The plan was almost set. It was past midnight and the common room was empty. James, Sirius and Peter had pulled up chairs around the bulletin board, where Remus had tacked a very large white piece of parchment and was scribbling on it as they threw suggestions at him.

Remus finished writing Mirror on fourth floor.

"Okay and then it takes about fifteen minutes to get to the hollowed out oak tree behind the Three Broomsticks from there—," Sirius was saying.

"No it doesn't, it takes twenty minutes," Remus cut in.

"No, it takes fifteen—," Sirius argued back.

"It takes twenty if we're trying to stay quiet at 1:30 in the morning—,"

"What the bloody hell are you trying to be quiet for, you think people are gonna be camping out in sleeping bags—,"

"That corridor passes right under Flitwicks sleeping chambers—,"

"Oh and, what, we're taking an extra five minutes to pass across an area three yards wide—,"

"That's not the point—,"

"Just write fifteen minutes on the fuckin' time schedule Moony—,"

"Moony?" Peter and James chimmed together.

"Stop calling me that!" Remus shot at Sirius.

"Yeah, that's the weirdest insult you've thrown out in years, mate," James said grinning.

"It's not an insult, it's a nickname. You know, in case we're talking about each other and we don't want the people around us to know who we're referring to—,"

"When would you ever need to do that?" James said laughing.

"Can we get back to the plan please?" Remus said writing twenty minutes on the time schedule very clearly so that Sirius wouldn't miss it. He heard him growl and curse at him under his breath.

"I heard that." Remus said over his shoulder.

Another hour passed before Remus stepped back and read the finalized plan.

The sneak into Hogsmead to break into Wizardry Brewing Supplies would take place on the second of November, which was a Sunday, and as Peter pointed out, the night when teachers would least suspect students to roam the halls.

They would use the large passageway behind the mirror on the fourth floor which would take them to the hollow tree behind the Three Broomsticks. From there they would sneak behind the shops until they hit the fork in the road on Main Street. Peter would stand watch from the alleyway next to Zonko's, and Remus, James, and Sirius would sneak out under the invisibility cloak to the shop in the center of the road.

Sirius had a knife that could untie knots and unlock any door. They would use this to get in the side supply door, and as Sirius and Remus waited next to the doorway keeping an eye on the road, James would sneak in and find the ingredients.

"We should still pay for them though… just leave the gold on the counter with a note," Remus said after he was finished reading the plot to get back in.

Everyone burst out laughing.

"You know, if you weren't with us we'd be the baddest criminals in England," Sirius said, shaking his head.

"Yeah Remus, stop messing up our style, people won't take us seriously," chuckled James.

"Oh, shut up," Remus said, taking the poster down and rolling it up. "You can sign it Moony if you don't want anyone to know who you're bloody referring to."

"Ha HA!" Sirius yelled at James. "You see the shoe is on the other table now…which has… turned…?"

James fell on the floor laughing and Sirius kicked him.

.x~*~x.

So one week later they were all lying wide awake in their beds waiting for the clock to chime 1:15.

Remus was having a hard time staying awake. He'd been in bed since ten and had had plenty of time to warm it up. It was strange how comfortable and soft his bed was when he least wanted to leave it.

He lifted his head. James had abandoned the pretense of sleeping and had just sat up in the dark, staring around. Remus grinned and sat up too.

James smirked wickedly at him and looked over at Jacob and Pallas who slept on either side of his four poster. He made a loud snoring sound at Jacob, who grunted but didn't wake up. Remus pressed his fist to his mouth trying not to laugh. James did it again, this time at Pallas. He sounded ridiculous. Sirius and Peter began squirming with silent laughter at his sheer absurdity.

"James, shut the fuck up!" Sirius hissed at him.

James made another long snore and then let it out by flapping his lips together in an absurd raspberry sound.

Remus' had a sharp stitch in his side from trying not to laugh out loud.

Ten minutes later they were all creeping out the door, ready to pull it closed. James stuck his head in one last time to make a particularly loud gurgling snort and Remus closed the door on his face.

"You deserve it you git," Remus said as James rubbed his injured nose and the other two finally released their laughter.

It did indeed take them twenty minutes to get to the hollowed out oak tree once they had gotten into the passageway. But Remus held his "I told you so" for later.

