Remus' friends came over the next day.

They did all the normal things: Sirius tried to teach Remus the piano, James initiated a game of tag in the yard (Remus could only play for ten minutes because running made him tired and sore, but he watched and applauded as per usual). Peter noted that they'd been running around in the mud and now all their shoes, socks, and the bottoms of their trousers were destroyed. Remus led his friends to the bathroom and made them wash their shoes, socks, and trousers, and then he cleaned up the mud they'd tracked all over the house. From there, they proceeded to sit in the bathroom (it was cramped, but bearable) and talked while they waited for their clothes to dry.

Overall, pretty typical Marauder shenanigans.

"How was Poppy's house?" asked Sirius, waggling his eyebrows. "Was it fun, having a babysitter?"

"Shut up!" said Remus. "How did you even know about that?"

"Your mum mentioned it. I overheard. You're not the only one who can overhear things, Moony."

"What did you do all day with her?" asked Peter.

"Er… we played cards. Went shopping. Went out to eat. I met her sister."

"That's weird, mate," said James, shaking his head.

"I know."

"How come you're so close with all the teachers? You were pretty much best mates with Questus. You're pretty much best mates with Pomfrey. Flitwick adores you. McGonagall likes you. Even Dumbledore seems to like you…"

"I'm actually taking Arithmancy lessons with him after holidays."

"How frequently?"

"Er… every day for an hour."

James shook his head again. "You're not supposed to be so close with teachers. They're fun-sponges. You'll turn into a teacher yourself if you're not careful."

"I'll have you know I can't ever teach," said Remus.

"Oh, stop being all self-pitying. We know. You're a werewolf, and they'll never hire you… but seriously, mate, start making friends with people your own age."

"I can't." Remus sighed. "You don't understand how tiring it is to lie about every aspect of my life all the time. I live in terror that someone will figure it out. I have to stick around the people who already know, or else I'll wear myself out completely."

"Then spend more time with one of us."

"I spend nearly all my time with you lot! But nowadays you're all working on this stupid three-person project, aren't you? And I'm not bitter," Remus added hastily. "But…"

"But you're bitter," said Sirius.

"No!"

"Yes, you are," said James. "That's fine, though. You're allowed to be. But I promise that we'll be finished soon, and then we'll spend your every waking minute with you."

"Well, not every waking second," said Remus with an eyeroll. "That would be rather dangerous on full moons. But I appreciate the sentiment."

Remus saw his friends give each other knowing glances, but Remus couldn't even begin to figure out what those meant (and he didn't particularly care to; it would probably make his head explode).

They milled about for the rest of the day—making fun of each other, exploring the house, and listening to Peter and the Wolf on repeat. When Remus' parents arrived, Remus was thoroughly tuckered out. He bade goodbye to his friends and then collapsed on the couch in exhaustion.

"Tired?" his mother asked.

"Exhausted."

She laughed. "I'm not surprised. The energy of your friends is seemingly boundless. Why don't you go take a nap?"

"Yeah, that sounds good."

However, Remus had no intention of taking a nap. Yes, he was tired—but there was also a sort of electricity buzzing through his veins that could only be brought on by spending time with a crowd of extremely rowdy teenage boys. There was no way he'd be able to get to sleep with electricity in his veins.

And he couldn't read, either. Every time he tried to read, his mind would drift back to Peter's giggles, Sirius' raucous laughter, and James' excited chatter.

No, Remus was going to have to find another way to entertain himself… and he knew exactly what to do.

He sat quietly in his room for about ten minutes—just long enough for his parents to assume that he was asleep and was not to be disturbed. Then he took a deep breath, worked up all his Gryffindor courage, and tapped his wand on the wall seven times.

As soon as he'd said it, he felt a tugging at his navel, like a Portkey; he found himself hurtling through a vast expanse of nothingness, and then he was standing in the corridor of the painted Hogwarts, just as he had been before.

"Hello?" he called. "Rowena? Helga? Godric?"

For a few moments, no one appeared, and Remus considered leaving. Suddenly, he heard a shout from behind him—he spun around and came face-to-face with Godric Gryffindor, who seemed to be running from something.

"Remus!" he shouted. "Run! There's a dragon!"

"A what now?" called Remus.

"A dragon! The size of the Great Pyramids! Run!" He grabbed Remus' wrist and pulled him behind him, and Remus tried his best to keep up.

"Why is there a dragon?" Remus shouted.

