part two

'The vast majority of wizards and witches who attempt the transformation never manage to achieve it. Can anyone tell me why this might be?'

The class was silent.

Covering his mouth casually, James leaned towards Sirius. 'Maybe if their teacher wasn't so bloody boring. I think everyone's asleep, and look, Snodgrass is even drooling.'

Sirius suppressed a smile as James let out a rather animated yawn.

'Potter?'

James hurried to sit up straight. 'Yes, Professor McGonagall?'

'By all means, share you answers with the rest of the class.'

'Um,' James started lamely, and Sirius had trouble preventing his smile from turning into a snicker. 'Uh … they - they kill themselves trying?'

'That is one reason,' she said and considered James a moment - lips pursed, Sirius was pleased to note - before adding, 'Five points from Gryffindor.'

'What?!' several of their Gryffindor classmates complained.

'Indeed, the Animagus transformation is a very dangerous one, but apart from the--'

There was a sudden knock on the door.

'Come in.'

The door opened promptly and Dumbledore took half a step through. 'My apologies, students. Minerva, if I may.'

'Turn to page nine hundred and twenty-eight,' McGonagall addressed the class at length, with obvious reluctance at having to leave them unattended, 'and read through the section on those who were not so lucky in their attempts.'

She followed Dumbledore out into the hallway, but instead of doing as they were asked, the class broke out in conspiratorial whispers.

Lily Evans, who was seated directly in front of Sirius, did as she was told and read from her book, but her friend beside her twisted around and glared at James reprovingly.

Five measly points was hardly worth getting huffy over, and her snotty self-righteousness was nothing less than annoying. As she shook her head disdainfully and again faced the front of the class, Sirius stretched beneath the table and kicked her chair. She didn't turn around again.

Swinging back on his own chair, he saw James hadn't even paid attention to her, slumped down and staring at his quill. On James' other side, Peter was, like a few other students, straining to see what was going on through the thin sliver of space made by the door left slightly ajar. Next to him, Remus - disappointingly enough - was reading, too.

Everyone pretended to have been reading all along when the door opened again and in stepped McGonagall and Dumbledore.

'Mister Lupin,' Dumbledore said, and Remus started. 'If I may steal you away from your studies for a moment.'

Casting an unsure glance at McGonagall, who looked just as nervous as he did, but nodded regardless, Remus rose hesitantly from his seat and walked to the front of the classroom. Dumbledore ushered him out in a sweep of flowing scarlet robes, leaving James, Sirius and Peter's curious frowns to fall on McGonagall and each other.

'What do you suppose that's about?' James whispered once the class had resumed.

Sirius hesitated, watching as Professor McGonagall lost her train of thought and consulted her own notes, seeming distracted all the while. 'Something to do with … well, you know.'

James raised his eyebrows. 'That's what I was thinking.'

'What?' Peter said from James' other side. 'What did you say? I can't hear you.'

'Shush!' James turned back to the front, but sank in his chair, not at all listening to what was happening in the lesson.

But then, neither was Sirius.

The rest of Transfiguration went by in a haze of distraction, but it didn't particularly matter. They already knew all there was to know about animagi.

They were halfway into Potions, their next lesson, when the door opened, creaking loud enough to get everyone's attention. Sirius stopped adding Shrake spines to the cobalt blue mixture frothing in his cauldron, watching as Remus stepped into the room, closed the door quietly, and made his way over to Professor Slughorn.

Though he tried, Sirius couldn't hear what was said between them; nor could he divine much from their body language, other than Remus explaining his absence and Slughorn giving some sort of instructions as he motioned to the recipe on the blackboard.

The first thing Remus said when he made his way over to them was, 'What are we up to?'

On the verge of asking what it was Dumbledore had wanted, Sirius hesitated when Remus, pulling an odd face, leaned over to peer inside his cauldron.

'Is it supposed to look like that?'

Sirius' potion was now deep navy, and around the edges it had begun to harden, forming a crust.

Naturally, any sign of Sirius stuffing up instantly caught James and Peter's attention. Soon they, too, were hovering over his cauldron.

'You burnt it!'

'You're supposed to keep stirring, Sirius.' As though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

'Yes, thank you,' said Sirius irritably and extinguished the flames licking against the pewter with an impatient flick of his wand.

Remus smiled as he moved over to James' cauldron, and at the same moment Slughorn gave an untimely reminder.

'Remember, your potions must be stirred continuously. This is an advanced formula, and will ruin very quickly if you neglect it, so pay attention. Watch for the subtle changes and add your ingredients accordingly.'

Walking between the desks, he began checking the students' progress. Sirius' blood threatened to boil when he heard him say, 'Excellent, Severus. Very impressive work.'

When he reached the desk at which Sirius sat, utterly defeated and completely surrendered to his blunder, he smiled with a hint of amusement. 'Don't feel too bad, Black. I daresay half the class has managed to destroy their potion in one way or another.'

He moved on and Sirius watched as he looked over James' efforts, saying, 'Good, good,' before offering Peter a sympathetic smile and continuing down the row of desks.

