Beginnings: The Tests of Youth

by Typothetical

Of friendship and betrayal, of love and laughter, of war and growing up. The Marauders' story – from the very beginning. Canon-compliant.

38. 4-4 or 'A Giant's Step Forward'

Disclaimer: Everything you recognize and Harry Potter are owned by JK Rowling, not me.

---

Chapter 38 - 4.4 or "A Giant's Step Forward"

---

"All right, Mr. Lupin, just one more moment—hold steady now—there's a good lad—"

A pain like that of hot needles pierced the skin of his ankle and Remus hissed through his teeth and barely prevented himself from uttering a string of profanity in the presence of the school matron. He stared at the stark ceiling of the hospital wing and sought to occupy his mind with anything other than the pain scorching the entirety of his lower leg, but it was a fruitless endeavor. Madam Pomfrey worked diligently at the foot of the bed, her focus on the wound that stretched from Remus's heel through his calf, her wand moving in short, practiced motions and a tumble of incantations falling from her lips.

At last, the pain subsided and Madam Pomfrey straightened. Remus gladly accepted the pain potion she handed him a moment later, swallowing the blue contents without an inkling of hesitation.

"Thank you," he rasped when he was able to find his voice again. "It—it feels much better."

"I'm only sorry I couldn't mend it entirely while you were asleep," said the matron, now examining the all-but healed scratches on Remus's arm. She frowned at a purple bruise blooming on the inside of his bicep, tapped it with her wand, and then turned her eyes back to his lower leg. "You certainly did a number on that ankle."

"But you were able to mend it?" Remus asked, unable to find the courage to attempt to wiggle his left foot again. The pain when he had first awoken to the shredded and bloodied ankle had been nearly unbearable.

Madam Pomfrey tsked, as if offended by the suggestion that her Healing prowess may have been lacking. "You'll need to stay off of it for the evening, but yes, I've repaired both the tendon and muscle and you should be back on your feet in a day or two."

"A day or two," repeated Remus quietly. "But I've already missed the first day of lessons and—"

The sound of the door to the hospital wing opening and familiar, boisterous voices caused Remus to break off. With another tsk, Madam Pomfrey gently patted his shoulder and then stepped out from behind the crisp, white curtain that concealed Remus's bed from any prying eyes.

"Mr. Potter, Mr. Pettigrew," she said with surprise and a hint of annoyance, and even through his exhaustion, Remus felt a stab of excitement at the prospect of being reunited with his friends. "You boys should be at dinner. What in Merlin's name are you doing barging into my hospital wing and chattering about as if it's a tavern of your choosing?"

It was James's chipper voice that responded from somewhere on the other side of the curtain and Remus could not fight the smile that emerged on his face at the sound of it. "If this were a proper tavern, Madam Pomfrey, we'd be asking for some butterbeers. As it is, we've only come to check in on Remus."

Despite their frequent visits to the hospital wing during Remus's monthly recoveries, Madam Pomfrey still remained ignorant of the small detail that Remus's friends knew of his condition. Thus, it was with a bit of an anxious bite to her voice that the matron responded, "Who's to say if Mr. Lupin is here or not, Mr. Potter? Only you mustn't burst into the hospital wing making unfounded speculations as to who my patients might be."

"Of course," said James happily, and Remus could tell that his friends had moved closer to his bed. "Only we had heard that Remus had got a nasty case of Floo-sickness on his way to the castle yesterday and it's only sporting that we come to see how he's faring."

He heard Madam Pomfrey tsk for a third time in as many minutes, but it did not stop Remus from raising his voice for the group to hear from the other side of the curtain. "It's all right, Madam Pomfrey. I'd like to see them if you'll allow it."

The curtain was pulled open to show a thoroughly disapproving Madam Pomfrey frowning down at him. Behind her, James and Peter grinned at him, though distressingly, Sirius was nowhere in sight.

"Mr. Lupin," she said tightly, "this is highly inadvisable. You need to rest."

Remus, though, had experienced the matron's overprotectiveness enough times to know how to persuade her away from it. "They heard about my Floo-sickness. I'm sure they've only come for a quick visit and to help me understand all that I missed in my lessons today."

"That's right," Peter piped up. He gestured to the bag slung over his shoulder. "We brought him notes and everything."

"Go on then, Madam Pomfrey," James prodded, grinning at her. "None of us wants Remus here to fall behind in his studies just because he's got a weak disposition for Floo."

Madam Pomfrey pursed her lips before giving a resigned sigh and pulling the curtain back from around Remus's bed entirely. "I'll allow you five minutes," she said. "Five minutes, and then you two are off to dinner, do you understand?"

It was only after she had disappeared to her office and the door closed with a click that the cheeky smile slid from James's face. He surveyed Remus. "How'd you do, then, mate?"

"All right," answered Remus honestly. "Tore up my leg a bit." He moved his left ankle reflexively and braced himself for the pain, but when it came it wasn't nearly as excruciating as it had been previously. Then, eager to get off the subject, he asked, "Where's Sirius?"

James hopped up to sit on the window sill as Peter pulled a chair to Remus's bedside. "Got held back by Sprout after Herbology."

Remus released a breath he hadn't been aware he was holding. "Why?"

James ran a hand through his unruly hair, looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable all of a sudden. "Didn't do his summer Herbology homework."

"What? Why not?"

When James didn't answer immediately, Peter looked up at him with questioning eyes and then told Remus, "He didn't do any of his holiday work."

Remus looked between the two, confused. "You're joking."

"Actually that's not entirely true," said James with a snort. "He had his Muggle Studies essay completed the first week of summer. The one about different modes of Muggle transportation. It was a foot longer than Lumpkin asked for."

"Yeah," said Peter. "But that's the only one."

One immediate thought came to Remus's mind at this development. "McGonagall's going to kill him."

But James waved a dismissive hand. "He said he'd scratch down his Transfiguration essay tonight."

"That thing took me three days to write," Remus argued. "There's no way—"

"I told him he could copy mine if he needs to." James was still looking ruffled. "He copied my Potions one during break this morning. Said he'd do Charms tomorrow."

"I still don't understand why he didn't get them done," Peter said.

"He says he forgot," said James.

"But how do you forget something like that, I mean—"

James, though, sighed and cut Peter off. "I imagine if you were living with those bloody nutter parents of his you might forget about your Astronomy homework too, Peter. Leave it alone, all right? It isn't our business, anyhow."

Peter shrugged and bit at his thumbnail, but Remus could tell they were both unsettled. He himself had thought incessantly of Sirius for the past few weeks, had wondered what vitriol his friend was facing at home with his parents, had scoured his brain unsuccessfully for a way to help the boy who had tried so consistently to help him. His own uselessness had plagued him. But there was relief in the fact that at the very least, Sirius was now back at Hogwarts.

"How is he?" he asked them, unable to think of a more elegant way of phrasing it.

"He's a bit—"

"He's fine," James interrupted again. At the look Peter gave him, some of his stubbornness seemed to wane. "I mean, well, you know Sirius. He's in a bit of a strop. But he's fine and he'll be back to normal by tomorrow, I'm sure."

"Bertha Jorkins found him snogging Gin on the train yesterday," Peter told Remus in a dramatic whisper. "Now the whole school knows about the two of them. He wasn't too happy about that."

"I'd wager not," said Remus, raising his eyebrows.

"Didn't stop them from sneaking off together last night though, did it?" James said with a hint of a smirk. "Not tonight though. He's insisting we go up to the fourth floor and practice."

Remus shook his head. "He shouldn't be doing that tonight! He should be doing his homework so he doesn't have detention for the rest of the term."

"Try telling him that," muttered Peter.

"He'll get his homework sorted," said James before glancing toward the matron's closed office door and lowering his voice to a whisper. "We're getting close on the Form spells. If we can get them by next full moon, we can start the mandrake process and then be with you for November's."

Remus tried to prevent his hopes from igniting at the prospect, but the idea of having his friends with him during his November transformation to perhaps impede him from gnawing through his own ankle tendons was rather appealing, albeit terrifying. Still, he told James, "I know, but don't rush it. The things that can go wrong after the mandrake phase are—" He stopped speaking immediately when Madam Pomfrey emerged from her office.

"I told you five minutes and I surmise you've had ample time to catch Mr. Lupin up on the first lessons of the term," she said as James and Peter groaned and found their feet.

"I'll see you in lessons tomorrow," Remus called after them once Madam Pomfrey had ushered them toward the door.

She turned and scowled deeply at him, closing the heavy doors with a snap behind her. "You most certainly will not, Mr. Lupin. You need another day's rest at least and—"

"And you're a better Healer than anyone anywhere, Madam Pomfrey," he told her with a smile and a charm he tried to channel from James. "I trust if anyone can fix me up before lessons tomorrow, it'd be you."

"Hmph," she breathed, reaching over to refill his vial of pain potion with a flick of her wand, but the cross look on her face had melted into something a bit softer. It was only after she had reassessed his ankle and fluffed his pillows that she spoke again. "It's a wonder how your friends knew of your Floo-sickness when you haven't had a chance to speak to them in several days and certainly not since your arrival in the castle." Remus opened his mouth to attempt some excuse, but the matron gave him a small smile and pulled the white curtains back into place around his bed. "Very odd indeed. Now get some rest, Mr. Lupin."

