Apologies for lack of length. And lack of promptness. Both are due to the fact that my EFFING LAPTOP IS DEAD, which had the next three chapters on it. So, I was forced to rewrite it, because I've been informed that the poor little thing won't be working again for quite some time.

In short, I'm angry at life. Grr. Fear me and my non-owning abilities in regard to all of Harry Potter fandom.

Wow. Lookit that, we're still on day three, people! How'd that happen?

Lily Evans looked up from her Arithmancy book just in time to see one Alice Dunsworth come tiptoeing down the stairs from their dormitory. She flipped irritably to a reference sheet as she proclaimed, "Alice, I thought I told you to go to sleep – just because I have to finish all this doesn't mean you can't get a decent night's rest."

Alice yawned, then giggled a little, shaking her head. "Believe me, Lily, I'm in no way objecting to the idea of a decent night's sleep. But you seem to have a visitor – and he's sleeping in your bed. The other girls are going to gossip if they find him there again."

Again? Well, that could only mean Remus – the last time he'd made his way up to her dormitory on Prefect business, the other three girls that shared their dorm had discovered him first. It had caused not only dorm-wide panic, but a pack of rumors that Lily still had to occasionally dispel. "Did you say he was sleeping?"

She nodded, taking a seat next to her friend. Alice had always been the prettiest of Lily's friends – her blonde hair and perfect figure was the consistent envy of every Hogwarts girl. She'd been Lily's friend ever since she'd found the blonde crying in a bathroom in first year, having a frightful case of homesickness. She had grown out of that stage of her life quickly, and was now the most self-assured girl Lily knew, excluding herself. "Yeah – he's completely knocked out, Lils. Looks like he's had it pretty rough today. Not that I blame him – I'm sure I'd look much worse if I'd been through the same." She raised a thoughtful finger to her chin in a playful manner. "But then again, it is Sirius Black – so I suppose I could have tolerated it."

Lily rolled her eyes, deciding to not engage in a fight over her friend's approval of the Marauders. "You know, for the first of us to be engaged, you're pretty fickle."

She was, of course, speaking of Frank Longbottom – Alice's fiancé. The two had engaged in a whirlwind romance that had begun just six months before – and after five months, Frank had gone to Hogsmeade and picked out the largest engagement ring he could afford. Alice hadn't hesitated so much as a second to say yes – and Lily had no doubts whatsoever that they'd make it as a couple. Lily had never seen two people more fit for each other.

Alice flashed a smile back to her. "I may be fickle, but if you leave that poor boy up there any longer, you're going to be the permanent slut of Gryffindor House, m'dear."

Lily closed her book with a sigh. "Yeah, I suppose. If Celia or the others come in, will you distract them for a minute?"

Alice wrinkled her nose in a tired expression. "Do I need to be awake for this?"

"Yes." Neither girl was very fond of their dorm-mates – they might be Gryffindors, but that didn't assure a melding of personality traits by any stretch of the means. The other girls were rude, loud, and much too 'boy-crazy' for either Lily or Alice's tastes.

Alice shook her head. "Then I'm not gonna be much help, Lils. I'm liable to fall asleep right on the couch here." She yawned, stretched, and grabbed a nearby pillow. "In fact, I think I will."

Lily rolled her eyes and slipped off the couch. "Some friend you are."

"As long as I have my beauty rest, I don't really care what sort of friend you think I am," she replied, conjuring a paisley decorated blanket with her wand. "Have fun!"

Lily knelt by the side of her bed, almost afraid to wake the sleeping boy. He looked strange in what was such an obviously girl-oriented dormroom, the makeup bottles, hair products, and occasional Muggle-made romantic-comedy movie posters creating a strange frame around him.

He's really kind of cute, she thought, smiling as an errant lock of hair fell over his eyes. She whispered gently s she knelt next to the bed. "Remus? Remus, wake up."

He rolled over, obviously not yet awake. "Nrmph."

She rolled her eyes, then whispered in a fiercer tone. "Remus!"

