VIII. A New Direction

Professor McGonagall placed an envelope with a wax seal into Remus' hands during breakfast and stalked off without speaking to him. Remus gazed down at the envelope as though he had just received a notice of his own imminent death. Memento Mori, the letter would say, only it would give a time and place.

"Not opening it won't make anything better," Lily sighed.

"There's a first time for everyone, mate," James said brightly. He'd become rather chummy with Remus since yesterday afternoon, though Remus had yet to decide what to make of this.

"Who are you calling your mate?" Lily asked murderously.

"If anyone knows anything about getting into trouble, it's us," Sirius reminded her. "I say don't worry about it, Lupin. You're a good man."

Remus gulped. He loosened his tie, then tightened it. He took a swig of his pumpkin juice, choked on it, swallowed—

"Oh bloody just open it," said Sirius, forgetting that he was trying to be supportive.

Nothing Remus did would make the reality of the situation go away. He removed the envelope's seal with sweating hands.

Detention.

Remus J. Lupin had gotten himself a detention.

"My parents will murder me," Remus said, aghast.

"Not if they don't find out," James advised. "The school doesn't tell your folks about every detention and house point, you know. Otherwise my own parents might've hauled me out of here by now—"

Sirius laughed.

"Imagine if they did. I think my mum would have me thrown down a flight of stairs just for Potions on friday…"

James nearly snorted yogurt out of his nose.

"Oh! You mean—that detention you got for telling Snivellus to suck your bollocks!"

"WHAT?" Lily bellowed. Remus raised an eyebrow—he'd seen Professor Slughorn slam a detention slip down on Sirius' desk during Potions that day, but hadn't known before now what exactly he'd done to deserve it.

"Did I miss something?" asked Peter, who'd just sat down at the table with them, yawning widely. "Who's sucking whose bollocks?"

"No one is," chirped James. "Well, none that I know of. Mornin', Pete, have a nice lie in?"

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU, BLACK!" Lily shouted, her face having gone from its usual color to the same shade as her hair. "WHAT DID SEVERUS EVER DO TO YOU?"

"Inside voices, Evans," said Sirius with a smirk.

"What did he ever do to you?" she repeated, though it was a decibel or two softer.

"It's a long, sad story," Sirius began with gusto, and James was already laughing. "You see, Professor Slughorn paired me with young Snivellus during Potions on friday, and we ended up in an argument about whether we'd added the flobberworm mucus yet. We definitely hadn't, obviously, but Snivellus said we had, so we get into it—Snivellus throws the whole bloody jar on me—well, okay, more like dripped a little accidentally—but it was disgusting, alright, so I decided I had to get even—"

"Get this," James said, his laughter now uncontrollable. "And then—and then Professor Slughorn says, 'are you boys fighting?' Ahaha. Go and tell them… tell them what happened next!"

Lily was clearly not finding this to be very funny, and looked to Remus for back up. Remus, however, had a betraying shadow of a smile on his lips—he'd been feeling neither fond of Severus nor Professor Slughorn lately, and was finding it very hard to keep a straight face.

"So Snivellus goes—" (here, Sirius put on a nasally voice that sounded nothing like him but was funny nonetheless—) "'Professor, Black's gone and thrown armadillo bile on me because he thinks I haven't added the flobberworm mucus! Would you please tell him that any imbecile could tell that I have from the color it's turned…?' Well I'd had it after that, so I say, 'Professor, and will you please tell Snivellus that I don't care what he says and that he can just suck—my—bollocks?' which I thought was a brilliant thing to say but Professor Slughorn didn't find it very funny—"

"The rest of us did though," James said, wiping tears from his eyes. "Good lord..."

The morning bell rang and the Great Hall began to filter out. James and Sirius walked side by side, still with enormous smiles on their faces, while Peter grabbed great handfuls of all the food he could reach, stuffing himself before breakfast could disappear. He hurried after the other boys a moment later.

Remus glanced at Lily, who surveyed him with a mild glare. He knew what was coming: she was surely going to berate him for thinking that Sirius' story was funny, make him feel guilty for having even dared smiled, and then quite possibly drag him to the Slytherin table with her and make him apologize.

"We're going to be late," Remus told her flatly. He swung his bag onto his shoulder and left her before he could change his mind.

