"Come on Remus, it'll be hilarious," said James, "you were well up for it last week, what's changed?"
"What's changed is that now we've got homework to do," said Remus.
"What are you talking about? You've already done your star chart so you've only got the Charms and Defence essays still to do. You do Charms tomorrow and Defence isn't due 'til Tuesday, you've got loads of time!"
"Wouldn't it be better to just get it all out the way today though?" argued Remus, though a defeated tone was creeping into his voice, "that way we can have fun tomorrow without it hanging over us."
"Come on Remus, we've been working all week," said Sirius, "Saturday's a day for relaxation… or as it may be, depriving teachers of it."
Remus sighed. It was a great plan they had come up with. After Sirius's Howler the boys had decided that the charm was entirely wasted on rant about dishonour and blood purity, and now the fruits of their endeavours were finally ready to be feasted upon. In a pile between James's and Sirius's beds lay a twitching heap of envelopes. Inside each was a piece of parchment, and on each piece of parchment was written the words to a different song. When all of them were let off at the same time in a confined space, such as, for argument's sake, the staffroom, the result would be an unbearable cacophony of tuneless voices. Enough to cause a nice disruption to any teacher's afternoon cup of tea. No, the prank was not the problem, it was simply a case of bad timing.
They had planned to do the prank last weekend, but as is so often the case with carefully planned things it was pushed back by one thing and another, and now here they were, all set with their supply of ready-to-explode Howlers, and tonight was the bloody full moon.
"Okay," said Remus, feeling bad about making the others put off their prank even longer just because he had work to do and was feeling somewhat unwell, "to the staffroom then?"
James, Peter and Sirius beamed.
"To the staffroom," they agreed, and they stuff the howlers into James's satchel and set off to put their plan into action.
They were waylaid in the Common Room, however, by Lily Evans
"What are you four up to?" she demanded, folding her arms across her chest as she stood in their path.
"Who say's we're up to anything?" said Sirius.
"You did!" said Lily, "you should learn to talk a bit quieter while you're looking up charms for your stupid practical jokes in the library while some people are trying to work."
"And you should learn that eavesdropping is naughty," countered James, "now if you'll excuse us we have mail to send."
"You're going to get in a ton of trouble for this," said Lily, following them to the portrait hole, "you lose us all the House Points we've earnt so far. Remus, you can't possibly be thinking of going with them."
Lily seemed to have singles Remus out as the "reasonable one" of the four friends, not that she didn't tell him off as regularly as any of the others, if anything he bore the brunt of her chastising almost as much as James and Sirius, which was a bit unfair really seeing as they were normally the ringleaders in any little troublemaking schemes they came up with. Remus supposed that she had chosen him because he worked the hardest in lessons.
"It's only a bit of fun Lily," he said, trying to straddle the middle ground between reassuring Lily and not seeming like he was wimping out in front of Sirius and Peter and James.
"Forget it Remus, Smelly Evans doesn't know what fun means," said Sirius.
"Yeah," said Peter, "she's too busy snogging Snivellus to have any fun."
"Fine! Get in trouble, see if I care!"
"See you then!" called James brightly as Lily stomped off.
Remus allowed himself to take a back seat in the conversation as they made their way to the staffroom. He back was beginning to hurt and now that he was moving around he realised that he was very tired.
"You alright there Remus?" asked James, "don't tell me you're sulking because you'd rather be back at the dorm with your Charms essay."
"Sorry," said Remus, "my mind just wandered there for a bit."
"Well, no time for any more mind wanderings now," said Sirius as they reached the staffroom door, "alright men, to your positions!"
What this essentially meant was that Remus and Sirius went to hide round the corner, James ducked under his invisibility cloak and Peter stepped right up to the staffroom door. A hand poked out from think air and gave an "okay" sign. Peter nodded at the hand, it disappeared again and he knocked on the door.
Remsu and Sirius listened as Peter stumbled over a long winded half-question half-apology about some piece of homework he hadn't done yet. He was stalling on purpose to give James time to slip in, release the Howlers, and get out again before all hell broke loose. Remus and Sirius waiting patiently, listening for any sign of trouble, poised to charge in as reinforcements, either as another student with a complicated query, or to come to James's rescue should he somehow manage to trap himself in the room full of teachers.
Just as Remus's attention was beginning to drift they heard the sound they had been hoping for. A horrible mix of screeching and gargling, the sound of a couple of dozen different Wizarding popular songs and nursery rhymes sung in the boys' best worst voices. They emerged from their hiding place to see James and Peter running for dear life, and they quickly dashed off after them.
"Stop! You stop right there or it'll be detention for a month!"
It was Professor Slughorn, which was a stroke of luck, Remus thought, because he doubted the walrussy man would be able to outrun the four of them. There would be more teachers on the way though, and it would be best to find a place to hide as soon as possible.
"Come on, hurry up you two," said Sirius.
He and James were some way ahead of Peter, who was in turn a couple of feet ahead of Remus. Remus tried to run faster but his legs seemed to jar every time he landed too hard on them. He felt sort of light headed too, so his balance was all of kilte and whenever they rounded a corner he lost even more ground of the others.
"Come on, take my hand," said James, who had stopped a little ahead of Remus with his hand stretched out towards him, "Sirius you grab Peter, we've got to hurry or we'll get caught."
Remus took James's hand and tried to keep his legs moving fast enough to keep up with his body as he was dragged along more corridors, round more corners, and up more flights of stairs. He tripped over his feet more than a few times when he couldn't match James's pace, and soon the corridor before him seemed to be tilting and blurring. He stumbled again. Grey fuzzy splotches were clouding his vision, and the same fuzziness was invading his ears. He might have said something, he might have tried to loosen James's iron grip, but he didn't remember either way. He fainted before he hhit the floor.
