A/N: Hello again and welcome to the next chapter. I'm afraid this one is rather short. Thanks a lot to Kayla for her beautiful review and to Guinness for beta-ing this chapter. Enjoy!


Chapter 7 – The Terror Starts

The first few weeks of school went by in a flash and Remus felt happier than he had ever felt in his life. The classes were extremely interesting, people didn't avoid him as they used to in his old school and for the first time in a long time he had friends, true, great friends.

There was only one dark cloud on the horizon.

Remus was extremely anxious that his friends might figure out his secret. Not only would that mean losing them for sure but also facing expulsion from Hogwarts, for Remus could see no way of being allowed to stay at school once everybody knew. The headmaster knew, of course, and even some of the staff. To tell the truth, Remus was still puzzling over the fact that Professor Dumbledore seemed to have no problem with his condition.

He found it very hard to make up stories to explain not only his regular absences but also the injuries he bore afterwards, that were plausible enough to satisfy Sirius – even though he put all his effort and imagination into them. Luckily, James and Peter weren't so hard to convince. True, they were just as shocked to see all his bruises and cuts, but they'd probably seen Remus stumble over his own feet or bumping into other students too often not to believe his lame tales about having fallen down the stairs.

But Sirius wasn't deceived that easily.

All through Defence Against the Dark Arts Remus felt Sirius staring at the bandage around his head – a souvenir from the day before yesterday. This time, Remus had told his friends that his mother was ill and that he had to go check on her, hitting his head badly on the mantelpiece when he'd been climbing out of the fireplace that had taken him home via Floo-powder. Sirius's staring actually irritated Remus so much that he gave Professor Lollop – who insisted on being called May – the wrong answer when she asked him to tell her how to recognise a werewolf.

That day he skipped lunch and took refuge in the library, hiding from his friends behind a huge stack of books that waited to be sorted back onto their shelves by the librarian, Madame Pince, trying hard to ignore his rumbling stomach.

He was late on purpose for their next lesson – Potions, which was the only subject the Gryffindors had with the Slytherins – so as to avoid having to sit with Sirius, James and Peter, who already had their cauldron up at a table at the front of the classroom, a fire crackling merrily underneath it. He mumbled a hasty apology to Professor Slughorn and slid wordlessly into the only unoccupied place which happened to be next to Lily Evans and a Slytherin-boy with dark, greasy hair – Severus Snape – who shot him a malevolent look.

"Hi Remus" Lily said smiling, moving her book and notes aside to make space for him.

"Hi Lily" he muttered, trying to ignore Peter who had turned around in his seat and was looking at Remus questioningly.

Today's potion was very complicated which gave Remus an opportunity to take his mind off his worries. He busied himself cutting up bat-wings and slicing thick, juicy shrivelfigs, dutifully following Lily's instructions. He couldn't help noticing how good Lily and her greasy friend worked together. Their potion was the first to turn forget-me-not-blue and emit a high-pitched whistling as it was described in the textbook. Remus caught the annoyed look James threw them over his shoulder when Professor Slughorn's apprentice, Damocles Belby, came over to inspect their potion and award Gryffindor and Slytherin ten points each for their good work.

"Well done, well done indeed!" he cried happily, peering down into their cauldron over his rapidly fogging up glasses. "Good work, you three. Now, all you've got left to do is to add the sliced shrivelfigs and you're done."

Obediently, Remus slid the shrivelfigs into the slightly bubbling potion – which gave a nasty slurping sound, then belched loudly and emitted itself all over Remus, Lily and her Slytherin friend, burning holes into their robes and singing their hair. A foul smell started to spread and the whole class, shrieking hysterically, fled from the classroom.

Lily cowered against the heavy stonewall of the corridor, looking horrified at her arms which were now starting to throw vicious purple boils where the potion had made contact with her skin, whimpering silently. Remus was about to crouch down beside her to have a look at her injuries when he suddenly felt himself being yanked back by the scruff of his neck. He crashed onto his back, choking, and found himself face-to-face with a wand which pointed directly at his nose.

"Get the hell away from her" Severus Snape yelled furiously, holding the wand that pointed at Remus in his right hand, his eyes flashing dangerously.

