While Remus was still admiring the very-real grass, his mother emerged from the house. He gazed at her in wonder: everything about her was perfectly real, from the soft brown hair to the blue eyes. This was her. She was real, she was alive, and she was perfectly fine. This was a dream come true.

"Do you boys want to come in?" she asked, smiling. "You've been out here for nearly three hours."

"Three hours?" said Sirius. "Only three hours?"

"Three hours?" echoed James. "Where did the time go?"

Remus didn't say a thing: he just stared at her some more. She was real. Everything was real. Without warning, he hugged her—she was surprised, but she managed to laugh and pat him on the back a bit. "What's going on, Remus?" she asked.

"Thanks for letting us know," said Remus, his voice muffled.

She giggled. "You're welcome. Come indoors, all right? I'm nearly finished cooking supper."

She went back inside, and then Remus turned to face the Visionvines. "The glow on the vines is gone," he noted. "You know how there was a weird green glow on them before? Not anymore."

"Yeah," said James. "I wonder if it still works. I should try it out…"

"No!" shouted Remus.

James started laughing. "Only joking, only joking. So… you all remember that, right? The broomstick and the bugs and the Quidditch game?"

"No," said Sirius.

"No," said Remus. "I think we all saw… different things, maybe? Peter, did you go in?"

"I was too scared," said Peter. "I stayed right here and waited. I might have taken a nap."

Somehow, the thought of Peter napping was very funny to Remus. "So we were suffering in the Visionvines… and you just napped?"

"Suffering?" repeated Sirius, wrinkling his nose. "I didn't suffer." He looked downright miserable. "I mean, maybe a little. Did you lot suffer? Because my experience was… you know. Okay. I suppose. There's a reason I didn't go back for so long."

"I suffered a little," said James, "but it was worth it."

Remus' mouth dropped open. "How come I always get the short end of the stick? Mine was straight out of a horror novel!"

"Let's talk about it," said James, and then he turned towards the house. "Er… right after dinner, okay? I'm starved."

Remus laughed. "Yes, me too."

At least he knew that he could eat in this world, and he knew for a fact that Professor Questus wouldn't be angry with him if he didn't… after all, Professor Questus was dead.

Remus' stomach suddenly started to feel weird, and it continued to feel weird all throughout dinner… but Remus kept eating nonetheless. He really was hungry.

Remus decided to sleep in the guest bedroom that night with his friends. They didn't talk about what had happened until Peter fell asleep. Then, ever so silently, the three remaining Marauders crept outside, sat next to a large tree, and spoke about what had happened in whispers. It was a warm night, and the stars shone brightly in the canopied sky, just visible between the tree branches overhead. It was the perfect night, Remus thought, for some ghost stories.

Vine stories. Boggart stories. Whatever.

Remus told them about his vision first. He skipped over the part with Greyback, instead mentioning "a big transformed werewolf"—other than that, he made sure to mention everything that he was comfortable mentioning, including the Memory Magnolia lie, being trapped all night, Professor Questus' constant mental and physical fatigue, and Dumbledore. "But I was only gone for three hours?" asked Remus once he had finished. "It was much longer than that, I'm sure of it!"

"Sirius came back through first, and then me, and then you," said James. "I think time moved differently for all of us."

"So how long did it feel for you?"

"Ten minutes," said James.

"Three months," said Sirius.

"Woah," said Remus. "That's weird." He sighed and leaned further back against the tree. "I feel awful. I had started to believe it, you know—Questus had told me that, logically, it was much more likely that my story was false. Memories are much easier to fake than actual experiences, right there, in the now. I knew he was right. But I… felt somewhere that it was real… and that my memories couldn't be fake, you know? I don't really have any concrete reason to believe that this is real, even… for all I know, I could just be in a separate vision. But it just… feels real. I know it is, somewhere deep down."

"Yeah," said James. "I dunno how to explain it, but this feels like the real world. Like, I haven't raced everyone in the school, but I still know somewhere deep down that I'm the fastest flier."