Remus at last caught sight of Sirius, James, and Peter again, laughing and carrying on as they always were. They may have been arrogant little berks—Sirius especially, of course, and James fell all over himself trying to look cool, and Peter was rubbish at almost everything—but perhaps there was more to them than Remus had wanted to admit.

The main reason Remus had never before sought any sort of friendship with these three Gryffindor boys was because they had bullied Severus since day one. Remus disapproved of this, naturally, but Severus of course fought back in often nastier ways, so refusing to speak ill of him for Lily's sake was growing harder for him by the day. Bullying issues aside, Remus also did not care for that way Severus had chosen to join his fellow Slytherins in their game of treating him as though he had a highly contagious case of dragon pox.

Still, Remus hesitated to fall into step with the other boys. Would this mean he had officially stepped over to the side of evil? Would he soon be the one nicking manure and mouthing off to Slytherins? Would he, from now on, be merely amused by the threat of detention, and frequently vanish from the Gryffindor common room for hours, only to reappear with armfuls of dungbombs? If he made a habit of talking to them, would he be forced to join the Sirius-James-Peter cult forever? Somehow, he doubted that joining in with their Boys' Club would allow him to escape unscathed.

And yet...

Remus would never be able to forget that James Potter had been the very first to speak to him on the Hogwarts Express. He also suspected that James was a secretively caring person, beneath all the show-boating, because sometimes Remus caught him doing kind things without prompting, like offering people help with their spellwork. Sirius Black, meanwhile, had been accepted by his fellow Gryffindors despite his haughty mannerisms, and most of them approved of his rebellious streak if nothing else. He was also just as brilliant a wizard as James, and made speaking his mind look so easy, which was something Remus thought he'd never be able to do. Both James and Sirius had even accepted Peter, and that was saying something, considering Peter was no more popular a person at Hogwarts than Severus. So what about Remus J. Lupin, who believed himself stunningly boring besides one night a month? Might he be accepted as well?

Remus decided he wasn't going to be afraid to try. He clenched his hands, quickened his pace, and spoke without any idea of how much his life was about to change.

"Can I walk with you blokes?"

"Sure?" James seemed puzzled as to why Remus felt the need to ask permission in the first place. "I don't mind."

"I don't mind," agreed Peter.

"What're you doing for your detention, Lupin?" Sirius asked conversationally.

"Er," said Remus. He flipped open the piece of parchment to read it fully for the first time. "I'm supposed to be… on the fourteenth… I'll be scrubbing the Owlery without magic… oh, cripes…"

He was glad, however, that he hadn't gotten anything worse. Perhaps Malfoy had been too embarrassed about the whole ordeal to turn him in for anything more than disrespect.

"Really?" Sirius slugged Remus in the shoulder in a friendly, only mildly bruising sort of way. "That's what I'm doing too! McGonagall's going soft, seems like, having me do detentions with other people... maybe it's just because I do so many… oi, James, why don't you have detention?"

"Dunno," James said, grinning. "Lupin here got me out of any punishments for Thursday, I guess!"

"Thursday?" Remus remembered something, and his face fell. Why he had been briefly excited about his detention, he had no idea.

"What's the matter with Thursday?"

"What? Did you want it to be Wednesday, so you'd skip Astronomy?"

Professor McGonagall must not have known, Remus thought. The full moon would be coming on Friday night, not Thursday, but detention in the Owlery would still involve being bathed in strong moonlight for hours—and that could involve all manner of unpleasant side effects for Remus, even if he was safe from actually transforming. He would need to speak to her, and see if he couldn't have his detention rescheduled...

"It's got nothing to do with Astronomy. I'll just have to do it another time," Remus muttered.

"Why?"

"Because I—can't be there."

It was a terrible excuse, and Remus knew it, but he didn't have the time to think.

"Are you going to be gone again?"

Remus blinked. "What?"

"You're gone sometimes," said Peter. "Like every few weeks."

"He is?" James looked pensive. "Hm… huh. Actually, yeah, I guess so. What's with the absences, huh?"

Remus just barely kept himself from cursing. This was exactly why he couldn't allow himself to get too close to anyone: if he knew someone too well, if they paid enough attention to him and cared about him, they would inevitably begin to ask questions.

"I get sick a lot," Remus told them lamely.

"Sick?" pressed Peter. "Sick on a regular basis?"