And he could have sworn, as her face disappeared behind the curtain, that she gave him the tiniest of winks.

---

It couldn't have been fifteen minutes later that a nearby rustling sound pulled Remus out of a brief slumber. He cracked open his eyes to discover Sirius's head poking through the white curtain and gazing down at him.

"Bugger," Sirius said. "Didn't mean to wake you. Thought I might be able to catch James and Peter while they were in here visiting."

"Did you think they were visiting in my bed?" Remus asked groggily. Despite the question, he was happy to see his friend, and pulled himself up to sitting with slight difficulty.

"Well while I was in here, I reckoned I'd see if you were awake."

"I am now." Remus nodded toward the chair that still sat nearby and pulled his curtain open more fully. "You might as well stay until Pomfrey kicks you out. She must have gone to supper."

Sirius dropped himself into the chair and surveyed Remus for a moment, his leg bouncing as if borne from adrenaline. "How are you?"

"I'm all right," he said, echoing what he had told James and Peter. "Not one of the worst I've had, by far, so that's something."

Sirius nodded. "Cheers to that."

"Are you all right?" Remus asked him, tone softer than he had intended.

Sirius's head jerked up to look at him as if he was surprised by the question, or the subtext, or both. "Yeah mate, I'm good." He paused, swallowed, and shot Remus a ghost of a grin. "Past few weeks were fucking rubbish, but not the worst I've had either, so there you go."

Despite the undeniable fact that Sirius was a rather good liar, the haunted look in his eyes betrayed the casual ease of his words, and for a second Remus was not sure if he should voice what he said next.

"I was worried they might not let you come back," he confessed. Perhaps it was his honesty, or the tenderness with which he spoke, but Sirius didn't recoil defensively as he normally did when one of them broached too closely to the subject of his life in London.

"Yeah," he said with a breathy chuckle. "Only they don't have many options. They'd sooner face the Cruciatus than teach me at home and Durmstrang hasn't allowed transfer students in centuries." He paused. "I guess they could have hit me with an Avada Kedavra and hidden my body in a sewer somewhere, but I suppose that would have invited a few too many questions."

"Don't joke about that," Remus told him sharply. "It isn't funny."

Sirius just shrugged and tilted his chair onto its back two legs. "Did James tell you we're going to practice tonight?"

The abrupt change of topic was not lost on Remus. "Yes, but Sirius—" He hesitated. "I mean, he also told me about your summer homework and—"

"Don't worry about that. I've got it handled. Might not get top marks but when have I ever cared about that?"

With a bit of difficulty, Remus rolled himself onto his side to better look at his friend. The muscles in his neck ached and he propped himself more comfortably against his pillow, sighing slightly as he sunk again into the comfort of the bed. "What'd Sprout say to you?"

"She gave me a detention and said that I've got to hand in my Herbology assignment by Friday. No sweat."

"That's all?"

"Ah, well, she was a bit cross at first, but I complimented her new hat, asked her about her summer… You know how she is." He grinned, and the grin seemed less forced now, though the timbre of his voice still carried a heaviness that was rather atypical. "She's a witch. She likes me."

Remus laughed at the image and at Sirius's never-ending boldness. "Well just make sure you get Transfiguration finished. I don't think complimenting McGonagall's hat would get you very far."

Laughing slightly, Sirius gave a shrug. "Shame that McGonagall's been immune to us, but that doesn't mean we should stop trying, eh?"

"At least you don't have to worry about Defense homework," Remus pointed out. "Have you heard anything about the new professor?"

Sirius shook his head. "Dumbledore introduced him at the feast like always. Another Auror, but a chap this time." He gave Remus a teasing look. "Less your type than Romielle, I imagine. Sorry mate."

"Sod off," Remus said, unable to contain the chuckle that escaped to contradict his words. "She lent me books, I've told you before. Anyway, if I can get my way, I'll be in Defense tomorrow afternoon."

Sirius let the front legs of the chair thunk to the floor and leaned his elbows against his knees. Despite the restlessness Remus sensed in him, he seemed more relaxed than he had mere minutes ago. "I don't know why you don't take advantage and miss a few days of lessons. Seems to me skiving off'd be the best thing about your situation."

At the comment, something like annoyance grasped at Remus, but he didn't allow it a chance to take hold. "I'd fall behind," he said honestly. "I won't let it make me fall behind, on top of everything else."

Sirius seemed to truly consider this, his lips twisting with thought, and when he responded his tone had dropped some of its playful edge. "Yeah. I get that, I reckon."

They fell quiet for a moment, and it was only in the silence that Remus's eyes were drawn to the rapidly darkening sky outside the window, and he realized something.

"You're going to miss supper."

At the comment, Sirius's eyes also flickered toward the window and again he shrugged. "I'll get a bite in the kitchens before meeting the lads on the fourth floor."

"The elves will be happy to see you, I'm sure." In his new comfortable position, the weariness was starting to take hold of Remus again, and he felt his eyelids grow heavy. "I think I'll go to sleep now, if it's all right with you."

"'Course." He paused and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Mind if I sit here with you for a few more while you sleep, though?"

There was something to the question—a strange vulnerability, perhaps—that Remus had rarely seen from Sirius, and he nodded his assent but did not feel the need to say anything more. He drifted off to sleep quickly after that, the brutal events of the previous night working to sap any remaining energy from his body, but his sleep was fitful and interrupted, plagued by dreams of creatures with hollow eyes and blood-stained fangs. When he awoke in the night, Sirius was gone.

---

Remus did not see any of his friends again until after lunch the following day, when the three of them strolled into the Transfiguration classroom to find him sitting at his usual table. He had eaten early in the hospital wing, convincing Madam Pomfrey with his hearty appetite and returned color that he was well enough to attend his afternoon lessons. Not wanting to draw too much attention to himself by limping into the bustling Great Hall during lunchtime, he had instead made his way slowly to the classroom, where James, Sirius and Peter had found him fifteen minutes later.

"Oi!" called James when he saw Remus. The three of them approached him hurriedly, ignoring the curious looks of their other classmates who were milling about. "You're back!"

"Good to see you, mate," said Sirius, giving him a light cuff on the shoulder by way of greeting as he walked by.

Peter slipped into his customary seat next to Remus and gave him a wide smile. "Only we weren't sure you'd be back at all today."

Before Remus could respond however, Raeanne and Goomer turned toward him from the next desk over. "Hi Remus!" said Raeanne with a smile. "Welcome back. We heard you'd fallen ill."

"Oh, y-yes," stuttered Remus, taken off-guard. He smiled meekly at them. "I had a terrible Floo-sickness, actually. But I'm better now."

"Merlin, what a way to start the term," said Goomer. "I've never heard of Floo-sickness lasting for more than a few hours before! Must have been brutal if Pomfrey kept you for so long."

Having not considered his alibi from this perspective, Remus struggled to find his tongue. He needn't have worried, though, because a second later a crumpled ball of parchment sailed straight into Goomer's face, courtesy of Sirius, who had taken his seat at the table behind Remus.

"Goomer, mate, let's not remind Remus just how very delicate his constitution is, yeah? You're going to give him a complex."

Relief flooded through Remus at Sirius's easy and cheerful dismissal of the questioning, and once Goomer had given him an apologetic wince and had turned back to conversation with Raeanne, Remus shot Sirius a thankful smile over his shoulder. Any additional chatter, however, was stymied by the arrival of Professor McGonagall and the beginning of the lesson.

Sirius had apparently found a way to finish his homework, for when McGonagall collected the assorted essay scrolls, Sirius's was in the pile along with everyone else's. McGonagall's lessons—even the first one of the year—were so dense that there was very little opportunity for anything other than focused and diligent note-taking. They were learning about cross-species Transfigurations, and by the end of the lesson, only James and Sirius, predictably, had been remotely successful in turning their grouse into a mouse.

"Remember to keep your wrist straight when casting, Pettigrew," said McGonagall shortly before the bell was to ring, as she stood over their table and watched Peter's grouse make a valiant attempt at escape. "And Lupin, you've done nicely on the tail, but make sure you're focusing properly on the entire entity, not just individual components."

"Yes, Professor," said Remus, trying to ignore the aching fatigue that seemed to be spooling around his muscles.

"It's not a bad start," McGonagall told him kindly. Then, in a slightly lowered voice, "I'd like to speak with you briefly after the lesson Lupin, so don't hurry off."

Obediently, Remus nodded at her, but curiosity and dread flared inside of him. Experience had taught him that Professor McGonagall tended to keep pupils after lessons only to doll out punishments, but as he had been confined to the hospital wing for the entirety of term, Remus could not imagine why she might need to speak with him privately. He glanced at his friends who were all watching him with varying levels of intrigue, and when the bell sounded, he loitered behind his classmates, only begrudgingly thankful for the excuse to move slowly.

"Ah yes, Lupin," said McGonagall as he approached her desk. She surveyed him over the rims of her spectacles and then turned her gaze to Sirius, James and Peter, who all lingered by the classroom door. "I believe Lupin is fully capable of finding his next classroom on his own, gentlemen."

