CW: Death, and seeing a dead body

The start of the second apparition lesson went down very similarly to the first one. No matter how hard I focused on the three D's, I couldn't do it.

But one different thing did happen the previous Saturday: Lily half apparated. When I say she half apparated, I mean she was able to get to the second hoop, but a lot of her skin was left behind in the first hoop, so after she half apparated, she was standing in the second hoop, blood pouring down from several parts of her body, choking and spluttering.

James screamed when he saw her, and sprinted over to her, by her side even before the teachers were.

"Get Madam Pomfrey," James said, his voice shrill. "Someone get her! Now!"

It was hard for me to move away from Lily while she was writhing on the floor, but I managed to peel myself away from her and run to the Hospital Wing. The Great Hall was a long way from the Hospital Wing, but the other marauders and I had added another passageway to the map which started near the Great Hall and ended near the Hospital Wing, so it cut my travel time by more than half.

"Madam Pomfrey!" I wheezed as I came into the Hospital Wing. But when I realised that Madam Pomfrey wasn't there, my heart stopped. There was only one student in the room, a third-year girl, but she was asleep.

I rushed over to Madam Pomfrey's office and ripped the door open. She wasn't in there, either. My blood went cold and the pulse in my temple was thumping. Where the hell was she!?

I ran out of her office, then over to the third-year girl, then clapped in her face to try to wake her up so she could tell me where Madam Pomfrey had gone. She didn't stir.

"Wake up!" I yelled, shaking her, but she still didn't move. "Where's Madam Pomfrey!? Hello? Are you OK?"

The girl didn't even flinch in her sleep. I lifted her hand, which was freezing, and felt her wrist. There was no pulse beating. Was she...?

No. They wouldn't keep a student in the Hospital Wing if they were dead. But where was Madam Pomfrey?

"MADAM POMFREY!" I cried out. "POPPY POMFREY, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU!?"

No response.

I screamed internally, then grabbed the cream and medicine that Madam Pomfrey had always used for the wounds I had inflicted on myself before the marauders had become Animagus off the shelf then took them back to the Great Hall.

But when I got there, Lily looked completely fine, and everyone was back to attempting to apparate as if nothing had happened. Something had happened, right?

After the apparition lesson finished, I asked the other marauders what had happened.

"Evans got splinched," said James. "But after you left, Snivellus did some weird spell on her which closed all her wounds, and she was completely fine."

"That's so weird..." I said. "I couldn't even find Madam Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing, and there was this student... wait, can we go to the Hospital Wing real quick?"

"Why? Do you have a crush on some random student in the Hospital Wing?" Sirius asked, his tone a little hurt.

"What? No," I said. "She was a third year I'm pretty sure. Oh my god, do you really think I'd have feelings for a thirteen-year-old girl? Anyway, when I was there, she was asleep and I tried to wake her, and she didn't respond, and then I felt her wrist, and... there was no pulse."

James's eyes widened. "Oh my god, OK, we should definitely go and see if she's OK."

We quickly made our way to the Hospital Wing, walking as fast as we could without running, because the last time we ran through the halls, we lost Gryffindor twenty points.

But when we were in the Hospital Wing, the girl was gone. The Hospital Wing was completely empty.

"What?" I said. "She was here... she was... lying in a bed..."

"Maybe they took her out because she was... dead." Peter's voice was quiet but blunt.

"No... how would a student have died? Why would she have been in the Hospital Wing at all if she was dead?" I said, but I felt sick with the thought that maybe Peter was right.

I couldn't sleep that night. I lay awake in my bed, sweating even though I'd pushed my blanket off of me, and it was cold because it was the middle of February.

I couldn't stop thinking about the sight of both Lily splinched and that girl, lying motionless on the Hospital Wing bed, her freezing cold hand and non-beating pulse.

I turned over, again and again, until I realised that I was probably disturbing Sirius. He was right next to me, both of us in my bed.

I pulled the curtains back to the four-poster and got up, walking over to the water jug that was sitting on our table. I poured myself a glass of water, then walked over to the cupboards where the school photo album was. We didn't have access to the one for this year yet, so I grabbed the one from last year and opened the page to the second-year section.

I found her photo quickly. Her name was Cynthia Baxter. I didn't know why I was so obsessed. I'd never even seen this girl before. But what if she was dead? And I'd just found her body in the Hospital Wing and done nothing about it?