Sirius sat there stewing, arms crossed, boring holes into the back of Snape's head with his loathing, resentful glare, until--

'Are you going to watch this?'

James and Remus were staring at him expectantly.

'Show you how it's done, shall we?' James boasted, and Remus grinned, moving over to give Sirius some room beside him.

Watching was one thing, but paying attention was quite another. Sirius' eyes followed every step - adding each ingredient, adjusting the heat - but he absorbed none of it. Leaning against the desk, all he could do was wonder if his and James' speculations had proved true. The curiosity was burning. He couldn't hold back asking any longer.

'So, what did Dumbledore want to--'

'Oh, nothing important.' Light tone, blank expression, Remus didn't even blink, and suddenly he was very determined to grind more Shrake spines for James' potion - no mortar and pestle had ever had such a workout in all its career at Hogwarts.

He could pretend he was unaffected, that it was nothing, but the look James and Sirius shared said it all. We know better.

As far as Sirius was concerned, their suspicion was all but confirmed during Defence Against the Dark Arts.

The professor they had this year was perhaps their worst yet. He seemed uninterested in his students' learning, and rarely was the class anything more than copying straight out of their textbook. It pissed Sirius off, as the subject had always been one of his favourites, and he was certain they were all slipping well behind where they should be, considering they'd be doing their N.E.W.Ts at the end of the school year.

So it was again as they all sat scrawling away, stifling yawns and fighting boredom. One thing it did, though, was give Sirius ample opportunity to keep an eye on Remus.

It was obvious, really, with the tense set to his shoulders and the way his eyes kept glazing over as he stared at his textbook, that his mind was somewhere else. There were lines of stress between his brows, and it was worry that made him chew his lip.

With all the energy of the barely waking, the four boys left after class, heading to the Great Hall for lunch.

As soon as they took their seats, the act was on again. If Sirius didn't know better, Remus would have been perfectly convincing as he laughed and joked along with James and Peter. James was being needlessly flamboyant again, as he usually was when all eyes were on him, talking animatedly about some exaggerated Quidditch anecdote or other, though they'd heard them all.

Remus didn't eat much, Sirius noticed.

By their last class, Sirius was dying to get away. Remus had left them to go to Arithmancy, and he, James and Peter had all headed outside for Care of Magical Creatures.

James had quietened down considerably. In fact, he was completely silent as they waited with their professor and a few other students.

Sirius was rather grateful for this, distracted as he was anyway. Grateful, that was, until their class started and he suddenly understood the reason for the dramatic change in James' demeanour.

'If there's anyone who can see what we'll be studying today, please step forward,' the professor began. 'I'll need your help.'

James, to Sirius' confusion, made his way over the front of the class, hands in his pockets, seeming quite serious. He and one other student talked briefly with the professor, everyone else watching until they were told to form two groups of roughly equal size.

Realisation dawned even before the professor spoke again, when he saw James take hold of something invisible, leading what seemed to be nothing at all towards their group.

'Now, the care of Thestrals is usually left to those who can see them, so we won't spend more than a single lesson on these rather rare and mysterious creatures …'

In the latter half of their sixth year, James had gone home for a week to be with his father and dying mother. Her condition had taken a sudden turn for the worse, and their fears had been realised when she died four days later. Sirius hadn't forgotten this (he'd never forget the first time he'd seen James cry), but James never had told him he'd been with her when she died. Now though, it was all too plain to see.

For Sirius, James and Hufflepuff Sally Goode (as it turned out, a Muggle-born who'd been in a car accident that proved fatal for her older brother - their classmates lacking in tact enough to ask), the lesson was terrible. The Thestrals were fascinating enough in themselves, but they seemed only to remind those who could see them exactly why that was so.

Afterwards, they didn't talk about it. Even Peter kept his silence.

It wasn't that Sirius didn't respect James' loss (he'd been quite fond of Mrs Potter himself), but he knew from experience that providing a distraction was usually the fastest way to cheer him up. Sirius tried his damnedest, sitting in the common-room that afternoon, but James was content to sit and stare forlornly at the crackling flames in the fireplace. He wasn't interested in anything Sirius had to offer.

'Peter here seems to be chatting up your girl,' Sirius said in a last-ditch attempt to spark some life in his friend.

This, at least, got James to have a look. Peter was sitting at the desks with Lily and two of her friends, looking rather earnest, if somewhat daunted. One of the girls looked extremely displeased with his being there - she appeared to be doing her homework - but the other two were chatting with each other and obliging Peter politely whenever he added something to their conversation.

James smiled half-heartedly. 'He hasn't got a chance.'

Sirius sighed loudly as James drifted back to his silent thinking. Picking at a particularly irritating hangnail, he tried to think of something else.

'Chess?'

James shook his head.

'Want to go find Remus, see what he's up to?'

Sirius thought he had a winner when James actually seemed to be considering it. But then James sighed and said, 'Not really.'

'Well, I think I might,' Sirius said and stood. 'If you change your mind, you know how to find me.'

With that, Sirius left for the dormitory. There he found the Marauder's Map right where he'd last seen it, tossed carelessly on James' bed. Checking all the usual haunts, he found Remus quickly enough. He was in the library.