"Right you are, Professor," said Sirius. Remus was relieved to note that the cheeky and cheerful lilt that had been so obviously absent from Sirius's voice the previous evening had returned. "Only we often have trouble finding the Defense classroom without Remus, you see."

While her gaze did not waver in the slightest, McGonagall's nostrils flared ever-so-slightly. She was not amused. "Close the door on your way out, Black."

James gave Sirius a shove to the shoulder as he and Peter turned to leave the room, but Sirius remained where he was, a devilish grin splitting his face.

"Say, Professor, did you get a new hat over the summer? It sure does look lovely on you."

Remus could not help the small laugh that spilled from his mouth, and though he tried to cover it with a cough, McGonagall's annoyed glance slid his way for a brief moment.

"It's a wonder you're able to accomplish anything in my class, Black, when your powers of observation are so lacking," she told him with a crispness that confirmed her waning patience. "I've had this hat for going on twelve years now. And no matter your interest in my attire, I will ask you again to step outside and close the door so that I may have a private conversation with Lupin."

Sirius replied with a broad wave before following the other two from the classroom. "Ta, Professor!"

It was only once the door snapped shut behind him that McGonagall turned her eyes back upon Remus, who could not help but think that an aggravated Minerva McGonagall was not one he particularly wanted to be alone with.

"Right," she said, as if regaining her bearings. "Lupin, I was pleased to see you in today's lesson. I had expected you to remain in the hospital wing through the afternoon."

Remus had not expected her to say anything of the sort. "Yes, ma'am. Madam Pomfrey thought I was in good enough condition to sit through lessons this afternoon."

"Indeed. I'm happy to hear it." She paused as she picked up the pile of homework assignments from the top of her desk and slid them into a drawer. Then she turned back to him, placing the tips of her fingers against the desk as though to brace herself. "Lupin, I wanted to speak with you briefly about Professor Idurus."

"Professor Idurus?"

"Of course, you weren't at the welcoming feast on Sunday evening to witness his introduction. Professor Ormund Idurus is your new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Like Professor Romielle before him, he is an Auror who joins us for the year from the Ministry."

"Oh. That's good." Remus was not sure how else to respond, nor was he certain why she had felt the need to hold him back privately to tell him this. "I only mean, well, Professor Romielle was a wonderful teacher."

McGonagall nodded, seeming to consider him closely. "We expect Professor Idurus to be equally as capable." She ran a slender finger over the ridge of her chin and paused momentarily before saying, "Professor Dumbledore has deemed it…prudent…Lupin, to avoid alerting Professor Idurus to the nature of your condition."

As he tried to comprehend what she was telling him, Remus shifted his weight to his injured ankle and then winced. "Professor Idurus doesn't know then?" he asked. "Professor Dumbledore didn't tell him what I am?"

"No," answered McGonagall, and she looked slightly pained by it. "Lupin, would you like to sit down?"

"Th-that's okay, Professor. I'm all right." Remus steeled himself. "Why can't Professor Idurus know? I mean, all of my other professors do…"

McGonagall seemed to weigh her words before answering him. "Professor Dumbledore believes it wise to start—excuse the expression—playing these cards closer to the chest. Of late, there has been an uptick in rumblings regarding anti-werewolf sentiments, particularly within the Ministry." Remus was rather surprised with his own ability to avoid flinching at the word "werewolf." When he did not say anything, McGonagall continued.

"Don't misunderstand me, Lupin. It is quite possible that Ormund Idurus would be as tolerant and unbiased toward your condition as one could hope; but as it is, Professor Dumbledore does not wish to test such a hypothesis in the current political climate…not when it is your future on the line."

Unsure what to say to all this, and realizing that McGonagall had finished her spiel, Remus responded with a hesitant, "All right, then. But won't Professor Idurus wonder why I am missing so many of his lessons?"

"Eventually, I suppose he might. Professor Idurus is a skilled and observant Auror, after all." McGonagall pursed her lips as if in thought. "I will make your excuses for you. And if your recovery this month is any indication, perhaps you will not have to miss your Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons quite so regularly that he will catch on."

"Yes, Professor," said Remus, thinking to himself that such an outlook did not seem probable. Nevertheless, he was relieved when McGonagall excused him from the classroom a minute later, as he had found the entire conversation uncomfortable, and more pressingly, his ankle had started insistently throbbing. Unsurprisingly, he found James, Sirius and Peter waiting for him in the corridor.

"Well?" Sirius prodded as the four began walking. "What was all that about, then?"

"I-I think I need to sit for a moment," said Remus softly, limping past the three of them toward an out-of-the-way alcove. It was only once he had dropped himself onto the stone bench and Peter had taken the seat next to him that the questioning resumed.

"What'd McGonagall want?" asked James, leaning casually against the alcove wall. Something about the position led Remus to fleetingly realize that James had grown rather a lot at some point, unnoticed by any of them.

There were more important matters to consider at the moment, though. Remus was not entirely sure he wanted to repeat the conversation he had just had, particularly not in such an exposed place and particularly not when he was out of breath and suffering an aching ankle, but he also knew his friends were unlikely to let the subject drop. After a cursory glance around the corridor, he told them in a low voice, "The new Defense professor doesn't know about me. That's all. McGonagall just wanted to give me fair warning."

Sirius shoved his hands in his pockets and settled into a spot next to James, frowning down at Remus. "Why?" he asked.

Remus gave a shrug that suggested more casualness than he felt at the moment. "Something about the current climate."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know," said Remus, taking a deep breath. "Look, it doesn't matter much in the long run. Just don't, you know, draw attention to anything, all right?" He struggled back to his feet, and Peter—more nimbly—followed suit. "I'm not keen on being late to the first lesson, so we'd better get a shift on."

The four boys started walking once again down the corridor, and Remus was grateful for the way his friends matched his puttering pace without comment.

"Want me to carry your bag for you, mate?" asked Sirius, eyeing Remus's limping form with some concern.

"Not in the least." Remus was only too aware of the attention it might garner if they entered the Defense room with Sirius toting his books. With a smile, he knocked into Sirius's shoulder with his own. "I'm not your girlfriend after all. Speaking of—"

"We're not speaking of any such thing," said Sirius at once as James and Peter both sniggered. "And I haven't got a girlfriend."

"So now everyone knows about you and Gin, you're not going to, I don't know, take her to Hogsmeade?" Remus prodded playfully. "Or what about Karina?"

Sirius looked at him as if he had grown tentacles and turned left to start down an intersecting corridor. "Why on earth would I do something like that?" Then he looked back and realized that James and Peter had continued straight, and he called after them, "Where are you two going?"

The other pair stopped and turned, confusion evident on their faces. "To the Defense classroom," said James, brow lowered in puzzlement.

"You're not going to take the moving staircase!" said Sirius in astonishment. "It'll take twice as long as the passage behind Grandolyn the Grumpy."

"But that passageway'll take you all the way down towards the staff room," James pointed out. "Then you have to walk all the way back up. The moving staircase is much quicker."

"Especially on a Tuesday," added Peter. "It won't move again until after dinner."

"You two are barmy," Sirius told them, but he sighed and nudged Remus as they moved to follow James and Peter. "The passageway comes out near Filch's office, not the staff room."

"I think Sirius is right," concluded Remus. "Remember we used that passageway when you stole Filch's pants second year, James."

"Nonsense," said James, while the four of them started slowly up the currently-stationary moving staircase. "That was the passageway that opens up underneath Geronimo the Grisly, not Grandolyn the Grumpy."

"Sod it, you may be right," Sirius admitted.

"Of course I'm right."

"Are you sure that one leads to the second floor?" asked Peter as they neared the top of the staircase. "I thought that one went down near the hospital wing."

"Perhaps we should start making a list," James offered. "It's getting a mite difficult to keep track of them all."

"Or a map," said Sirius.

"What use would a map be when the staircases and rooms change depending on day and time and phase of the moon?" posed James.

"Which rooms change based on the moon?" Remus asked, curious despite himself.

"No idea," shrugged James. "Only we've never sussed out where that one wandering classroom's going to be on any given night. Remember the one we found behind the tapestry on the sixth floor? Could be it's only there during the waning crescent, or when Saturn's in retrograde."

"Rubbish," Sirius said. "We got that room's whereabouts sorted last year."

James frowned at him. "We did?"

"When we were looking for a good place to hide all of the furniture from Filch's private quarters during the war on Filch. The room changes floor based on the day of the week, not the phase of the moon." He snapped his fingers in front of James's face with a kind of satirical impatience. "Keep up, will you?"

"What? How'd I miss that?" James asked, swatting at Sirius's hand. The others all shrugged. The revelation that he had not been privy to this fact seemed to throw James, and he shook his head as if to clear it. "Well this only proves my point." He straightened his glasses thoughtfully. "There's clearly a need to start cataloging these things to preserve the knowledge of our explorations, if nothing else."

A dull thrum of excitement sparked in Remus as he pondered this. "I'd reckon there's a way to enchant a map to reflect the footprint of the castle on a given day."

"You're probably right, Moony," said Sirius, considering it. They turned down the corridor that would take them to the Defense classroom. "Could be worth looking into."

James snorted at this. "I still say we just write them down. It'd be quicker. We've got plenty of other things going on after all."

"What are you on about?" asked Sirius. "We've got loads of free time. Not all of us is holing up with Walker at breaks to talk Quidditch schemes."

