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Chapter Text

September 1st 1971, Grimmauld Place, London

Sirius Black stared at himself in the mirror, trying to keep the grin off his face. Today was the day. In just a couple of hours he would walk away from his mother and get on a train to a new life. And yes he’d also have to walk away from Regulus and that sucked, but Reg should be okay without Sirius there to get him into scrapes. He’d probably turn into the model Black son, with pristine manners and snooty turn of the head and all. Sirius just hoped he’d keep a little of his fiery spirit underneath.

But really, Reg would be fine and Sirius was getting to go to Hogwarts! He was beyond excited and could hardly keep from skipping and jumping except for fear that any bad behaviour today would tempt his mother to not let him go after all. So Sirius tucked his shirt in tidily, smoothed his hair down, and walked over to his bedroom door where his trunk was waiting. He picked up his trunk and turned for one last look around his room. It was perfectly tidy and boring, not a crease on the bed sheets or even a loose sock dangling out of his laundry basket. He knew his mother would check before they left the house and if anything was out of place he would be ‘reprimanded’ or worse.

With his trunk in hand Sirius stepped out onto the landing and headed down the stairs, Regulus slipping out of his room to join him quietly. On any other day the boys would race each other down, jumping to tap the noses of the stuffed house elf heads on their way past, but they both knew today was not any other day. Regulus had even helped Sirius clean the day before (perhaps for the first time ever), turning his bombsite of a bedroom into the strange place it was this morning. They walked quietly together now, like little soldiers marching in time with no expression on their faces. At the bottom of four flights of stairs they turned into the hall, Sirius put his trunk down neatly and they stood waiting for their mother to appear. They could hear her in the kitchen shouting orders at the house elf, and then walking up to the hall as if by magic knowing they were there (it probably was magic, she would be the kind of woman to set tracking spells in her own house).

Upon her arrival in the hall, Walburga Black looked her two sons over thoroughly. Luckily for them they had neither of them a hair out of place for her to find fault with. She stalked past them up the stairs to Sirius’ bedroom, showing no surprise at the lack of chaos. She had heard the boys cleaning the day before and it was only with slim hope that she looked for something they might have missed. She didn’t find anything and so headed back downstairs to the two boys waiting exactly where she had left them.

“Come” she said coldly and led them to the front door.

Outside a dark car was waiting, with a man in chauffeur's uniform holding the passenger door open for the three Blacks to enter. Once they were in and the man had loaded Sirius’ trunk they took off smoothly in the direction of King’s Cross station where Platform 9 ¾ and the Hogwarts Express waited. It took a while to get there as traffic in London was its usual terrible self and even magic could only help so much. Walburga spent the entire 45 minute trip lecturing Sirius on how he was to behave on the train and once he got to Hogwarts, and that he must be sure to give up his nasty mischievous habits or he would bring shame on the family and he wouldn’t like the consequences. Sirius listened carefully, making a list in his head of all the things he wasn’t supposed to do (and therefore all the things he must do as soon as possible).

At last the car pulled to a stop in front of a train station full of muggles and the Blacks got out and walked toward the barrier leading to platform 9 ¾. As befitted her pure blood snobbishness, Walburga didn’t change pace as the barrier neared, walking calmly through as though there was nothing there and no one was watching. Sirius and Regulus hurried after her on their shorter legs, Sirius pulling his trunk behind him. And then suddenly they were there, looking at the gleaming scarlet train and the crowds of children and families with trunks and cages holding owls and cats, and some were leaning broomsticks over their shoulders. Behind their mother’s back Regulus reached out and quickly squeezed Sirius’ hand before letting go, excitement subtly gleaming in both their eyes though they still hid smiles in stony faces. Walburga led them to a carriage door and then stopped, staring down at Sirius with something strange in her eyes that almost looked like affection.

“Right, have a good year and remember everything I’ve told you. Your cousins will be able to answer any questions you might have and keep out of trouble and obey your teachers and don’t fraternise with ‘that sort’” - she paused to glare at a clearly muggle family hugging their redheaded daughter goodbye a short way down the train - “Well, we’ll see you at Yule. Come along Regulus.”

Walburga then did the most bizarre thing Sirius had ever experienced. She reached out and patted him on the shoulder. Sirius decided to risk her good mood and stepped toward Regulus, his arms open for a hug, but caught her eye and changed it to a handshake at the last second. Reg gave him a small little smile before turning and following his mother away down the platform. Sirius hurried to heave his trunk onto the train and get out of sight, just in case his mother changed her mind at the last minute. He would not let her find him now that he was out of her grasp.

Sirius wandered down the train, which was still fairly empty as many students were engaging in prolonged affectionate goodbyes on the platform. He wanted to be careful not to end up in a compartment with any of his numerous Slytherin cousins. That would not go well with his plans for rebellion. As he wandered, compartments slowly filled as more and more students got on board. Towards the back of the train Sirius found a likely looking compartment and let himself in. There were two boys he didn’t recognise sitting near the door chatting amiably, and over by the window sat the redheaded muggle girl his mother had glared at on the platform.

“Not a muggle - a witch” Sirius corrected himself mentally. He would not let himself think the way his mother wanted, he would not! So Sirius entered the compartment with a friendly grin on his face, “room for one more?” he asked the two boys who both looked up in surprise.

“Sure!” said the boy with unruly black hair and glasses, while the blonde, slightly chubby boy moved down to make room. “I’m James, and this is Peter.”

“Sirius” he replied, leaving out his last name just as they had and glad to do so. As he settled into his seat James returned to the conversation about quidditch teams, telling Sirius his favourite and asking what his was.

***

September 1st 1971, Potter Manor, Shropshire

“We’re going to be late!” Effie Potter yelled up the stairs at her son. James was dashing madly around his bedroom throwing stuff into his trunk haphazardly. Somehow he’d forgotten to pack his trunk for an entire week straight and now it was the morning he was supposed to catch the Hogwarts Express and he couldn’t possibly put it off any longer. Finally he threw some textbook or other in and slammed the lid shut deciding anything he’d missed would just have to stay behind or get sent on by owl. James dragged his trunk to the top of the stairs, double checked the clasps, then gave it a push to send it bumping and sliding down toward his mum who was glaring at him in the hall. He followed his trunk by hopping up on the bannister and zooming down it like a slide. At the end he leaped down perfectly to land standing next to his trunk with a massive cheeky grin on his face. He’d perfected the bannister slide a few years ago but it still got him a good telling off from his mum every time. Today however she didn’t have time to properly yell at him as they really were running late so she just levitated his trunk and dragged him out the door to where James’ dad Monty was waiting holding a muggle rugby ball and frantically waving them over. 

“Come on come on, the portkey’s about to go and if we mess this up I’ll never get another permit from work.” James and his mum made it just in time and the ball glowed blue as they got their hands to it, Effie’s other hand firmly holding the trunk.

With a thud the Potters landed in an alleyway beside Wolverhampton train station. Now decidedly back on schedule, Effie calmly led the way toward the station with her husband and son following behind. Monty pulled the trunk and James walked beside him before stopping with a sudden cry “I forgot Weebles!” his parents both looked at him with almost identical exasperated expressions on their faces.

