Author's Note: If you wanted to, you know, tell me what you think, that'd be cool, too.

CHAPTER TWO

Wonderful

Remus Lupin was closing at the Three Broomsticks again. Not only was the work reasonably lucrative, which made possible the continuation of his education at Hogwarts, it could be fun sometimes. Closing was the best, of course.

Remus usually closed on Fridays, because Madam Rosmerta trusted him and often had other appointments--or she just wanted to get some sleep. At eleven, nominally the end of his shift, she would hand him the keys, tell him he could take a few butterbeers home if he didn't cause trouble, and remind him to bring "that nice boy, Sirius" with him next time.

So here he was, at eleven twenty-five on a Friday night, all the crates moved, all the mirrors cleaned, everything in order. And he'd almost finished sweeping the floor.

Almost.

There was no one in the streets at this hour, and he'd already put most of the lights out, so he wouldn't be silhouetted in the windows. A bit tentatively, and then all at once, like an avalanche, the room changed. The floor glimmered, the remaining lights glowed, and the mirrors sparked like diamonds in the dim light. And the broom handle, of course, became a microphone.

"You ain't nothin' but a hound dog," Remus Lupin sang, "cryin' all the time; you ain't nothin' but a hound dog, cryin' all the time... You ain't never caught a rabbit, and you ain't no friend of mine."

The crowds were cheering, screaming his name; the band was in high spirits, pounding out the tune behind him; hundreds, thousands of eyes were on him, and he couldn't disappoint all those people--he just couldn't.

"They said you were high class," he went on, belting it out now, forgetting the existence the window gleaming dully in front of him, "but that was just a lie..."

In reality, Remus Lupin had what most people would call a halfway-decent singing voice. He could carry a tune, though it tended to leak a little bit when he did, and he lacked the strength and power that frequented the voices of the truly great. But in his head, when he was closing, when he was bobbing and prancing and swinging his hips as if there was no tomorrow to speak of, he sounded like half a million new Galleons piled in neat, shining stacks. He sounded like a crisp, boundless night in a land overflowing with opportunities. He sounded like little creeks in autumn and beaming sunlight warming a little boy's back. He sounded wonderful, and he sounded amazing.

When he ran out of lyrics, he swept a deep, supremely suave bow, and a few of the more sentimental girls in the audience fainted clean away.

"Thank you," Remus said, affecting a pronounced drawl very poorly. "Thank you very much."

Then he cleared the last of the dirt and dust that customers had tracked in out of the corners, set the broom in the back room, requisitioned a single bottle of butterbeer, and went out the front door. A bit of searching yielded the appropriate key on Rosmerta's ring of them, which boasted something like twelve different specimens, and Remus jammed it into the keyhole and locked the door securely. He pulled on the handle just to make sure and, satisfied, tucked the keys back into his pocket and started briskly down the path to Hogwarts. He had to be back in Hogsmeade at six the next morning for opening, since he had the keys, after all, and that wasn't quite as far away as he might have liked...

But that was a long way off. Hours.

Almost midnight. The witching hour, it was called, and this one was lit by a cream-colored first quarter moon. This was the kind of night Remus loved, loved more than all the butterbeer and Chocolate Frogs in the world: just cold enough to make his face tingle, just bright enough to feel safe, stretching wide out before him like a dream. A chilly hint of the impending winter had seized the air, and Remus could taste it on the breeze that made dust swirl around his shoes insistently. He could also taste something else--something sinister.

Immediately it seemed a little too dark and a little too cold. Remus paused momentarily, and then he realized that pausing indecisively was the last thing he wanted to do. That little revelation sent him striding forward again, faster than before. Considerably faster.

If he had been Sirius, or James, he wouldn't have been so concerned. They could change at will, becoming something stronger on little more than a whim. He, however, was at the mercy of the moon, tied to the tides, linked to the lunar cycle. The wolf wouldn't help him now, not tonight. Tonight, he was no more than a boy, thin for sixteen, only a bit taller than average, out on the street late at night. Alone. Defenseless.

He huddled in his coat and walked faster still.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Lily was making a list. Lily loved lists. She was impeccably organized.

James watched her delicate white hand drag the quill across the page in delightful, swirling strokes. She was left-handed, which meant she had to be careful to keep the heel of her hand out of the ink as she laid it down. There was considerable evidence of recent failures to do so in the form of a variety of ink stains decorating her skin. Hair persisted in falling into her face repeatedly, and she persisted in batting it away.

"You, James," she said, and his heart did a graceful pirouette, "can have the first, second, and third floors. I'll take four and five, and Remus can have the sixth and the seventh. How does that sound?"

"Fine," James answered. Spectacular, he thought dreamily. Lovely. Wonderful.

It wouldn't be until the next evening, when they were exerting the pattern, that he would realize that he'd been saddled with the extra floor. At the moment, he was watching the firelight play in her hair, watching her chew absently on her lip, watching her verdant eyes flick over what she'd written. He could have watched her forever. Longer, even.

James Potter was enamored with Lily Evans. She could have walked all over him in cleats while carrying a fifty-pound weight, and he still would have been enamored with her. She was his angel and his enduring devil; the shimmering force of good that got him out of bed in the morning and the merciless torment that haunted him late into the night. Sirius laughed at him, but that only fueled his conviction, because it reminded him that there was something to laugh at in the first place, and that something was the fact that he utterly adored Lily Evans.