"Yes, you only hole up with Gin at breaks for a quick snog," teased James. "Plus we've got Transfiguration homework, you know."

"And our actual homework," Remus pointed out lowly, but both Sirius and James hand-waved this.

"I think it's worth considering, is all," said Sirius. "It'd be right useful if we could work it out."

They made it to the classroom shortly thereafter, and the four boys took their standard seats in the back. Remus tried to ignore the way several of the Ravenclaw girls stared at them as they entered, but felt his neck growing hot nonetheless. Once seated, he distracted himself by observing the new professor, a middle-aged wizard who sat at the desk at the front of the room, flipping through a stack of parchment with quick flicks of his wand. He had dark hair peppered with gray and a thin, tidy mustache. Obviously focused on his various sheets of parchment, the wizard did not look up or pay the students any attention at all until the peal of the bell echoed through the castle. At this, he stood, straightened his robes, and offered the class a close-mouthed smile.

"Good afternoon," he said, gaze sweeping around the room. He seemed to be waiting for something, but with another whisk of his wand, the door to the classroom closed gently. When the class remained silent, unsure of this new authority in their lives, the wizard continued. "I am Professor Idurus. This is—" He quickly checked one of the sheets of parchment that laid on his desk. "—Level Four, Defense Against the Dark Arts. Ravenclaws and Gryffindors?"

There was a general murmur of assent and nodding throughout the class.

"Lovely," Professor Idurus said. He again checked his parchment, cleared his throat, and went on. "I have been reviewing your three years of defensive education to this point. To say your curriculum has been disorganized would be an understatement. While Laurel Romielle seems to have caught this class up on defensive shields and counterjinxes, there are still a number of glaring gaps in your defensive magic experience that I will be looking to address this year." His tone was straightforward and undramatic, but several of the Ravenclaws shifted at this proclamation, as if they were being personally reprimanded for this lapse in their educational history.

"This year," the professor told them, "we will be focusing solely on how to defend yourselves against dark creatures."

Remus felt his stomach clinch reflexively and a wave of dread overtake him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sirius tense. He didn't dare look toward James or Peter.

Unaware of the sudden panic that was engulfing the pupil sitting in the back of the room, Idurus continued. "I have a syllabus drafted here, which I shall pass out momentarily," he said, gesturing toward the stack of parchment on his desk. "First, I am willing to admit to you that I am not an expert in matters of dark creatures. As an Auror, I have occasional dealings with boggarts or vampires, but my specialty is more geared toward dueling and apprehending dark wizards than it is in overpowering magical beasts. Nevertheless, your O.W.L.s are a little over a year away and it is all but a certainty that there will be a number of questions geared toward how to identify and defend yourselves against these dark and dangerous creatures. It is my responsibility to ensure you are properly prepared not only for your exams, but also for the unlikely chance that you encounter a kappa or a werewolf."

More murmurs flitted through the classroom at this pronouncement, but they seemed to fade in and out of Remus's ears. His vision clouded. Breathe, he told himself. It would not do to pass out in his Defense lesson, especially not now. He could feel the eyes of his friends on him, but he did not chance a returned glance. Instead, he focused on the air moving in and out of his lungs, of the feel of the cool wooden desktop against his fingers, of the faraway sound of some sort of bird chirping outside the classroom window. It calmed him somewhat.

By the time Remus was able to reorient himself enough to the teacher's words, Idurus had once again flicked his wand and a sheet of parchment flew to every student's desk.

"…taken the steps to outline a detailed course schedule for you, so that you may become more acquainted with the progression of dark creatures we will be metaphorically tackling…"

Swallowing heavily, Remus forced himself to look at the parchment, where a list of tight black lines swam before his eyes.

"3 September: Introduction to Ministry classifications

5-12 September: Pixies

14-21 September: Kappas"

The list continued, meticulously detailing every lesson they would have through the end of term, and Remus skimmed his eyes across it searching desperately for the dreaded word, but to no avail. By the time he reached the bottom of the parchment, ("11-18 December: Pogrebins") he was breathing a bit easier.

Then he realized the list continued on the back.

His eyes snapped to the word as if drawn by a magnet. There, at the bottom, in the very last slot before the start of exams: "4-11 June: Werewolves." Hands shaking, Remus flipped the parchment back to the front and tried to tamp down the panic that was climbing up his throat.

He was not sure how he made it through the remainder of the Defense lesson. Later, he realized that the notes he had taken throughout were disjointed and nonsensical, as though he had written down only every other word that Professor Idurus spoke about the taxonomy of magical creatures and the ways that the Ministry systematically rated various species. The only bit of his notes he was able to hone in on was the fact that he had written down the word "beast" 27 times.

"Outside before dinner?" James suggested tersely as they made their way out of the classroom once the lesson had finally—thankfully—come to an end.

"Right," nodded Sirius, his jaw tight. "Outside."

They did not speak again until they were standing in the shade of the castle wall, just around the corner from the path that led down to the greenhouses. The sun had sunk low in the sky but still warmed Remus's legs as he dropped his school bag to the ground next to his friends' and lowered himself gingerly to the grass, stretching his aching ankle out before him. He thought longingly of his four-poster and of the oblivion of sleep, and braced himself for what he knew was coming.

And sure enough, James spoke first. "So. What are we going to do about this?"

"Do?" repeated Peter, sliding down to again sit next to Remus in a way he found distinctly comforting. "What do you mean?"

"Well we can't just let this Idurus fellow carry on with his—curriculum—like he's planning," said James as if this was exceedingly obvious. "We've got to stop him at the very least from teaching everyone how to, what'd he say, 'identify and defend yourself' against…certain creatures."

Sirius already had a cigarette perched between his lips, and he lit it with his Muggle lighter before nodding his agreement. "We disrupt him," he told them. "Wreak havoc. It wouldn't be the first time, eh?"

"No." Remus's voice was quiet but firm, and the others looked at him in surprise.

"Remus, mate—" began James, but Remus cut him off.

"No, I don't want you wreaking havoc or playing pranks to stop him from teaching about werewolves."

He so rarely brought himself to utter the term that the other three simply stared at him for a moment.

"But—"

"No, James," Remus repeated. He had known what they were going to say, had been formulating his rebuttal during the trek through the castle, and he wasn't about to yield to them now. "Look, Idurus isn't Philpott. He's an Auror. He's not going to stand for you dosing him with sneezing powder and the like."

"We're not scared of some teacher, Remus," scoffed Sirius, handing James a cigarette. "Auror or not."

But Remus ignored him. "Secondly," he went on, "he doesn't know about me. You can't do anything—anything—that might give him a clue about what I am."

James passed the cigarette to Peter and took another from Sirius. He flipped it between his fingers as he frowned down at Remus. "That's why we'd start soon. No one'd possibly cotton on if we disrupted the lessons on, say, kappas."

Remus purposefully ignored him, along with the sight of both James and Peter lighting their cigarettes. "And lastly, and most importantly, you heard what Idurus said. We're going to be asked about these creatures on our O.W.L.s, if not our N.E.W.T.s."

"We don't care about—"

"You might not care, but I do," implored Remus. "And it's not fair for the rest of our class not to learn what they need to as well. I'm telling you, I don't want you to mess with Idurus or his lessons."

Peter's eyes bounced between the three of them as he took small puffs of his cigarette. James and Sirius looked at each other, clearly trying to find some sort of loophole in Remus's argument. It was James who spoke first, exhaling a stream of smoke that disappeared into the breeze.

"If that's what you want, Moony," he conceded.

Sirius, though, snorted. "We're not just going to sit by and let him—"

"Please, Sirius," pleaded Remus. "Please don't mess with him."

Sirius took a contemplative drag and then looked down at Remus, his face unreadable. "We'll come up with another way, all right? We'll think of something."

"Sirius—" started Remus, but he cut off suddenly when the sound of a twig snapping against the grass alerted them to someone's presence around the corner of the castle wall.

Peter squeaked and immediately stubbed his barely-smoked cigarette out in the grass, covering the butt haphazardly with some dirt. Neither James nor Sirius showed remotely the same concern, and both took a handful of steps in order to peer around the corner, the former's cigarette dangling between his fingers, the latter's between his lips.

"Ah," said James, and Remus could tell by the way his shoulders tensed even before he reached for his wand that the out-of-sight person was not someone they wanted to see. "Snivellus."

"Eavesdropping are you, Snivelly?" sneered Sirius as both Remus and Peter found their feet and approached the others. With a shot of anxiousness, Remus wondered exactly how much Snape had overheard of their conversation. He attempted to replay it in his head to determine if they had uttered anything too revealing, but his mind felt nearly as sluggish as his exhausted body.

Snape had clearly not anticipated his presence being noticed, as evidenced by the fact that his wand had not been previously drawn. He unsheathed it from his pocket and pointed it between them even as his eyes lingered on the cigarettes James and Sirius were still unabashedly nursing.

"Smoking's prohibited on castle grounds," he spat at them, and Remus could not help but think that such a proclamation was a fairly feeble way to antagonize them.

His friends must have been thinking along the same lines, as they snorted in unison. "You think you're a prefect or some rubbish now, Snivelly?"