“How do you manage to forget an entire owl James?” his dad asked, then turned to Effie and added “and how did you not notice when you left the house?”

Effie just sighed in response then clearly made a decision because her expression returned to business-like calm. “We will send Weebles along just as soon as we get home, she’ll probably even beat the train and she’ll be able to bring all the other things I’m sure to discover that you’ve forgotten once I see your room. Though she may need a little help from Evenstar if it’s as many things as I’m beginning to fear.”

Monty laughed and James pouted which just made both his parents laugh. “Don’t worry dear, it’ll all be absolutely fine” his mum soothed, starting to walk towards the station again, James and Monty following. When they got inside, Effie looked all around before turning to Monty and asking “can you see the entrance? I just can’t remember what it looks like here.”

Monty pointed to a boarded up brick archway that used to lead to a set of bathrooms, “I think that’s it over there, better not run at it though just in case I’m wrong.” The family headed off in the direction Monty had pointed and sure enough when they gently tried to lean against the archway they slid right through and ended up on Platform 9 ¾.

James started hopping up and down he was so excited. He could see the Hogwarts Express, shiny and red and puffing steam into the crowd. He ran ahead of his parents towards the nearest door, which was close to the end of the train. As he turned around to wait for them to catch up he could see all the other families milling around, and behind them the many archways all leading to different muggle train stations. Off in the distance near the front of the train was the biggest archway, leading to Kings Cross in London, the original entrance to the platform but no longer the only one as parents up and down the country had complained to the ministry about the distance they had to travel to get their children to London each September. James’ Dad had been part of the team that had planned and created the 30 new entrances to Platform 9 ¾ that were now scattered all around the UK and Ireland. People still had to travel, but now someone who lived in Scotland didn’t have to go all the way down to London just to come all the way back on the train.

James’ parents caught up to him, and helped him get his trunk onto the train and tucked into an empty compartment, then they stepped off to say goodbye. Effie and Monty both looked a little teary as they crushed James into the middle of a threeway hug, but they were smiling as they let him go.

“Please try to rein in your wild behaviour James dear, and remember that Aunty Minnie doesn’t tolerate any cheekiness from her students even if she has tolerated your mischief up till now,” his mother said.

“Can I have a quick word before you go?” Monty asked James suddenly and pulled him away from his mother, out of earshot. James looked up at his dad with a query in his eyes as he watched him pull something out of his coat. It was a soft squishy looking paper package. “Don’t open it till you get to your dorm tonight, and make sure there are no prefects or teachers around,” Monty cautioned.

“What is it Dad?”

“It’s a family heirloom, you’ll know what when you open it. Now hurry or the train will be gone!” His dad pushed him forward with one last ruffle of his hair and James jumped up into the train, turning around to wave madly at his parents while the train engine started to get louder and louder and all around him students ran for the train doors and parents yelled goodbyes and last minute reminders.

As the train started to leave the station James headed along to the compartment where his trunk was and found it was no longer empty. There was a girl sitting looking out the window and a boy with blonde hair and chubby cheeks. The girl clearly didn’t want to talk as she kept looking out the window when James entered, but the boy looked friendly if a little shy so James sat down opposite him and introduced himself, “Hi, I’m James and my Quidditch team is the Tutshill Tornados, what’s yours?”

The boy looked a little taken aback at his method of greeting, but after a moment he managed to answer “Wimbourne Wasps I guess. I’m Peter by the way.”

“Good choice Peter” James said and launched into a slightly one sided conversation about the most recent times the Wasps and Tornados had played against each other and who had won each match and why. A few minutes later the door opened and a very prim and proper boy with perfectly combed shoulder length black hair and a collared shirt buttoned up all the way and tucked into his trousers walked in.

“Room for one more?” he asked with a confident grin that made James smile instinctively.

“Sure” he said and the boy sat down next to Peter (as the quiet girl was still on James’ side ignoring them all). “I’m James and this is Peter,” James said then gave the boy just enough time to reply “Sirius” before launching into his routine, “My Quidditch team is the Tutshill Tornados, what’s yours?”

“Ah well let’s see, if we went by location they’d be the Wimbourne Wasps but my father supports them so I’ve never liked them much. Currently I’m supporting the Kenmure Kestrels who look set to beat the Wasps to a pulp in their next game.”

***

September 1st 1971, Pettigrew Household, Bournemouth

To say Peter Pettigrew was nervous about going to Hogwarts would be an understatement. He was actually shaking as he struggled to do up the clasps on his trunk and he’d spilled his breakfast all over himself twice somehow. But his mother just kindly cleaned him up each time and when she saw him struggle with his trunk she came over and clicked it shut with a flick of her wand. Maybe this was why Peter was so nervous. He’d always been clumsy and never very good at anything much, so his parents had gotten into the habit of doing pretty much everything for him which just made him feel a bit more incompetent each day. He was so worried about what would happen once he got to Hogwarts and they weren’t there to look after him anymore. He knew that soon he would start learning magic and if he was any good he would start being able to do these little things for himself. But he had the great fear that he would be terrible and clumsy at magic just as he was terrible and clumsy at everything else, and everyone at school would laugh at him and tease him and he’d just be useless, clumsy Peter forever.

Once his trunk was shut, his mother took his hand in one of hers and the trunk in the other and apparated them to the Bournemouth train station. Peter hated apparition but he didn’t complain as it was the easiest quickest way and his mother liked to be efficient. They walked into the train station and Peter stayed close to his mother, holding her hand tightly so he wouldn’t lose her in the surprisingly packed crowd. They walked along, till they found a blank stretch of wall that had a large swirly 9 graffitied on it. Fiona Pettigrew looked around carefully to make sure no one was watching then stepped through pulling her son along with her onto Platform 9 ¾. Peter let his mother lead him along toward a carriage that hadn’t yet gotten too full, looking around at all the families saying their goodbyes. He saw a redheaded girl saying a tearful but calm goodbye to her clearly muggle parents and sister, and a little further down the platform there was a boy with scruffy black hair whose parents were squishing him between them in a big hug. Peter’s mother pulled him onto the train, in much the same way she heaved his trunk on, leading him into an empty compartment where she set his trunk in the luggage rack then sat him down in a seat near the door.

“Right” Fiona said, bending down so she was at eye level with her son, “You be good now and remember, if you’re friendly to people they will want to help you so be nice to everyone you meet and especially to teachers.”

“Okay” Peter mumbled.

“I love you dear” Fiona said then leant forward and kissed Peter on the cheek before turning and leaving the compartment door open behind her as she exited.

Peter thought briefly about standing up and shutting the door so he didn’t look quite so desperate for company, but he was too slow as a moment later the redheaded girl he had noticed on the platform stepped inside. Peter smiled at her just as his mother had taught him, but she didn’t even look at him as she hurried to the window to wave at her parents. She looked like she might still be crying, which terrified Peter so he sat quietly in his seat and ignored her. Luckily it wasn’t long before someone else came into the compartment, the boy with the huggy parents. Peter smiled at him and this time it worked. The boy, James, introduced himself and started talking rapid fire about quidditch. Peter knew enough about quidditch that he could just about keep up and say one or two things whenever James paused for breath, but mostly he just listened and smiled. It seemed like he’d managed to make a friend, and it hadn’t been nearly as scary as he thought it might be.

