Sirius was officially, totally thrilled. He all but skipped throughout the corridors the next day—which was quite tacky, seeing as students were still fearful and mourning from the recent attack. "You may call me Assistant Headmaster Sirius Black," he told the Marauders pompously (and not for the first time). "Nothing more and nothing less. That's my name now."

"You realize that this is very temporary?" asked James. He was pretending to be annoyed, but Remus knew that he wasn't really. "As soon as Albus finds someone new for the Arithmancy post, you'll be sacked from your pretend position before you can say arrogant little brat."

"It's not pretend," said Sirius. "I'll be doing whatever headmasters do. It'll be fun."

Over breakfast, Remus pointedly ignored the newspapers (they were only recaps of the news from the day before) and listened to the professors' chatter. He couldn't normally hear them over the din of the Hall, but today it was oddly quiet as students processed what had happened only twenty-four hours earlier.

"I don't understand why Albus made Black his assistant," said McGonagall. "Of all people! Surely there was someone a little more responsible. Valencia Frasier, perhaps? She's Head Girl..."

"Which means that she already has duties," said Dilley. "Dumbledore knows what he's doing, he does."

"The fact remains that there are many more qualified students," insisted McGonagall. "Why Black? What is Dumbledore hoping to accomplish?"

"Who can fathom the way his mind works?" asked Slughorn. "The man is a genius."

But Remus thought he, Remus, knew exactly what Dumbledore was trying to do. Sirius, upon being crowned Assistant Headmaster, would stay out of trouble. He would be given duties to accomplish instead of pestering James and sulking about being alone. Peter would be free to do schoolwork without ridicule... James would be free to practice Quidditch and go to classes... and Remus would be free to do his own schoolwork and his Arithmancy project. What was more, perhaps Sirius would learn a lesson about having his own hobbies.

James confirmed Remus' suspicions only moments later. "I complained to Albus the other day," James confessed as he and Remus were walking to Arithmancy together. "Told him that Sirius needed a hobby or something. I wasn't sure what to do, really—Sirius was all over me, all the time, and it was suffocating. He's my best mate, and I love him to death... but he really needs to let me have other friends sometimes."

Remus smiled. "So Dumbledore helped you out, hm?"

"Yep. Sirius is all too happy to go off and do Assistant Headmaster stuff, even though it's probably just stupid paperwork and organization with a fancy name. Honestly, I'll bet it's just detention."

"But the detention will make him feel busy and important."

"Yeah. What's in a name, am I right?"

The phrase brought back memories of Pensley, and Remus gagged forcefully. "Oh, don't," he complained, and James grinned at him.

They entered Arithmancy class, and the atmosphere was so thick that Remus felt as if they were being submerged into deep water as soon as they crossed the threshold. The class was silent, and only about half of it had showed up. Dumbledore was sitting at a desk in the front, flicking through Craff's old lesson plans. "Ah, Remus. James," said Dumbledore as they entered, and his calm attitude seemed completely out-of-place. "Good to see you. Have a seat."

They took their normal seats, but nothing felt normal. Remus glanced over at Evans, who had tears in her eyes. Snape was rubbing her shoulder.

"Git," fumed James. "He needs to give her some space."

"Rich of you, Prongs," jested Remus. "You've most certainly hugged me before."

"Did not!"

"Did too."

"Men don't hug!"

"Are you calling yourself a girl?"

"Oi! I'm not a girl!"

Remus wanted to poke fun at James for a bit longer, but it did not feel right to be happy in such a setting. Instead, he fell silent and removed his Arithmancy supplies from his bag and mentally prepared himself for whatever type of class was coming.

A few moments later, Dumbledore stood up. "I think everybody who intends to come is already here," he said. "I'd like to thank you all for continuing to proceed as normal, even though I know that your worlds have been upturned once again."

Once again? Remus wondered, and then he remembered Professor Questus. He could have slapped himself. He kept forgetting that Questus' death and the town's massacre had affected the other students at Hogwarts, too. He felt selfish.