Snape was taking small sideways steps along the grass as though trying to better position himself for an approaching fight. Both Remus and Peter at this point had also taken out their wands, though Remus wasn't sure his quivering muscles or his throbbing ankle could withstand anything in the realm of a confrontation at the moment.

"I haven't got to be a prefect to report you," Snape retorted, baring his teeth slightly.

"Well that's true," said James, taking a long, unconcerned drag. "And I could likewise report you, Sniv."

"Hadn't you heard?" continued Sirius as if the pair had rehearsed it. "Being a nosy twat—and I mean nose-y—is prohibited at this school too."

Without a second's hesitation or warning, Snape shot a jet of vicious blue light at Sirius's chest. Sirius moved to block it, but the force of the spell ricocheted off of his quick Shield and into his forehead, where a small cut bloomed above his brow.

"Expelliarmus!" shouted both James and Remus simultaneously and Snape's wand sailed over their heads and into the grass behind them.

"You'll bloody pay for that, Snivellus," growled Sirius, dabbing at the cut with his sleeve. After examining the blood on his cuff, he then reached up and took a forceful drag of his cigarette with the one hand while training his wand on Snape with the other. "Petrificus Totalus!"

As one, Snape's legs and arms snapped together and he toppled over, supine in the grass and glaring with the utmost hatred at the others as they moved to loom over him.

"You know what else is prohibited, Snivellus?" said James, and his voice had lost any semblance of the joking quality it had harbored previously. He tossed his own cigarette to the ground next to Snape's legs and crushed it with the toe of his shoe. "Dueling."

"You going to report us for this too, you hypocritical little maggot?" Sirius approached Snape's face purposefully, and Remus felt a bubble of unease well up within him at the sight of Sirius's expression—it was colder and more vindictive than Remus had ever witnessed before. "Too bad we've got you at our mercy now, eh?"

They stood and watched as Sirius pressed the toe of his shoe against the edge of Snape's jaw, forcing the side of the Slytherin's face into the grass. The jade blades tickled Snape's nose and obscured one eye, even as the other shot daggers toward his tormentor. Remus looked to James, hoping his friend might rein Sirius in, but he was simply observing with a sort of casual interest. Peter's eyes bounced from Sirius to Snape in awe.

"What should we do to him, James?" Sirius posed, and even with his shoe still pressing firmly against Snape's face, he took a long, easy drag of his dwindling cigarette before looking up and grinning at James, but the smile didn't reach his eyes, and James did not smile back.

Remus could not bear it. "Sirius…"

But Sirius didn't pay him any attention at all. Instead, he removed his foot from Snape's face and crouched down next to him. Snape's eyes were nearly black with loathing, but he was unable to do more than glare as Sirius spun the cigarette between his fingers.

"Why don't we teach him a lesson about following us around…" He moved the burning end of the cigarette toward Snape's forehead ever so slowly. "…interrupting our smokes…" Still, his hand inched closer. "…threatening us like the cowardly little wank-rag he is…"

"Sirius, stop!" said Remus, unable to watch it unfold any further. "That's enough."

Sirius's hand did not stop its slow progression toward Snape's face, though, and just as Remus was about to try to physically grab at his friend to put an end to it, James's voice broke through.

"You'd better not, mate," he said with a strained sort of nonchalance, and Sirius's hand froze a few inches from Snape's face. "There's so much grease on his face we'd probably all go up in flames."

Sirius laughed hollowly, but the next moment he stubbed his cigarette out in the grass next to Snape's chin. Then he stood up, wiped again at the bit of blood on his brow, and shrugged at the others. "You're right. His face's ugly enough as it is. It'd terrify all the firsties if it got any uglier."

"C'mon then," James said, beckoning for Remus who had remained frozen even after the others began fetching their bags and walking back toward the courtyard. "Might as well get some dinner, if the sight of this git didn't cause you to lose your appetite."

Remus felt his feet propelling him forward, but he looked back at Snape's paralyzed form as he said, "We can't just leave him…"

"Sure we can. Someone's bound to stumble upon him before morning. At the least, someone'd spot him on the way to Herbology after breakfast."

So with his insides squirming in guilt and distress, and against his better judgment, Remus limped along behind his friends.

---

It was the second full day of term, and Lily had already been stood up.

Not by her boyfriend—her sweet, punctual boyfriend whom she was scheduled to meet in exactly sixteen minutes (not that she was counting)—but by Severus. He had agreed to work on their Potions assignment together in the library after dinner and she had been waiting at their designated table for nearly two hours and he still had not made an appearance. The good news was that she was nearly finished with her Potions assignment. The bad news was that she was now rather annoyed with her best friend.

Severus's absence wasn't the only thing annoying her though. About twenty minutes prior, Gin Leigh had taken up residence at a nearby table. Lily's current bitterness toward her roommate combined with the whispers and giggles her presence had evoked from a table full of third-year Hufflepuffs was making it difficult to concentrate on the brewing techniques used in Wit-Sharpening Potions.

Lily had not spoken to Gin since the train ride, had staunchly ignored the other girl's presence when she appeared in the dormitory and at the Gryffindor table for the previous two days, and had not offered to walk down with her to Care of Magical Creatures like they usually did. The other fourth-year girls had treated Gin in much the same fashion, though with significantly more acidic whispers cast toward her turned back.

"I can't believe her," Adin had said on the first night back as she, Lily, Mary and Raeanne had changed into their night clothes. Gin had not appeared in the dormitory after the welcoming feast, for which Lily had been rather grateful. She wasn't sure she would have been able to restrain her temper and had no wish to face Gin at that moment. "I just cannot believe her. This whole time…"

Raeanne, who had not been on the train and had been filled in on all the scandalous gossip during the feast, paused in the act of unpacking her toothbrush and frowned at Adin. "And Karina said they had been sneaking off together to snog since second year? Are you sure?"

"Yes." Adin tied her dark hair back with rather more force than was entirely usual. "Since second year and she never breathed a word. Even though I'd told her about Danny countless times, and Lily's told her all about Andrew, haven't you?"

It was true. Lily had returned from her very first Hogsmeade date with Andrew and had proceeded to tell all four of the other third-year girls about it in great detail, and they had all sighed and squealed and gasped in all the right places, Gin included. Lily had thought they were friends. Not best friends as she was with Severus, certainly, or even as close as the immediate kinship she had found with Adin, but close enough friends to generally keep one another up-to-date on one's love life. There had been so many times when Lily had found herself confiding in Gin, had tried to get her to open up, had asked her about herself, and Gin had never let on even the barest hint of what was actually transpiring.

Unlike Adin or Emily or Mary, Lily's opinion of Gin had nothing to do with jealousy. In fact, Lily didn't think her perspective would have changed had they discovered Gin had been secretly kissing Davey Gudgeon or Phillip Maloney or even Peter Pettigrew; it wasn't who Gin had been snogging for two years, it was that she had been lying about it.

And Lily had little patience for that sort of deceit. In Severus, she already had one friend in her life who didn't often understand that reciprocity mattered in a friendship; she wasn't particularly keen to discover that someone else she trusted with secrets didn't feel compelled to do the same.

Lily had allowed Adin's ramblings to continue unobstructed as she unfurled her pajamas from her trunk and groped around to locate her stuffed unicorn Cobb. It was only after she had dislodged him from underneath her brass scales that she turned back to the conversation.

"…sat there on the train today while we were literally talking about who Sirius had snogged—"

"She's a liar," Lily had finally cut in, suddenly weary of the entire ordeal. "It's as simple as that. Now is it all right if I have first turn in the loo?"

And so two nights later as she sat in the library, Lily could do nothing but try to ignore the Hufflepuffs' titters and thinly veiled mutterings. She certainly was in no state to rise to Gin's defense, anyhow.

Luckily for her, Madam Pince was not prone to allowing students to carry on in the library, and after one particularly obnoxious shriek of laughter from the Hufflepuffs, the entire group was shooed bodily out the door. It was only when the librarian had retaken her sentinel-like seat behind the check-out desk that Lily made the mistake of meeting Gin's gaze. She looked entirely unruffled and as detached as ever, blinking once at Lily before going back to her book, which only served to irritate Lily further.

Distraction came in the form of Severus, who slid into the empty chair next to her before Lily had even noticed his presence.

"Sev! Where have you—" She looked him over. "What's wrong?"

His dark eyes burned with cold fury; his normally slouched posture was rigid, coiled like a spring; his pale cheeks were drawn. He did not look at her, but simply pulled the Potions assignment she had worked on toward himself as if to review it.

"Sev?" she tried again, glancing up to ensure Madam Pince was not paying them any attention. "Where were you? Did something happen?"

"No," he almost snarled, still not meeting her eye. "I got held up is all."

"What do you mean? Held up doing what?"

"It doesn't matter. Leave it alone, Lily."

"I don't understand. Why are—" She noticed something green buried in his dark, lank hair and reached over to extract it. Severus flinched at the contact. "Why have you got grass in your hair?"

At this he finally looked up. His eyes flashed as he snatched the blade of grass from between her fingers and proceeded to toss it to the library floor, though he did not answer her. When he went back to reading her parchment, Lily tried a new tactic.

"Sev!" she whispered dramatically, raising her eyebrows up and down a few times for good measure. "Were you out rolling round in the grass with some girl?"