Just as Peter was beginning to feel like maybe things were all going to be okay this year after all, the most cool and collected boy he had ever seen casually opened the compartment door and asked, “room for one more?” and since James replied “Sure!” enthusiastically Peter felt he had better move down and make some room. After introductions James began the quidditch tirade again and Sirius, as the other boy was called, had much more to say than Peter could ever have come up with. It turned out he didn’t like the team Peter had picked as his because it was the one his father supported and clearly he had something against his father, though he didn’t say what. This made James laugh and he told Peter there was going to be contention in the compartment if the two boys couldn’t agree to be friends despite their quidditch ties. Peter hurriedly said he could pick a new team to support, how about James’ team, could he tell him more about them? Sirius gave Peter a funny look but didn’t say anything and went back to animatedly discussing the different strengths and weaknesses of various teams with James. James would occasionally pull Peter into the conversation for a moment or two but mostly Peter was relegated to spectator as he watched Sirius and James quickly becoming the very best of friends. Peter sat and watched the boys and swore to himself that somehow he would manage to hold onto them, if he could just end up in the same house.

***

September 1st 1971, Evans family home, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire

It was early in the morning when Lily Evans and her family bundled into their car to drive down to Wolverhampton so that Lily could catch a magical train that would take her to an actual school for magic. They were all still reeling a little from the visit a month ago from Professor Minerva McGonagall, deputy headmistress at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, who had explained to Lily and her parents that she was a witch and that she would need to attend this school to learn how to control her powers. That’s right, somehow unbelievably all the strange little tricks Lily had been finding herself able to do were actually magic. Of course Lily had already known about witches and wizards for a little while before Professor McGonagall’s visit but she didn’t mention this to her parents. She wasn’t sure they would approve of her friendship with Severus Snape. His parents were decidedly not ‘good people’ as her father would say. Sev’s dad was a drunk and his mum was a bit weird too, though that might just be because she was a witch who had married what Severus called a ‘muggle’. Sev said it didn’t make a difference that Lily was muggleborn but she wasn’t so sure she believed him. She had read all her textbooks and few others that she’d gotten to learn more about the magical world, and she asked Sev every question she could think of, but she was still sure she didn’t know nearly as much as kids who had grown up with magical parents. Since there was nothing Lily could do to change this though she accepted her situation and tried not to think about it anymore.

That was the kind of girl Lily was. She was very matter of fact and once she had made a decision about something she didn’t waste anymore time worrying about it. This was perhaps why she was such good friends with Severus after only knowing him a few weeks, she had accepted that he was going to be her friend because they were going to school together and so he was her friend. That was that and no one and nothing would change her mind - not his old hand-me-down clothes, not his questionable parents, not the way he was sometimes mean to Petunia (this bothered Lily and she always told Sev so, but she didn’t stop being his friend).

Severus had promised Lily they would meet on the train, though he was going to the station with his mother the magical way, while Lily and her family would be driving down to Wolverhampton where they would be meeting someone from the Ministry of Magic who would show them how to get onto the platform. Lily’s parents, George and Mary, were quite excited to get to see more magical people and they were so proud of Lily that they didn’t mind in the least getting up early and driving her down. Lily’s older sister Petunia was another matter entirely. Petunia was not a witch, a fact she pretended didn’t bother her but which Lily knew was in fact a bit of a sore point. Severus had found a letter from the headmaster of Hogwarts telling her that he was sorry but she couldn’t come to school with her sister. Lily hoped she’d get a chance to tell Petunia she was sorry before she got on the train, but she didn’t dare try while in the car with her parents.

They drove for around an hour till finally the country roads became busier and more suburban and then they were suddenly driving into central Wolverhampton and there was the train station right in front of them and a man in a black suit was clearly waiting to meet them as they got out of their car. Lily’s dad was pulling her trunk along and Lily was holding a pet carrier with her precious kitten Bluebell tucked inside. The man was brusque and after ensuring they were indeed the Evans family he led them quickly into the station and pointed them to a boarded up archway where he explained they would all be able to walk through and reach the train platform. He told Lily’s parents to make sure they left the platform through the Wolverhampton exit or they’d end up in a completely different part of the country. George stared at the man in wonder when he said that but the man didn’t seem to notice and was already walking away from them and out the station doors.

Lily led them through the archway and sure enough they ended up sliding through the seemingly solid wall into another place where there were hundreds of people milling around as students made their way onto an amazing scarlet steam engine. Lily could hardly believe her eyes, even though she’d read all about the magical train platform that could be entered from different locations all around England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. She looked for Severus in the crowd but couldn’t see him so she just had to hope he would find her on the train. She tried to talk to Petunia but it didn’t go well and then her parents were wishing her a happy term and saying they would see her at Christmas and she was rushing onto the train and waving through a window as they disappeared from sight, the train puffing its way out of the station. Lily barely realised that there was a boy sitting in the compartment with her while she cried about Petunia, until another much louder boy showed up and then another and they just kept talking and talking about quidditch. Lily knew what quidditch was as she had read a book about it, but she didn’t think it was any more interesting than any other sport so she didn’t understand what these boys found so thrilling about dissecting every second of some game they hadn’t even seen but had only heard the commentary to on their wizarding wireless (wizards apparently had magic radio but not magic television).

After a little while another boy joined them, though it looked to Lily like they actually just pulled him in from the corridor as he was walking past and didn’t give him any choice. He seemed happy enough though and talked quietly with a Welsh accent that somehow the two loud ones stopped to listen to whenever he opened his mouth. It was as if he had some magnetism that made them want to catch every word he uttered. Lily thought maybe if the loud boys weren’t there she would have said hello to the Welsh one, but as it was she sat and stared out the window and waited for Severus to turn up so she could be grumpy with him about Petunia (and then forgive him, she’d already planned this out).

It was just a few minutes later when Severus finally found Lily. She told him about her conversation with Petunia, but forgave him very quickly and they got to talking about Hogwarts and what it would be like. When Severus said “You’d better be in Slytherin” the other boys turned around in the compartment and the scruffy haired loud one made a joke about Slytherin, while the long haired loud one said his whole family had been in Slytherin but he wasn’t planning on it if he could do anything about it. Lily and Severus left the compartment quite quickly because the boys turned rather mean. They even teased Severus about his name which Lily thought was just horrible, it wasn’t like he’d chosen it himself after all.

***

September 1st 1971, Lupin Cottage, North Stack, Holyhead, Wales

It had taken a lot of convincing from Albus Dumbledore for Lyall and Hope Lupin to agree that their son Remus could attend Hogwarts. He was after all a dangerous werewolf and Hogwarts was a castle full of vulnerable young children who would be put in danger every full moon. But Professor Dumbledore had explained how they had set up a secure location away from the school where Remus would be able to complete his transformation in secret every month, and that all the teachers had agreed to help hide his condition from the students. Lyall had been harder to convince than Hope but eventually his wife won him around to the idea and they had told Remus he was going to go to Hogwarts, where he would meet other children his age and learn about magic.