His eyes opened with a snap, though the rest of his body didn't move. He looked worried, then relaxed. "Oh. Hi Lils. I was looking for you."

She smiled kindly. "I was hoping it was that, rather than some sort of weird stalker-tendencies emerging." Her joke failed to get more than a confused smile out of him. Beginning to worry, she furrowed her brow. "Are you alright?"

He closed his eyes again, and she could clearly see that the day's events had taken a toll on him. "Not really."

"I'm sorry, Remus, I really am."

"I know, Lils. Thanks for helping. Is there anything you needed to tell me?"

She thought immediately of the conversation she'd heard outside the Potions room. Wrinkling her nose a bit, she said, "I think you were right about James and Peter starting this. I heard them talking earlier today. After you ran out of Potions."

He didn't seem to want to know what they'd said. Instead, he sat up, pushing locks of hair out of his eyes. "Lily, what was I thinking?"

"When?" she asked, the question almost automatic.

He ran a hair raggedly through his hair – a gesture so like James that she would have commented, under other circumstances. His face was a study of pain, but he looked as though he was in another world. "When I woke up this morning? When I became friends with them? When I enrolled in this school?" He sank back down to the bed, burying his face in the pillow. "When I let myself live?"

Oh dear, thought Lily. That's not a good sign. "Remus, what are you talking about?"

His face stayed buried in the pillow, muffling his voice. "Nevermind."

Lily wasn't sure whether to be concerned or exasperated. Boys were more work than they were worth, sometimes. "No, Remus. Tell me. Please?"

Slowly, he sat up again, folding his legs under him and cuddling her pillow in an almost childlike manner. "When a child is brought into the Ministry after a werewolf bite, they're forced to register. You know that." She nodded, allowing him to continue. "That's the basic outline brought to the public."

He wouldn't quite meet her eyes, looking for all the world as though she wasn't even there; like he was telling the story to himself, or to ghosts. "The truth is, the officials spend hours swarming around you and your parents, telling you horror stories. How the person before you went on a killing spree, and murdered their own parents. How the person before that had gone insane, and ran himself off a cliff and died on the rocks below it." He gritted his teeth – whether in anger or some other emotion, she couldn't tell. "How no one wants to be near a werewolf, not even their own family."

"Remus –"

He kept talking over her. "And you believe it, too, because it's the same sort of story that your parents have been telling you for years. 'Don't go out at night, or the werewolves will get you.'" He looked her in the eye. "I'm sure that even Muggles have stories along those lines. Either way, it finally hits you – you're the monster, you're the one that's going to kill people. The one that heroes are obligated to come after, brandishing swords and silver bullets." He bit his lip, twisting his finger around the edge of the pillow. "They take your parents away, after a while. They go into a room, where they need to fill out paperwork for your continued survival, I guess." His voice had a satirical ring at this last comment.

"But they lead you into an entirely different room. They tell you to sit on a bench and wait, then they leave." He shuddered. "It's an awful room, to a six year old. It's cold, with a high ceiling – everything's made out of metal. But the first thing you notice is what's on the shelves. Swords, knives, arrows – there's even a gun. And these glass cabinets, with every door marked 'Poison'." He looked her straight in the eye. "They want you to simply do away with yourself. Take care of the trouble for them, if you can."

Lily was honestly horrified. "Remus, that can't be true. They wouldn't allow it."

His eyes hardened, then moved back down to the pillow. "It is. I've spoken with several other werewolves – on a purely anonymous basis – and they've all told me the same thing. I know several who said that their victims took the implied message – the poison is by far the most popular." His words were bitter, full of hatred and sadness as he closed his eyes again.

Minutes passed without either of them saying anything. Remus was clearly reliving old memories, and Lily was digesting all of the information. Eventually, the clicking of the clock in the corner got to Lily, and she shifted, then spoke.

"Remus?"

He looked up, eyes shining a little. "Yeah?"

"How does that even compare to what happened today?" The words came out more harshly than she had intended, but the intention remained.