"If you know someone who has found him or herself unable to attend class, please let that person know that no punishment will be issued."

"Should've skived today," muttered James.

"Shut up," hissed Remus.

Dumbledore smiled and then leaned against the wall, still completely calm. "Now. I must confess that I have never taught an Arithmancy class before. I took it in Hogwarts, of course, but that was decades ago—though I shan't tell you how many. What were you working on last week?"

Last week. The phrase reminded Remus, once again, that Professor Craff had been alive only a week ago. A lump formed in his throat. "Professor Craff had a device with lights," Remus forced himself to say in the hopes that speaking would get rid of the lump. "It flashed colors at seemingly random intervals. We were trying to make a number chart that predicted the intervals and the colors."

"Oh, I remember that device." Dumbledore reached into Craff's desk and pulled it out. "Yes, I remember this, indeed. A fine lesson. I did it myself when I took this class. It's nice to see that some things never change." He looked at it for a few moments, and then he put it away. "I think that today should be a day of independent work," he said. "We're missing enough people that a lesson would be useless."

Remus worked on his project for the rest of class, and James practiced his colored smoke spell so that Remus wouldn't have to worry about anyone seeing him plug in variables that predicted a werewolf transformation.

Remus hadn't liked Professor Craff all that much, but he couldn't believe that she was actually dead. Even after the first layer of shock wore off, there was still another layer—deep inside him, numb and sharp at the same time, and annoyingly persistent. The initial shock wasn't the only hardship to overcome, however—students were even more afraid than they had been at the beginning of the year, and the atmosphere in Hogwarts had thickened considerably. Four days later, Remus came across a small Slytherin boy sitting on a bench, struggling to breathe, and he recognized the signs immediately.

He sat next to the boy. "Hold your breath," he advised. "Ten seconds. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…."

The next day, Remus came across a girl crying by herself in a corner. With her permission, he sat next to her until she stopped sobbing. "I'm so worried about my parents," she wailed. "They're Muggles! They couldn't protect themselves if someone were to…" She collapsed into another fresh torrent of tears.

Remus didn't know what to say. He couldn't tell her that it would be okay, because he didn't know that. Instead, he advised that she take deep breaths, in through her nose and out through her mouth. "It's what always helps me when I'm feeling emotional," he said.

He caught Sirius vomiting in Myrtle's bathroom the day after that. "Sorry," said Sirius, wiping his mouth. "I just… can't stop thinking about it. But I'm getting better."

There were a few more disturbances. Peter was afraid to leave the dormitory one day, and he ended up hiding beneath his bed for an hour while Remus and James tried to coax him out with promises of sweets. James was trying to cheer people up, but he didn't quite understand that nobody wanted to be cheered up. Dumbledore taught Arithmancy classes very well (Remus was almost ashamed to admit that he was a much better teacher than Craff had been), but the atmosphere was still suffocating. And, now that visits to Hogsmeade were off, students were found wandering the corridors at random on weekends.

Dilley missed a few classes to search Hogsmeade, for he was certain that there was a cursed object that had caused Craff and the other victim to die before the Death Eaters had gotten to them. "There was a cursed object involved; I'm sure of it!" he said. "They must have touched something funny."

So, while he was gone, Max ended up proctoring the class while they did bookwork or took tests. He always stood directly by Remus, which made Remus uncomfortable—but he'd been so uncomfortable in the past few weeks that it didn't really matter anymore.

Slowly, however, Hogwarts began to heal. Peter began to leave the dormitory again, and Remus didn't even have to go with him. James stopped nervously making jokes every couple of seconds. Students were panicking in the corridors a little less frequently.

"Was this what it was like after Questus died?" Remus asked James one day while they were in Ancient Runes.