Remus wasn’t sure how to feel about going to Hogwarts. On one hand it was so exciting he could hardly believe it, he would get to leave Lupin Cottage for the first time since before ‘that night’ and he could make friends and learn how to use his magic properly. But on the other hand it was terrifying, he would have to leave Lupin Cottage and interact with strangers. He had no idea how to talk to other children and he was scared at the idea of a giant castle he would almost certainly get lost in. His mum soothed his worries though, and she even helped him practice having conversations in preparation, and they watched muggle TV shows about kids together. His dad did other things to help him prepare, such as going out one day and returning with armfulls of books and boxes of school supplies. He even bought an owl for Remus so he could write to them whenever he wanted.

One evening Lyall sat Remus down and explained to him the things he would need to be careful about in order to hide his condition. “You’ll need to act a bit more clumsy and make noise when you walk so people don’t notice your wolf stealth, and make sure you don’t let on how good your senses are. Normal people can’t hear a quiet conversation going on on the other side of a large room, and being able to tell who has entered a room just from their scent isn’t normal either so don’t let on about that. And you must always control your temper, don’t let people see the wolf come into your eyes, and don’t ever growl or snarl. You must remember all these things if you want to stay at school, for once someone finds out they will be sure to be terrified of you and tell everyone and then Dumbledore will have to send you home.”

Remus nodded solemnly and made careful note of all the things he had to remember. He started whispering them to himself before going to sleep every night so he would never forget. It became a little mantra “ Don’t walk too quietly, don’t listen too far, don’t smell too much, don’t ever get angry, never growl, never snarl, hide, hide, hide .”

But now September 1st had arrived and it was time for Remus to go to Hogwarts. Luckily the full moon had been a week ago so Remus was well recovered and would have plenty of time to settle in at school before the next one. The Lupins left their cliffside cottage around 9.30 in the morning, prepared for the hour long walk to Holyhead, where there was a portal to Platform 9 ¾ at the Stella Line train station. They walked because side-along apparition was painful for Remus and they didn’t own a car. It was lucky that Holyhead was so close to their cottage and that one of the Platform 9 ¾ portals was there, or it would have been much harder to get Remus to school.

It ended up taking nearly an hour and a half by the time they finally made it to the train station as none of them had thought to consider that Remus would get tired on such a long walk when he’d barely left their cottage before. They finally made it though and with just 5 minutes to spare Remus and his parents were hurrying through the barrier to get to Platform 9 ¾ and rushing him to the train. Lyall lifted his trunk onto the train while Hope gave him one last hug and then Remus was climbing up just as the train whistle blew and it started to chug out of the platform. By the time he had turned around to wave his parents were out of sight. Remus tried not to cry as he picked up one end of his trunk and began to make his way down the carriage looking for somewhere to sit. Even though Remus and his mum had practiced conversations and they had watched all that television he was suddenly very nervous about talking to other students, so he desperately looked for a compartment that was either empty or the people inside weren’t talking. Every window he peered through showed students laughing and chatting though so he kept walking and kept looking. He made it all the way to the back end of the train without finding anywhere and so he turned around to walk back again, this time just looking for a compartment that was at least a little quiet.

Suddenly a door beside him flew open and a beautiful boy with long black hair all but lept in front of him and pulled him into the carriage.

“Why don’t you sit with us?” the boy asked.

Remus stared at him in surprise for a few seconds (none of his practice had prepared him for this), finally managing to open his mouth and say quietly “thanks. I was late to the train and all the compartments looked full.”

Another boy had grabbed Remus’ trunk and was squishing it into the luggage rack where four other trunks already sat. The compartment was rather full now, with three boys sitting by the door and one girl steadfastly ignoring them all over by the window. The boys all introduced themselves, the beautiful boy was called Sirius and the other two were James and Peter. Peter was quiet with blonde hair and James was loud with glasses and wild black hair that looked as though it were somehow alive all on its own. Remus wasn’t sure quite how it happened but somehow this strange mix of boys made him feel relaxed and comfortable in a way he hadn’t for weeks now. They talked about quidditch, were shocked to hear that Remus lived so close to Holyhead but had never been to a game, but didn’t push it too far, and every time Remus opened his mouth Sirius and James would stop their shouting and wait for him to talk. They didn’t seem to notice that Peter hadn’t gotten a word in edgeways in a long time, but he looked like he was okay with just listening. Remus thought this was a bit strange, but he really didn’t know much about conversations after all so he didn’t let himself worry about it.

It wasn’t long before the girl left the compartment. A boy who clearly already knew her had come in and after a short conversation they left, probably because James and Sirius decided to tease the boy and make fun of him for wanting to be in Slytherin. Remus stayed quiet for a while after they left thinking about Hogwarts houses and where he might end up. Slytherin was the house for dark wizards, and he was a werewolf - a dark creature by nature according to everything he’d managed to read. But he didn’t feel dark when it wasn’t the full moon, and his mum always called him her brave boy for handling so much pain every month. He liked the idea of Gryffindor, especially since James was so sure he’d end up there and Sirius clearly wanted to be in Gryffindor too, though part of that was perhaps because of his family being so anti Gryffindor. Eventually Remus decided that the best thing would be if he ended up in the same house as Sirius, so he made a plan to wait and see where the sorting hat sent Sirius and then focus all his thoughts on that house when he put the hat on. They had learnt each other’s last names by this point so he knew that Black would get called before Lupin.

Remus wasn’t entirely sure what it was that made him so sure he should stick to Sirius like glue. Perhaps it was because Sirius was the one who had pulled him into the compartment, but Remus thought it was more than that. Sirius smelt right, and the wolf in Remus’ head certainly liked him. There was something there that Remus didn’t fully understand but he thought it might be magic pulling them together. Sirius seemed to feel something too because he kept glancing over at Remus and would ask him a question whenever Remus hadn’t spoken for a little bit.

The train ride went on like this for the whole day, with a break in the middle to gorge on sweets from the trolley. Hope had slipped a few sickles into Remus’ pocket so he could stock up on chocolate for the next moon, but it was hard not to just eat it all with his friends. He was pretty sure they were friends now. Towards the end of the day they changed into school robes. Remus’ looked decidedly more worn out than the others but they didn’t seem to notice. Sirius and James started a competition for who could look more scruffy in their robes, but James won easily because even though Sirius was happy to mess his robes up he would never beat James for crazy hair. Finally the train began to slow and looking out the window they could see village lights and a train station coming into view. They were arriving!

Chapter Text

Remus

James, Sirius, Remus and Peter made their way off the train amidst the crowds of students. Some were heading towards rows of carriages, but off to one side a ridiculously tall man was calling all the first years to come over to him. James led the way over, the others following behind. The man introduced himself as Hagrid and said he was the Hogwarts gamekeeper. Once all the other first years had come over, including Severus and the redhead girl from earlier, Hagrid led them down a narrow path leading to the lakeshore where boats waited. The students filed into them. The four boys got one to themselves and Sirius and James began rocking it back and forth and splashing the water while Peter squirmed. Remus just rolled his eyes, a sudden flash of what his future with these boys as friends might look like crossing his mind. All the other students got into their boats, no one acting remotely silly, and after a moment they floated out across the lake.

