Remus showed up at Dilley's club a couple minutes late. "Why are you late?!" barked Dilley, who was studying a crack in the wall. "Tardiness is the best way to get cursed!"

"Max was following me," Remus panted. "He followed me everywhere. I was trying to lose him, but…"

"Why would you do that, boy? Max is a good dog! Let him follow!"

Remus didn't respond. The truth was, he'd fallen asleep on the common room couch (for unexpected napping was an occupational hazard of being a werewolf right before the full moon). Then he'd felt drool on his cheek and woken up to a rather large canine standing on top of his chest. He'd panicked, frozen, and forgotten how to breathe. There he had sat, on the couch, gasping for air and trying to hold his breath as Professor Questus had told him to—all while Max had stared at him curiously.

As soon as he'd mostly recovered (or at least remembered how to breathe again), he'd dashed into the dormitory, closed the door, cast a Soundproofing Charm, and cried for a moment—not because he was afraid, not really, but because he was stressed, and the Max incident had just pushed him over the edge. He hadn't allowed himself to cry like that in a while, and it felt better than Remus would have ever cared to admit. Maybe Remus really was trying to do too much as once.

Anyway. All in all, it had been a very productive morning.

"Professor…?" he asked. "Could I…? You know, talk with you in private for just a second?"

Dilley clapped his hands one time, which scared Remus immensely. He jumped, and Snape scoffed at his jumpiness. "Sure!" said Dilley. "Come into my office!"

Remus followed him, albeit reluctantly, and Dilley cast a Soundproofing Charm on the office when they were both inside. Unfortunately, Max was inside, too, and he was staring directly at Remus. "Does this have something to do with werewolves?" he asked.

"Er, kind of…? Not really." Remus glanced at Max wearily, whose head slightly cocked as he stared into the depths of Remus' soul. "I'm just… well, Professor, I'm sort of afraid of dogs."

"You'll hurt Max's feelings!" Dilley barked, and Remus jumped again. "Ha-ha! Just kidding! Max doesn't care. So what do you want me to do?"

"Er," said Remus again. "Could you… well, I assume Max understands English, since he's… you know, a very clever dog. Could you ask him to stop following me, perhaps? He won't listen to me."

"Can't do that," said Dilley with a sharp shake of his head. "Max has a warrant from the Ministry. He's allowed to follow whomever he wants to. He's more or less my boss!"

Remus blinked. "Max has a warrant to follow me?"

"Not you specifically, boy. Anyone whom he deems suspicious."

"Why does he deem me suspicious?"

"Could be anything. He's a very clever dog."

Remus glanced down at Max again, who was still staring at Remus. "I'm afraid of dogs, though," he insisted. "Why can't he just keep away? At least for most of the day? I'm not doing anything remotely suspicious." Remus paused. "It's because I'm a werewolf, isn't it? Max is a magical creature and somehow he can sense it, can't he?"

"Dunno," said Dilley, "but he's a very…"

"…a very clever dog. Yes, I know."

"I'd ask him to keep away, I really would, but he won't unless there's a good reason. I think he understands your fear completely, though."

"And how would he do that?"

"He's a very clever dog. He'll be more careful in the future, I promise. Won't you, Max?"

Max blinked. It looked sort of like a nod, but Remus refused to believe that the dog had actually understood that. "Clever" was one thing. This was just creepy.

Remus groaned. "Right, then. I'll… I'll cope."

"Good!" said Dilley. He removed the Soundproofing Charm and shepherded Remus back into the classroom. "Today we're going to try to break a curse that I found!" he told the whole classroom, and Remus retreated to his friends and tried to forget all about Max, who was still staring at him suspiciously.

"You found a curse?" said Evans skeptically.

"But of course! It's in the second-floor girls' lavatory."

"Which one?" asked Valencia. "I haven't seen any curses."

"Well, of course you haven't! You can't sense curses like Max can! Follow me… oh, I still don't know what to call you. My club really needs a name."

James raised his hand. "Do we get House points if we can come up with a good name?"

"I suppose," said Dilley, frowning. "But I've thought long and hard. Can't come up with anything."

"Your first name is Andrew," James mused. "So… Drew's Crew."

It was a long while before Dilley finally clapped his hands (making Remus jump yet again). "YES! YES, THAT'S PERFECT! TWENTY POINTS TO GRYFFINDOR! Come along, Drew's Crew!"

Remus rolled his eyes and tried not to look at Max, who was still following him.