He was evidently not amused, as his scowl deepened and his face turned a blotchy puce. "Oh you've cracked it, well done," he mocked derisively. Then he pointed at one of the lines in her Potions assignment. "And you've mistaken ginger root for Valerian root, here."

Lily slid her parchment back to its prior location in front of her and frowned down at it, not entirely believing that she had made such a novice mistake. "Bugger," she sighed, scratching out the error. "You're right. Valerian root would counteract the armadillo bile for certain."

"And would make the drinker drowsy. Not exactly the effect you're going for if you need your wits sharpened."

Using the end of her jobberknoll quill to keep track of her lines, Lily searched through the rest of the parchment for other such instances of the noted root-swap. She found three more in total, and had just finished fixing the final error when Severus spoke again.

"There's something strange about Lupin."

"Hmm?" Lily asked, distracted.

"Why's he always missing lessons?"

"Who?"

"Lupin!"

Lily looked at him in confusion. There was an inflamed spot on the side of his nose and she tried not to stare at it. "Lupin? I haven't any idea. Why do you care?"

"Because there's something strange about him," Severus repeated. "And I'd like to know what it is. Missing the first day of term isn't normal."

Lily chanced a glance at her wristwatch. She was due to meet Andrew in nine minutes and was not particularly looking forward to Severus's reaction when she took her leave.

"He had Floo-sickness from when his dad brought him to the castle," she told him absently, her thoughts elsewhere.

His lips pinched inward. "Floo-sickness that requires a two-night stay in the hospital wing?"

"Is that unusual?"

"Unusual?" he scoffed. "Merlin, Lily, even the weakest sod among us can kick Floo-sickness in an hour with the right tonic. It must have been something else and I want to know what."

"Why?" she asked again, starting to collect her things. "What's it got to do with you?"

"The lot of them are—" His gaze followed her motion as she rolled up her Potions assignment. "You're not leaving are you?"

It was often a delicate balance, dealing with Severus's moods. Usually she found herself biting her tongue to keep from propelling him into deeper states of unpleasantness. Tonight, though, after waiting for him for nearly two hours, she felt entirely justified in her lack of patience with him.

"I am," she told him, her general annoyance perhaps making itself more evident by the determination with which she packed her bag. "I'm off to meet Andrew, actually."

If possible, his shoulders became more rigid. "You're joking."

She arched an eyebrow at him. "I've been waiting for you since six, Sev, and you won't even tell me why you're late. I had planned to meet Andrew at eight. You can't be cross about that."

"Andrew," he sneered. "You're ditching me for Andrew."

"Ditching you?" Madam Pince glared over at them from her perch, and Lily lowered her voice, suddenly furious. "I'm not ditching you, Severus. You're the one who ditched me and you can't even be arsed to tell me why—"

"I just don't think he's good for you, Lily," said Severus, and his voice was low and angry, but he did not meet her eye. He stared fiercely at a burn mark on the wooden table.

This made Lily pause. "What do you mean, he's not good for me? I mean, he made prefect, you know—"

Severus snorted. "Being named a prefect isn't what it used to be, clearly. Merlin, even Bertram Aubrey made prefect, and he barely knows the hexing end of a wand. Are you going to go out with him now, too?"

"Don't be rude," snapped Lily, her patience turning brittle. "You've barely ever even spoken with Andrew, Sev…"

"And I don't need to. But I do know that it's clear you need to focus on your schoolwork. I mean, mistaking ginger root for Valerian root is something I might expect from a first year, and you said we were going to work on that new charm together. I've started reading about how to charm the properties of sound based on the individual—"

Lily took a deep breath and attempted to keep her tone from sounding too harsh as she cut him off. "Severus, if you'll actually show up, I'll meet you tomorrow after dinner and you can tell me about your charm. Right now, I'm off to meet my boyfriend who wouldn't dream of being two hours late to meet me with no excuse."

And with a scathing look, Lily swung her bag over her shoulder, swept her hair out of her face and looked back down at the best friend who was still refusing to meet her eye.

"Unless you want to tell me where you've been?" Lily posed, hopeful despite herself.

Severus inhaled deeply through his nostrils. The red spot quivered, and Lily looked away. "I'll see you tomorrow," he said, and his tone reeked of indignation, but Lily didn't much care. Without another word, she stalked toward the library exit, giving a faux-cheery wave to Madam Pince as she went.

Unfortunately, her vexation was such that she failed to notice the nearby movements of her fellow library-goers, and was therefore caught by surprise when she reached the door at the exact same moment as Gin Leigh.

"Oh," said Gin, the usual impassivity of her expression eclipsed for only a millisecond by something like wariness. She adjusted her bag against her shoulder and held the door open for Lily, who had no choice but to walk through it. "Hello."

"Hello," Lily responded automatically, but she said nothing more as she turned the corner and began striding up the corridor toward the main staircase.

"Are you going back up to the common room, then?" Gin asked, matching Lily's pace with annoying ease.

Lily did not look at the other girl, but replied rather snippily, "For the moment."

There was a lengthy pause before Gin said, "Right. Well, me too."

Silence fell between them. By the time they had reached the fifth floor and turned past the statue of Boris the Bewildered, it had become so uncomfortable that Lily was tempted to pretend she had left a book behind in the library, just for an excuse to double-back on her own. But the thought of Andrew waiting for her at the portrait hole made her dismiss the idea and she continued onward.

"Are you all right?" Gin asked, the abruptness cracking through what Lily had assumed was in impasse but was, in hindsight, more likely just Gin's inherent oddness.

"Quite," intoned Lily.

Up another staircase they ascended, and she assumed Gin had at least gotten the point that she didn't much feel like a chat, but she was evidently wrong.

"Look," Gin said, her fingertips reaching out to brush the sleeve of Lily's robes in what must have been an attempt at a friendly gesture. "Lily…will you tell me what I've done that's so horrible? Why you're so terribly cross with me?"

Lily did not stop walking like Gin had clearly hoped, but she did at least look at the other girl, readying to tell her exactly what had set her temper on edge. Yet the look on Gin's face was one of such earnest sincerity that she quashed the acid on her tongue, sighed, and said, "I'm not cross, Gin. I just haven't anything to say to you. And you very clearly haven't anything to say to me." Then, before she could stop herself, she added, "I thought we were friends."

"Well I—I suppose I thought we were too." A slight crease appearing between her brows, Gin fidgeted with the straps of her bag. "Does being friends mean we can't keep anything private, though?"

Had the question come from anyone else, Lily would have thought it rhetorical. The question from Gin's lips, though, came with such diligent curiosity that Lily found herself answering with what she considered a reasonably impassioned response. "There's a difference between secrecy and privacy, and it's clear you don't understand the difference at all and certainly not enough to ever forsake secrecy in honor of actual friendship."

All in all, she thought this was rather eloquently said, particularly when her own aggravation was once again thrumming through her ears. It seemed as if Gin were going to respond, but any chance of rebuttal was aborted as they turned another corner and Lily slammed headlong into a very solid body.

"Andrew!"

Two sturdy hands found her shoulders to steady her. "Blimey, Lily, are you okay?"

He was smiling at her through his surprise and Lily could not fight against the swooping sensation in her stomach at the sight of him.

"Yes!" she said, perhaps too enthusiastically. Gin lingered awkwardly nearby, watching them. "Sorry, yes. But I thought we were supposed to meet by the Fat Lady?"

"We were." His hands slid down her arms until they grasped her fingers. "Only…well I guess I was excited. Reckoned I'd make my way to meet you instead." He seemed to notice something in her expression and his smile fell the tiniest bit. He glanced briefly at Gin before turning back to Lily. "Is everything all right?"

"Of course," she answered at once. "What should we do?"

"We can go for a walk?" he suggested.

"I'll see you later," mumbled Gin, and she did not wait for Lily to respond before turning on her heel and continuing toward the passage that would take her up to the common room.

Lily watched her for a moment with a twist of unease in her gut before forcing a smile back at Andrew. "A walk sounds lovely. Where to?"

"Let's wander." With enviable deftness, he slid the strap of Lily's school bag off of her shoulder and onto his own and then threaded his fingers through hers. "We've an hour until curfew."

"Only an hour?" teased Lily. "And here I thought prefects could get away with being out past curfew."

"Only for patrols, and I haven't got one of those until tomorrow. Besides, patrols are far less interesting than a walk with you. Maybe we'll find a secret passage, eh?"

She laughed lightly at the idea. Having attended Hogwarts for three full years, she had never personally discovered so much as a secret broom cupboard. Nevertheless, she agreed. For a minute or two they walked silently, and it was only after they had navigated a rickety staircase back down to the fifth floor that Andrew spoke.

"That girl you were with. Gin Leigh? You two are friends, right?"

"I don't know," Lily told him honestly. She hesitated before saying, "Not really, I guess."

"Well that's good I suppose. People have been talking about her quite a lot."

"Really? Even the fifth years?"

Andrew scratched at the back of his neck and gave a quick nod. "The lads, at least."

"Oh." Disquiet surged within her. "What are they saying?"

He seemed to choose his words carefully. "Nothing I could repeat and feel remotely gentlemanly."