Remus thought that James' analogy was stupid, but he didn't argue. "Wanna hear what happened to me?" James continued, grinning broadly in the way he always did before he told a particularly juicy story.

Remus nodded, but James didn't need further prompting—he, being the enthusiastic storyteller that he was, launched into a magnificent monologue, complete with hand gestures, exaggerated facial expressions, and tremendous voice acting skills. "So, here's what happened," he started. "I jumped into the Visionvines with Sirius, and then I came right back out. Sirius and I were really confused. We looked at you and Peter, and you two were confused, too. We figured that the Visionvines hadn't really done a thing. You were teasing me about them, Moony; you said that perhaps I only dreamt about Visionvines when I fell asleep in History of Magic."

"That does sound like me," said Remus.

"We decided to explore the forest a bit, just because we felt like it. And then I found a broomstick floating next to the trees. Remus told me not to ride it. He said I didn't know if it was cursed or not. But I'm a Gryffindor, so I picked it up and rode it!"

"Gryffindor is not synonymous with stupid," said Remus.

"Anyway," said James, making a face, "while I was on the broomstick, speeding along at the speed of light, I saw something. It was Peter's dad! You know, his biological one! He didn't die after all! And I swooped down and saved him from about ten bajillion Death Eaters. And then I saw something else: it was a magical pond. I got a bunch of the water in some phials that I conveniently had stored in my pocket, and it turned out to be the cure for lycanthropy—"

"What?" said Remus, alarmed.

"Yeah. And I brought it back to you and you were thankful and all that. Peter went off with his dad, and I don't know where they went, because they didn't come back. And then Sirius came to live with my family permanently. The day was won and all that. Then I went to the library to read up on Visionvines so that we could open the secret passageway, and I slowly started to realize that… no matter how brilliant I was… it probably wasn't real. So I went back to your house to go back through the Visionvines, but the green glow was gone and I couldn't get through. Then the floor turned into cockroaches."

James grimaced and leaned into Sirius, who patted his shoulder awkwardly. "I'm gonna have nightmares for weeks," he moaned. "Anyway, then I managed to Transfigure a roach into brand-new Visionvines, and I went through, and here I am."

"Wait," said Remus. "You said that you were only in there for what felt like ten minutes. You saved Peter's father… defeated a bajillion Death Eaters… cured lycanthropy… rescued Sirius… read up on Visionvines… fought your worst fear… and achieved an extremely advanced Transfiguration… in TEN MINUTES?"

"It was a slow ten minutes," said James.

"How is that even possible?"

"I'm a very fast flier."

Remus started laughing hysterically. "How did none of that clue you in to the fact that it wasn't real?"

"I told you, Moony. I'm a very fast flier. It was plausible."

"So you didn't have a conversation with any of us? I should think that I'd be thanking you for finding the cure for lycanthropy for a little more than ten minutes, James."

"Nah. You just kinda said, 'Thanks,' and then I flew away before you could say anything else."

"James!"

It was far more than ten minutes before Remus stopped laughing. He finally did so and then wiped a stray tear from his eye. "So what happened to you, Sirius?"

"I…." Sirius sighed. "Promise you won't be angry, Remus."

Remus shook his head. "Why would I be mad at you? I just dreamt up a scenario in which both my parents were dead. Obviously, the vision has nothing to do with what we want."

Sirius crossed his arms over his chest, clearly uncomfortable. "Well, I emerged from the vines and ended up in Grimmauld."

"But you said that it was a good vision," said James. "I didn't think that you could possibly ever think that Grimmauld was good."

"I'm getting to that, Prongs. I ended up in Grimmauld, and my parents came to meet me… they said I'd fallen into the Visionvines as a baby and I'd just now gotten back out. And the reality was… well, it was mostly the same, except my parents actually loved me. And… and Voldemort won the war."

"But you said that it was good," James insisted, all-too-familiar anger clouding his features.

"I did! It was! That's why I asked Remus not to angry!"

"What?" James roared. "Why only Remus? Why not me? I detest Dark magic, Sirius, you know that! Why was it good? What could possibly have been good about that? How dare you say something that ignorant?"