He closed his eyes softly, hugging the pillow tighter as he let out a dark chuckle. "You know what, Lils?"

"Yeah?"

"It just does."

An amiable silence stretched between them, until Lily finally moved. "Can I assume you're not going back to your dorm tonight?" she asked, getting up and pulling a hair tie from her drawer.

He rolled over onto his back, folding his arms behind his head. Lily was glad that he could be so comfortable around her – but that didn't stop her from belatedly wishing he'd taken his shoes off. "Not if I can help it. Sirius jumped me again, and I'm not about to sleep in the same room as him."

Lily chuckled, slipping on her cloak and trying to ignore his muddy shoes on her perfectly clean sheets. "Alright. You can have my bed, and I'll take over Alice's – she crashed on the couch downstairs – and we'll just lock the other girls out for the night. Deal?"

He smiled sleepily, his eyes closing as he stretched on the bed. "Lily Evans, you are my hero."

"Heroine," she automatically corrected. "I've still got to go out for hallway patrol, but I'll be back in an hour or so, alright?"

All she got in response was an incoherent "Mmmph." Within no time at all, Remus was fast asleep, his breathing perfectly rhythmical. Lily moved quickly out the door, locking it securely behind her with whatever charms came to mind.

"Sweet dreams, Remus."

Alice was still sound asleep downstairs, perfectly safe from any pranks by the younger years because she took so much time to help each and every one of them in tutoring sessions. Their dorm-mates were nowhere to be seen – though Lily'd had a shrewd suspicion they'd be spending the night in their boyfriends' dorms anyway. She threw a scarf around her neck – the castle was always so cold at night, and she hated this part of her obligatory Head-In-Training jobs more than anything. "Here's to an eventful night," she muttered sarcastically.

James and Peter, upon finding their bespelled friend, quickly did their best to tend to his wounds, both mental and physical, making sure that no damage had been done and he wasn't in serious trouble, acting as tried and true friends would in any situation such as this – in a caring, courteous manner.

That is to say, they spent the first fifteen minutes laughing their proverbial asses off.

Sirius, now completely despelled, was doing a lovely job playing the melancholy hero. He had parked himself at the foot of his bed, knees drawn up, and was pulling apart a daisy that he'd conjured from the greenhouse. They'd barely managed to convince him to think his actions over before he went after Remus – and this was apparently his chosen method of contemplation.

"He hates me." Off came a petal. "He loves me." Another. "He hates me. He loves me. He hates me." He blinked as the last petal fell to the floor. "He hates me? James, he hates me! How can he hate me?"

Peter rolled his eyes, throwing a ball at the ceiling in a repetitive motion that was always relaxing. "I'm not going to touch that one. James?"

James glared over the top of the essay he was completing, beginning to become genuinely annoyed by Sirius' antics. "Sirius, everyone bloody hates you right now. How has that not sunk in?"

The look he got in return was one of pure misery, and James felt a twang in of commiseration. "Do you think he really hates me? Maybe I should go after him – launch a full scale attack on the girls' dorm, you know." Sirius' eyes lit up, and he snapped his fingers as the details of what could only be a doomed plan fell into place. "Yeah! We'll have him back in no time! And then my beloved will recognize the love we share, and we shall live happily ever after in a cottage in the hills! It's perfect!"

James snagged the back of Sirius' collar as the black-haired boy darted towards the door. "Slow down there, Pads. While I am normally all for a raid on Lily's dormitory, I'm going to have to tell you that this is not going to help the situation."

Sirius slumped back to the floor, squishing what was left of the daisy. "Then what am I supposed to do, James? I can't let him be angry at me."

Peter caught the ball one last time before sighing halfheartedly and sitting up. "You might have to."

Sirius looked at him. "Might have to what?"

"Might have to let him be mad at you." He moved to his bookbag and started rummaging for the same essay James had already started on. "Maybe that's the only way that he'll figure all this out. It's not like he's going to hate you – I don't think he can, when it comes right down to it. But you probably scared him pretty badly today, Pads, and I don't quite think he could handle it. Give him some space, you know?"

