiet for long enough that Sirius looked over at him with alarm.

"Yes," he said at last. "I've... the answer is still no, thank you."

Sirius let out a hissing breath. James looked at him with knitted brows for a few seconds before his face settled into a tight-lipped smile.

"Okay, Moony. Just know the offer still stands, and you're—"

"I understand," said Remus, so quickly it cut off the end of James's sentence.

The door banged open behind them and Peter paused in the doorway, leaning on the frame and breathing heavily.

"Where's my sausage roll?" demanded Sirius.

"What?"

"He's just being cheeky," said Remus. "Something happen, Pete?"

"No," Peter huffed. "S'just the stairs—"

"Well, well, well," smarmed a voice from behind Peter. He spun around to face it, and as he turned Remus could see Severus Snape stalking up the steps, a hateful delight all over his face. "If it isn't the golden boys, tempting fate in the last week of the year, skulking about in restricted areas—"

"Fair enough, Snape. You've caught us," said James flatly. "Why don't you run down, get a teacher, and explain to them how you went into a restricted area and found us there? We'll wait."

"Did you at least bring us some sausage rolls?" smirked Sirius. "James is a bit peckish."

"There's sausage rolls?" asked Peter hopefully.

Snape's expression simmered with rage.

Remus stood and clapped Peter on the back as he sidled around him and approached Snape, now standing at the top of the stairs.

"Go sit, I'll handle it," he murmured to Peter as he passed. He smiled gamely at Snape as the door to the overhang fell shut behind him. Snape glowered back.

"Got something to say to me, Lupin?" he spat.

"Actually," Remus said mildly, "I do. I understand it's much too late for this, but there's something I'd like to speak to you about. I'm sorry we haven't ever gotten on with each other. I'm sorry—well, I'm sorry for a lot of things that happened. But, Severus, you had your own part in them. If you'd just learn to keep your head, take things in your stride, not to get so upset and pitch a fit at every slight, real or imagined—if you'd stop snooping around trying to get people detentions—"

"Expulsion would be more fitting," Snape drawled with contempt.

"Fine. As you like. The point is, nobody likes a tattletale. It'd serve you well to take that in."

Snape's face hardened into a scowl. He drew his faded robes closer around himself and sneered, "I don't take advice from animals."

He turned and swept down the stairs.

Remus's shoulders drooped: in disappointment, but also in relief. He'd said it, Snape had heard it, it was done. He pulled his wand out, picked the lock again, and rejoined his friends.

"—Right chuffed for you, Wormtail—Oi, Moony, did you catch that?" James pointed at Peter excitedly. "Pete's been down there snogging someone! We can't get him to say who, though."

Peter shot a sidelong glance at Remus and buried his hands in the front pouch of his hoodie. "A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell," he said primly.

Remus frowned as he sat back down. Peter wasn't typically much for girls. He seemed to prefer trying to sneak glances down their robes in the library and furtively studying photographs of them in the Madam Malkin's catalogue he kept under his pillow to actually speaking with them.

"Nice one, mate," Remus said anyway. Peter didn't meet his eyes, only stared out over the lake, which was beginning to shimmer with some unseen activity below.

"Oh, I think it's happening," sing-songed James.

Peter pinched his nose shut with his fingers.

The Squid's enormous head, glistening and pebbly, broke the surface of the water. Concentric waves rippled gracefully away from her. The orange of nearly-sunset reflected on her big milky eyes.

"Gorgeous as ever, love. Fabulous," assessed Sirius.

The squid rose to her full height, tentacles corkscrewing through the air. The crowd on the banks below had fallen still, watching. Couples gripped each other; a few firsties started to wail.

"I can't watch," said Peter, turning away and pulling the collar of his hoodie over his nose. "I can't stand the smell. I'm gonna vomit."

"You always say you're going to vomit and you never have," Remus pointed out.

The squid smacked her tentacles on the surface of the water and let out a deep, vibrating groan. Waves crested to the banks of the lake, and a few thrillseekers gathered on the edge were knocked onto the grass by the splash.

Remus looked over at his friends. Peter's face was hidden and the sunset played in his sandy hair. Sirius and James were in handsome profile, their faces painted by the dying light in the hues of smouldering orange that belonged solely to early-summer late-afternoons at Hogwarts. Solely to the four of them. Soon, Remus thought, that colour would belong only to his memories. He drank in the sight like he could hold it somewhere inside himself, hoard it for later when he'd need to remember what he'd once had.

But even as he tried to save it, the colour had already begun to change and fade.

He saw the shift in his friends' faces as the squid put on her show. A briny tang filled the air. Remus had seen the squid lay her pearlescent clutch of eggs over the water six times by now, and he found he had no desire to turn his gaze away and watch it. James was smiling dreamily in that way he'd started doing since Lily had finally given him an exasperated yes. Sirius's mouth was turned down in an appraising look as he watched the raft of huge translucent eggs bob in the lake. Peter dry-retched inside his hoodie.

James glanced over at Remus and caught him watching. Remus ducked his head bashfully, but James reached across his friends and gripped Remus's shoulder.

"All right, Moony," he said. It wasn't a question.