"I'm not saying that it would be good if Voldemort won, James. I'm saying that it was good in this totally fake scenario. Got it? Voldemort won, and then you and me were basically in charge, along with the other Purebloods. It was… I mean, I know that's not right, so I was conflicted. It was just…" Sirius sighed. "It felt right, you know? It felt right to have a… a clear hierarchy, and a person in charge, and… and there was no question as to what was right or wrong. I've been questioning what's right and wrong my whole life, ever since I came to Hogwarts and learned that my family are wrong, and I'm tired of it. You know what I mean. Right?"

Remus had a horrible, achy feeling in his gut. "Why'd you apologize to me, though?" he asked, though he feared he knew the answer.

"And my family loved me," Sirius continued, almost desperately, as if he were begging Remus and James to agree with him… but Remus didn't even know what they were meant to be agreeing with. "They hugged me, James. I've never been hugged. Never. It was weird. And kinda nice. And…"

"Why'd you apologize to me?" Remus asked again.

Sirius lowered his eyes. "Oh, come on, Moony, you already know."

There was silence, and then Remus nodded.

"What?" said James. "I don't know. I don't get it."

Sirius continued rambling fervently. "When I said it was good, I didn't mean… like that. I mean, I didn't like it. It wasn't good. It was only… only… you know. Different, and kind of nice. But not that part! Never that part. That's why I went back. Remus… you understand, right?"

"Yeah, I get it," said Remus. "It's fine, Sirius."

"It's not! It's not fine! I should have come back immediately!"

"What are you lot on about?" demanded James. "What happened with Remus, Padfoot?"

"Those nicknames are stupid," said Remus, trying to deflect. Maybe James would forget all about it. Sirius shot Remus a thankful look.

"No, you are not changing the subject," said James. "Come on. Tell me."

"You do it, Remus," Sirius begged. "You always manage to say it diplomatically."

Remus sighed and pulled at the thumb of his glove, trying to figure out how to word it. "Voldemort's views are a bit radical, James. He's not opposed to executing certain individuals who won't comply with what he believes to be the correct answer. In a world where Voldemort wins, the werewolves don't survive… so I imagine I wasn't alive in Sirius' vision."

"What?!" said James, turning towards Sirius. "What do you mean? Remus died in your vision and you didn't come back, even when you had the opportunity?!"

"What?!" said Sirius, turning towards Remus. "That's not what happened at all! You didn't die! You just couldn't go to Hogwarts, so we never met!"

"Oh," said Remus. "I wasn't dead?"

"I mean… maybe you were. I didn't really think about that. But I just didn't know you, that's all! You really think that I would have stayed in that vision if you'd died? Merlin's beard, Moony, I'm not my parents. You're so self-pitying."

"Oh."

Sirius laughed a bit hysterically and threw his arm around Remus' shoulder. "Well, the good news is… I don't feel all that guilty anymore for staying, now that I know you'd forgive me for staying in a world in which you'd died for three months."

"I'd forgive you for anything, Sirius," said Remus. "Any of you. You've all forgiven me for plenty."

Sirius laughed again. "True, that. Anyway. It was hard to go back, but I eventually realized that James was acting a bit different… and that it just didn't… you know, feel real. So I went back. I mean, people were dying. It wasn't great. It only felt great at first because I had everything I'd ever wanted… besides, you know, the fact that the world was ruled by a Pureblood dictator. Not the most ideal situation. Nice to have a family who loved me, but staying wasn't worth the cost. So I just crawled back through the way I'd come, and now I'm here."

There was a moment of silence.

Remus couldn't stop thinking about the his own vision… and Professor Questus… and the terrifying, unnatural Boggart. Boggarts couldn't talk like that; they could only repeat something, word-for-word, that a person had actively experienced or imagined. They were terrifying, yes, but they did not possess the capacity to actively argue and hold conversations. They were scary, but never surprising—not like that. "What do you think it even was?" Remus asked. "The vision, I mean. It couldn't have been a real-life alternate reality, could it?"