"Well, you know the Hogwarts motto?"

"Draco dormiens numquam titillandus, right?"

"And do you know what it means?"

"Of course. Never tickle a… oh no, Godric. You didn't."

"I sure did, and he's right hoppin' furious!"

Remus ran, but his legs weren't all that great. They never were. Bones breaking and reforming and remolding every month did that to a person's legs.

"Can the dragon really hurt me?" he panted. "It's made of paint!"

"I've no clue, but I guess we're gonna find out! It's gaining on us!"

Sure enough, Remus could hear wings flapping and furious breaths coming from behind him. He made the mistake of looking.

There it was: an enormous red dragon, smoke spewing from its mouth and encircling its head like a wreath (a bit like that poem about St. Nicholas, except 100% less cheer and 1000% more terror). Its scales were glossy and just as dangerously red as fire, which was erupting from the back of the dragon's throat as it flew. Its wings were so large that the dragon could hardly squeeze through the Hogwarts corridors; indeed, the tight fit was probably the only reason it hadn't caught Remus and Godric yet.

Remus ran and ran and ran… and then he hit a dead end.

"End of the line," said Godric. "Nowhere to go!"

"What do we do now?" asked Remus, terrified. The dragon was drawing nearer and nearer with a fury in his eyes that Remus only ever saw in James after Puddlemere United lost a Quidditch match.

"Wait to die, brave soldier!" said Godric. "There's nothing we can do! Stay valiant, Remus!"

"Valiant?" shrieked Remus as the dragon let out a great roar.

"Valiant, indeed! Aren't you a Gryffindor? Valiant in the face of death!"

Remus waited valiantly (actually, he was terrified, but he tried not to let it show). He was pretty sure that he couldn't be killed by mere paint. He'd been attacked by a werewolf and survived, for heaven's sake, so he could survive an old dragon made of paint.

Sure enough, the dragon descended upon him… opened its mouth… Remus closed his eyes… and then…

…it bumped against his nose with the force of a thin piece of cardboard.

"Ah, I guess it can't hurt you," said Godric. The dragon was certainly trying—it was knocking against Remus' nose with small thwip-thwip-thwip noises—but it gave up when it realized it wasn't getting anywhere. Remus rubbed his nose, slightly sore, as it flew off.

"Its only two-dimensional," said Remus. "That's weird. Everything else around here is three-dimensional."

"That's because it came from another painting," said Godric with a shrug. "I knew it wouldn't kill me, since we're both paintings, and of course Hogwarts paintings wouldn't destroy each other… but I thought it might kill you. We got lucky though! Wasn't that exhilarating?"

"Not really," admitted Remus. "It was mostly awful and terrifying."

"Ah, well, can't please everyone."

"Why is it here in the first place, if it belongs to a different painting?"

"I lured it in for target practice. It gets dull around here sometimes. But I didn't expect you to show up out of nowhere! How have you been?"

"Significantly worse now that a dragon was chasing me," said Remus, "but otherwise quite well, thank you."

"Sorry about that. Let me call Rowena and Helga for you—I'm sure they'll be happy to see you. ROWENA! HELGA! OI, GET IN HERE!"

It was only a few seconds before Helga and Rowena emerged from an adjacent classroom. "Yeah?" said Rowena, clearly annoyed about something. "What, do you need our help getting rid of the—Remus!"

"Hello!" said Remus.

"Oh, it's so good to see you! Is there any particular reason you're here?"

"No, not really. I just wanted to say hello. Mum wanted me to take a nap, but I wasn't very tired, and—"

"Of course, of course. Come over whenever you'd like. Why don't we walk around the castle for a bit? Anywhere you'd like to go?"

Remus hesitated. "Erm… yeah. I know it's boring, but I'd sort of… I mean, my friends don't like to do it with me, so it'd be really nice to have company… I'd sort of like to go to the library. I know it's not that interesting, but…"

All three present Founders began laughing. "I'm sorry," said Helga, wiping her eyes, "but Rowena Ravenclaw, of all people, does not think the library is boring. She built the thing."

"You've got yourself a clone, Rowena," said Godric.

Rowena smiled. "I sometimes wonder why you weren't in Ravenclaw, Remus."

"Loads of Gryffindors like the library," said Remus. "It's amazing."

"Oh, I know. I helped create the Sorting system. It's not about what you are, it's about what you value. What you value frequently shapes who you are, but it's not all there is to it."