"I can't help when it happens, you know."

James and Sirius both rolled their eyes. Peter regarded Remus with even stronger suspicion as the stairs to the first floor began to shift, connecting with the hallway that led to History of Magic.

"You got something to hide, Lupin?"

"No." Remus' heart had started to pound.

"Then what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. My health just isn't very good, alright?"

"You're doing a pretty bad job of convincing us of that."

"He's got a secret," said Sirius wickedly. "Definitely got a secret."

"Definitely," James agreed. His lip quirked. "I should figure out a way to get myself a detention for Thursday too, now."

"Don't," snapped Remus.

"Why not? Afraid I'll find out something I shouldn't?"

"There isn't anything to find out. I don't feel great right at this moment and I'm sure I'll be worse by Thursday. That's the only reason I won't be going."

"Yeah right," said Sirius.

They had reached the classroom, so Remus purposefully walked away from the boys and sat down at his usual seat. It had been so nice to act like he was one of them a few minutes ago, but that was the end of that.

Or perhaps that wasn't that. Remus hadn't even taken out his notes before James, Sirius and Peter had him surrounded again.

"Go away," protested Remus. "You're in Lily's seat, Potter—"

"Tell us what you're being all secretive about. Tell us the truth."

"No."

"So there is something! Tell us!"

"It isn't something you need to know about."

"Why not?"

"What, scared of us or something?"

"Did Lupin lose his bollocks?"

The bell rang again, and the boys reluctantly went back to their seats. Remus was just beginning to breathe normally again when Lily jogged into the classroom, shut the door behind her, and slipped into her chair. Remus was probably the only one to have noticed her lateness, as History of Magic class usually involved the entire class going straight into a boredom-induced coma.

"What took you?" Remus said to Lily, though he was sure he already knew the answer.

"Severus," Lily said. She was panting slightly as she set down her bag. "Told him I was sorry for what they did."

"Sorry I didn't go with you," Remus began. "But—"

"You aren't friends with him anymore," said Lily, with a tiny shrug. She flipped through her notes under she had found the right page. "And I realize Severus hasn't been nice to you."

"Oh," said Remus. So Lily did understand. That was good, because now he could go back to being just Lily's friend in peace. James, Sirius and Peter might have offered more entertainment, but they were also much too curious.

"Sev hasn't been very nice to me either recently," Lily added softly, though before Remus had the chance to ask what this meant, Professor Binns floated in through the chalkboard and cleared his ghostly throat.

"And," he said, starting mid-sentence and precisely at the point in their text that he had ended with a few days ago, "in 1512—"

"Professor?"

James' hand had shot into the air. This was quite a shock, as History of Magic was a class that generally went by without anyone raising their hands at all.

"What's he doing?" Lily wondered aloud.

"Mister…" Professor Binns' boring voice was even slower than usual. "Mister… Plodder, was it? Or maybe…"

"Right," said James, plowing right through whatever his next guess might be. "Professor Binns, I'd just like to know if you could please give me a detention for Thursday night? Scrubbing out the Owlery, specifically."

James put down his hand and kept his eyes firmly locked on Professor Binns. The entire class sat in stunned silence except for Sirius, who had his head down on his desk and was shaking with barely suppressed laughter.

"If you like, Mr. Plodder," Professor Binns said. He made a note on a piece of paper, then turned back to the textbook. "And, in 1512…"

"Oh!" Peter called out. His arm had shot skyward as well, hand fluttering frantically in the air. "Me too, Professor!"

Professor Binns made another mark. Remus buried his head in his hands and did not resurface until the class period was over.

March 8, 1972

Name(s): Sirius Black

Offense: Foul language; disrespect for a teacher and fellow student

Punishment: Owlery Cleaning

March 11, 1972

Name(s): Remus Lupin

Offense: Disrespect for a prefect (NB: First ever rule violation.)

Punishment: Owlery Cleaning

March 12, 1972

Name(s): James Potter and Peter Pettigrew

Offense: Requested

Punishment: Owlery Cleaning

Harry Potter found himself in detention a little more than twenty five years later, forced to organize disciplinary notices as part of his punishment. With this most recent sequence of detentions, however, the murderous expression he'd worn for the last hour faded into puzzlement. He risked a glance at Snape, wondering if he should ask.