(A/N): So a lot of this chapter is parts of the last one rewritten from another persons pov, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Trigger Warnings: Discussion of self harm.

Herc

I knew Leo was writing a reply to his friend- probably a sensitive one, given his reaction upon receiving the letter, and his desire for privacy- so I made my journey to his room an intentionally un-sneaky one, and leant against the door frame as I waited for him to notice me.

He was standing by a shelving unit against one of the walls, where a box painted to look like a bus sat, its lid open wide to accept the previous letter inside of it. Wedged upright against the back of the box was what looked to be an old pamphlet, which in bold red letters read, 'SISKY: Stress Is Slowly-' The lid descended again before I could read the rest of it, and Leo finally noticed me.

"Letter done?" I inquired, and Leo nodded, but I noticed he intentionally put himself between me and the box as he did so, as if he thought I could see through its sides and was currently perusing the contents.

"Yeah, just sending it now. Is the food ready?"

"Yes." He moved to attach the letter to the owls leg, probably determining I did not, in fact, have x-ray vision, and sent the bird off. "I talked to Shari last night." He seemed surprised by this, and looked back at me, crossing his arms over his chest.

"And did she talk back?" Not as much as I would have liked, but probably more than Leo would. How would he take the news? And how would he take it if she took my offer?

"Not really." He didn't seem to like this answer, I'm guessing because, as Lisbet had told me, Shari had been mostly catatonic since Nicholai's death, and having a stranger come in and suddenly make her start talking probably wasn't the most welcome thing in the world.

"What did you talk about?" He sounded almost suspicious, and as he closed the gap between us, I hesitated. "Herc, Just tell me." He really didn't need to hear this right now, but I needed to tell him before Lisbet inevitably let it slip.

"I, uh... I asked her if she wanted to come back with me." His face dropped. "To Colombia, I mean. When I leave." She hadn't said yes, but she hadn't said no.

"...And what were her thoughts on that?" He wasn't very good at hiding the fact he was clearly upset at the thought of her leaving, but I didn't think he was going to say that out loud.

"She said she'd think about it." She hadn't seemed enthusiastic- not that I really expected her to sound enthusiastic about anything, given the circumstances, but she hadn't outright told me it was a stupid idea, and to go to hell. "I thought maybe getting away... from here, from the things that remind her of Nicholai... it might make it possible for her to heal." To find something to live for.

"...Do you really think that's possible?" He sounded hopeful. Sad, but hopeful.

"I don't know. I've seen people never recover from this sort of thing, and I've seen people get better. That's a lot rarer, but it can happen, and if going away might help..." He nodded.

"Anything that might help, we need to consider."

Elaine

When I woke up the next morning, Lawrence was waiting for me at the window, with a letter tied to his leg.

"Lily!" She seemed confused at first as to why I shook her awake, but as soon as she saw the letter, she understood.

"Don't open it until we're all together." I rolled my eyes at her, setting the letter on my nightstand before starting to get dressed.

"Of course Lily, I wouldn't do that." She eyed me like she didn't quite believe me, but I ignored her in favor of heading to the bathroom to fix my hair. I wasn't going to read the letter without them- after all, they helped write it. If the letter had been between me and Leo, and only me and Leo, then of course I would have read it beforehand, but that simply wasn't the case, and they had as much right to read it as I did. I also knew that whatever Leo's reply was, it would have shown on my face if I had read it first.

"Hurry up, or I'm leaving without you!" I hissed to Lily as I slipped my shoes on, and she reemerged from the bathroom with her hair up in a messy bun, her shirt untucked and one trouser leg rolled up.

"Just have to put shoes on-" I chucked the shoe she was looking for at her, then grabbed her arm to drag her out as she hopped on one leg trying to put the other shoe on. "Elaine- slow down! His answer isn't going to change!" I knew it was probably dumb to be in such a rush, but I also couldn't handle not knowing for a second longer- whether his family had intercepted the letter, whether they had tried, and he'd acted weirdly enough during the incident to make them suspicious of him- whether we were right about the three times he had hurt himself or whether there were more- and if he would own up to them if there were.

The door to the boys dormitory slammed off the wall, and Peter, with one leg in his trousers, tripped over them and fell face first onto the floor on the other side of his bed.

"We got a letter back!" I barely got the words out before I was mangling the envelope to try to get into the damn thing, and Lily quietly closed the door behind us before going to help Peter off the ground.