"Yes," said James immediately. "I mean, it's weirder now, because Kirsten was actually here, you know? Her absence is a little bit stronger than her presence was... and Hogsmeade is closer to Hogwarts, so people are more afraid. But yeah, the general gist of the thing was the same. Panic. Guilt. Et cetera."

Sirius' Assistant Headmaster duties occurred, conveniently, whenever James wasn't free to spend time with Sirius. Sirius would actually tuck his tie in ("it makes me look important, Moony") and report to Dumbledore's office directly on time ("I have the password and everything. Won't that be good for... you know... if we ever need it?" Here, Sirius winked at them, and Remus decided not to tell Sirius that he himself, as a student with extremely special circumstances, had Dumbledore's password pretty much all the time).

While Sirius was gone, Remus and Peter would scramble to get their homework done. Remus watched the next full moon memory—he still didn't watch himself transform, but he came a little bit closer this time. His project was coming along nicely. He wondered if the next teacher would still assign projects... but, even if the new teacher didn't, Remus knew that he'd do the project regardless. He was too far along now.

The full moon arrived, and Remus made sure to write all about the attack in his Stress Journal (as he'd started calling it to combat Madam Pomfrey's use of the word "diary"). His friends came to visit him in the Hospital Wing for a bit, and when they left to "work on the project", Remus drew a picture of Bufo for his father, even though he wasn't very good at art. Bufo stayed very still for him.

The full moon wasn't all that bad, even though it was a lunar eclipse. The worst part (and only bad part, really) was that Remus ended up with a giant bruise on his face.

It was absolutely awful. It was black and yellow and purple, ran from his temple to his jawline, and could not be covered by his hair. "What happened?" asked Remus in a small panic. "I usually stay away from my face."

Madam Pomfrey shrugged. "Well, Remus, I don't know. I wasn't there."

Remus touched his jaw, and it exploded into pain. "It hurts to touch."

"Then stop touching it."

"It hurts to move."

"Then stop talking."

"Everyone's going to see it and find out!"

"Lupin, it's a bruise. Chances are, they'll just think that you were hit by a stray Bludger or got into a fight."

"Me? Bludgers? Fights? Do you even know me?"

"I do, but your stubborn insistence on ignoring your classmates means that hardly anyone else does. They know of Remus Lupin, master duellist, Marauder, but they know nothing of how unlikely you are to get into fights."

"I don't care. They'll find out. This will draw more attention to me, and then they'll find out…."

"They will not. Now, I think your friends have arrived—are you feeling up to sitting up right now?"

Remus nodded sullenly, and Madam Pomfrey helped him sit up (which was ridiculous, seeing as he would be fourteen in March and did not need help sitting up).

Peter entered the room first. "Holy mackerel, Remus," he said, mouth ajar. "That looks bad."

"It is bad," Remus grumbled. "People will notice it."

"I'll say people will notice it," said James, who had entered second. "It looks pretty awful."

"You don't have to rub it in."

"That's terrible," added Sirius, trying to squeeze around James for a better look at Remus. "So bad. You look horrible."

"You're all very mean," said Remus.

James shook his head earnestly. "No, not mean. If we were mean, then we'd let you go all day with that awful thing on your head. No, friends tell friends when their hair looks like a rat's nest."

It took a while to sink in. "What?" said Remus.

"Your hair, Moony," said Sirius. "It looks awful. What did you do? It's sticking up all over the place."

"I thought you were talking about the giant bruise covering half of my face," said Remus.

"What bruise?" said James. "I didn't even notice." Then he smiled and sat next to Remus on his bed. "You're lucky that the only thing I can Conjure out of thin air is a hairbrush," he said, waving his wand at the bedsheets; a pink hairbrush plopped onto the white surface, and James picked it up and started running it through Remus' hair.

"You had to have noticed the bruise," Remus grumbled.

"Yeah, Poppy warned us beforehand," said Sirius. "We only wanted to mess with you. Your hair really does look awful, though."

"Well, transforming into an animal with matted fur will do that to a person."

Peter chuckled. "It's not as bad as James' hair, though."