"Yeah, Dumbledore said that, too. And Professor Questus mentioned it a couple of times, too."

"I'm sorry. I don't know either of those people very well."

Remus paused. He couldn't imagine someone not knowing who Albus Dumbledore was. "Oh. I…"

"It's all right." Rowena placed a hand on Remus' back and started leading him down the corridor. "You can tell me all about it in the library."

Remus grinned. "That sounds like a lot of fun," he said.

And it was.

There was no Madam Pince asking them to be quiet. There was no James groaning about how he'd rather be back in the dormitory or on the Quidditch pitch. There was no Sirius complaining about having to sit still. There was only Remus and Rowena, chatting excitedly at the best table in the library (which, back in the real library, was often taken before Remus arrived), surrounded by the same exact books that had been there thousands of years ago.

"I can't believe you've never heard of Dumbledore," said Remus, shaking his head. "He's probably the most famous wizard of our time. He defeated Grindelwald."

"I've heard something about Dumbledore—one does when occupying a castle in which he is Headmaster—but I don't know all the details. I know less about Grindelwald, though I've heard the name. Give me the basics."

"Oh, right. Grindelwald was a Dark wizard. Started a war and all that. I wasn't born yet, but apparently it was terrifying. Dumbledore defeated him, and he's also a total genius. He did a lot of research on dragon's blood… he discovered the Twelve Uses of Dragon's Blood, actually."

"Never heard of those."

"What? They're groundbreaking. No one knew what dragon's blood could be used for before, so it had to be disposed of… and it was dangerous to dispose of it, too, because it was often toxic to the touch for both wizards and Muggles."

"I know all that," said Rowena with an amused smile.

"Oh, right. Okay. But Dumbledore discovered not one, but twelve uses, without even experimenting with it in person! He didn't harm a single dragon to find out; he just figured it out through Arithmancy. I'm sure that must have taken ages. I'm taking Arithmancy right now, and it's really hard."

"So where is this great Dumbledore now? Working on another project, I'm sure?"

"No. He's the headmaster of Hogwarts, as you know, and I'm not aware that he's doing any research at the moment. Everyone wanted him to be Minister for Magic, so no one's quite sure why he turned it down… but he's a very good headmaster. He let… he let me come to Hogwarts. I'm pretty sure no one else would. I mean… even Professor Questus didn't like me much at first."

"Ah. And who, exactly, is that? Students frequently talked about how harshly he marked their essays, I believe."

"Oh." Remus laughed. "He's not nearly as famous as Dumbledore, though he's pretty well-known throughout the duelling world—he was a fantastic duellist. But no, he was only my first-year Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. Then he was my next-door neighbor for a while. We talked a lot, and he helped me through some rough spots—like when my friends found out that I was a werewolf. But…"

"Yes?"

"He died. It was a pretty long time ago—the end of term in June, actually—but it's still rather difficult on occasion."

"I can imagine."

Remus thought of how excited Questus would be if he knew that Remus had met the Hogwarts Founders themselves. He'd probably ask Remus all sorts of questions about the logistics of the whole thing—how it felt to walk into a painting, how exactly the Founders acted—and he'd be very, very curious as to how Remus felt without his enhanced sense of smell to guide him around. "That's interesting," he'd probably say, leaning forward in his chair as he always did when he was excited about something. "You know, as much as you want a cure… if you got one, right here and right now, you'd probably be ridiculously discombobulated, wouldn't you?"

"It would be worth it," Remus would say.

"I imagine it would. But it would still be unpleasant for quite a while, wouldn't it?"

And then they would discuss the finer points of an outright cure for lycanthropy for about an hour, and then Remus would finally say, "It doesn't matter, anyway. There's no cure. I doubt there ever will be."

Remus' parents, if Remus had been talking with them, would have said, "Of course there will be, Remus! Just wait." Dumbledore, if Remus had been talking to him, would have said, "The world of magic is vast and unknown. There could be something—perhaps not a cure, but something to relieve the symptoms. Lack of hope will drive you to madness, Remus."

But Questus wouldn't say any of that. He wouldn't even bat an eye before saying, "Yeah, probably not. But it's an interesting thought experiment, don't you think?" And then Remus would agree, and then they'd change the subject and move on.