James felt a sudden jolt on his arm. Remus had tripped again, though this time he had fallen flat on his face. He tugged at his arm, urging him to get up, and when that didn't work he bent down beside him to offer him a hand. That was when he noticed that Remus's eyes were closed and his mouth open, face muscles slack as if in sleep.
"Sirius! Peter! Stop!" he called.
"The teacher's'll be here any minute," panted Peter, "we can't stop now. Remus, come on, we'll et in trouble!"
"I don't think he can hear you Pete," said James, "I think he's unconscious, look."
Sirius and Peter bent down next to James, and agreed that Remus was indeed unconscious.
"Did you see what happened to him?" asked Sirius, "did someone hex him?!"
"I didn't see anybody," said James, "we were just running and I felt this deadweight on my arm and I turned around and he was just lying like this."
"Bugger," said Sirius, "what do we do?"
"I don't know," said James, "what are you meant to do when someone faints?"
"Well I don't know!" said Sirius, "that was why I was asking you!"
"We should get a teacher," said Peter.
And right on cue, Professors McGonagall and Slughorn, along with the caretaker Mr Filch, burst round the corner and stumbled to a surprised halt in front of the four boys.
"You four are in so much trouble," said Professor McGonagall, "is that Remus Lupin?" she added sharply, seeing the prone body on the floor."
"We didn't do anything to him we swear!" said Sirius.
"He just passed out," said James.
Peter nodded to his friend's assertions.
"The three of you are to go with Mr Filch, he was assign you your punishments."
"But what about Remus?" asked Peter.
"Mr Lupin's punishment can be arranged when he is once again conscious Mr Pettigrew," said McGonagall impatiently.
"No, I mean, will he be alright?"
"I'm sure he'll be perfectly fine," said McGonagall, "We shall take him to the Hospital wing an Madam Pomfrey will have him right as rain in no time."
"Can't we come too?" asked James.
"No," said Professor McGonagall, in a tone of clear finality, "you three shall go with Mr Filch, Professor Slughorn and I can deal with Remus.
"Come on you 'orrible lot," said Filch, grabbing Sirius, who was nearest, by the wrist and physically dragging him away from the scene. James and Peter, not wanting to be similarly manhandled, followed quickly.
"Scrubbing bedpans! That man is evil, I'm telling you. It was only a bit of a laugh."
"No sense of humour at all," agreed James, following Sirius through the portrait hole, "it wasn't as if anyone got hurt or anything, I don't think we even broke any rules, not any important ones anyway…"
"So you did get into trouble then," said Lily, who was reading in one of the armchairs when the boys entered, but promptly laid her book aside and marched over towards the boys.
"Yeah well the thing is Evans, we don't really care," said Sirius.
"Come on then, how many house points did you… where's Remus?"
"Hospital Wing," said the three boys simultaneously.
"Oh well done," said Lily, "not only did you manage to land yourself in detentions but Remus also managed to get himself injured as well. Well, serves him right I'd say, maybe it'll teach him not to go round getting himself caught up in any more of your mad schemes. You'll be next Peter, wherever there's trouble there two are always at the centre of it. How did he hurt himself then? Did the spell go wrong? Bet it did. Honestly, you try and do these elaborate pranks and you can't even…"
"The prank went swimmingly thank you very much," said James, "Remus had to go to the Hospital Wing afterwards because he was sick."
"Sick? Again? What kind of sick?"
"How am I supposed to know, I'm not a Healer."
"He just passed out when we were running away from the teachers," said Peter.
"He passed out?! Oh God! Did he come round?"
"We don't know," said Sirius, "McGonagall and Slughorn sent us away with Filch and he ranted on at us for about half an hour and then when he finally let us go we went to try and see Remus in the Hospital Wing 'cause McGonagall said that's where they were going to take him but Madam Pomfrey told us to clear off."
"Oh gosh," said Lily, "I hope it isn't bad."
"Hang on a minute," said Sirius, "you were saying it serves him right a minute ago!"
"Yeah well that was when I thought it was his own stupid fault," said Lily, "I didn't realise he was sick again!"
"Yeah well maybe don't be so quick to assume stuff Evans," said James, "no haven't you got any slimy Slytherin's to snog or do you plan to stand in our way all day?"
"I swear Potter, if you make sun of Severus one more time I'll…"
"You'll what? Oh… wait… I don't care."
And with that the four boys trooped past her and retreated up the stairs to their dormitory. They should have been basking in the glory of a prank gone to plan (apart from the evening of bedpan scrubbing they had to look forward to) but it just didn't feel right after what had happened to Remus.
What had happened to Remus?
Peter was the first one to voice the question.
"People don't just faint for no reason like that do they?" added James.
"Yeah," said Sirius, "he seemed fine earlier didn't he?"
"I don't know," said Peter, "maybe he wasn't, he didn't eat much at breakfast or lunch did he?"
"You think he's sick then?"
"Well, like James said, people don't just faint for no reason do they? Not healthy people at any rate."
"We don't know that's what happened though," said Sirius, "he might have hit his head on something, or something like that. That can make you faint can't it?"
"I suppose he might have tripped on something and when he fell he hit his head on the ground and then that was when he passed out," said James.
"Maybe," said Sirius thoughtfully, "he'll probably be out by this evening anyway, McGonagall said he'd be fine, we can ask him what happened when he gets back."