"Oi!" James yanked the hairbrush a little too hard, and Remus yelped. James grimaced. "Merlin's pants, Moony. How do you brush your hair after a transformation? Is it always this bad?"

"I use water and a comb. Madam Pomfrey sometimes helps."

"Well, you're not getting any girls with that hair."

"I don't want girls."

"Ah, I forgot. Moony, the martyr bachelor."

"The bachelor martyr sounds better," sniffed Remus.

"The martylor," suggested Sirius.

"The bachetyr," offered Peter.

"Shut up," giggled Remus. "And put down that brush. It's not helping. There's dried blood in my hair. I need to wash it with soap and water."

"Gross," said Sirius.

"Sorry, Sirius, I forgot. Let's change topics. Er... how're Assistant Headmaster duties, Assistant Headmaster Sirius?"

Sirius immediately straightened his spine and lifted his nose in a very pompous fashion. "I have to draft a letter to the Minister," he said.

Peter's mouth fell open once again. "The Minister?"

"Yes."

"About what?"

"School repairs. Albus has requested that I draft a letter detailing the things that need to be fixed so that the school can receive money. I've already started. Would you like to hear it?"

The remaining three Marauders nodded, and Sirius pulled a sheet of creamy parchment out of his bag and cleared his throat importantly. "Dear Minister Eugenia Jenkins," he read.

Silence.

"That's it?" asked James.

"Yeah, that's it. Any ideas of what I should mention?"

"Mention the bench on the fifth floor. It's falling apart, and no one can sit on it."

"Mention the fifth bed in our dormitory," said Peter.

"You can mention the fact that there's a dangerous werewolf infestation in the school," said Remus. "I hear there's a really scary one just wandering the corridors."

"He's detained at the moment, though," said James, and then he knocked Remus on the head while Remus laughed.

Sirius snorted, writing furiously. "Albus will love this," he said. "I'm the best Assistant Headmaster ever."

Remus glanced over Sirius' shoulder and saw the words dangerous werewolf infestation. "Is he really going to let you send that in?"

"Nah. He reviews them and makes changes—so many changes that it's barely the same letter—and then makes me rewrite the whole thing. He even reads it over again before he sends it."

"That makes sense," said James. "Otherwise you'd sneak something in."

"Sirius," said Remus, amused, "do you realize that the job of the Assistant Headmaster is not to make things harder for the headmaster?"

Sirius shook his head sagely. "Remus, there's never been one before. The job of an Assistant Headmaster is whatever I want it to be."

"No, the job is what Dumbledore tells you to—"

"Shhh!" said Sirius suddenly, and Remus fell silent. "Do you hear that? That's the sound of…" More silence. "That's the sound of Moony not being annoying for once in his life."

Remus rolled his eyes, disgruntled. "Way to treat your ill and injured friend, mate. Real sympathetic."

"Sympathetic, that's me," said Sirius proudly. He finished writing the letter with a flourish and stuck it in his bag. "Now, Prongs, what do you say we get out of here and go work on our project?"

Remus watched them go, still smiling. "Bye," he said; as soon as they were gone, he leaned back and put on an Alexander Adamson record to unwind.

Remus awoke from his nap and heard someone in the Hospital Wing.

It was a girl. Remus didn't recognize her scent, but she sounded like a sixth- or seventh-year. Madam Pomfrey was whispering soothing words, and the girl was sobbing uncontrollably.

"I feel so ill all the time," she said, "and it's all I can do to get out of the dormitory."

"Now, now. Hogwarts is perfectly safe, dear."

"No, it's not! Oh, Madam Pomfrey, my stomach hurts."

"Here, take this Calming Draught. And do try to relax. Everything's going to be just fine."

Remus tried to relax, too, but he was starting to realize that the world was changing—and he didn't like it one bit.

AN: I haven't played Hogwarts Legacy, but the soundtrack is on Spotify, and it's actually really good!