"I-I'm sorry" Remus stammered, feeling embarrassed, confused and scared all at the same time. "I didn't mean to-"

"Shut up! You didn't mean to, eh? Don't make me laugh! You should have realised that adding sliced shrivelfigs to a Silencing Solution without squeezing them dry first would make the whole thing blow up."

Remus thought that this was very unfair. How was he supposed to know that? It certainly didn't say anything about that particular reaction in the textbook. He could tell, as he'd read the whole book during the summer. And Assistant-Professor Belby had told him to add the shrivelfigs, hadn't he?

Cautiously he pushed himself up on his elbows and opened his mouth to tell the livid boy so, when he realised with a shock that – shaking his greasy hair out of his eyes – Snape furiously swished his wand at him, yelling "Diffindo!"

"Expelliarmus!" someone cried at the exact same time and Remus saw the wand being wrenched out of his attacker's hand and flying through the air, landing some distance away with a soft clutter.

Breathless, he whipped his head around to see James standing some feet behind him, his own wand in his hand pointing at Snape's chest, a cold and controlled look on his face.

"Attacking a defenceless opponent isn't very heroic, don't you think?" Sirius said casually, standing next to James and cracking his knuckles playfully.

Peter meanwhile had rushed over to where Remus was lying on the floor to help him get to his feet. "You alright?" he asked him worriedly.

"'m fine" Remus mumbled, his face now positively glowing in embarrassment. He went to pick Snape's wand up from where it had landed and gave it to him. "Look" he said. "I really didn't mean for this to happen. I'm sorry, alright?"

Snape snatched his wand out of Remus's hands, glowered at him and his friends for a moment, then turned on his heel and went to help Lily get to the Hospital Wing.

The next morning, Remus was glad to see Lily sitting at the breakfast-table, talking animatedly with a fellow Gryffindor first-year, Wilhelmina Lochrin. He sat down next to James who, uncharacteristically, had his nose buried deep in today's newspaper – which he'd nicked from the teachers' table just to proof to Sirius that he could do it.

"Pass the marmalade, James" Sirius said, spreading butter on his toast.

Nothing happened.

"Oi, the marmalade, James!"

Still no reaction.

"Are you deaf, mate?" Sirius yelled, thrusting his buttered piece of toast at James's head.

"Hey! What was that for?" James cried irritably, finally resurfacing from his paper, wiping butter out of his black hair.

"Pass the marmalade, please" Sirius said innocently.

"Anything good in there?" Peter asked James curiously, trying to get a look at the headlines on the front page of the Daily Prophet.

James put the paper down, looking gravely at his friends – something that was even more uncharacteristic for him than reading a newspaper.

"Another family has been wiped out last night. They found that green skull-symbol with the snake hovering over the ruined house, just like last time."

Silence followed this statement. A silence that crept under Remus's skin and sent shivers down his spine.

"A whole family?" Peter breathed in disbelief, his eyes strangely unfocused.

"It happened again, you said?" Remus asked, shocked by this news.

"Was it that Voldy-thing again?" Sirius said grimly, his fists clenching on the tabletop.

"Lord Voldemort" James corrected him quietly. "Yes, it was him again. That must have been the forth time since July. That skull-symbol of his is proof enough, of course, but it says in here that he also left a writing claiming responsibility, obviously pinned to…pinned to one of the victims" he trailed off at the end, his face screwed up in a part furious, part pained and part revolted expression. It took him a moment to pull himself together before he could continue. "That writing said something about his ambitions to rid the Wizarding World of scum and mud- I mean Muggle-borns. And apparently he described a way how people who are interested in his philosophy can contact him…oh, yeah, look. They have a copy of the letter here on page 5…"

"What? The Prophet printed that?" Sirius cried in disbelief, wrenching the paper out of James's hands which caused it to rip in two.

A piece of the article landed right in front of Remus and he gazed at the black-and-white photograph of a happy looking couple, embracing a tiny girl with a large ribbon in her hair who had a teddy pressed to her chest. All three waved merrily at the camera. The caption read 'Claudia and Richard Smith and their three-year-old daughter Flora'.