Lily got the gist and felt assuredly that she should not argue the point. She fell silent as they walked along, thinking of Gin and whether or not she deserved what she got; thinking of Severus and his tendency lately to reveal nothing but the harshness within himself; her thoughts swirling and jumbled and aggravatingly discontented.

Andrew broke the quiet, his question only somewhat hesitant as he eyed her.

"Were you able to finish your Potions assignment like you hoped?"

Lily, whose thoughts swiveled back to Severus, shook her head idly. "Almost, but not entirely. I mistook ginger root for Valerian root, and I was going to look into a bit about the scarab beetles, only…"

"Only what?" He gave her hand a squeeze. "You realized you're cleverer than most of the library's books when it comes to Potions?"

"No," she said, biting at her bottom lip. "It's Severus. He didn't show until a few minutes ago and he wouldn't tell me why he was so late."

There was a hitch in Andrew's gait. "Oh. Er, you didn't hear about that?"

"Hear about what?"

"Snape. I mean…I don't know what happened, per se, but…" Hesitating for a moment, he pulled the strap of her bag more tightly against his shoulder and peered down at her from the corner of his eye.

"What?" Lily pressed.

"I heard he was found on the grounds. Hagrid stumbled across him on his way up to the castle."

"Wait—what? What do you mean he was found on the grounds?"

Andrew shrugged. "He'd clearly been on the losing end of a duel or something and left there. Stunned, I suppose."

"What?"

Vision clouding with the image of Severus abandoned and frozen on the castle grounds as night fell, Lily stopped walking. She felt the cold tendrils of guilt creeping up her neck. No wonder he hadn't told her what had happened. He had undoubtedly been mortified.

Andrew was watching her with concern. "Er, did he seem all right? Was he hurt or anything?"

"N-no. He…he was…" Lily shook herself, clarity descending upon her. She met his eye and reached for her bag. "I have to go."

"What? Why?"

"I have to go check on him. I shouldn't have left him. I should be there with him." Unsure if she was trying to convince him or herself, she succeeded in taking back possession of the bag and letting go of his hand. "I'll meet you in the common room at curfew, all right?"

Obvious annoyance flashed along Andrew's normally warm brown eyes. "All right," he conceded with a sigh.

Nothing else needed to be said, and she bestowed upon him a grateful but fleeting smile before hurrying off down the corridor. By the time she reached the library she was slightly out of breath, and she pushed into the entrance with more force than was strictly necessary. Madam Pince scowled at her from her ever-present perch, but Lily ignored her thoroughly, eyes locking on the table she had vacated only twenty minutes prior. He was still there, curved over a stack of worn books.

She couldn't pinpoint exactly why she had needed to come back. It was not as if she could bring up the mysterious incident with him—he clearly had no interest in discussing the matter, and she knew him well enough to understand that his prideful inclinations would not pleasantly abide her having heard about it from a different source. Thus, instead of saying anything at all after she plopped into the chair next to him and he quirked an inquisitive eyebrow at her sudden return, she simply gave him a small, apologetic grin and once again delved into her bag to unpack her Potions assignment.

"Well?" he probed harshly, evidently unable to allow her to return sans explanation. "Did you get ditched?"

"No," she said very deliberately, envisioning him lying alone on the darkening grounds and allowing the thought to bite back any embittered retort. "I decided my time might be better spent having you explain to me the effect scarab beetles have to a base potion, if you're willing?"

And when the corners of his mouth twitched upward very, very slightly, and the color returned to his sallow cheeks with a satisfied flush, Lily allowed herself to expel a relieved breath she hadn't been aware she was holding, certain—for the moment, at least—that she had made the right decision in taking her place by his side.

---

With the disruption of his first-of-September transformation and the drama of their first days back behind them, Remus was once again able to find some normalcy and relax into the rhythm of life at Hogwarts. He had not forgotten Sirius's behavior and the viciousness that had emerged so suddenly that afternoon in the waning sunshine, but as the first weeks of term passed, his friend had morphed mostly back into his usual self—eyes dancing with mischievousness and humor instead of the hollow cruelty he had exhibited so abruptly toward Snape.

Remus had tried to broach the topic with James the day after the incident, but James refused to engage with him on the subject. "He's fine, Moony. You saw him, he wasn't going to actually burn Snivelly's greasy face with his fag. It was just a laugh."

"But James, you saw him too…it was like he was—like he was possessed or something—"

"Possessed? Come on now Moony, don't you think you're overreacting? He's had a bit of a rough go of it is all, but it seems like he's through the worst of it."

Remus did not have much of a counterargument; there was, after all, truth to James's words. He wasn't sure what he had been hoping for from James—possibly just confirmation that Sirius's actions had gone too far. But James had never gone against Sirius, had never truly spoken out against him, and it seemed that a minor, if disturbing, incident with Severus Snape would not be the occasion to warrant such a betrayal. Thus, Remus was left with the fading disquiet of having witnessed his friend transform—if only for a minute—into a more dangerous shadow of himself.

The irony was not lost on him.

Nevertheless, as the days went by, there was little time to dwell on Sirius's mercurial moods or James's dismissal of his behavior. The Hogwarts professors had evidently decided that fourth years didn't need time to do such trivial things as sleep or eat, as the homework quantities between third and fourth year had seemingly doubled. Many nights, Remus found himself shepherded out of the library by Madam Pince as curfew neared, bleary-eyed and insisting he only needed another minute or two searching through the dusty stacks. Aside from his schoolwork, he had found himself intrigued by the conversation had in the corridor regarding a catalog of Hogwarts' secret passages. Unable to disregard such a potentially useful idea, Remus found himself periodically researching methods of enchanting some sort of diagram to reflect the Hogwarts layout depending on the day, time, phase of the moon, or any other such factor that affected the castle's corridors and staircases. So far, though, he hadn't had much success.

The boys' trips to the fourth-floor secret passage were scattered, as they not only had their school work and James's Quidditch responsibilities to schedule around, but both James and Sirius had also been assigned a handful of evening detentions already for performing magic in the corridors, usually consisting of practicing their jinxes on unsuspecting Slytherins. Neither seemed too bothered by their evenings spent polishing trophies or cleaning out cauldrons, and as Remus had learned a long time ago that attempts to dissuade them of their troublemaking generally fell on deaf ears, he said nothing.

Yet despite their busy schedules, they were able to find odd assorted hours to spend practicing the Form spells in the torchlit passage, and those hours had quickly become some of Remus's favorite. Sure, his three friends hadn't made much outward progress in their quest to become Animagi, but they persevered, rarely complained, and the four of them quite usually ended up laughing together atop the pillows and cushions that littered the stone ground.

It was one such Saturday afternoon in late September, and Remus found himself lying on his stomach and scratching away at a Charms essay. Peter sat nearby, eating through a plate of the house elves' chocolate eclairs and thoroughly distracting Remus from his work.

"…and Queenie said they'd be serving the roasted chicken tonight—the one with the carrots—but I asked if they'd be able to add some of those crispy potatoes they do, you know, and she said they'd send them up to the Gryffindor table, no sweat." He took a sizable bite of eclair and wiped a bit of cream off his lip with his knuckle before continuing. "So then I asked if they could swap out the treacle tart for those shortbread biscuits they make and—"

"Peter," Remus interrupted amusedly, "I don't think you're supposed to put in custom orders with the house elves. Haven't they got enough to be preparing every day?"

Peter licked his fingers and then frowned, as if never having considered this before. "Well if they couldn't do it, they'd just say so, right?"

Frankly, Remus had never much pondered the idea either. Not having grown up with them, house elf conventions were beyond him. "I guess I'm not sure if they could say so or not."

"Well," said Peter breezily, entirely unconcerned, "I'll ask them if they mind next time, but it sure doesn't seem like they do." As if to prove the point, he shoved the entirety of what remained of his eclair into his mouth.

Remus turned back to his Charms text, but he hadn't read through one paragraph before Peter said with a bit of excitement, "Someone's coming!"

The sound of footsteps down the stone passage proved Peter correct and a moment later, Sirius's lanky form came ambling into view.

"Hullo mates!" greeted Sirius cheerfully as he approached them.

"You're late," Peter accused.

"You sound like McGonagall. You'll be handing out detentions next. Where's James?"

"He's been with Walker and the team since trials this morning. They still haven't decided on a new Chaser," explained Peter. "Where've you been then?"

From Sirius's familiar lazy smile, Remus could have told Peter exactly where he had been. And sure enough, Sirius grinned in the same proud, nonchalant way he did every time he had a similar answer. "The Astronomy Tower with Gin."

Remus just barely abstained from shaking his head in wonderment. He didn't think he would ever quite understand the peculiar dynamic that Sirius and Gin shared, nor their mutual ability to consistently sneak off together and then fairly well ignore one another in public. Sirius had brushed off his questioning enough times that Remus had grown hesitant in voicing his confusion.

Peter, though, had no such reticence, and his eyes went wide with wonder. "It's the middle of the day!"

"Exactly. No one bothers to go up there until it's dark out," Sirius shrugged. "And what's taking the team so long anyway? Seemed obvious Merriweather should make Chaser."

"Maybe not," Peter commented. "Cecilia Axelgrove looked pretty good out there this morning."

Sirius snorted. "She looked pretty good. She didn't look pretty good at Quidditch. And just because you're gagging after her doesn't mean she should make Chaser."