Unfortunately, Dilley led them straight to Moaning Myrtle's toilet. "Oooh, it's Remus Lupin," she said, head resting upon her hands as she floated in the air. "Haven't seen you in a while. You're shaping up to be quite the wizard, I hear…."

"You're decades older than me, Myrtle," said Remus. "Give it a rest."

Myrtle had had a bit of a crush on Remus since first year, and Remus was more than a little bit annoyed. It was one thing to fancy Remus when it was just the two of them. It was quite another thing to do so explicitly when Basil, Valencia, James, Sirius, Evans, and… oh, fiddlesticks, Snape… were with him. Remus would never hear the end of this.

Basil was laughing hysterically, and Valencia had her hand on his shoulder as if she expected him to faint again. Dilley pointed his wand at Myrtle. "Off with you, you demon of the loo!" he cried, and Myrtle made a face before flying away.

"Even the Defense professor thinks that I'm a curse," she wailed as she left. "Everyone hates me!"

"Too right they do," said Sirius, and Remus hit him.

As soon as Myrtle had left, Dilley pointed at the tap on one of the sinks. "Max says that the curse is right there," he said. "Investigate, Drew's Crew!"

Remus tried not to roll his eyes again. He really hated that name.

For the next hour and a half, the eight of them (nine, if you counted Max), stared at the tap and tried desperately to open it. "There's probably a password," said James importantly. "Sirius, Remus, and I know all about passwords."

"Of course it's a password," snapped Evans. "Duh. Isn't that obvious?"

James held his hands up. "I'm just spitballing, Evans. Besides, it could be a specific action instead of a password. A pass-act. Or it could be a combination of both."

Evans rolled her eyes. "Idiot," she murmured.

James seemed to have nothing to say to that, and there was silence as the nine of them continued to inspect the tap.

"There's a snake on it," said James.

"Oh, well spotted," said Evans.

"Shut up, I'm only thinking. I need to talk while I think. It gets the gears in my head going."

"Bold of you to assume that there's anything in your head at all."

James put his hands on his hips. "And who, I ask, is taking every single elective and excelling at all of them?" he snapped, and Evans went silent. "Yes, that's what I thought. Let me think."

He turned back to the tap and reached out his wand, tapping the snake engraving on the head. "Dissendium," he said, but the snake did not permit them entrance.

"That's not even a word," said Snape.

"Neither is Wingardium Leviosa," said James. "Remus, try every Latin variation of 'open' that you know. Chop-chop."

But Remus did not respond; he was too busy staring at the tap. "This looks familiar," he said. "Very familiar. I think I've seen it somewhere."

"The girls' loo?" said Sirius. "Yeah, you have. You've been here before, remember?"

"No!" said Remus, and it wasn't only because he was worried that he might get in trouble for being in the girls' loo. "Not the loo. I mean the… the snake. I've seen that exact snake somewhere."

"Well, of course you have," said James. "There's a snake just like that carved onto your doorknob. I noticed it last summer."

"Oh," said Remus. "Yeah, that's what I was thinking of. Dad suggested the the previous owner probably supported the Sligo Snakes. You know, the Quidditch team."

"Rubbish," James said airily. "The Sligo Snakes' mascot is a bit more curly than that snake; didn't you know?"

"That's the snake that's on some of the walls in the Slytherin common room," said Snape.

"And the curl of the tail is similar to the Slytherin banners," offered Basil. "Perhaps if you try the Slytherin common room password?"

Snape nodded, and then he poked his wand at the tap and whispered, "Bloody Baron."

Nothing happened.

"Maybe it needs a woman's touch," said Valencia. "After all, this is the girls' loo." She pointed her wand at the snake and repeated the password, but still nothing happened.

"Guess you were wrong, then, Snivelly," said James. "Bad luck." He was grinning widely, and Remus wondered why. James was usually optimistic and over-excited, but failing to find a password for a mysterious passageway was not something that typically made him happy.

It was only two hours later, when Drew's Crew had exhausted their energy and were heading back to their dormitories, when Remus realized that Snape had just given James and Sirius the password to the Slytherin common room.

"So what was the password?" James asked Remus that night.

"What?" said Remus. "You don't remember it? You have an excellent memory."

"You and I were on the other side of the room, Moony, and he was whispering besides. Valencia heard it, but I didn't hear a thing. What did he say? You have werewolf hearing. You had to have heard it!"

Remus froze.

He had a decision to make.

He knew that, if he told his friends the password, then they'd storm the Slytherin common room and torture the people therein. He knew that it would probably end in a mean-spirited hex, or Dungbombs, or… or anything, really: things that far surpassed Remus' imagination. He knew that telling James the password to the Slytherin common room was not the right thing to do. Not one bit. Dumbledore would be so disappointed in Remus, and so would Remus' parents.

