3. While waiting for the storm, the following procedure should be followed at sunrise and sundown. The tip of the wand should be placed over the heart and the following incantation spoken: 'Amato Animo Animato Animagus.'

• • •

They deposited each of their phials in the secret drawer beneath Sirius' trunk, as it was full of mothballs and one very large dead cockroach, and they hoped this might put them off being tempted to check how things were coming. They had thought about digging a hole outside and keeping the potions there, or finding an abandoned cupboard in an unused corridor, but they had decided this was too risky. Anyone might find the phials, look at them, and put them back, and then they'd be stuck as half-animal forever.

"The only thing," said Peter, looking over the instructions with a frown, "is that we're supposed to put them in a quiet place. Our dormitory isn't quiet. Ever. At all."

"Gregory Cotton is quiet," Sirius pointed out, looking over at the place where Gregory was snoring expressively in his four-poster. "I won't speak for you other rapscallions."

"We just won't hang around upstairs," said James decisively, and then he dropped to a whisper—they were still in their dormitory, after all. "That's what the common room's meant to be for, anyway. But we should stay here for this part. It's almost sunrise. Get your wands out."

Both he and Sirius had parents who had made them study Latin as children, and although neither of them were especially good at it, James thought he understood this spell. Amato animo animato animagus… Love and soul… animates Animagi? Like all spells, James was sure there was more to it than just the phrases; you were clearly meant to put those things together, your love and your soul, until they came together to form your animal.

The problem was, James wasn't sure what he was supposed to be loving as he performed the spell. Did it mean he should be thinking about Lily Evans as he put his wand over his heart? After the disaster that was their last encounter, he'd been trying (unsuccessfully) not to think about her. He wanted to avoid those feelings, not call them to the forefront of his brain.

"Sun's rising," said Sirius, glancing out the window.

Remus is turning back, thought James. He nodded and placed his wand over his ribs, where he could feel the rather faster than normal thump of his heartbeat. "Together?"

"Together," agreed Peter. Sirius nodded. James gripped his wand tighter.

"Now," he whispered.

"Amato animo animato animagus!"

Absolutely nothing happened.

They looked at each other.

"Back to sleep, then," said Sirius, in a voice that was a little too obviously cheerful.

"The book says nothing's supposed to happen," said James, his eyes on the rising sun.

"Right. I know."

"But still," said Peter, and James could tell he was thinking of the noises they had heard, the previous night, as they stood in the tall grass outside Hagrid's hut.

"But still," James agreed.

"But still," said Sirius, his jaw set.

• • •

"So, let me get this straight," said Remus. His face looked serious, but he had a funny twinkle about his eyes. "Your cabbage thing, which was actually on a lunar cycle all this time, has finally been cured, but it seems to have taken your voices with it. Or is it another curse? Mulciber again this time, I suppose?"

"Please, Remus, not so loud," hissed Sirius, his eyes darting to corner where he kept his trunk. "Our ears."

"They're awful," James agreed. "Aching. Very sensitive. Very painful."

"I prefer them this way," said Gregory Cotton. "By all means encourage it."

"I see," said Remus in a loud whisper, ignoring Gregory Cotton and pacing to the other end of the room, tapping his chin like a rather pale and shaky private detective. "So the issue in question is not your voices, but your hearing. Perhaps a Grindylow shouted very loudly at you? Or you've each got baby Dugbogs nesting in your ears?"

"Oh, stop showing off," said Peter affectionately. "We all know your father works for the Department for the Regulation of Magical Creatures."

"The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures," Remus corrected. "Which is important because they aren't really very good at the controlling part of it. Boggarts all up and down the country. Shameful, really. But that's not the point."

"I thought his father worked on a rabbit farm," called Gregory Cotton. "Piles of rabbit poo, and all that."

Remus stopped pacing and gave James a quizzical look. James put on his most innocent smile.

"Be quiet," whispered Sirius, giving Gregory Cotton a murderous glance. "I told you, our ears."

"He does," Peter explained in a low voice. "It's a family rabbit farm. Spends all morning hand-feeding them lettuce they grow in their back garden, and then he goes off to fight Boggarts. With rabbit pellets, you know."

"There's this one rabbit," James whispered, trying to clue Remus in, "that they call their 'furry little problem'. Hades. He's about the size of a Quaffle, but he's got teeth like razors, and you don't want to be around if he hasn't had his evening carrot—"

A peculiar snorting noise came from Remus' direction. James turned; it appeared to be costing Remus every ounce of his self-control to keep from falling over laughing. James watched him attempt to get control of his lips, which were twitching wildly.

"It's true," Remus agreed after several breathless seconds. "He'll only have the best lettuce, too; he knows somehow if you've given it to another rabbit. I tried to feed him a piece that wasn't fresh-picked yesterday morning and he nearly bit my arm off. And poor Mum has only just recovered from the Radish Incident."

