It was a well-known fact that James Potter was an absolute monster when he was nervous.

Now, Remus figured that he wasn't one to judge—after all, he was also an absolute monster on certain occasions—but James was a little bit scary sometimes. The final Quidditch game was the next day, and Gryffindor and Slytherin would be competing for the Cup. This was James' moment to prove himself as a Beater, and of course he was nervous. He sat in the Great Hall at breakfast, scowling at his food.

"Hungry?" asked Remus.

"No, Moony. Shut up."

"You know, I'm not hungry, either. We can skip breakfast together."

James' head snapped up. "You are not skipping breakfast, Moony!" he snapped. "You had a stressful day yesterday, you have a long day today today, and you'll be outdoors for however long the game takes! You need to eat!"

"You'll be flying a broomstick for that same amount of time. You need to eat, too. I'll eat if you do."

James scowled harder and took a bite of his eggs. "I'll be sick," he said.

"Save it for after the Quidditch game," said Remus, taking a bite of his own eggs. He winked at Sirius, who was laughing hysterically.

"You're using his own pitying and coddling against him!" Sirius wheezed.

"And it's working," said Remus.

James stopped eating, eyes narrowed deeply, and so did Remus. "You git," said James.

"Oops, Prongs. If you're done eating, then so am I."

James crossed his arms, stood up, and stormed off, leaving his eggs growing cold on the table.

"Too far?" asked Remus, wincing.

"Nope," said Sirius. "He needs a taste of his own medicine on occasion. Besides, he'll be his cheery, bubbly self after the game no matter what, and then he'll think it was the funniest thing ever."

Remus nodded and finished his breakfast. He really was hungry.

Every time Remus watched a Quidditch game, he was reminded how utterly incredible James Potter was at Quidditch.

James dove with the grace of a swan, the agility of a panther, and the speed of a Peruvian Vipertooth. He hit each Bludger with strength that was outstanding for his lanky, fourteen-year-old body. He was quick, he was confident, and—most surprising of all—he was actually working well with the other Beater.

Remus, Sirius, and Peter cheered every time James did anything remotely outstanding, and they weren't the only ones. Practically the whole school was there, and most of the Houses (excluding the Slytherins) seemed to be cheering for James Potter. That was one of the perks of being immensely popular, Remus supposed.

Gryffindor was up fifty points, and most of that was because James would knock the Chasers away every time they got close to making a goal. He had a talent of using a Bludger to knock the Quaffle itself to a teammate (while it was traveling in midair!) that impressed everyone very much. There were other brilliantly talented people on the Gryffindor team, of course, but James just had a way of commanding the attention. The commentator—a seventh-year boy from Hufflepuff—talked about nearly no one else but James Potter.

Suddenly, Remus started to feel a bit ill.

"Everything all right, Moony?" asked Peter.

"Yeah. Probably just ate too much breakfast."

"Are you sure you don't need to go to the Hospital Wing? I could take you if you wanted."

"Nope, I'm all right…" Another wave of nausea washed over Remus, and he leaned against Peter. "I'm sorry. Just… for a second."

He watched the Quidditch players, flitting here and there in the June sunlight, but there was a dark cloud moving in… no, that was just Remus' vision, slowly going dark and fuzzy at the edges… and those were merely black spots, growing larger and threatening to blot everything out.

"Gonna need some help right about now," Remus mumbled, and the last thing he felt was his head hitting where his feet had been only moments before.

He woke up in the Hospital Wing and blinked up at Madam Pomfrey's concerned face. He couldn't believe that he was here for the second day in a row, and it wasn't even the full moon.

"You were poisoned," said Madam Pomfrey. "Again, and it seems to be getting worse every time it happens. You hit your head when you passed out, and your heart stopped for about ten seconds."

"I was dead for ten seconds?" mumbled Remus. "Cool."

"Not cool! Not cool at all! Someone in this castle is trying to kill you, and they're very nearly succeeding! I'm sorry, Remus, but you cannot leave the Hospital Wing until we have a better idea of who's doing this to you. I can't let you go home for the holidays only to die in your sleep."