But, all the same… his friends had done so much for Remus, and they weren't even obligated to like Remus' family was. They deserved anything that Remus could give them, didn't they? And they might stop being his friend if they thought he was a "fun-sucking Dementor", as Sirius often called it.

Remus sighed. "Bloody Baron," he said. "But don't hurt anyone."

James grinned, wide and feral. "Of course I'm not going to hurt anyone," he said.

Remus sincerely doubted that, and he lied awake with worry all night as he imagined the terrible trouble into which he had just led his friends.

"We're going to the Slytherin common room tonight," announced James and Sirius a few days later. "It changes every fortnight, and we have to make sure that we go before the password changes again. Coming, Moony?"

"Tomorrow's the full moon," said Remus quietly. "I can't go. I need to sleep as much as possible."

"Aw, come on, Moony," said Sirius. "It'll be fun. Besides, you'll sleep all of tomorrow and probably the day after. You can catch up on sleep in the Hospital Wing."

"I… I really shouldn't. Last time I stayed out late on the full moon was the first December full moon, and we all know how that ended, so..."

James shook his head. "We don't, actually. If you're talking about first year, then we didn't know back then."

Remus laughed. "Oh, right. Feels like you've known forever. Er… remember the werewolf stakeout? When you thought there was a werewolf in the Shrieking Shack, and I gave you the wrong date for the full moon and stayed up late in Hogsmeade watching the house?"

"Yeah."

"Well, the next morning, there was a girl who needed to be taken to St. Mungo's. Madam Pomfrey left to get her there, and Professor Questus took me back to the Hospital Wing. It was probably the most embarrassing day of my life, but he was a lot nicer than I'd thought he was back then… well, I suppose 'nice' isn't the right word. Anyway. It was really bad. I was unconscious after I transformed back, and that doesn't happen often. Was in the Hospital Wing for six days. And I… I had a really hard full moon last month, and I really don't want to do that again. I'm sorry, but I think I'll stay in the dormitory. You lot can go on without me, though."

Remus hoped they would, actually. He really didn't want to take part in the nefarious scheme that his friends had surely planned for the Slytherins, full moon or no full moon. The more detached he would be from their antics, the better.

"Nonsense," said James. "No Marauder left behind."

"I don't mind being left behind," said Remus.

James walked up to Remus and clapped him on his back, right behind his right shoulder. "Listen, mate," he said seriously, "you already have to miss out on enough because of the full moon. It must be pretty awful, to see all your friends having fun and know that you can't because of a giant floating rock in the sky. We won't let you miss out on anything if we can help it."

Remus' throat suddenly felt as if it was coated in Hagrid's awful treacle toffee. Somehow, James had touched on exactly how Remus had been feeling recently. His friends hadn't visited him on the last full moon, and now they were working on some sort of project that they wouldn't tell Remus about… he'd been feeling as if they'd been trying to distance themselves from him. But perhaps it was all an accident. Perhaps they really didn't want to leave him out. Perhaps they had a reason.

"…so, instead of doing it at night, we're going to storm the Slytherin common room in broad daylight!" finished James, throwing out his hands and accidentally hitting Remus on the cheek.

Remus groaned. "You realize we'll definitely get caught, right?"

"That's half the fun!"

"We'll all get detention!"

"Detentions are fun!"

Remus groaned and ran his hands through his hair. "Fine," he said. "But you might have to slow down for me. I'm not feeling well."

James whooped with joy. "Not a problem, Moony, old friend! The Marauders are experienced slow-downers."

"We're going to get caught."

"I said slow-downers, not downers. So stop being one. Come on, Remus! We're going right now! Fortunately, I wrote up a plan last night, so everything is perfectly planned and accounted for!"

"We're going to get caught," said Remus as they snuck down the crowded corridor under the Invisibility Cloak.

"We're going to get detention," he said as they stood in front of the blank wall that contained the Slytherin common room.

"We might get expelled," he whispered as James spoke the password at a noise level that seemed far too high.

"I'm nervous," he confided to Peter as they snuck into the common room.

"This is stupid," he said as James and Sirius started turning all the furniture in the common room red.

"It's a miracle there's no one in the common room," he mused as Sirius suggested they try to recreate the Gryffindor tapestry onto the wall.

"That's the worst tapestry I've ever seen," he said, which was entirely accurate: James could not do any sort of art for the life of him, and the tapestry was just a couple golden stick figures on a red background.