"And good morning to you too." Sirius groaned from where his face was buried in his pillow, and I would have thrown something at him if I wasn't already so preoccupied. As it was, I chucked the envelope in his general direction- which drifted lazily to the ground no where near him- before carefully unfolding the letter, my eyes taking a second to focus before I could actually read any of the words.

"Dear Elaine-" There was a darker spot of ink here, like his quill had lingered. "Remus, James, Sirius, Peter and Lily-" The fact that he had copied the order we had written our names in the original letter didn't escape me.

"Hey, why is my name last?" Lily whined from Leo's bed, and I made a mental note to remember to sensor the letter in case Leo hadn't already. Although, he had addressed it to her, so if he hadn't, it was his own fault if I missed something.

"Because we had to redraft it after you left and I wrote everyone in the room down first." I bit out, before returning to the letter, not appreciating even this temporary distraction.

"Yeah. More than once." My breath caught as I read what was on the parchment before I could speak it aloud. "You figured out three of them, but there was a fourth. I'm not going to say when, or why, or how, but there was another time."

By this point, the boys were all at least sitting up, and Peter had managed to get his trousers all the way on. The feeling in the room right now was tense, as I think we all tried to consider when the fourth time could have been. Falling short, I returned to the letter once more.

"I considered not telling you- Yeah, big surprise there, bud- but thought you might figure it out anyway, and I didn't want to have to deal with that- not because he thought we should know but because he didn't want to deal with it if we found out on our own, ugh- so yeah. I ended up telling you. Mia knows too-" I paused here, glancing at the others. "-About the first one, at least. I told her after Elaine first saw the scars, she helped calm me down." Calmed him down from what, exactly? "Please don't tell her about the other ones-" If he thought we were going to do his dirty work for him, he had another thing coming. "I will tell her at some point, but I want to do it in person." James scoffed, and I could tell we all shared the same sentiment.

"Yeah, right-" I cut him off as I read the rest of it.

"And I promise I will actually tell her, I'm not lying." James shut his mouth as Leo preempted him. "I miss you guys too- I'm going to be fairly occupied during the holidays, but I promise to try and write as much as possible. Love, Leo." It was nice to know he already missed us. Then, I caught sight of the post script, which answered our previous question.

"PS: You know I can't hurt myself while I'm here, because they'll know. You don't have to worry." I pondered briefly whether he actually thought that was the only reason we said we were worried, then decided he wasn't stupid enough to think that. Then decided again that yes, he was that stupid.

"Well at least that answers whether or not his family would care, just because they're- er..." Sirius eyed Lily as he caught himself just in time. "...Unconventional." She narrowed her eyes at him.

"Why was that ever in question?" Oof, this was going to be hard to explain.

"You know, how Leo is always getting hurt anyway, during training and such. Maybe it wouldn't be as big a deal to them as it is to us." Remus coming to the rescue.

"Yeah, I mean, Leo never mentioned how they reacted to him ending up in St Mungos after that one full moon, so it couldn't have been that bad, right?" Remus and I winced, both at James's mention of that particular incident, and the fact that we knew Leo would never have told us if they had freaked out, so we had no way of knowing that they didn't, in fact, freak out.

"Or he kept it from us, like Leo always does." I pointed out, and Lily nodded.

"The roof could cave in and he'd tell us everything was fine. We can't take anything he says at face value. Like the fact he said there were only four times." We all turned our attention to her. "We only gave him a free pass for before we found out, and you know as well as I do Leo would take that fine print and run with it." I hated to think about it, but I knew she was right.

"There's not much we can do before he gets back, so we shouldn't dwell on it too much, but I think Pete's idea was solid." Pete himself seemed shocked by this, and Lily just seemed confused.

"What plan is this?" I remembered that Pete's plan wasn't exactly secret friendly, and kicked myself for just throwing it out there like that.

"Pete had the idea to use Remus's heightened sense of smell to check in with Leo regularly." James piped up, and as Lily's attention turned to him, I sent him a thankful look. "You know, to see if he smells like blood or anything." We didn't need to mention the fact that Remus had already been doing this, and we had already identified several problems with this method, such as him not being able to smell any blood on Leo as of late.

"Would that work?" Lily asked of Remus, who looked like he hated having to lie to her.

"I mean, its worth a shot. At the very least, it should help to keep him honest."

(A/N): First Sirius almost outing Leo, and then Elaine. Mostly because I forgot Lily was in the room and needed the secret kept from her, so my forgetting became their forgetting.

This chapter has had a minor edit made to it on 26/4/23 - Added the trigger warning.