"The Radish Incident?" said Gregory, who sounded intrigued despite himself.

"You kind of had to be there," said Remus airily, the sides of his mouth twisting upwards in spite of himself. "It was totally loony."

• • •

Autumn turned to winter. The air outside the castle grew chill and stark. Moods darkened, in teachers and students alike, and James spent far more hours tediously writing out assignments than he wanted to. Quidditch practices grew cold and wet, Sirius received several letters from home that put him on edge for days, and Peter accidentally jinxed all his toenails off in an unpleasantly memorable Charms class.

Worst of all was what began to happen to Remus. And James knew it was their fault—his and Peter's and Sirius'.

Like everything else about the becoming-an-Animagus process, remembering to do the spell every sunup and sundown was much harder than James had anticipated. For one thing, it required waking up early, which wasn't something that any of them were good at. Every night before bed, James, Peter, and Sirius put an Up-at-Dawn Charm on themselves, which had the advantage of being completely silent, unlike the Caterwauling Charm on their watches, but the distinct disadvantage of jolting them awake mid-dream. Remus slept through it all—thankfully, he was an even heavier sleeper than Sirius, which was saying something—but every morning, James felt it had been a close call. After several weeks, the thought that they might have to sneak around like this indefinitely, for months, even, was enough to make his blood run cold.

However, the charm they had to do when the sun set was far more difficult. In Scottish Novembers, the sun set early, and James knew it would only get worse. Eventually, they would be running out of their afternoon lessons to cast the spell. As it was, they were frequently abandoning Remus at dinner, something that left their friend amused at first, but quickly changed to bewilderment, and then a kind of silent fear that James noticed but did not know how to address.

"5:06," said Sirius in James' ear, tapping the silver Black family watch that he wore to spite his brother. "We'd better go."

James looked across the table, where Remus was watching them, trying to smile. It was two days to the full moon, and he was more aware of it than he had ever been before. "We'll be right back, Remus," he said. "You can have the rest of my chips."

"I can do pranks too, you know," said Remus in one breath, and James could tell this was something he'd been waiting to say for days. "Just because I'm a Prefect doesn't mean I can't be part of things. I've done pranks with you loads of times. I've thought of a few." He swallowed. "Remember what I did to that staircase last year?"

"That's not why," said Sirius, sighing.

James looked at him in alarm as Remus' face paled and then fell; he was sure he knew what his friend was thinking.

"No," said James hurriedly. "Sirius only means—there's a reason this one's secret, all right? You wouldn't like it. It's—it's to do with Snivellus."

He regretted saying it immediately, for more than one reason. A certain girl with dark red hair and piercing green eyes had heard the last word he'd said, and gave James a glare that felt like knives under his skin. Then she muttered something to Mary Macdonald and Marlene McKinnon. Whatever it was, James did not imagine it was anything good.

Why did Lily only ever see the worst of him?

"Yes," said Peter, totally oblivious. "It's to do with Snivellus."

"I never stop you doing anything to Snivellus," said Remus quietly.

"I know," said James. "I know."

"We've got to run. Now," said Sirius, standing up very suddenly and nearly knocking his chair over. "Two minutes."

"Oh god," said James, and really did knock over his chair. Lily snorted.

James looked away. "Bugger—sorry, Remus, we'll be right back—I swear we'll explain later—if they start pudding, don't you dare let the Slytherins take it all—"

They ran to a small classroom by the trophy room. They had never cut it so fine. But all while James was performing his spell, the image of Remus' white, unhappy face swam in his mind's eye, and he couldn't help wondering if all this was worth it.

"We were stupid," he said, when they had finished. "Electrical storms don't happen in winter; they happen in summer. We'll be doing this every day until then, and it'll only get worse, and he'll convince himself we don't care about him, and he'll go all distant like he does, and there's no way we can tell him why yet. He'd be furious."

"We weren't stupid," said Sirius fiercely. "We wanted to help him as soon as we could. You heard him last month—we can't let him keep going through that alone. And—and—" He rested his chin on the planes of his thumbs. "There are sometimes electrical storms in winter, aren't there? There definitely are. Sometimes."

"I didn't realize," said Peter, looking down. "How bad it was. It's… it's Remus, you know? He always went away and came back again. All cheerful, like. Like he really was on a visit home."

"Can we force an electrical storm to happen?" said James. "Can we—I don't know, cast a spell into the sky? It doesn't matter if it's difficult, we can learn it. Maybe if all four of us did it, something would happen?"

Peter shook his head. "The book says the potion knows when you cheat."

"Rhinos and tamarins," said Sirius, shaking his head. "But maybe that would help him sooner. Could he hurt us? If we were half?"

They stood in silence for a few minutes. James knew that Remus was waiting for them in the Great Hall, but he still didn't know what to say, or what to do, and he couldn't shake the feeling that he was better off saying nothing than saying the wrong thing. They certainly couldn't tell him the truth.