Remus spent the next couple of weeks avoiding his friends. He knew that they wanted an explanation, but he simply could not come up with a lie that he knew they would find believable. Instead, he kept quiet and spent even more time than usual doing his homework. He found excuses not to walk with them to classes, and though he sat with them in the Great Hall, he didn't speak unless he had to. He made sure to keep his arm covered up and his head down as he waited for his wounds to heal, and hoped that maybe somehow it would all go away, and everything would just go back to normal.

He had become quite comfortable with Peter, James and Sirius, but around others, he still stayed pretty much silent. He was therefore surprised one evening in the library when Lily Evans pulled up a chair across from him and sat down.

"Hello Remus," she said, pulling out her own books.

"Hello Lily," he said politely.

"So what's wrong?" she asked matter-of-factly as she unrolled a piece of parchment.

"Excuse me?" he said, confused. He had been earnestly studying right then, not worrying about his friends (though they were always in the back of his mind). Did he look upset? "There's nothing wrong," he said, perplexed.

"You won't even look at anyone, and you aren't talking with your friends even when you guys are together," Lily said. "And usually you guys are always together, but now you're in the library almost every night. Are you mad at them?"

"No!" Remus said quickly.

"Are they mad at you?" Her parchment and quill sat in front of her untouched as she watched Remus curiously.

"No. Maybe. I'm not sure." He shook his head. "It's nothing," he said, for what felt like the hundredth time that week.

"You don't know if they're mad at you?" She frowned. "Why don't you ask them?"

Remus didn't answer. He shook his head nervously, allowing his hair to fall in his face and cover up the yellow remains of his bruise. He really kind of wished Lily would leave him alone. He had been studying perfectly fine before she showed up. Now she was nodding in an understanding, sympathetic kind of way that he found very annoying, seeing as how he hadn't said anything.

"You're afraid to ask them because then you'll know that they're mad at you," she said wisely. "Then you won't be able to ignore it."

"What do you want, Evans?" he asked tiredly.

She finally opened her textbook and picked up her quill, not looking at him. "You're not like them, Remus. You're nicer. I don't want them to be mean to you."

"They are nice!" he said, surprised and offended. Lily glanced up from her book to stare doubtfully at him for a moment. "No, really, they are," he insisted. "They're not being mean to me."

"You should go ask them if they're mad at you. That way you'll either know that they're not, and you won't have to worry about it anymore, or you'll know that they are, and you guys can fix it," she said. "I mean, if you really do think that they're nice and they're worth it." Then she began writing, and even though Remus sat there for another five minutes, she didn't say another word.

It took Remus a very long time to walk back from the library, because he took several unnecessary detours, and walked very slowly. He thought about just asking his friends if they were mad, like Lily had suggested, but he couldn't think of a way to do it that didn't make him sound really pathetic and stupid. However, Lily's words had made him realize that he had to do something instead of just avoiding them. They were, as she had said, worth it.

He was the first one in the dormitory that night. He sat on his bed reading, leaving the curtains open. He had decided he would just try to act completely normal. Maybe if he pretended nothing had happened, they would do the same. His eyes moved over the pages of the book as he waited, but he wasn't really reading a word. When he finally heard the door open, he had to take a deep breath to get up the courage to look up and, for the first time in two weeks, really meet his friends' eyes.

James glanced over at him, and Remus smiled what he hoped was a natural smile. "Hey," he said as cheerfully as he could.

James looked slightly taken aback. "Hey Remus," he said, looking as uncertain as Remus felt. Then he laughed. "You're sitting up here doing homework on a Friday night? Only you."

"Oh?" said a cool voice from the doorway. "Is he speaking to us again?" Remus's stomach sank as he spotted the glare on Sirius's face.

"Drop it, Sirius," James muttered out of the corner of his mouth. "Just let it go."

"Why?" Sirius demanded.

"Because he's speaking to us again," Peter hissed from behind him.

"So what? He ignores us for two weeks, and then all of a sudden everything is just back to normal?" Sirius turned to face Remus, and Remus fought the urge to look away guiltily. He had been so worried that they were mad at him that he hadn't thought about how it must have seemed from their end.

"You just disappear one night in the middle of dinner, show up the next day half dead and looking like you've been attacked by some wild animal, and then you stop speaking to us for no apparent reason!" Sirius was nearly yelling, but Remus thought that he looked more hurt than angry.

"You're right," he said quietly, still forcing himself to look at Sirius. Sirius blinked in surprise, and James and Peter glanced at each other behind his back. "I'm sorry." He didn't know what else to say. He had no explanations or answers for them. Sirius turned away and walked to the window, and Remus finally allowed himself to stare at the floor.

"Why did you stop talking to us?" Peter asked cautiously.

Remus considered his answer carefully. "At first I was upset about other things, and I didn't feel well, and that made me grumpy," he said slowly. "And then I was afraid that you guys were mad at me because I had been grumpy, so I wasn't sure what to do." That answer was close enough to the truth, he figured.