Sirius' eyes lit up again, and he shot to his feet. "Yes! That's it! I'll win his love through invisibility! I'll run away for three weeks time, my friends, and his love will grow so strong in my absence that he'll be forced to fall into my arms upon my return!"

James rubbed the bridge of his nose in frustration. "I don't think that's what he meant, Sirius."

To James' and Peter's horror, he began throwing things in his trunk at an appalling speed. He was almost like a whirlwind, throwing things with one hand and magicking them with the other. "It's perfect! Thank you, Peter, you were always a good friend! I shall live in the hills until my true love has recognized his own feelings!" He was halfway to the window with his broomstick before James finally moved.

Grabbing Sirius' shoulder, he coaxed him of the windowsill. "Pads? Why don't we think this over first?"

He looked aghast at the very suggestion. "But James! The sooner I start out, the sooner my Remus will –"

James cut him off, making his words very clear and concise so as to not confuse the already riled Sirius. "You. Me. Kitchens. Now."

Sirius nodded slowly. "I suppose I'll need some food for my quest, now that you mention it."

James rolled his eyes, then spoke to Peter as they went out the door. "Can you stay here, in case Remus comes back? I've got to take care of this idiot."

Peter looked less than enthused about being the one left behind yet again, but nodded his head anyway. "Yeah, I can do that. Take the cloak, though, will you? Sirius is going to need as much time out of detention as he can get, if we're going to pull this off."

James groped seemingly thin air next to the doorframe, finally grasping the thin material and revealing a coat-rack underneath. "Good thinking, Peter. Thanks!" Both he and Sirius disappeared from sight, but Peter heard the footfalls continue down the stairs.

Upon reaching the kitchens, Sirius immediately asked the confused houselves for food that "a hypothetical Muggle might take on a hypothetical long-term camping trip." James believed that he had exhibited tremendous self-control in not cursing his friend right then and there.

That didn't stop him from placing an order for a treacle tart.

"Sirius," he said, speaking carefully around the tart, "I don't think that you're taking this very well."

Sirius inspected a bag of mixed nuts with a shrewd eye. "How do you mean?"

James reflected that talking to Sirius was, more often than not, exactly like smashing you head into a brick wall. "Pads, you're thinking of running away to the mountains. Doesn't that seem a bit...rash to you?"

Sirius waved his hand dismissively. "You simply do not understand my love."

James rolled his eyes. "Fine. Then tell me about your love," he said sarcastically, spreading his arms wide in a sweeping gesture. He knew he'd regret it –but he was also conscious of the many times Sirius had listened to him wax on about Lily.

"My love," began Sirius, a misty look coming over his eyes, "is eternal. It cannot be broken, cannot be pried from the one I love. It will last forever, and will continue to occupy my mind until the day I die – and past that, because my love knows no bounds."

James blinked, wondering if this was what he sounded like when he spoke about Lily. He couldn't really blame his friends for getting sick of it, if it was. "So we've established that your love has the consistency of a piece of chewing gum. Please go on."

Sirius glared at him before stuffing another container of trail mix into a large bag. "My love, up until this point, has been caged. Enslaved, if you will, by the morals of society."

James made a half-jump up onto the counter. "The morals that you try to ignore each and every day?"

Sirius nodded. "Yes. But these morals, you see, were so ingrained into me that I couldn't see that there was another way. Like a houself," he added, earning himself the gaze of several dozen small eyes, "who cannot see his own enslavement, so was my love locked in a cage of unmerciless torment."

"...Like a houself?" James was getting the idea that he was speaking to a four year old. A four year old with an extensive vocabulary.

Sirius nodded enthusiastically, apparently happy that his friend finally understood. "Yes! Like these houselves that surround us! And now that my love is free and uninhibited, it will soar like a hippogriff!"

James did his best to not laugh. "I'm glad to know Care of Magical Creatures has done you so much good, Sirius."