"Just give my parents the bezoar antidote. I always feel ill enough to wake up before it gets bad."

"There is no 'always'! It's getting worse, Remus, and I'm guessing it's going to keep evolving and changing."

"But if the poisoner is at the castle, then…"

"It could be anyone or anything. It could be one of your friends."

"You think it's James, Sirius, or Peter?"

Madam Pomfrey was silent for a few moments as she fluffed Remus' pillows. "I think it's possible," she said.

"What?! It couldn't possibly be one of my friends!"

"Not the ultimate culprit, no. I feel confident that they would never do that to you. But we've talked about this earlier, haven't we? It could possibly be the Imperius Curse, and your friends are the only common denominator. They've been near you and your food every time you've been poisoned, and they're the only ones who have been so… unless you accepted another drink from Professor Leek."

"No. Only Professor Flitwick."

"Have you noticed your friends acting strangely? Or Professor Flitwick?"

"No, but… if I didn't notice that Professor Questus was a werewolf, then… I probably wouldn't notice if my best friends were under a Dark curse, either."

"Remus, I'm not sure how many times I have to tell you this. He was lying to you. You weren't expected to know."

"I know. I'm just saying, I'm frightfully unobservant and self-absorbed."

"You're not self-absorbed."

"That's not what Questus would have said, though I suppose he wasn't telling the truth nearly as much as I thought he was anyway." Remus sighed. "We're not going to find out who poisoned me today," he said. "Even Professor Dumbledore doesn't know. Can't you just let me leave the Hospital Wing? We'll figure it out later, I know we will. I'll come to you with anything I find, and I'll keep an eye on my friends."

Madam Pomfrey sighed, too. She patted down Remus' hair and handed him another glass of water. "I'll let you out after supper," she said. "I do need to keep an eye on you for a little while longer, all right?"

"All right," said Remus. He drank the water, letting the refreshing coolness slide down his scratchy throat, and then he fell back on the pillows and slept.

"No, you may not visit my patient," Madam Pomfrey was saying. "He needs sound sleep, and you three are never quiet. Come back in an hour; I'm sure he'll be awake by then."

Remus raised his fist and knocked four times on the wall.

"Sounds like he's awake to me," he heard Sirius say.

"Fine," said Madam Pomfrey. Remus heard the door shut, and then he heard footsteps—a few moments later, the door to Madam Pomfrey's office flew open and Remus was greeted by his friends' chatter and Madam Pomfrey's pleas that they would be quiet.

"I'll leave you to it," she said, noticing Remus' smile, and then she left.

"WE WON!" was the first coherent phrase out of James' mouth. "I'm so sorry you were poisoned again because that was BRILLIANT! Slytherin caught up near the end, and they were forty points ahead of us—not my fault, our Chasers just aren't as good as they were last year—but then the Slytherin Seeker was about to catch the Snitch, and I hit him with a Bludger! It gave the Gryffindor Seeker plenty of time to swoop in there and snatch the Snitch! We won!"

"It was a really exciting game!" squealed Peter. "We were saying, 'Oh no, Slytherin's going to win!' and then James swooped in out of nowhere and Gryffindor won!"

"There's a party on right now in the Gryffindor common room, but I thought I'd sneak out and tell you what happened. I can't imagine missing the last half of the Quidditch Cup. You must have been so worried and nervous about who was going to win. Well, not worried and nervous, because of course Gryffindor was going to win, but definitely a little bit anxious."

"Yeah, that's the only reason why I was anxious," said Remus.

"You just… passed out on the stands," said Peter, frowning. "I ran and got Poppy, because she wasn't sitting terribly far away, and then she Conjured up a stretcher and took you to the Hospital Wing. No one even noticed. They were all too engrossed in the game."

"No one noticed? Are you sure?"

"Positive. I went down with you to make sure you were okay, and it was scary. Poppy looked panicked. She said you weren't breathing, and then she told me to run and get Albus, and then he had to help out."

Remus grimaced. "That's embarrassing."

"As soon as you were all right again, I ran back and watched the rest of the game. Padfoot caught me up on what I missed, so it was all right."

"Yep, that was definitely the main concern."