"I am not!"

Sirius laughed at this, but it was a cheerful laugh instead of a teasing one, and Remus was relieved to hear it. "No need to act coy. There was a puddle of drool in your lap watching her at trials this morning."

His cheeks flushed pink, but Peter didn't have a chance to deny it, as James's arrival put a stop to the discussion.

"Well," James said dramatically, tossing his bag onto the stone floor and throwing himself onto one of the squishy cushions next to Sirius. "We finally have a new Chaser. And it only took me four bloody hours to convince Walker."

"It's Merriweather, then?" asked Remus.

"Merlin, no," said James, pulling a face. "You sound like the rest of the team. It's Muller."

"Really? Raeanne?"

"'Course." James ruffled his untidy hair in apparent impatience. "She was the best this morning. And now she's Chaser."

"Er, better than Merriweather? I mean he outstripped her plenty—"

Sighing, James stood again and started pacing across the passage. "As I've been explaining to Walker all afternoon, Merriweather was the fastest, sure. But we don't need speed, we've got me and I'm the fastest bloody Chaser in the school. We need accuracy to offset Walker's strength and my, well, everything else. Plus, Merriweather's a sixth-year. Walker and Peakes are both gone after this year and we need to think of the future here. Spreading out the talent between years is just good Captain-ing."

"If you say so, mate," nodded Sirius, eyebrows raised. "Only Peter here wanted it to be Cecilia Axelgrove…"

Sniggering, James stopped his pacing, and in a way that was uncannily similar to Sirius's own response just minutes before, said, "Chasers are supposed to be good with the Quaffle, Peter, not have good-sized Quaffles under their robes…"

"She does have nice ones, doesn't she?" commented Peter dreamily.

"Certainly," acknowledged James, as if this were a given fact. "Peakes wanted her too, but I think that's just because he's soft on her, not because of any particular talent for Chasing."

"I heard she's going out with the Head Boy," offered Peter.

"With Fortescue? Too bad for Peakes. Where'd you hear that?"

"I hear things," Peter replied enigmatically. Then, pausing to lick an errant bit of chocolate off his wrist, he added, "Like I heard both Damon Laslow and Dominick Brown asked Gin to Hogsmeade."

Sirius, who had been reaching surreptitiously for Peter's last eclair, froze. "What?"

"She said no," Peter clarified.

"Oh." That was all Sirius said, and he sat back again, leaving the eclair untouched and clearly pondering this development.

James was looking at him curiously. "Should we go hex the Ravenclaws?" he asked after a moment's uncomfortable silence.

As if surprised by the question, Sirius blinked up at him and then laughed. "No, I mean—no, it's fine. I mean, it's not as if she's my…my girlfriend or something."

"And you're not…" Remus started and then stopped, realizing the futility of questioning Sirius on all of it again.

"I'm not what?" Sirius asked, after a beat.

Remus fidgeted with the quill in his hand, wishing he hadn't said anything at all, but his utter befuddlement regarding Sirius's attitude was enough to give it one more go. "I only mean," he said, swallowing, "you still don't want to go to Hogsmeade with Gin?"

To his surprise, Sirius seemed completely sincere when he grinned and answered, "Why would I want to spend a day in Hogsmeade with a girl when I can spend it with you three idiots?" This did nothing to assuage Remus's confusion, but Sirius clearly had no interest in continuing that particular conversation. He pulled himself to standing and took out his wand. "Now, we aren't in this dingy old passage to sit and gossip like witches, are we? Let's get to it, lads."

Within minutes, the passageway was filled with the hum of the three friends' voices as they stood with their eyes closed and their wands moving in broad, looping patterns. Remus had become used to the song-like incantations they had learned months ago, and allowed the noise to fade into the background as he again turned back to his Charms work. He had only just finished scratching down a bit on when the Scouring Charm was a better option than a Vanishing Charm when—

"Oh holy fucking Godric!"

It was perhaps the shock of hearing James use such harsh language, but for the briefest of moments, Remus instinctively reached toward his wand, convinced that something terrible had occurred. Then he looked up at his friends.

Peter and James were gaping at the spot where Sirius had been and where, now, an enormous black dog stood, blinking at them with pale eyes.

"Oh my God," Remus breathed, finding his feet and joining his friends in their astonishment.

"It's…it's Sirius," squeaked Peter, and it was their collective amazement at what had just transpired that prevented them from teasing Peter for eliciting such an obvious statement. Suddenly feeling rather lightheaded at the development, Remus placed a steadying hand against the passageway wall, eyes never leaving the sight of the animal in front of them.

"Sirius, mate," James said, taking a step toward the huge creature. "You're—holy shit—you're a dog."

In response, the dog, which had remained still until this point, raised his head and let out a resounding bark that caused all of them to jump backward in surprise. As if waking from a trance, Sirius began wagging his long tail. He attempted to move his massive paws but they became immediately tangled in the pile of previously-worn school robes that now lay pooled at his feet, and he stumbled.

"Here," James said, moving forward to unspool the robes, but he had only just crouched down near the animal's flank when without warning, the dog transformed back into a wide-eyed, very human, and very naked Sirius.

"I did it!" Sirius gasped, his expression of utter shock melting into gleeful wonderment. He raised a fist triumphantly in the air. "I did it!"

"Oh bloody hell," said James, who had crumpled backward out of the way of his friend's celebration. "Put some pants on before you start dancing, will you?"

"I did it!" Sirius repeated, and it was a second before James's words seemed to register and he reached down to dislodge his pants from the pile of robes and began pulling them on. "I did it. I bloody-well did it. I'm a dog! I'm a bloody dog!"

"A massive bloody dog!" laughed James, handing Sirius the discarded robes to now put on. "You were as big as a bear! I've never seen a dog as big as that!"

"How'd you do it?" asked Peter, his eyes as wide as saucers. "What was it like?"

Sirius's head poked through his robes before he paused as if considering this. "I…I guess—blimey—I guess I did what we've been doing for months but it was like… Remember the first time you connected? How you felt like you had to lean into it and not think about it? It was like that I reckon. You forget entirely about the wand movements and the incantation and just let the connection take over."

And as Sirius pulled his robes more firmly into place, James took the opportunity to jump onto him in celebration. "You did it, you unbelievable bastard! I can't believe you did it!"

"Don't act so surprised I did it first," laughed Sirius, pushing James off of him and leaning down to retrieve his wand which had clattered to the ground when he had transformed. "I am the brilliant one, lest you forget."

"Sod off," James said, thumping him on the shoulder, but there wasn't the barest trace of malice in the remark. He turned to Remus, glasses crooked and grin gleeful. "What's next then, Moony? Does the mandrake leaf bit allow him to transfigure his robes along with him or are we going to have to see this git starkers every time?"

It took a moment for Remus to register that James was talking to him. He tried to shake himself out of the absolute shock he felt rather suddenly consumed by. Sirius had done it, really done it. He had transformed himself into a dog—a massive bloody dog—right before their very eyes. All for an entirely absurd plan that they had hatched two years prior in a naive attempt to help Remus, of all people.

Head pulsing with both terror and something close to elation, Remus wrenched his eyes from where Sirius was now pulling his shoes back on and turned to James, bringing his thoughts back to the conversation at hand and trying to make sense of the question he had been posed. It was only then that Remus realized he had left both of their Animagi tutorial books locked in his trunk. As it had been so long since they had started the Form spells, they hadn't needed to reference them for months and he had at some point stopped toting them around in his already overburdened schoolbag.

"I-I'll have to check," he told them honestly. He paused, trying to remember all that he had read on the subject, but his brain felt torpid with incredulity. "Er, I think transfiguring the inanimate objects on you doesn't come until later, toward the end. The mandrake leaf has got something to do with your being able to hold the Form and not immediately transform back."

"We're close," Sirius said, finishing with his laces and standing up straight. Jubilation radiated out of him and he started bouncing on the balls of his feet as if his exuberance made him unable to remain stationary. "We'll be with you soon, Moony."

"We've got to celebrate," James told them, still grinning as brightly as if he had just transformed himself. "We'll keep at it tomorrow, but tonight, we're celebrating. It's a giant's step forward, isn't it?"

"Shall we continue down the passage to Hogsmeade?" Sirius posed. "We could try to get some firewhisky off that barman in the Hog's Head. Maybe pinch some more cigarettes from the paper shop Murphy had mentioned. Have you got the cloak?"

James scoffed at the question. "'Course, it's in my bag. And don't forget, Zonko owes us some free merchandise, at the least. Remus, Peter, you in?"

Despite the faint lightheadedness that lingered between Remus's eyes, there was, of course, no declining such an invitation. As Peter bobbed his head excitedly, Remus turned to him with a smile that was suddenly as gleeful as James's. "Guess the house elves will be making those crispy potatoes for nothing, Peter."

Peter did not seem too overly concerned about this and Remus could not blame him. And within minutes, the four boys were making their way down the torchlit stone passageway toward Hogsmeade, exuberant and laughing and basking in Sirius's triumph.

---

A/N: Oh, hey, welcome to the story, Padfoot.

I'm alive! Thanks for the kind reviews. I've also cross-posted this story on AO3 if that's more your style. Same title/author.