"James?"

Sirius had that look in his eyes – the one that scared James more than anything in the world. The one that signified the beginning of a disastrous plan that would land the rest of them in detention for the rest of the semester, scrubbing cauldrons for Slughorn. The one that said that Sirius simply would not be deterred.

"Yes?"

Sirius was gazing around at the houselves. "I think...No! I am sure of it! Our newest quest shall be to liberate the houselves! For them to not have experienced life outside of this castle, enslaved by their own ignorance is a crime! A crime of the highest degree, James!"

"No."

Sirius rounded on him, taking hold of his shoulders. "How can you deny the weak their freedom? Where is your sense of justice, of adventure?"

James winced a little as Sirius hands bit into his forearms. "Weren't you going on a trip? To the mountains? How are you going to liberate them from there?"

Sirius took his hands off of James, to his pleasure, and adopted an overdramatic thinking pose in the middle of the room. "How, indeed? You have posed me a difficult question for me, my friend."

James breathed, foreseeing smooth sailing from this point on. "You can't do both, you know. So it's a question of what's more important to you – Remus' love, or the plight of houselves who don't even want to be freed."

"This is true."

James nodded, making sure his next words were calm and soothing. "So why don't we head back to the dorms, Pads, and we'll think it over for a few days. Alright?"

Suddenly, Sirius snapped his fingers. "No need! I have the solution!"

"Oh, for –"

"You will liberate them in my stead! As my best friend and closest confidante, I am confident in your abilities to take my place! I shall continue on in my journey to the hills, whilst you repair the evils that exist within our own society!" He slung his pack over his shoulder and walked confidently to the door.

"Sirius!"

"No! You cannot change my mind! I will stay my course!"

James vaguely wondered how this had gotten so out of hand. He knew it had to be the potion making Sirius act this way – but he hadn't foreseen that Sirius would become quite this irrational from it. As it was, he'd learned the hard way in third year that when making a potion that he planned to use on friends or foes, having enough antidote to reverse every case of it was absolutely essential.

Remus had related it to the Titanic – if you didn't have enough of something to serve those you'd harmed (say, lifeboats), it became a strict standard of procedure the next time around. Their 'Titanic' had occurred in third year when, after attempting to put a potion to turn every Slytherin into a canary, the potion had ended up in the Gryffindor goblets. Caught without an antidote, they'd spent the next three days chirping and finding yellow feathers in the oddest and most uncomfortable places.

James sighed, reaching for said antidote in his back pocket. Fine, Peter, you win.

"Sirius, I solemnly swear this is for your own good." With that, he tackled his friend to the ground, forced his mouth open, and poured the bottle in. It was a relatively simple process – though each Marauder had perfected the art of tackling Sirius at one point or another. It was a simple must when he became irrational, as nothing else seemed to deter his ambition.

Sirius turned an alarming shade of purple for a full minute, causing James to panic slightly. "Hey, are you alright?"

He blinked rapidly a few times before responding. "I...yeah. What hit me?"

James got off of his friend, allowing Sirius to stand up and hoping for the best. "Let's see. Do you have any compulsions to free houselves, or run away into the mountains?"

"No to the first, but I've been wanting to do the second since we were little. Why?"

James breathed a sigh of relief. "Good. I think you're cured."

"Cured of what?" Sirius was beginning to look confused.

James shook his head. "Nevermind. Let's just head back up to the dorms, shall we?"

"James?" Sirius had stopped dead in the middle of the room, eyes wide.

"Yeah?"

Sirius turned his gaze on James, in a perfectly rational state that was completely alien to his nature. "Is Remus gone, or did I dream that?"

Oh, shit. I didn't want to answer this yet. "No, you didn't dream that."

"And it was my fault, wasn't it?"

James squirmed visibly. "Not entirely."

Sirius was looking rather panicked. "What do you mean, not entirely?"

Yep. We've finally passed the point where my alerts equal my reviews.

Shall we increase that ratio?

Please?