Sirius and James were at their worst. Both of them were cracking jokes and trembling in a frenzied excitement. In a rush of bittersweet emotion, Remus realized that they both knew this was the last time they'd be sneaking out for anything related to the Animagus transformation, and they were fully appreciating the suspense and danger of it. They were clinging desperately to their last night of mischief as if their lives depended on it.

Remus caught Peters' eye in the alley behind Zonko's as they prepared to split up. They grinned at each other. Both of them felt like third wheels.

There was no one on the dark windy street as Remus and Sirius slipped out of the invisibility cloak and James entered the shop. It became unusually quiet with Sirius and James separated from each other.

Remus chanced a glance at Sirius who was staring hungrily around in the dark, as if wanting someone to come catch them and make the situation that much more dangerous. He was positively beaming, his eyes glittering with mischief.

Remus shook his head, smiling to himself and looked around. He heard a door open and close somewhere. He stopped leaning against the shop and looked around, trying to find the source and if anyone was in view of them.

"Sirius, pay attention, I think someone's out here," Remus whispered to him.

Wind blew softly and the eerie creaking of a sign reached them. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted twice into the night.

And then he heard it— the crunching of footsteps in the snow. He looked around at Sirius in a panic, but it was clear that the other boy didn't find this as unnerving as Remus did. If anything, he stepped toward the light of a street lamp as if to make himself more visible.

The increased speed of footsteps spurred him into action. Remus stepped forward and grabbed Sirius by the shoulders, steering him backward into the extremely cramped alley next to the potions shop and Madam Pudifoots, and clamped a hand over the other boys' mouth. The crunching was getting louder.

Remus looked at Sirius who had lowered his eyes to stare at the hand over his mouth. Their chests were pressed together and Remus was squished so close against him that he had to put his right foot in between both of Sirius'.

And then something broke.

Remus' eyes widened. It was not that something had physically broken. It was perceptual, and from the way Sirius' eyes widened too, he knew that it had broken for Sirius at the exact same time.

It was suddenly and intensely inappropriate to be this close to each other. Remus' hand over Sirius' mouth should not be there because the atmosphere was different now.

Had Remus been pressed against James, they would be shaking with silent laughter. Had Sirius been silenced by Peter, he would be trying to jokingly put the moves on him just to freak him out.

But they were not with James or Peter. They were with each other, and for a reason that only the universe now knew, this was not safe territory anymore.

Remus panicked. The hand over Sirius' mouth felt dirty and unbearable. He wrenched it off as if it had burned.

Immediately he knew it was the worst action he could have possibly done. Sirius' face was fully in view now and what was more, their lips were a mere two inches apart. Both of their heads flew away from each other, hit the opposite walls of the shops, and then bounced back.

"Ouch!" they both hissed as their foreheads collided sharply. They were wincing from the pain and struggling in vain to keep their chests from touching.

A dark figure in a cloak passed through view but neither of them noticed. Blood was hammering in Remus' ears and he couldn't hear anything, even the subsiding sounds of the crunching footsteps.

Sirius stopped moving and took a deep breath.

"It's tight in here, yeah?" he said in a horribly forced conversational voice.

"Yeah," Remus echoed, staring around wildly, anywhere except Sirius' face.

Misted breath shot out from their mouths as if they had both just ran a marathon. Then Remus had an idea. He reached up and covered his own mouth with his hand as if warming it.

It worked.

The tension broke, both of their shoulders relaxed, and sanity started to pour back into Remus' head. It was no longer so awkward for their chests to be touching. They made eye contact and it didn't feel so painfully intimate anymore.

Remus frowned. Why had they both reacted like that?

"Guys?" they heard James whisper from around the corner.

Sirius shoved past Remus at lightning speed. Remus could tell he was also completely unnerved at what had just happened.

"What were you doing over there?" James grinned.

Remus felt like he had missed a step going downstairs.

When James said "What were you doing over there?" in that tone, Sirius would always, always, joke that he had been snogging whoever he was with. It never failed to make James roar with laughter.

Only this time, Sirius didn't. He opened his mouth to respond as if his reaction was on auto-pilot. But then he seemed to choke on his words and a weird sound erupted before he shut his mouth again.

James' eyes widened in shock. Sirius had never missed out on that joke before.

"This is when you say you've been snogging," he prompted bluntly, surveying at his best friend in alarm.

Both of them stared at James with wide eyes as if trying to telepathically shut him up.

James grinned again, obviously thinking Sirius was about to crack a new joke.

"You weren't actually snogging were you—?"

"NO!"

