The Midnight Hour

(One-Shot)

Disclaimers: I don't own anything apart from some DVD's/books for this series.

AN: This is a short standard prompt for "The Houses Competition" set in 'Marauders' Era' time. As I am old (ish), my views of them may vary from the young ones, including the fact that I am TeamCharlus/Dorea, have Sirius/James as distant relations through Black blood, as well as TeamTrans (as an ally). I do not accept any new stuff by Rowling.

House: Gryffindor

Class: Prefect

Category: Standard

Prompt(s): [Object] Candy / [Time] Midnight

Word count: 1,555 according to AO3 (3.5 pages)

Summary: In which, Remus finds out he has three true friends.

"It happened again, didn't it?" James asked. "Fifth time in a row, now."

"Check it again," said Peter.

Sirius sighed but opened the monthly chart once more. "Full moon. That's what it says."

"Are you absolutely sure, Sirius?" Peter asked.

Sirius lowered the chart. He began rolling it up. After tossing it onto his bed, he looked at his two other friends in turn before saying, "I am quite sure we have a werewolf puppy in our midst. It explains everything."

"This is big," James whispered from his place on the windowsill of the dorm. "This is really big!"

"I know," Sirius said.

"I mean, we've been with him all this time," James began.

"I know."

"We've slept in the same room with him," James went on.

"I know," Sirius said.

"This whole time," James gasped. He had a strange, gleeful look in his eye. "Sirius! We have a pet werewolf!" He was practically giddy.

"Wait a minute, Jim," Peter cut in. "We're talking about werewolves here."

"I KNOW!" James squealed, echoing Sirius but on a much higher octave. "It's amazing!"

"What are you planning?" Sirius asked.

James just grinned wildly. "I have no freaking idea in hell!"

A werewolf puppy. They had a werewolf puppy right in their dorms. Except...well...exactly where did Remus go once a month, anyway?

"Well, we aren't going outside right now," Sirius said, glancing out the window at the full moon crossing the sky. "Clearly, they stash him somewhere for this event, or else he'd be eating us as we speak. He usually disappears for a few days. We should try finding him in the morning. Right now, it's midnight. We should get to bed."

Going to bed, however, was not the same as going to sleep. Each lay awake most of that night, pondering their discovery. Peter was rather confused since Remus was a good friend of his. Yet, somehow, he was a werewolf, it seemed. Sirius worried more about his father than about a gigantic wolf running around somewhere. Orion was bad enough with his pureblood supremacy. Remus was a halfblood, but worse in Orion's eyes. Now this? Remus was the epitome of everything Orion, or actually the entire Noble House Of Black, hated. Sirius lay stoned-faced, staring at the ceiling of his canopy trying to fathom just how far off he had drifted from his family now that he was apparently friends with an impure boy who also happened to be a werewolf.

James lay awake, grinning. A werewolf puppy! What to do with this? Any information they had on werewolves went against what they all knew about Remus. Clearly, the 'experts' on werewolves were wrong. But how to prove them so? He finally, slowly but surely, fell asleep, as did the other two.

"THAT'S IT!" James bellowed, startling the others out of a sound sleep. They blinked bleary-eyed at James as he jumped out of his bed into the morning rays of sun. "I GOT IT!"

"Got what?" Sirius grumbled.

"Remus likes candy, right?" James began. "Especially chocolate."

"S-S-So-oh?" Sirius yawned widely as Peter finally sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

"So!" James rolled his eyes. "What do people normally do with new pets?" When all he got were more glares, he answered his own question. "Train them with treats. Let's train Remus! We can get candy at Hogsmeade. Or order it by owls. We can tame him using treats. Train him!"

Sirius stared like a stunned owl at James. Of all the harebrained ideas... "Dude? I'm going back to sleep."

"Oh, come on!" James didn't allow Sirius to go to sleep. "It's brilliant!"

"Too early," Sirius complained, rolling over. A loud snore was soon heard.

James groaned as he dug around in his trunk for his invisibility cloak. He pulled it out, then looked at Peter, who also happened to like candy. "Want to go?"

"Sure," Peter said, ducking under the cloak with James.

They made their way down the path to Hogsmeade, being careful to stay hidden since second-year students were not allowed to go off the grounds of Hogwarts. But they had done this many times since James had this special cloak.