"Nah," said James. "Felt more like a weird dream."

"Mine didn't," said Sirius.

"Yeah, mine was so… logical… and real. It didn't feel like a dream at all. It wasn't fantastical, nor over-the-top… not until the end. The people in it couldn't have been just figments of my subconscious, because… they surprised me, and scared me, and held intelligent conversation with me. There had to be a sort of force behind it. Someone or something had to be actively trying to keep us from going back."

"I don't think so," said James slowly. "I don't think that the people in our visions were evil. I think that it really was a scenario produced by our subconsciousnesses. Subconsciousnessi? I don't know what the plural is."

"Subconsciouses," supplied Remus, "I think. How do you know?"

"Because it was a formula. In all of our visions, the Visionvines took something that we wanted and combined it with things that we didn't want. I think that the goal of the Vine was to produce an emotional experience, so it just took things that we were most emotional about and combined them together. It wanted to be intense, but I don't think that the characters were sentient."

"Why not?" said Remus. "Things can be sentient and still have a formula!"

"I… I don't know," said James. "I just sort of know. You know?"

"No," said Remus, exasperated. "But I guess it doesn't really matter."

"It does matter," insisted James. "It does matter, because I don't want you believing that the John that you saw was a demonic vine spirit. I don't think that anything you saw was demonic and malevolent, Remus. Everything you saw was just… things that made you emotional, except presented in a different way. Seeing John Questus again made you emotional, but so did grief, so the Vine combined them and made you lose someone else. Boggarts were a huge part of your childhood, and so was fear, so the Vine combined them. No one was malevolent; it was just a weird part of your subconscious… and your memories allowed everyone to stay in character."

Remus crinkled his brows. "Why does it matter if I think that the Questus that I saw was a malevolent vine spirit?"

"I may not understand everything that you go through, but I know you pretty well, I think—and I bet that whatever you saw in there is going to mess with your memories of John. Isn't it? You're not going to be able to think about who he really was without thinking about the vine thing. You don't want all your memories of him to be linked to an evil John keeping you prisoner and trying to keep you from getting home, right?"

Remus nodded slowly, taken aback by James' sudden wisdom. He'd never before thought that James Potter had an ounce of empathy, but now he seemed to know Remus' mind even better than Remus himself did.

"So it wasn't evil. It was just a pretend scenario. You said that he was in character and acting like you thought he would've acted if the scenario had really happened… so don't think of him as an antagonist. It was just a strange dream, and it'll be out of sight and out of mind pretty soon."

'I suppose," said Remus. "Yeah, you're right."

"And Sirius, no one blames you for kind of wanting to stay. You came back anyway. It doesn't matter."

Suddenly, Remus had a horrible thought. "I would have stayed, Sirius," he said. "It was only a vision, so it couldn't change me… just my surroundings. But if the vision had given me what I want more than anything else in the world, just like it did for you… then I don't think I would have come back, no matter who I knew and who I didn't know. Especially since the vision tried to convince me that staying was noble… no, I wouldn't have gone back."

"What do you want more than anything else in the world, then?" said Sirius, wrinkling his nose. "Can't imagine Remus Lupin doing anything for his own personal gain."

"If Visionvines were the cure for lycanthropy, then I wouldn't have come back," Remus whispered, and then there was silence.

And it was true. The more Remus thought about it, the truer it became. If he knew that, by staying in the horrible world that the Visionvines had concocted from his subconscious, he would never hurt a soul… and, what was more, he would never have to go through another transformation… then he would have stayed. He would have stayed while the world collapsed around him. He would have stayed, even if James and Sirius didn't exist. He would have stayed, even if his parents were dead, because he knew that they all existed in another world… and they were safe from Remus there…

And if he didn't know for sure?

Remus wondered if he really would trade his parents' safety for the cure for lycanthropy. He didn't think he would, but he wasn't sure, and that uncertainty scared him immensely. "I don't blame you one bit, Sirius," he said, shivering a little.

