chapter four

Remus leaned forward, elbows on his knees and wind whipping his face. There were a few groups of people scattered around the stands of the Quidditch pitch, though few looked as disinterested as Remus felt. He didn't really care for the sport, and sitting there watching James trying to conduct a practice was one of the last things he wanted to be doing. And every time he opened his textbook up to get some reading done, the wind slammed it shut again. He was resigned to listen to Peter and Sirius ramble on about strategies and Seekers and skills. Remus didn't feel like following along.

There was some point in his life that Remus would've pretended that he cared about the sport or even knew what he was looking at during practices, when he was younger and skinnier and unsure. When pretending to be more like James or Sirius took up half of his energy and he thought that if he stopped he'd be stuck on his own. It was a relief to realize, maybe sometime after the tenth full moon they stayed up all night for, that he would have a much harder time getting rid of them. And it was an added bonus to have to stop pretending to care about Quidditch.

Numbness spread from the tips of his fingers to the bones at his wrist. He didn't quite understand the reason James had pleaded with him to attend his practices, but he did. And Remus agreed. He usually did.

"C'mon, Potter, move your arse," Peter murmured, kneading his hands together like he was nervous for whatever outcome he was preparing for. Remus couldn't imagine how severe it could be during a practice.

"It's not his fault," Sirius countered, hands folded under his chin. "McKinnon's not hitting the bludger as hard as she normally does. Letting it get the better of her." Sirius paused, and looked over at his silent friend. "What do you think of all this, Moony?"

Remus sighed, putting his hand to his chin. "Well, it seems that the beaters certainly are beating. But you have to ask yourself, Sirius, at a certain point when do the beatings stop being beatings and start being a pounding?"

"And what, pray tell, is the difference between a beating and a pounding?"

"Why don't you ask your mum, Pettigrew? Reckon she's had a fair few demonstrations."

"Oi, shut it Black!"

"Yeah, Padfoot, you know better than to go off on someone's mother. Mrs. Potter would have you strung out by your toes."

Sirius grinned and gave a roll of his eyes, but he didn't say anything. Remus was sure that if he were James or Peter, there would have been some clever remark for him in store. But Sirius had a newly developed habit of being gentle with Remus. It was annoying, really, and every time Sirius retreated like that Remus was reminded of why. He thought about telling him off, but he didn't want to open that wound again.

They had only started talking again in August, and it took a lot to get there.

A cloud of smoke floated up into the air, getting whipped away from the cigarette it came from by the unforgiving wind. Torrance Drummond sat a few rows in front of them, cigarette between her fingers and her head on Dorcas Meadows. Remus frowned. He hated the smell.

Peter shoved an elbow into Sirius. "Bloody hell, where is she getting fags from?"

"Why don't you ask her?" Sirius replied with a shrug. He had learned his lesson about Torrance, and from the way Peter kept his mouth shut, it seemed that he had too.

The practice dragged on for a while, flooded with non-stop commenting and an envying for Torrance's cigarettes. And when it was over, James met them on the grass and threw his sweaty arm over Peter's shoulder. "I'm feeling good about this year, mates. Got the cup under my belt already, I think."

They trudged back up to the castle, listening to James's extensive recap of what they just watched, as the Slytherin team was heading down towards the pitch, looking slick and mean, with their scowls and set jaws and straight ahead stares. Sirius tensed up, keeping his head forward, but Remus caught how his eyes flickered over to the Slytherin seeker, who didn't spare him a second glance.

And when they were gone and out of sight, Sirius gave a smile that didn't meet his eyes, his mind elsewhere.


Peter shook his head, looking down at the bubbling gray mush in their cauldron. "I dunno what you did, Remus. This is a mess."

The taller boy tugged at his hair for a moment, headache creeping in from the sides. "I followed the instructions," he insisted, "I read them twice and did everything right, I know I did."

Peter shuffled around ingredients and tools until he found the bookmarked page in his Potions text. "Add two pieces of ginger root, I did that, add the armadillo bile?"

Remus nodded. "I did that."

"Mix in the beetles until red."

"Did that."

"Mix in armadillo bile again until yellow."

Remus paused, looking down at the potion with a blank expression. "I did not do that."

Peter sighed, looking between the potion and his friend. "Maybe next time you prep the ingredients and I'll brew it, yeah?"

"Yeah," Remus agreed, nodding, "that might be a better idea."

Stirring the potion a few times, Peter scrunched his nose up. "More of a dunce potion, less of a wit-sharpening one, I reckon." He dropped his wand, and let out a little bit of a groan. Guilt twisted up in Remus's gut. The one class Peter really excelled at and Remus was mucking it up for him.

Defeated, Remus slumped down in his chair. The sound of laughter caught his attention, and he twisted around to see James and Torrance, chortling over a potion that looked even worse than theirs. She watched the cauldron, tossing in a seemingly random amount of beetles, with the corner of her mouth upturned, a glint in her eyes that Remus had never really seen before. "Just keep going with those until it's purple, Drummond," James encouraged, grinning, "We'll get there eventually." She flicked one of the beetles at him. He didn't remember them being such good friends.

Remus turned back around. He felt pretty witless.