Dumbledore had decided that there could be three Gryffindor Prefects this year. James didn't know why, and he didn't care. Maybe McGonagall had seen him gazing at Lily, daydreaming his heart out, and had put a good word in for him. It didn't matter. There were three prefects--Remus, and Lily, and him. And Remus had a job and did his homework on time, which meant that there were a lot of moments like this one, where he and Lily plotted out the finer points of their tasks--or, rather, Lily plotted them out, and James sat watching her, feeling light enough to float away or burst into glitter at a touch, and nodded and smiled.

It was edging towards midnight by the time Remus tripped his way into the common room with flushed cheeks and a hunted expression. The wind had wrought Hell on his hair, but, somehow, it made him look very, very alive. It was almost becoming.

Lily looked up and smiled. "Hello, Remus," she said. "It'd be great if you could look at this sometime."

James smiled, too. She was so considerate. He added it to his mental list of things he worshiped about her. That list, as meticulously precise as one of hers, if written out, would have filled a meter of parchment--at least. James wasn't sure. He was a bit afraid to try.

"Sure," Remus agreed. He was breathing a little fast, though it wasn't full-fledged panting. "Could I save it for tomorrow morning?"

Lily nodded her accord.

Agreeable, James added. Surely a meter and a half.

"Sirius said he wanted to talk to you," Lily reported. "Didn't he, James?"

James smiled and nodded. He was growing very adept at that. "Didn't say what about."

"Guess I'd better go see, then," Remus noted. Lily looked to her list again, and Remus made for the stairs, pausing at the bottom to indicate her subtly with his head and offer James a broad wink.

James grinned, and Remus grinned back before scampering up the stairs to meet Sirius.

Sirius Black was essentially James's brother--and might as well have been, given that he had taken up residence at the Potter household that summer. It should have been a dark, stormy night that he arrived, with rain coming down by the bucket and the pail, but, rather, it had been a lazy, slightly humid afternoon. Sirius, his face set, had asked very politely whether he might be able to stay for the remainder of the summer, knowing that James Potter would have had to have been the worst friend in the history of the world to turn him away. Never that, disgusted and mortified at the very thought, James had dragged him in off the street, unable to ignore the stony tension in Sirius's shoulders as he clapped his visitor heartily on the back. Then he had asked why, and Sirius had looked at him with eyes dark, ominous, and gray like the truant storm clouds and, in a voice heavy with a bitterness James couldn't imagine, cited "irreconcilable differences of opinion." James wouldn't have thought it possible to be scared of Sirius Black until that moment, when he found that he was.

He had stuffed Sirius full of chocolate, trusting it as the best panacea in his power, and together they'd assembled a cot in James's room. James hadn't asked Sirius whether he was going to come and stay for Christmas, too, and the next summer. The tempest in the gray eyes had told him the answer.

But he knew, as he saw Remus's trailing shoelace disappear from view up the stairs, that there were things even a brother couldn't understand. In years past, he might have been jealous of the way Sirius read Remus's thoughts, the way he protected him, the way he smiled like a proud father when Remus accomplished something great. But he knew better now. On one of many nights, while starlight streamed in the window and Peter snored softly, James had realized why Sirius had taken it upon himself to stand between Remus Lupin and danger. It was because Sirius understood now. It was because Sirius had been cast out from the only home he had, by his own blood, and now he understood what rejection of that profundity meant. He had received a glimpse of the kind of abandonment with which Remus Lupin lived every moment of every day, simply because of what he was. And a bond had been built between them, a mutual comprehension forged by a shared anguish, a connection that James Potter couldn't have broken if he had wanted to.

He didn't want to. It was what both of them needed. James didn't claim to know a lot of things, but he knew that much.

Lily laid down her quill, reviewed her list, blew on the ink, folded the parchment, and slipped it into her bag. She covered a yawn. "I think that's all I can stand for tonight," she remarked, climbing to her feet before James could gallantly offer her a hand--and he would have, too. "'Night, James."

"'Night, Lily," he replied blissfully.

She smiled that unbelievable smile of hers, shouldered her bag, and skipped up the stairs to the girls' dorm, coppery hair bouncing one last time, teasing him with a final glitter.

James Potter sighed the happiest sigh of his life.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The door to the dorm was slightly ajar when Remus reached it. There was nothing but darkness within, alleviated only faintly by the moonlight, and a shiver crawled like an enterprising spider up Remus's spine. Gently he pushed the door, and it creaked as it gave way, a gaping mouth drawing him into an endless darkness to which there was no remedy in the world...

"Sirius?" he called softly. "James said you were looking for me..."

Hesitantly, he took a step forward.

It was at that moment that a pillow hit him squarely in the face.

The lights went on abruptly, giving Remus a good view of Sirius's and Peter's grinning faces as they beat at him with pillows that sent forth forlorn eruptions of feathers in protest.

He laughed until he couldn't breathe, and likely would have continued to do so had the Fifth Years not pounded on the wall and shouted, in impressive unison, "Shut up, ya gits!"