“You’re going to get us tipped in” Peter moaned as Sirius gave his side of the boat an extra vigorous push that caused a small wave of water to wash in.

“Challenge accepted!” crowed James, and pushed his side harder making Sirius laugh. The two boys pushed and wobbled and eventually succeeded in dumping the four of them into the icy water, though by that point they were already soaked from all the splashing. Remus was a strong swimmer having grown up on the Welsh coast, but the others looked like they’d never swum a day in their life. Peter screamed and flailed and slipped below the water only to be lifted out and plopped back into the boat which seemed to have righted itself. James and Sirius were too busy floundering on their own to see what happened to Peter and so were utterly shocked when they too were returned from the water to their boat. Remus, who was treading water and watching, saw the tentacles, and below them through the dark murky water his wolf eyes could make out the shape of a giant creature. The creature was looking at Remus and reaching a tentacle towards him to help but he shook his head at it and it retreated. He easily vaulted from the water back into the boat before realising that was probably a wolf trick and looking at the other boys in a panic.

He needn’t have worried though, as Sirius’ next words were “What just happened to us? Did you guys feel that weird thing that pushed us all back in?”

“I don’t know what it was but it was horrible and slimy,” James shuddered. Peter just whimpered quietly.

“Don’t be so mean,” Remus chided. “You’ll hurt the poor squid’s feelings, and after it saved us all too.”

“Squid?” Sirius cried. “You saw it?”

“Well I saw the tentacles, and my dad told me there was one in the lake so that’s what it must have been.”

“Wow!” breathed James.

And then suddenly the boats were slowing and they all looked up to see an enormous castle looming above them. The other students, who had all been watching the mayhem happening in their boat were turning to look too, and gasps could be heard all around. It was a spectacular sight, and they all stared for a good moment before Hagrid was calling them out of the boats. He seemed to have decided to just ignore the boys and their silliness though he did look them over with a little concern as they all started to shiver (Remus only started shivering once he noticed Sirius’ teeth chattering and realised he should be feeling cold).

Pretty quickly they were in front of the castle, huge doors open wide to let them into the entrance hall and a tall, slightly hawklike woman standing in the middle of the doorway looking out at them all. She had a severe expression on her face, but for some reason James broke into a giant smile and cried “Aunty Minnie! We fell in the lake, look I’m soaked.”

“James Potter, you will address me as Professor McGonagall if you do not want detention on your first day of school! And I very much doubt there was anything accidental in your ‘fall’ in the lake.” She replied in a calm haughty voice, but she did wave her wand and cast a drying charm over the four boys so they could stop shivering. “Now come along all of you.” And she turned and led the first years into the castle.

“Aunty Minnie?” Sirius asked James in a whisper.

James ducked his head as he replied, “I forgot I’m not allowed to call her that anymore. She’s a friend of my parents.”

“I’m calling her Minnie every chance I get” Sirius said with a sneaky grin spreading on his face. Their conversation had to end though as they stopped in front of another large set of doors, these ones closed.

“Through these doors your classmates and teachers wait,” Professor McGonagall told them. “You will form an orderly line and follow me in. Once we reach the front of the hall you will stand and await your turn to be sorted.” She turned, opened the door, and walked into a suddenly hushed room. Hundreds of eyes watched as the group walked in, trying to keep in a tidy line, though not exactly succeeding. Remus grabbed Peter’s arm as he noticed him getting left behind, the boy was one of their group after all even if he didn’t talk as much as the others. After what felt like the longest walk ever they made it to the front of the hall where a table of teachers looked down at them, including Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster, who gave Remus a small wink before looking away to the other students. In front of the teachers’ table a hat sat on a stool. When Professor McGonagall moved to stand beside it, the whole hall silenced, the last few whispered conversations ending. And suddenly the hat was singing in a gruff voice, telling them all about the four houses, how Gryffindors were brave and chivalrous, Slytherins were cunning and insightful, Ravenclaws were creative and intelligent, and Hufflepuffs were diligent and loyal.

After the hat had finished its song, Professor McGonagall began calling out names. Remus had been right that it would be in alphabetical order so it wasn’t long before she called “Black, Sirius” and Sirius walked up, looking nervous for the first time that day. James gave him a thumbs up and then promptly crossed his fingers. Remus didn’t cross his fingers but he did hope very hard that Sirius got the house he wanted. A few moments later the hat cried out “Gryffindor!” and there was a collective gasp from the hall. Clearly it was known that if your name was Black you would be in Slytherin. The table under red and gold banners soon started clapping and cheering though and Sirius walked over to sit down, looking a mix of terrified and thrilled.

Remus had a while to wait before he got his turn, but finally it came around. “Lupin, Remus” was called and he walked up, sat down on the stool and began to think “Brave, Gryffindor, Brave, Gryffindor, Brave, Gryffindor.” until suddenly it occurred to him that the hat might notice he was a werewolf and his thoughts uncontrollably slipped into panic “hide. Hide. Hide. Hide. Please don’t tell anyone, I won’t hurt them I promise. Hide. Hide. Hide.”

“Well now, calm down my little wolf” a voice spoke softly right in his ear, “I had been told to expect you, but that hardly matters as I can see for myself that you’re not the monster people might think. It’s quite clear to me that your mother is right, you are certainly more brave than monstrous.” and then that hat cried aloud “Gryffindor!” and Remus was walking to the table in a daze. He felt Sirius clapping him on the back and looked up to smile at him.

“We made it. I’m glad we’re in the same house” Remus said quietly, not sure if Sirius would hear him, and also not entirely sure if he wanted him to.

But Sirius soothed his nerves by replying in a similarly quiet voice, “me too. It would have been awful to be in different houses.” Then louder he said, “Here comes Peter!” And sure enough Peter was walking over to the table at that very moment. “Now we just need James and the gang will be back together again.” James obliged just a few minutes later, sauntering over to them with a cocky grin on his face.

Shortly after that the sorting was wrapped up, the redhead, Lily Evans, and her friend Severus not so lucky as the boys, as he got his desired Slytherin and she, in perhaps a slightly ironic twist, had already been sorted into Gryffindor. Remus and his friends (he really could call them that now) listened as Professor Dumbledore stood and welcomed the new students and made a few notices before officially starting the feast. As food suddenly covered the tables Remus was relieved to notice there wasn’t a speck of silver in evidence on the table. The trays were gold and all the utensils were stainless steel. He didn’t know if this had been done for him or was just a lucky coincidence but either way he was just happy not to be at risk of burns and exposure while eating his dinner.

The boys talked only a little as they ate their fill, though Remus did notice that James and Sirius seemed to know how to use their cutlery and keep the food in their mouths whereas Peter was quite hopeless and had drips of sauce on his robes in no time at all. Remus made himself eat a variety of food and not just the rare steak his inner wolf wanted. At dessert he had no such qualms and took a healthy portion of chocolate pudding, alongside a large slice of chocolate cake and two scoops of chocolate ice cream. There were even little after dinner mints that he managed to smuggle into his pockets for later. He did get a few sidelong looks at the amount of dessert he was eating, and a prefect down the table told him to be careful not to make himself sick. But he just felt good when he put the last mouthful in his mouth just in time as the plates magically cleaned themselves.