"Are you alright?"

I jumped and dropped the photo album, spinning around to see Sirius standing next to his four-poster.

"Hey, Padfoot," I said.

"Hey," he said, walking over to me, and looking down at the photo album. "What are you looking at?"

"I just wanted to know her name," I said. "The girl I saw."

"Moony, I'm sure she's fine," said Sirius.

"Her hands were cold, though," I said. "And there was no pulse in her wrist. And she didn't respond to me at all. I'm worried. And... if someone's died at school... how would she have died? Is there a killer at the school?"

"Calm down," said Sirius. "Even if she had... died... which she hasn't, I'm sure, she was probably just really sick and died from her illness."

I would have liked to think that, but I knew it wasn't true. "Padfoot, I go to the Hospital Wing on a monthly basis. I think she would have been there at least a few times while I was there if she had an illness that was so bad that it killed her."

Sirius picked up the photo album and looked at it. "Which one is her?"

"Cynthia Baxter," I said.

"Says she's in Ravenclaw," said Sirius. "They're in a tower, too. Maybe she fell."

"She didn't look like she'd fallen off something," I said, biting my fingernails.

"Stop," said Sirius, closing the photo album. "She's completely fine. She didn't fall from the Ravenclaw tower, she was not murdered, and there are no killers at Hogwarts. She was just passed out for some reason. Let's try and go back to sleep. Everything will all be OK."

Sirius held out his hand to me, and I hesitantly took it. He led me back to my bed, and we both climbed in side by side. He held my hand under the sheets, and I tried to stop worrying about the fact that I thought a girl might have died in our school.

Cynthia Baxter was dead.

The story was, according to some other third-year girl, that Cynthia and a few of her friends were at Hogsmeade, shopping for Valentine's gifts for some boy that Cynthia fancied. That boy had then come into the store that they were in, so Cynthia had slipped out of the shop to hide from him, and gone up the side of the store. Five minutes later, her friends came out of the shop to find her, and when they looked down the side of the shop, they found her lying motionless on the ground, so took her straight to Madam Pomfrey.

Madam Pomfrey soon realised that Cynthia was already dead and went out to inform Dumbledore of what had happened. During that time, I had come into the Hospital Wing to find Madam Pomfrey to help Lily.

I felt sick to my stomach. The school was informed about Cynthia's death over breakfast on the morning after I'd seen her, but I'd come forward to tell the teachers investigating her death that I had seen her body in the Hospital Wing because I thought that might be somewhat useful information.

The only information that the teachers were able to find was that she was killed by the killing curse. Which meant there had been a murder in Hogsmeade. And we were all banned from Hogsmeade until further notice.

"I can't believe I saw a dead girl and didn't say anything," I said, to no one in particular, because I was sitting alone in the common room during my spare period on Monday afternoon, only a day after Cynthia's death had been announced and two days since I'd seen her. "Now I probably look guilty."

And it doesn't help that I'm a werewolf and people who know that probably already think that I'm a murderer, I thought to myself. Then, Well, they wouldn't be wrong, now, would they?

I swallowed and tried to push back my thoughts. I'd done nothing wrong. I'd never intentionally hurt someone in my entire life, and hadn't hurt or killed anyone since my second year.

I clutched onto my unstarted Charms essay so hard that it crumpled under my grip. I didn't want to think about that now. I'd spent the last few years doing everything I could to not think about that, despite nightmares that I still had about it. They were less frequent now than when I was thirteen, but they still came.

I shook my head and put the parchment down. I didn't want to think about this now. I didn't want to think about it ever.

The rest of February passed in the dizzy grief of the school, and the fear that another student might be killed, and Hogsmeade remained out of bounds for the remainder of the month.

The first Saturday of March was my last full moon as an underage wizard, and when I transformed back into myself the morning after, the first thing I felt after the pain had eased away was fear.

What if, when I was an adult werewolf, the transformations were worse? I was more dangerous? What if my mindset completely changed and I became pure evil, just like Greyback?

What if, with the other marauders there, as an adult werewolf I hurt them even though they were animals? Only an underage werewolf would not harm animals?

I swallowed as Madam Pomfrey came into the shack. I was lying on the floor, and couldn't move as a result of my exhaustion and fear.

"Remus, can you walk?" Madam Pomfrey asked me. I could walk, so I did, absolutely silent.

I was terrified.