James jumped and made to take a step back.

Both Remus and Sirius had said the word with such force and immediacy that they had almost yelled it.

They looked at each other, startled, before tearing their eyes away. Their gaze seemed unable to hold now, as if it burned to look at the other in the eyes.

They just stood there now, looking at James for a very long awkward amount of time.

James wasn't grinning anymore. Cautiously, he attempted one more half-hearted joke, but Sirius didn't respond. His jaw was set and his eyes were full of tension.

"Uhm…okay, well let's go find Peter and get the hell out of here shall we?" James said, utterly crestfallen.

They got under the cloak again and crept back to Peter. The journey into the castle was sickeningly silent. Peter had no idea what was going on and ended up assuming the issue was between Sirius and James.

"What are they mad at each other about?" Peter muttered to Remus as they crept through the stone passageway again. "What the hell happened?"

Remus didn't know how to answer him so he whispered "Nothing" and kept on. James continued prompting jokes but Sirius was relentlessly sulky. He didn't smile or grin once.

They reached the common room and James rounded on Sirius, face furious.

Sirius cut him off and said "Look, you three go on up, I'm just gonna stay down here for a while."

"What happened?" Peter said immediately.

"Nothing, Peter," Sirius said exasperatedly.

He threw himself into the armchair by the fire and stared into the gleaming coals.

Remus didn't wait for the other two. He turned on his heel and headed up to the dormitory. James and Peter followed him silently. James caught Remus' eye and steered him, with a vice-like grip on his arm, into the bathroom, shutting the door behind them.

He threw him a furious look and snarled, "What the fuck happened while I was in there? What did you do?"

"What did I do? Me?" Remus shot back him indignantly.

"Fine, what did either of you do? You're telling me now or I'm cursing you so bad even your ears'll be bleeding," he spat, aiming his wand at Remus' face.

"He told me how much he's going to miss sneaking out like this," Remus invented wildly. "He said it wasn't ever going to be the same after you finally pull off the transformation, and then he got depressed and he's been sulking ever since."

James blinked. After a long moment he lowered his wand and stared at the floor, looking ridiculously sad and helpless.

"Oh," he said simply. "I thought I was only one who felt like that."

Remus smiled at him and clapped him on the shoulder.

"I'm going to bed," he whispered. "Just leave Sirius to himself tonight. See you in the morning, mate."

"Yeah…"

Remus shut the door and slipped into bed, his mind racing with what had happened in that cramped alleyway…

.x~*~x.

Remus didn't sleep well at all. He was the last to fall asleep and the first to wake up. Frustrated, he jumped into the shower, eye's lidded and head groggy. It was only when he came out twenty minutes later that he realized Sirius wasn't in bed.

He frowned. Grabbing his clothes, he shoved them on and left the dormitory, creeping downstairs barefoot.

Sirius was fast asleep in the armchair by the fire. He had his feet propped up on the low coffee table, head falling forward and sideways onto his shoulder. Remus looked down at him for a moment. His hair was getting ridiculous…

Rolling his eyes, he sat next to the chair on the squishy loveseat. He picked up a huge brown leather book, took aim, and casually tossed it at the right angle so that the wide part of the cover made an immensely loud slapping, banging sound against the hardwood.

Sirius jumped, startled awake. His eyes swiveled around and latched onto Remus, his shoulders stiffening.

"Hey," Remus whispered in his direction, sitting back and staring into the fire pit. "It's six thirty."

Sirius just looked at him sleepily. His eyes were drooping but he shifted upwards so he didn't slouch so much.

"I fell asleep," he grumbled.

"Observation of the century," Remus drawled.

There was a startled pause as Sirius processed the joke, and then laughed.

Remus looked around at him. Sirius was smiling widely. It seemed no matter how many jokes James cracked, the person he had needed to joke with most was Remus.

Remus realized this immediately. It hit him like a ton of bricks. Why the hell hadn't he thought of it last night? Anytime Sirius had been mad with someone, or gotten into an argument, the only way to recover was to make him laugh. Jokes were his way of apologizing, and the only way a friendship with him could ever be repaired.

That undistinguishable thing that broke last night... Remus had to repair it.

He grinned, basking in the relief of this discovery. He had one hour before the others would wake up and start trailing down to breakfast. And damn if he couldn't make Sirius Black laugh for the whole hour of it.

He starting forming jokes in his mind, turned toward Sirius, and, like a good student, went to work.

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