"I knew you were probably suffering, though," said Sirius, still guilty. "I knew that you wouldn't have Madam Pomfrey, and that you were all alone, and that people who hated werewolves were ruling the world… and I didn't even try to save you for three months."

"I don't blame you," Remus repeated. "I'd have done the same. If the Visionvines had given me my greatest desire, then I'd've stayed."

"I wouldn't have stayed," said James, "because things were only perfect in my vision because they were perfect. If I'd learned that they weren't perfect, then they wouldn't've been perfect anymore."

"I understand completely," said Sirius with a nod.

"Er, yeah," said Remus. He didn't understand at all, but he knew better than to question James at this point.

"I'll do some research when we get back to Hogwarts," said James. "You know, on Visionvines."

"James Potter, research?"

"Shut up. I'm good at researching when I want to be."

"Sure, sure."

Suddenly, James turned to Sirius, a grin on his face. "Mate… did you say that you've never been hugged?"

"Not like my parents did it in the vision. It was weird."

James stared at Sirius for a few seconds, the same evil smile touching his features, and then, before Remus could ever register it, the two of them were on the ground. James' arms were wrapped around Sirius, and he was making annoying smooching noises in the air. Sirius was shrieking and trying to wriggle out of James' grip.

"Be quiet," Remus begged desperately, "you'll wake my parents."

"Ah, be quiet, Moony." James stretched one arm out and pulled Remus into the tussle. "No one's gonna wake up. You have super werewolf hearing, remember? We're not being nearly as loud as you think we are."

Remus sighed, rolled his eyes, and then wrestled with James and Sirius and ran around the forest until they were all feeling better. At one point, Sirius slipped and fell into the mud; he decided to wash off in the pond, but the pond was just as dirty. James had brought his wand, and he hosed Sirius down with an Aqua Eructo.

An hour later, three-fourths of the Marauders returned to the guest bedroom and snuggled under their respective covers quietly (so as not to wake the snoozing Peter). Remus had rather expected to have a nightmare that night, but he only dreamt of tiny, adorable furball-werewolves, King's Cross Station, and Sirius falling into the mud.

Days passed. "So," said Remus' father one rainy afternoon, idly flipping a page of the Prophet. "You'll never believe what I found growing all over the house the other day."

"What did you find?" asked Remus. He was currently trying (and mostly succeeding) to choke down some of his mum's horrible porridge.

"They're called Visionvines."

Remus choked on his porridge.

"I'm glad I found them before you and your friends did," continued Remus' father. "You all could have been trapped in them for a very long while."

"So… er, what are they?"

"They create another world and combine things that get a reaction out of you. Visionvines feed off of emotion—a little like Dementors. But, unlike Dementors, any emotion will do for a Visionvine. They throw you into parts of your subconscious that you didn't know existed, and they keep introducing the most emotional situations possible. It's relatively rare that people get trapped in them for long periods of time—most people manage to get out within five hours—but there was once a man here in Ireland that didn't get out for twenty years."

"So the vines are evil?" asked Remus.

"No, not evil. Not even classified as Dark. They're just trying to get a meal. And, again—most people aren't permanently damaged by Visionvines. The Ministry doesn't even consider them a threat. They're just a little bit weird, like odd dreams. I suspect they affect some more heavily than others, though."

Remus nodded slowly. He wondered if being a particularly emotional person had anything to do with the vines' awfulness and severity in his case. Remus was a frighteningly emotional person who had been through a lot recently, so the Visionvines had quite a bit to feed off of. "So you got rid of them?" he asked.

"Yes, I did," said Remus' father. "There's a charm for that. After I removed them, I Vanished them, so now we don't have to worry about them anymore. But you'll never guess what I found underneath."

"What?" said Remus, suddenly excited.

"A portrait: a proper wizarding one, in fact! It's blank, though—I assume it needs a password or something to show up. Or perhaps it has other portraits all over the place and can't be bothered to visit the one covered in Visionvines?"

Remus grinned. "I knew it," he said, and then ran upstairs to use the magic mirror and gloat in his friends' faces.

AN: The letter "K" and "Tuesday" have very similar vibes.