But Professor Questus was dead, so Remus would never get to have that conversation with him. Pity, because Remus figured Questus would probably like the subject enough that it would become a recurring conversation topic—one that weaved in and out of future conversations, a line of thought that was always there to grasp in case they could think of nothing else to talk about (which was rare). It was a pity, but Questus would probably say that—

"There's no point dwelling on it," said Rowena gently, and Remus looked up at her with a start. "You're allowed to think about it, but I'm sure he would want you to move on."

"Yeah, he would," said Remus. "He definitely would. Er…." He asked his next question in the spirit of Professor Questus, who would definitely want to know the same thing. "You told me that you learned modern language because you listened to students walking in the corridors," he said, "but you didn't pick up many details about Professor Dumbledore? That dragon just entered this painting, but you aren't able to enter other paintings in Hogwarts and ask someone what's going on? Why haven't you? How does painting travel work?"

"All good questions." Rowena wandered to a bookshelf, and Remus watched as she picked out a book and brought it back to the table. She opened it to a page somewhere in the middle and showed it to Remus. "This book speaks a lot on the subject of traveling between portraits," she said. "Individuals in paintings can travel between any other paintings in the same building, as long as they're close to one another—so at Hogwarts, you often see objects and people in one painting hopping to the next. However, portraits cannot move to paintings in separate buildings unless the paintings depict themselves. You understand this, yes?"

"Yes."

"Other creatures can travel to our painting if they are close by—such was the dragon that Godric stupidly found. It's from a portrait in the Divination classroom, you'll notice. But we cannot travel in between paintings."

"But why not?"

"I believe it is because this portrait is so advanced that other paintings cannot accommodate us. There used to be other portraits by the same painter who painted this one, and we could travel to those—the enchantments weren't strong enough to allow us to talk, but we could see and hear from them. Those were removed from the castle ages ago, though. Alas—we have no way of escaping. We don't even have our wands. Perhaps, if we had a wand…"

"I'd lend you mine, but I sort of need it to get back," said Remus. "I can't have you escaping with it. Being trapped in here could be detrimental come full moon."

"That's true." Rowena smiled at him. "No worries, Remus. Salazar has a few portraits in Hogwarts between which he is able to travel, and he fills us in."

"But there are portraits of you all over Hogwarts, aren't there?"

"Indeed, but they're painted by different painters. They don't have the same memories and consciousnesses as we do, despite the fact that they depict the same person."

"So how come you can hear students talking and pick up their slang?"

"We can hear people speak, but we cannot see them. Teenagers talk quite loudly."

Remus grinned. "Yeah, that's true."

"We hear all the going-ons in the Divination classroom if we press our ears to the wall," said Rowena. "I've sat in on a great many Divination classes, so I know all about that. I've heard Dumbledore's name spoken, of course—I suspect I've even heard his voice a few times—but I haven't gotten the full story until now. Thank you for that, Remus. Sharing knowledge is one of my greatest values."

"No problem," said Remus. "I'm learning quite a bit from you, too."

"Ah, yes. Talking of learning from me: is there anything you're having trouble with in school? I can help with any sort of homework you have, of course—and, in turn, you can fill me on on the research I've missed since my painting."

"That sounds like fun," said Remus. And, for the next two hours or so, that's exactly what they did.

He returned home with a huge grin on his face. "You slept for a long time," commented his mother as he walked to the kitchen for a snack. "It's almost your bedtime. Are you sure you'll be able to sleep tonight?"

"Yeah. I'll be fine."

"Good. You know, why don't we stay up for a while? You can tell me more stories of Hogwarts."

But Remus, who had been telling stories of Hogwarts all day, didn't really feel like it. "Why don't we listen to an Adamson record?" he said hopefully, and his mother shook her head and laughed.

"No. I can't stomach those. I've no idea how you do it."

"We can play around with Garrison for a bit," said Remus' father.

So he and Remus played a riveting game of Boggart Catch for a long while, and then Remus practiced duelling with his father once they had finished.

When he went to bed that night, he realized that he hadn't been alone all day. He'd been spending time with other people—paintings, in some cases—since the very second he'd woken up.

It was a sharp contrast from his home life before Hogwarts, which had been spent partly with his family and partly completely alone. Remus had been bored to death alone in his room, and boredom had only invited terrifying thoughts of guilt and fear.

Remus decided that he rather liked spending time with other people. It kept the grief at bay, mostly, and—as Rowena had pointed out—Questus would have wanted Remus to move on.

Remus was busy, yes, but keeping busy was a very good thing indeed.