"Anyway," said James, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, "I've got to get back to the common room now. I'm sure they're all chanting my name."

"I'm sure they are."

"Bye, Moony!"

Remus watched his friends leave, and then he leaned back once again to go to sleep.

He felt left-out sometimes, and he hated being ill seemingly all the time… but at least he had good friends. Everything was going to be perfectly fine, probably, as long as he didn't die or anything.

When Remus finally got out of the Hospital Wing, things had calmed down considerably. The party had ended, the Gryffindors were no longer running around the place like maniacs, and James could finally use his inside voice again. Remus sat in the dormitory with his friends, playing a game of chess in the hopes that a sedentary activity would stop James from being so incredibly twitchy.

James and Peter silently watched as Sirius beat Remus as chess. Remus might have been good at strategy when duelling, but his chess strategy left much to be desired. He couldn't remember winning a game, ever.

While Remus was trying to figure out where to move his pieces, Sirius grew bored and started humming the wolf theme from Peter and the Wolf.

"At least start on the right note," said Remus, rolling his eyes.

Suddenly, Sirius was totally alert. "How did you know I didn't start on the right note?" he asked.

"Because the real thing is lower, you idiot. Don't you remember?"

"What's the right starting note, then?"

Remus shook his head in exasperation. "Knight to E5," he said. "Do you expect me to hum it, Sirius? You know I can't sing."

"Fine." Sirius hummed a note that was lower. "Is that it?"

"No. Higher."

Sirius hummed another note. "Is that it?"

"Lower. Are you being dense on purpose?"

Sirius hummed another note. "What about that one?"

"A little bit higher, obviously. What is this, some sort of weird game?"

Sirius broke out into a grin. "You have absolute pitch!" he said. "I had no idea! Why didn't you tell me?"

"What?"

"You remember notes."

"Well, obviously. My memory isn't that bad."

"Most people can't do it, though. I can do it, and so can my brother, but neither of my parents can. Albus can do it, too. Other than that, I don't know a single other person who can."

"But…" Remus looked at James. "You don't know what notes things start on, Prongs?"

"Nope. Blind as a bat when it comes to music."

"Based on our brief Musical Marauders appearances in first and second year… I could tell."

"Oi!"

"I don't understand," said Remus. "You mean, if you were to sing Peter and the Wolf all the way through, starting on the wrong note, then James and Peter wouldn't be able to tell the difference?"

"Perhaps they'd know it was a little bit different, but they couldn't produce the actual starting note reliably."

"Wow," said Remus.

"How'd you learn the piano and not know that you had absolute pitch, Moony?"

"My family were never much into music, obviously. We sold the piano two months before Professor Dumbledore invited me to Hogwarts, and we hadn't had a record player since I was six and a half. No one actually played the piano, but it had come with the house. I only knew how to play Moonlight Sonata."

"How did you know how to play it if no one else taught you?"

"It was pretty funny, actually. A random Healer came to our house once to heal me from a particularly awful full moon, and she played piano."

"So she taught you?"

"No, she played Moonlight Sonata once to entertain me. I knew how it was supposed to sound, so I played it. My parents got me a piano book a month later, hoping I'd play something else, but Moonlight Sonata was in the book and I just stared at the notes until I figured it out."

"You're saying you played it by ear."

"Yeah. Didn't work out for anything else in the book, though, so I think I figured out the notes wrong."

Sirius shook his head. "Do you still have the book?"

"It's probably in my trunk." Remus stood up, leaving the chess game, and rummaged around in his trunk for a bit. "Ah, yes," he said. "Here it is." He opened up to the right page and pointed. "This is what I can play," he said.

Sirius started laughing. "Moony! This isn't what you were playing!"

"Yes, it is."

"You played Moonlight Sonata for me over holidays, remember? And you started on an A! This starts on a G#!"

"I don't know what those words mean."

"The Healer started in a different key, so you taught yourself all the notes in the wrong key! That's why nothing sounded right. So this note sounds like this—" Sirius hummed a note— "but you thought it sounded like this." He hummed again. "Also, do you know what these little marks mean?"

"No clue."

"You don't know what accidentals are. Or key signatures."