Sirius

Somehow he’d actually done it. He’d gotten himself sorted into Gryffindor, the hat had even seemed happy to do it. And after a fabulous dinner he was now walking through the corridors of Hogwarts heading up to the towers not down to the dungeons, and walking beside him were his three new friends James, Peter and Remus. He felt warm and happy for the first time he could remember. As they walked up staircase after staircase the prefect leading them pointed out some of the features of the castle, such as which staircases moved, and tapestries that hid short cuts, and how some paintings were good to ask for directions and others would send you in completely the opposite direction.

They reached a portrait of a woman in a lilac dress who was clearly waiting for them. The prefect told them she was guarding the entrance to Gryffindor tower and only opened when the password was uttered, “for now it's ‘Flimblegimble’ but it will change throughout the year so pay attention to the notice board.” And they were led inside as the portrait swung open. Sirius looked around in delight. The Gryffindor common room was very cozy, with couches and armchairs and a huge fireplace. “Right, dormitories,” The prefect continued, “girls you’re up those stairs and the first and second doors on the right, boys you’re up here and all the way to the top two doors left and right.”

“Come on, quickly,” James said, grabbing Sirius’ arm and waving at Remus and Peter with his free hand, “We’ve got to make sure we get a room all together.”

“Of course, come on you two!” Sirius followed James, making sure Remus and Peter were right behind him as they almost ran up the stairs to the very top.

“Let’s look in both to see which is better,” suggested Remus, already opening the door on the left and looking around it.

Peter peered over his shoulder then suddenly cried out, “oh no! my trunk is by that bed, but there’s only three beds in here.”

“There’s four in here and our trunks are by them. Look Remus this is your one right?” James asked from the other room. Sirius paused next to James for just a second before coming to a decision. He hurried across the hall into the other room.

“Peter, help me drag your trunk. Remus you go next door and make sure James is moving the right one to over here,” he instructed as he started to pull Peter’s trunk to the doorway.

“What are we doing?” Peter asked.

“Swapping the trunks, obviously!” Sirius said with a bit of exasperation in his voice.

“We can’t split the gang up now,” Remus explained as he walked out to go help James in the other room. Once Peter had cottoned on they quickly had the trunks swapped, and a good thing as the other first year boys were beginning to come up the stairs. There were indeed three of them, so they would fit perfectly into the other room. There must be some magic in the tower that adjusted room sizes Sirius decided. He remembered one of the boys had been called Frank Longbottom but he couldn’t for the life of him recall the names of the other two. He gave them a friendly wave and pointed at their room before stepping out of the hall and shutting the door.

“This is great!” James grinned around at them all and then began to rummage through his trunk looking for pyjamas. It was complete chaos and it looked like he was going to come up empty, but suddenly there was a funny knocking on the window and James ran over to it in relief. “Weebles!” he cried, flinging the window open so two owls could fly in with an enormous bundle tied between them.

“What is that?” Sirius asked in shock.

“I forgot my owl in the rush to leave this morning. Mum promised she’d send her, and I guess this is everything else I forgot too. Thanks Evenstar! Here can you give this note to Mum? Just let me write it.” James grabbed a quill and ink and piece of parchment out of the bundle the owls had dropped on his bed and scribbled something down quickly, using his nightstand as a table. He handed it to the larger of the two owls and it swooped back out into the night. The other owl meanwhile was showing no desire to leave, and sure enough James shut the window and sat down with the owl in his lap, scratching at her feathers.

“Weebles this is everyone, everyone meet Weebles,” James said gesturing around at his friends. Weebles clicked her beak in what seemed like a friendly way and burrowed into James’ lap a bit like a cat.

“Do owls normally stay in the dorms?” Remus asked, “I just sent Harlow off to the owlery.”

“The owlery is probably normal, but Weebles is special. And don’t worry, she’s very tidy - much tidier than me in fact” James replied.

“That’s not hard to believe,” Sirius said with a snicker as he looked at the chaos surrounding James’ bed. His own trunk had of course been meticulously packed and thus was very easy to unpack, and as he looked around he could see Remus carefully unpacking a small number of possessions into his nightstand, and Peter just pulling out his pyjamas and leaving everything else in his trunk.

James was sitting on his bed opening a carefully wrapped package, the only careful thing in his whole mess of belongings. “What’s that?” Sirius asked.

“I don’t know,” James replied, “My dad gave it to me right before I got on the train, told me not to open it in public.” He pulled the last of the wrappings off and they all gasped. James was holding a pile of unmistakable shimmering fabric…

“Is that-?” Remus asked.

“An invisibility cloak, wow!” Peter squeaked.

James didn’t answer, just staring in shock at the cloak he held in his hands.

“Why would your dad give you an invisibility cloak?” Sirius asked, “don’t get me wrong it’s awesome! But it’s a bit of a strange present to give you, I mean just think of all the mischief we can get up to with it.”

“It’s not just an invisibility cloak,” James said quietly, “It’s the best invisibility cloak you could ever imagine and it’s been in my family for centuries. I never thought my dad would trust me with it.”

“How has it lasted centuries?” Remus asked, clear curiosity in his voice.

“It was made with powerful magic by one of my ancestors, or that’s the story Dad always told.” James reverently folded the cloak and tucked it safely into his nightstand.

They all chattered for a little longer as they got ready for bed, but pretty quickly they were under their covers and falling asleep. Or at least, James and Peter were falling asleep. Sirius wasn’t entirely sure about Remus but he thought he might also be lying awake staring at the ceiling. Sirius needed to take some time to process this crazy day. It had started under his mother’s controlling rules but had ended so completely differently. He knew that he would probably get an incredibly angry letter from his mother very soon, he might even have done enough to warrant his father’s involvement. And he would definitely be getting confronted by his Slytherin cousins, possibly the very next morning. But in spite of all that he was unbelievably happy, because not only was he not in Slytherin but he somehow had managed to get himself a group of friends who seemed to actually like him and not care a jot about his family history.

Sirius pondered his three new friends now. Peter was clearly shy and a bit of a scaredy cat, but he had ended up in Gryffindor so that was something. Sirius didn’t feel strongly pulled to Peter but he was happy enough to hang out with him. The other two were a different matter. James felt like the brother he’d never met, they bickered and teased, and joked and laughed, and all around it was just natural and easy with him and Sirius could see that it wouldn’t take long before he’d be confiding all his deepest secrets and desires into James’ waiting ears. And Remus…

Well Remus was a complicated one. Sirius liked him - a lot, maybe a little bit too much. It had started on the train, where Sirius had watched him walk past their compartment and without knowing why had leapt up mid conversation to drag him inside. He hadn’t understood the overwhelming feeling that overtook him, he’d just known he couldn’t let that beautiful boy walk away from him. And then he’d hung on every word Remus said in his gentle Welsh accent the whole train ride, and when they fell in the lake he was pretty sure Remus hadn’t needed the squid to help him back in the boat - he was just strong enough to do it himself. At the feast Sirius had been distracted with nerves over the sorting, and he hadn’t been able to relax until Remus was sitting next to him. James and Peter hadn’t joined them yet, but Sirius had felt like all was right the moment Remus got into Gryffindor as if the world couldn’t be right if they were separated. He’d whispered as much to Remus and he wasn’t sure why or what he meant by it. Sirius lay there pondering the mysterious way he felt about the beautiful Welsh boy for a long while before finally slipping into sleep.