"What were you upset about?" James asked. He and Peter were sitting side by side on Peter's bed, looking at him, but Sirius was still staring out the window with his back to them.

"My grandmother being sick." Remus didn't know what else to say. He hadn't wanted to bring up his absence at all, but there really wasn't any way to pretend that all of this hadn't started with his disappearance.

Sirius turned around from the window and walked right up to the edge of Remus's bed. He looked down at him, his face inscrutable. Remus wasn't sure what he was doing.

"Your grandmother was sick," Sirius said finally, and Remus nodded. "You promise?"

"Wh-what?" Remus asked, caught off guard.

"You promise you aren't lying to us, Remus?" Remus felt small and uncomfortable under the fierceness of Sirius's stare. He could see James and Peter behind him, watching them closely.

"I'm not lying to you," he said quietly, and he was surprised how strong his voice sounded. It didn't shake at all.

Sirius nodded abruptly. "Fine," he said, and he walked away and climbed onto his bed.

"So are we all good?" James asked hesitantly, looking between Remus and Sirius.

"Yeah," Sirius said. "We're good."

----------

Remus thought that he would feel better once he was on speaking terms with his friends again, and he was partially right. It was good to have people to laugh with and talk to again, and it was nice to have something to do in the evenings besides sit in the library. Even so, he felt like an outsider in a way that he had never before felt with James, Sirius and Peter. He had looked Sirius dead in the eye and lied to him, and Sirius had believed him. Pangs of guilt kept hitting him at unexpected times. It was made even worse by the fact that Sirius was trying to be extra nice to him to make up for getting so angry.

His spirits were lifted somewhat as signs of Christmas began to fill the castle. Giant trees stood in the Great Hall, suits of armor sang carols, and tinsel hung in the hallways. Unfortunately, mistletoe also hung in the hallways. The mistletoe was a source of great entertainment for his friends ever since they had caught Lily Evans and Remus looking at each other. It had been a couple of days after their talk in the library. Lily, sitting a little ways down the table from them, had smiled at Remus when she spotted him laughing and talking with his friends. He had smiled back at her, telling her silently that everything was okay again.

His friends had noticed the smile, and had deduced from it that Remus and Lily were clearly in love. He was too glad to have his friends back to tell them off for teasing him, so he simply stared at the floor and felt himself turn red whenever they brought it up. Lily was very nice, but he did not like her in any way that was relevant to mistletoe. Lily reacted to the teasing the same way she had reacted to everything James, Sirius and Peter had done since the beginning of school. She ignored it.

All in all, Remus was quite glad to be leaving for the holidays. He hoped that his guilt over lying to Sirius would have vanished by the time they all returned, and he would come back to find things the way they had been. Being gone for the holidays also meant that he was off the hook for the next full moon. No lies, no excuses, no stories. Considering how narrowly he had escaped the previous month, this was a huge relief.

As they loaded up their trunks the night before they left, there was a definite air of celebration in the room. James kept throwing socks at people, and thinking out loud about all of his favorite kinds of Christmas foods. Peter kept talking about what he hoped he would get for Christmas, and Remus just listened to them and smiled. Only one person seemed less than happy about leaving school.

"You can stay, you know," James told Sirius as he crawled around on the floor, trying to find all the socks he had thrown.

"My mum will be furious with me if I don't go home for Christmas," Sirius said dully.

"Yeah, well, she'll be furious with you no matter what you do, won't she?" James said reasonably. "At least if you stay here, you don't have to deal with it firsthand."

Sirius didn't reply. In fact, he hardly spoke at all until the next morning, when he said, "Write to me, all right?" as they all got ready to leave. There was a note of desperation in his voice, even though he was trying to keep it light and casual.

"Of course we'll write," James said. "And you write to us. Tell us all about a Black family Christmas." Sirius scowled at him.

----------

The calmness of his home was a bit of a shock to Remus after Hogwarts. He had gotten so used to constant noise around him, his friends joking and roughhousing, and people everywhere he went, that being back in a small house with just his parents was very strange. Day after day, he found himself wandering through the house restlessly.

He sent James and Peter their Christmas gifts along with short notes saying that he was having a nice holiday. To Sirius, he wrote several longer letters. Even though he really had nothing exciting to say, he hated the thought of Sirius trapped in a house with only that wretched family for company. His letters may be boring, but at least they were friendly.

The full moon, Christmas, and New Year all passed uneventfully, and soon Remus was longing for the castle and his friends again. The night before he went back to Hogwarts, he wondered what his life would be like if he didn't go back. What if he just stayed home? He wouldn't have to worry about lying to his friends, and he wouldn't have to wonder when his secret would be found out and he would be sent home. Even the thought of it was awful. Remus was beginning to realize just how terrible it was going to be when he had to leave Hogwarts. He had never realized just how wonderful it would be to have a normal life, and now that he had a life that was somewhat normal, he felt sickened at the thought of losing it.