"To be fair, my brief piano stint lasted about three months."

"You had absolute pitch the whole time, but you didn't even know, because you weren't around enough people to know that it wasn't normal, and you hadn't ever learned your note names! Merlin's beard, Moony!"

"Does it matter?"

Sirius shook his head. "All right," he said, "I'm going to teach you note names, and then you'll be able to play whatever you want. Almost. Unfortunately, knowing the notes is the easy part of playing piano. But this is gonna be so much fun! I'm going to ask Albus if we can borrow his piano. Be right back!"

Remus looked at James and Peter, chess game forgotten. "I'm going to regret this, aren't I," he said.

Peter wrinkled his nose. "Albus has a piano?" he said.

Albus Dumbledore did, in fact, have a piano. It was hidden behind a wall in his office, and apparently, Sirius had played it on occasion while waiting for Dumbledore to give him more Assistant Headmaster tasks.

"Albus says he doesn't need an Assistant Headmaster next year, so I've got to enjoy the piano while I can," said Sirius. "Albus! Did you know that Remus has absolute pitch?"

Dumbledore smiled. "I suspected," he said. "I believe it comes with the lycanthropy."

"It does?" said Remus. "Really?"

"Yes. John Questus figured it out when he started learning piano."

"Then how come he never mentioned it to me?"

"He couldn't do that without telling you the truth, Remus."

"He could have said he'd read it in a book or something."

"Not without running the risk of you asking to see the book. It was the safe option. Anyway… yes, I thought you might have that talent. I researched a bit further, of course. True wolves have absolute pitch; it helps them communicate. It makes sense that werewolves would as well, and it makes sense that the ability would carry over to your human form… the enhanced hearing does, too, after all."

"I can't believe I didn't notice," said Sirius. "You were so bad at the piano over holidays that I had no clue. What was the problem there?"

"You kept telling me the note names, and I didn't know note names! I could have done it if you'd hummed the note instead."

Sirius gestured toward the piano. "Play something," he said.

Remus sat down, shrugged at Dumbledore, and started playing Moonlight Sonata.

"No, Moony! Not that! Play… okay, I'm going to hum something. Play what I hum."

Sirius hummed a short melody, and Remus tried to remember where the notes were, based on the notes he knew from Moonlight Sonata. It was choppy, but he got through it without much of a problem.

"See, that was almost perfect!" said Sirius. "Now I'll teach you the notes. That first note was an E, and then an A, and then C, B, A, E, D, B, E, A, C, B, G. Got it?"

"Of course not!" cried Remus.

Sirius pushed Remus out of the way. "Okay," he said, sitting down at the piano. "This is a C."

He pressed a note.

"Okay," said Remus. "I think I can remember that. That note is in Moonlight Sonata."

"It's in a lot of things. Now, the notes go in order, so the one after C is a D, because D comes after C in the alphabet."

"Okay…?"

"If something is sharp, that means it's a little bit above the note. So a C# is between C and D. That's also called a Db, because a flat is a little below the note."

"But there are so many notes in between C and C#. What are those called?"

"Nothing. They're just out of tune."

"Who picked what notes are in tune and what notes are out of tune?"

"I dunno. Someone. Oddly enough, wizards often tune to 453 hertz, while Muggles usually tune to 440. That means that all the notes sound weird when I hear Muggle music. Dumbledore originally had his tuned to 440, but I changed it. It sounds better at 453."

"…What?"

"Never mind. My point is, you don't have to worry about learning any notes that don't have keys on the piano. Let's keep going."

After about an hour, Remus had a pretty good grasp of where all the notes on the piano were. "This is brilliant," said Sirius, grinning. "I can't believe I have someone else who can play cool music by ear with me. Hey, remember that Dave Hippo song? We should play it! You can play the melody, and I'll fill in all the other notes. You can join in, too, Albus! I think we'll all fit. Just play whatever sounds good. You know The Hippo of Seville, right?"

"It's one of my favorite songs," said Dumbledore.

And so they sat at the piano and played The Hippo of Seville, and Remus thought that maybe some of his lycanthropic differences weren't all bad after all.