"We're going to get in trouble," he said as Peter rearranged the now-red blankets on the now-red couches.

"We're going to lose House points," he said as Sirius Conjured a banner that read Gryffindor Common Room.

"There are students coming into the common room!" said Remus, and James quickly threw the Invisibility Cloak over the four of them.

They waited in the corner of the Slytherin-turned-Gryffindor common room under the Cloak, and a gaggle of Slytherin girls streamed into the common room, giggling uncontrollably.

The giggles stopped.

"What on PLANET EARTH HAPPENED TO OUR COMMON ROOM?" shouted the first girl, whom Remus recognized as a Slytherin Prefect. "I'm going to Slughorn immediately!"

They ran off, and Remus felt the corners of his mouth twisting upwards against his will. This didn't hurt anybody, and it was sort of funny. It was completely harmless. Slughorn could put it right immediately, and it showed some Gryffindor pride—even though it would likely get them into trouble. And they hadn't gotten caught.

Remus' friends had been given the opportunity to hurt someone or pull a mean-spirited practical joke, and they hadn't done it. Remus had not given them nearly enough credit. Of course he could trust them. They were good people.

"Now," whispered James, who was still laughing hysterically from underneath the Cloak, "we're going to the dormitories and hexing Snape's bed so that he gets giant welts when he lies down in it."

"Oooh, can we also add that hex that turns his hair into leaves?" said Sirius eagerly.

Remus started to get a stomachache.

"Wasn't there one that you were talking about that makes his teeth go all crooked?" asked Peter, and James and Sirius both high-fived him.

"Perfect!'

"Careful, Lupin, Wormtail's becoming the Most Valued Member after the two of us!"

"That'd be great!"

"Thanks, Wormtail!"

Peter glowed with pride. "Glad I could help," he said.

Remus, who had knocked a tooth askew during a transformation and had gotten it reset, knew that repositioning teeth was a very unpleasant experience. And welts? That was horrible. He could understand the bush-hair, a little, even though he still didn't like the idea of singling someone out, but this was ridiculous.

This was bullying.

Dumbledore had called it bullying the year prior, and Remus hadn't believed him. The word had made his insides go all squishy. His friends weren't bullies. They were brilliant. But this… this was bullying.

"I'm going to stay here," said Remus. "I hurt all over. Kinda out-of-breath. I'm not sure I can walk properly—my leg really hurts." Remus didn't often use his condition as an excuse, and he didn't like lying about it at all. He was using pity to his advantage, and he hated doing that... but he felt it was necessary in this case.

"Okay," said James kindly. "We'll take you outside. You can keep a lookout. Just yell really loudly if a teacher comes by, okay?"

Remus nodded, and he let James shepherd him outside and help him onto a bench. "I'm not sure how loudly I can yell. My throat is a bit scratchy," said Remus desperately, even though it wasn't true. He just didn't want to take part in their antics.

"Try anyway," insisted Sirius, and then Remus' friends threw the Invisibility Cloak over themselves and left.

Remus listened to the students bustling around the corridor and drew his knees up to his chest, staring at the wall opposite the Slytherin common room. He thought he might vomit. Guilt? No, that couldn't be it. It was just because it was too close to the full moon.

Fortunately (or unfortunately?) no teachers nor students came by. Remus' friends emerged a little while later, laughing. When no one was looking, they pulled off the Invisibility Cloak. "The deed is done," James announced. "How are you feeling, Moony?"

"Like I need to lie down," Remus muttered. "Mind helping me back to the common room, someone?"

"Don't we have Duelling Club today?"

"I'll skip it. Flitwick will understand."

"Don't think he will, actually," chortled Sirius. "You're his golden student, I think. You're a better duellist than most of the upper-years."

"But we'll help you back," said James, and Peter nodded, still beaming from the compliment earlier.

Remus let James put his hand on Remus' right shoulder, and he tried to look ill. It wasn't hard.

As he lied in his bed that night, listening to the soft snores of his friends, he decided that he was being stupid. They hadn't put Snape into mortal danger. The Gryffindor thing had been funny. And Madam Pomfrey would heal up Snape in two minutes, Remus was certain. Remus' friends were just doing what teenage boys did. Besides, Snape would have done the same to them in an instant, Remus was sure. He was rather unpleasant.

Satisfied by this thought, Remus rolled over and fell into a (mostly) peaceful sleep.

AN: Sorry for the late update again—another busy Sunday! I promise I haven't forgotten about this! :)