Chapter Text

James

The first few weeks of term raced by. James and Sirius quickly learnt that they had identical senses of humour, loving anything loud or outrageous. They were barely into their second week when they got their first detention for staging a race from Gryffindor tower to the quidditch pitch and back that resulted in five Ravenclaw second years getting knocked down half a flight of stairs when the two boys charged through their group. They spent the evening scrubbing floors in the hospital wing to repay all the extra work they’d cost Madam Pomfrey fixing up bruises and scrapes. But as James told Remus and Peter when they finally got back to their dormitory, “It hardly counted as punishment because we were in it together. And Madam Pomfrey was busy in her office so we had the room to ourselves mostly. As long as we weren’t too loud and the floors ended up clean we could do whatever.”

“Yeah! We even got to have a rematch since our race got thwarted,” Sirius interrupted. “We got the floors nice and mopped and then had a sliding match down the middle of the beds, which I won by the way,” he concluded, grinning.

“By an inch!” James grumbled.

They managed to stay out of detention for the next wee while, convinced by Remus that their pranks should be properly planned out. Remus, it turned out, could be very creative when it came to scheming. While Peter was just happy to go along with whatever harebrained scheme Sirius and James came up with for hi-jinks, Remus would quickly pull it to pieces and show them all the ways it was going to go wrong and how they needed to change it so they wouldn’t get caught. And so with Remus’ help the group were able to avoid getting caught for the majority of their pranks.

Classes were also surprisingly fun, despite involving homework that ate into their evenings and weekends. James was thrilled to be learning magic, not just for all the new levels of pranking it offered, but also because it was so satisfying when he got a spell to work for the first time or brewed a potion successfully. Of course some classes were less exciting, like history of magic, taught by ghost Professor Binns. Binns droned on and on in soporific tones about the most unexciting parts of magical history. James knew there were exciting parts of history, his parents’ friend Bathilda Bagshot was a noted historian (in fact she had written their textbook) and she used to babysit James on occasion and had always told the most thrilling bedtime stories about true events in magical history. But aside from history of magic, and the odd theory lesson here and there in the other subjects, the schoolwork was pretty darn exciting really. Even the homework wasn’t too bad. James and Sirius had both been drilled in completing homework early by their parents. Though of course this resulted in opposite reactions from the boys: James did his homework quickly though often sloppily as soon as he got it, while Sirius waited till the last possible moment to start. They seemed to get similar results however, as both their methods involved not really devoting enough time to the homework.

One of the things that James quickly realised about all three of his friends was that none of them were as carefree as he was. In Sirius’ case he could tell it was due to his strict upbringing mixed with his innate desire to rebel, his acts of mischief always coming with an expectant air as though he was just waiting for the inevitable punishment. Peter’s attitude was also pretty easy to work out. He was clumsy, simple as that, and had clearly been babied by his parents which did not seem to have helped. James had decided it was his personal responsibility to tease Peter out of his worried baby attitude and to show Sirius that having fun did not have to be an act of rebellion.

Remus was trickier though. For the most part he was engaged and friendly. He did his homework properly and worked hard in class, but he was also the mastermind behind their best pranks so far (he had come up with the brilliant idea to learn a shoelace tying spell and then use it on the Slytherins they shared potions with so that they all tripped over when they got up to leave class, and no one had been able to work out who did it so they didn’t even get in trouble). But there were moments when James would notice Remus seem to fold in on himself, sometimes after he told a joke that wasn’t quite right or misunderstood one of Sirius’ sarcastic comments. This, along with the times when Remus said something that almost sounded like an adult had said it, led James to think that Remus’ parents might have been the opposite of Peter’s. He thought that perhaps instead of babying him they may have treated him too much like an adult and forced him to act grown up all the time. This didn’t quite fit though, when James took into account the regular letters Remus and his parents exchanged (about the same number he and his own parents sent). And Remus always seemed happy after he got a letter so it didn’t seem like they were the nasty kind like what Sirius got from his mother.

One evening, nearly three weeks into term, James decided it was time to probe the mystery of what he thought of as Remus’ care-heavy moments. It was time to work out what caused them and how he could combat them. So he baldly asked, “Remus, what was your childhood like?”

“I- uh- good I guess,” Remus stuttered in surprise. James noted the folding start to happen, a sure sign that he was onto something.

He pushed forward, “well I mean you obviously read a lot of books, or you wouldn’t be so good at all the textbook stuff now. But what else did you do? Did you always live near Holyhead? What are your parents like? What’s your house like? Do you have grandparents who you visit for holidays?”

Remus stared at him in bewilderment for what felt to James like an eternity before finally replying, “Our house is right by the sea on these cliff tops, so I spent a lot of time exploring and climbing down to swim whenever it was warm enough. And my mum taught me school stuff ya know, and we played games and watched TV. We moved to Holy Island when I was around 4, my mum wanted to live somewhere quiet away from the big cities and people. Mum is a muggle and Dad is a wizard so we’ve always done a mix of muggle and magic things. Our house is really cool, it’s all by itself right at the edge of the cliffs, and any direction you look all you can see is ocean or moors. And like I said there are tracks down the cliffs that you can find if you look hard enough and then there’s little beaches and there are sea caves. Sometimes I used to feel like I was living in a muggle adventure story, it’s great!” His eyes lit up for a minute then, before going a bit blank as he finished off, “I have grandparents but we never really see them cause we live so far away, and Mum’s parents don’t know about magic so that would be tricky.”

Now it made sense to James. He asked just one more question to confirm his theory, “Were there other kids around where you live? Or was it just you and your parents and these amazing cliffs I’m beginning to think might actually be your best friends and we’re just stand-ins for?”

Remus looked down at his feet, going full on folded mode, and quietly answered, “Just me and my parents. I know… it’s weird.”

James was quick to reassure Remus that it wasn’t weird and he changed the topic to some question about one of their classes, but in his head the pieces had clicked together. Remus had never hung out with other kids, he’d lived alone with just his parents. It explained the weird adult ways of talking, and it totally explained why he sometimes got jokes and sarcasm wrong. Coming to Hogwarts must be his first time experiencing all the normal kid things that were second nature to James, and even to Sirius and Peter. They had all had plenty of interactions with other kids before Hogwarts. James had gone to a muggle primary school and Sirius and Peter both had siblings and cousins that they grew up with.

Now that the mystery was solved, James could formulate a plan of attack. It was pretty simple really. Remus would get better with time as he learnt more about being a kid from the rest of them. James would make sure to expose Remus to as broad a range of jokes and games and anything else he could think of that Remus might have missed out on before now. James decided that it would probably help if he got Sirius and Peter on board too, and so when Remus got up to go to the bathroom he quickly filled them in on the plan and swore them to secrecy to never tell Remus. They both agreed, though Peter was nervous as he was terrible at keeping secrets. But at stern looks from James and Sirius he promised he would keep this secret.