They drifted quietly into Honeydukes behind some older students from their fifth year, taking extra care not to hit the bell by the door. James tugged Peter along the aisles as both swiftly slipped random sweets off the shelf to hide in their pockets. Once both were loaded down, they made their way back up the main path to the castle.

The next step was figuring out what happened to Remus during his off days.

They literally bumped into Sirius on the way inside. Sirius glanced around before putting his hands out, feeling a big, invisible lump in front of him. "Over here," Sirius whispered, leading them to a large statue of a witch. James pulled the cloak off once they were safely hidden behind it. Sirius glanced at the bulging pockets before going on. "I know where Remus is. They keep him in one of those private rooms after his lunar shift." After a short hesitation, he added, "I might have fallen down the last flight of stairs since it started moving under me, so I went to the hospital wing."

James snorted back a laugh. "I'd have paid Muggle money to see that."

Sirius scowled before going on. "So I ended up sleeping a little there until the pain potion fixed things up. When I woke up, I pretended I was still asleep. I overheard someone's conversation about it. We could go see him tonight."

"Sounds like a plan," James agreed, while Peter nodded beside him, mouth full with a lollipop.

They waited in the dorms until late into the evening just to be extra sure that everyone had gone to sleep. Professors were tucked away in their private chambers. Prefects were snoring away in their respective dorms.

James grabbed the cloak. The three of them made their way down to the hospital wing. Several times they had to dodge ghosts or Peeves or even a few pictures of night creatures such as vampires who were awake at this time. They entered the main hospital wing twenty minutes later.

"Where did you say he was?" James asked in a whisper.

"In one of the private rooms," Sirius answered, also hushed. "I don't know which. We'll have to just check each one until we find him."

Sirius put a hand out beyond the cloak to the first doorknob at the back of the hospital.

DONG!

Sirius immediately withdrew his hand into the nothingness that the cloak offered as all three froze while the Clock Tower outside began tolling out twelve strokes.

"The midnight hour," Sirius said after the clock was done. "Hope no one here woke up." He tried the door in front of him once more.

Remus wasn't there. They tried three more doors before finally, they found him.

They shuffled inside, softly closing the door behind them, but Remus still snapped to attention. He sat up in bed, eyes shining in the dim light of a single candle on the nightstand. He was looking right at them.

But worse, his lips were curled back in a snarl.

"Bad idea," Peter whimpered. "Very bad idea."

"He knows something is going on," James said before yanking off the cloak. "Hi, Remus."

Remus blinked a few times, stunned that anyone, least of all those three, were here.

"What are you doing?" Peter yelped as Sirius kept his eyes on Remus.

"We forgot," James said. "He's a wolf. Of course he'll smell us."

"Mm, what?" Remus whimpered. No, no. No one was supposed to know. How did this happen?

"Don't deny it," Sirius said. "We've been tracking you for a while. Let me guess. Mummy dearest is sick again, isn't she?"

"Sirius!" Remus huffed.

"Well, is she?" Sirius demanded. Remus looked down at the bed covers. "Yeah, that's what I thought," Sirius finished. "It isn't her, it's you."

"You're a werewolf puppy, aren't you?" James said. "Remus, it's fine."

Remus slowly looked up at them. "It is?"

"Yeah," James nodded. "We brought you something." He nodded at Peter who held up two pillowcases stuffed full of candy.

"We have some candy," Peter said. "Do you ... want some?"

"S-Sure," Remus stammered. "But you all need to get back to the dorms. You'll get in trouble here."

"We will soon," said Sirius. "When the midnight hour is done."

The three of them moved to the bed. Peter tipped out the pillowcases, spilling the candy everywhere. Remus's eyes went wide at the sight of the rather large pile of sweets. His eyes flicked up to watch James pick up a chocolate bar.

James looked at Remus before offering it. "If you don't bite, you can have this."

"Um, thanks?" Remus half-laughed as he took it.

Sirius helped himself to a piece of peanut brittle before saying, "We'll help keep you sane. We can use this," he indicated the candy. "Maybe to distract you."

"It's my idea," James muttered.

"We'll train you properly," Peter said as he handed over more candy to Remus.

Looking at each of them in turn, Remus ended up smiling as he realized what kind of crazy idea had gotten into their heads. "Guys, I'm NOT a pet!"