There was a routine that Remus developed, and there wasn't much that deviated from it. He woke up early, earlier than Sirius and Peter but never earlier than James, and was already halfway done with his breakfast by the time everyone else made their way to the Great Hall. He spent hours holed up in the library, sometimes alone, sometimes with company. A lot of people asked him for help, and he never really had the heart to say no. Remus always left early enough, though, to find himself lounging about the common room.

"I'm bored."

Remus looked up from the History of Magic work in his lap for just a moment. Sirius was lying on his bed, tossing a Quaffle up in the air and catching it just before it slammed back into his nose. Remus snickered. "You should do your homework then."

"I'm not that bored," Sirius insisted.

"Well why don't you go do something instead of bothering me, so I can do my homework?"

Sirius caught the Quaffle, tucked it under his arm and turned on his side. He stared his friend down with a look in his eye that Remus had grown to be suspicious of. "Do you wanna go to Honeydukes?"

Remus paused, quill pausing on the parchment. He could have stayed and finished revising, and he figured he ought to, but he was running dangerously low on chocolate frogs. "I mean, sort of."

"Come on, let's go then!" Sirius exclaimed, shooting up from his spot on the bed and rushing to stuff his feet into his boots. "We've hardly done anything interesting this year and I think if I go on one more second with this boredom, I'm going to wither away into dust."

Despite his eye roll, Remus tossed his work to the end of his bed. "You're so dramatic."

"You can tell it to the crowd that gathers at my funeral after I die in fifty-seconds."

"Whatever, let's go."

Sirius gave him a brilliant grin. "Cheers."

After a fair bit of arguing, they decided to forgo waiting Peter and James (who had independently decided to litter the corridors with some timed dungbombs, just to drum up some excitement), and therefore forgo taking James's cloak. "It's not like I can fit under it anymore anyways," Remus argued. He barely fit under doorways anymore.

A shiny (non-silver) prefect pin was bright against Remus's robes. He didn't like flashing the bloody thing around, and he felt like a bit of snob whenever he did. But it was a pretty good defense whenever he was caught sneaking around after curfew. Sirius clutched the map, watching Filch's name hover around the Hufflepuff common room. "Brilliant," Sirius murmured, eyes fixated on the map. "Let's go."

The common room was bustling; first years in a heated chess tournament, a group of seventh year girls stretching out by the fireplace, some fifth years playing a punk record in the corner. No one noticed Remus and Sirius rushing towards the door.

Neither one of them were looking when they walked through the portrait hole. They were watching the map with a keen eye, keeping track of any authoritative figures that were in range to wonder by the one-eyed witch statue. Remus was insisting that the best place to wait out would be the empty classroom nearby when someone slammed into him. He staggered, narrowing his eyes at the girl whose head bounced off of his chest, clutching her nose as blood rushed out between her fingers, head tilted down so he couldn't see her eyes. "Torrance?" he asked, recognizing the Scottish girl after a moment.

"Bloody hell, Drummond, what happened to you?" Sirius questioned, leaning forwards towards her. "You alright?"

She didn't look up, and the blood kept coming. "Bugger off," she murmured.

Remus didn't know why, but he reached for her. Torrance flinched away from his hand. "Are you alright?" he repeated Sirius's question, leaning down closer to her eye-level. And even though she was covering her face, he could see her cheeks were a deep red.

"Oi, you're blocking the door!" someone in the common room yelled.

"Oh, shut it!" Sirius yelled back.

Remus stared down at Torrance. "Lily'll fix it," she said simply, and that was enough for Remus to step to the side, giving her the room to pass. Torrance rushed past the both of them without so much of a thanks or a glance in their direction.

There was a small stain of her blood on Remus's prefect badge. He smudged it off with the end of his sleeve.

"What do you reckon that was about?" Sirius asked sometime later, the two of them making their way through the damp and wet tunnel.

"What, with Torrance?"

"Yeah."

Remus shrugged. "I dunno. She's muggle-born, and looked like was alone. Probably got cornered by Snape or Mulciber or something."

It was dark down there, but Remus swore he could see Sirius flinch at his reply. "She shouldn't be wandering around alone, then. I'll tell James to talk to her."

"What's James gonna do? He's not her nanny."

There was a little bit of an edge to Sirius's voice when he said, "It's not safe for people who aren't purebloods to be alone in the castle anymore. She's allowed her pride, but she shouldn't be stupid about it."

Remus didn't have much to say to that, he just nodded. They didn't talk about Torrance anymore.

The trip down the tunnel didn't seem as long as it did when they were kids. It used to feel endless, winding and deep and mysterious. Remus could've sworn that when he first found this tunnel when he was eleven, it took him hours to get to the end of it. But it took him and Sirius just a quick twenty minutes to end up below Honeydukes, pushing up the door and reaching their stock.

The shared hushed laughter as they stuffed their bags with sweets, Remus grabbing as many chocolate frogs he could fit in his bag, along with some Cauldron cakes and sugar quills, while Sirius opted for some licorice wands and candyfloss. And by the end of it, they had enough candy to get them through to Christmas, with a clattering pile of galleons left on the steps of Honeydukes cellar.


another short chapter, but i hope you like it! i've found remus's chapters harder to write than torrance's, but i think that as we progress into the story they'll become more and more important and i'm excited for the challenge of writing from his perspective. let me know what you think! im very excited for every chapter that goes out and for hearing what you all think about it..