Peter

Peter’s first few weeks at Hogwarts were surprising, at least by Peter’s standards. Some mornings he managed to make it the whole way through breakfast without spilling food on himself, and even occasionally lunch too. He thought that the number of spill-free mornings was increasing, and maybe one day in the not too distant future he might get to the level of the rest of his classmates and only occasionally spill food if it was a particularly messy meal. Classes were hard, but he wasn’t miles behind everyone else as he had feared he might be. In class it would take him a while but he would eventually succeed at whatever spell they were learning. Homework was the hardest part, but it turned out Remus was really good at reading and writing and bizarrely seemed to enjoy talking about their homework. This meant if Peter did his homework next to Remus he was able to get help on the bits he didn’t understand just by asking. James and Sirius were no use for help with homework as they each had their own mad methods, but they were great fun to hang out with.

When it came down to it Peter felt like somehow he’d lucked out on the train and had managed to get himself the best friends available at Hogwarts. When they weren’t in class or doing homework, the four boys were inseparable. Peter could tell that James and Sirius were a bit closer to each other than to him and Remus, but he didn’t really mind as they never tried to leave him out of any of their schemes. Sometimes James would even do a headcount to make sure all four of them were there before setting off on an adventure.

Over the weeks Peter grew in confidence, taking a more and more active role in whatever the boys were doing. He even came up with a prank suggestion that got the Remus stamp of approval. They had developed the Remus stamp system after James and Sirius’ first detention and it hadn’t let them down yet. Peter’s prank involved charming the soap in the ground floor bathrooms to dye everyone’s hands different colours, using a spell he had found in a library book he and Remus had been using for their homework one afternoon. It was made even funnier by the fact that you could tell who hadn’t washed their hands by their colour when they came out of the bathroom. Peter was very proud of how well it had gone.

Three weeks into the term Peter and Remus were in the library working on a piece of history of magic homework. Peter was finding it really hard, but Remus was not his usual helpful chatty self. He kept jumping at the slightest sound, and was twisting his fingers in his lap constantly. After about twenty minutes of this Peter asked, “are you okay Remus?”

“What, I’m fine!” Remus practically squawked at him.

“Are you sure? You’ve been acting super jumpy, and we’re not getting anywhere with this homework.”

“Ah- sorry, I guess maybe I’ve got a bit of a headache. Can we call it a night?” Remus asked.

“Sure, let’s finish it tomorrow,” Peter suggested, starting to pack up his books.

Remus looked a little funny at that, but didn’t say anything as he packed up his own things. They headed out of the library and started walking up to Gryffindor tower. About halfway there Remus stopped and said, “My headache’s getting really bad Pete, I think I’d better go see Madam Pomfrey.”

“Oh no! Come on then,” Peter said, changing direction towards the hospital wing.

“No you go on, I’ll be fine on my own,” Remus interjected, waving Peter away as he tried to follow him.

“Okay, see you in a bit I guess,” Peter said and turned back to the tower. He was a bit concerned, but Remus was the most sensible of the boys, he wouldn’t do anything silly.

When Peter stepped through the portrait hole a few minutes later the first thing Sirius said was “where’s Remus?” standing up to look past Peter.

“He went to the hospital wing with a headache.”

“Why didn’t you go with him?” Sirius sounded almost accusing.

“I tried, but he told me to just go on without him.”

“I don’t like it. He’s been weird all day.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” James soothed, reaching out from where he was sitting to lay his hand on Sirius’ arm. “He’ll probably turn up in ten minutes feeling much better. Madam Pomfrey is a whizz with headache cures.”

Sirius continued to fret all evening, and finally when it was almost curfew James agreed that they could go down to the hospital wing to see what had happened.

Sirius

Remus wasn’t okay. Sirius just knew it. He’d known it all day, and now Remus had disappeared with mysterious claims of a headache and something was wrong. He hurried along, James and Peter struggling to keep up as he led the way to the hospital wing. Finally they got there, but when they knocked on the door no one answered and when James tried the door handle it was locked.

Something was really wrong, but they couldn’t stay to find out or they’d get caught out past curfew. James practically had to drag Sirius back to Gryffindor tower, though he seemed pretty reluctant to do so himself. Once they got back to the common room the three boys sat agitatedly by the fire, eyes flicking to the portrait hole every few minutes hoping to see Remus climbing through. It was getting late and almost all the other students had gone up to bed when one of the prefects stopped by where they were sitting and told them to go to bed.

“Remus hasn’t come back from the hospital wing,” James explained. “He just went to get a headache fix and he’s been gone for ages, we’re waiting for him.”

“If it was late Madam Pomfrey probably just decided to make him stay the night, she does that a lot,” the prefect, Andrews Sirius remembered he was called, said reassuringly.

“But we went by the hospital wing before curfew to see and it was locked. She wasn’t there,” Sirius cried.

“She’d probably just locked up early for the night and was busy settling Remus in. Now go on, you need to get to bed or I’ll be in trouble with McGonagall.” Andrews shooed them up the stairs, following them all the way to make sure they actually went into their dorm.

They all got into their pyjamas quietly, and got into bed. Peter started snoring almost immediately, but Sirius knew he wouldn’t sleep a wink and he was unsurprised when James appeared at the foot of his bed, pulling the hangings aside quietly. They didn’t say anything for a while, just sat together on Sirius’ bed listening to the sound of Peter snoring and the night time noises of the castle. There were owls hooting in the distance, Weebles probably among them as she’d gone off to hunt. She would turn up at some point in the night and come looking for James to cuddle with. That owl really was bizarre, thought Sirius, but only for a moment before his mind returned to worrying about Remus.

“What do you think happened to him?” James whispered.

“I don’t know,” Sirius sighed, “But whatever it was it can’t be good. It’s got to be more than a headache. That would have only taken a minute to fix and it was well before curfew when Peter left him. Oh why did Peter have to leave him? If he’d just gone with him then we’d know what was going on.” Sirius' voice got a little loud at the end,  but not enough to wake the boy in question.

“It sounded like Remus wanted to go alone though didn’t it,” James pointed out.

“But why?”

“Well maybe he could tell it was more than a headache, maybe he thought if we didn’t know we wouldn’t worry.”

“That’s just stupid, he should know we’re gonna worry about him. We’re his friends after all.”

“But remember, Remus hasn’t had friends like us before. I’m pretty sure it was just him and his parents till he came to Hogwarts.”

“So you’re saying it’s just one of those ‘I don’t know how to be a kid’ moments he has.”

“Maybe, I dunno.”

“I guess that could make sense. I’m still allowed to tell him he’s stupid though right?”

“As soon as he’s back and better you can tell him all the ways he’s stupid.”

“What if he’s not better. James! What if he’s really ill?” Sirius was suddenly panicked.

James reached out and placed both his hands on Sirius’ shoulders, holding him firmly. “Breathe Sirius, he will be okay. Peter saw him just a few hours ago, he was walking and talking and on his way to see Madam Pomfrey. Whatever it is she’ll be able to look after him.”

They were silent for a while again, James holding Sirius and Sirius working to keep his breathing calm. Logically Sirius knew James was right, Remus hadn’t been gone very long at all and he was with Madam Pomfrey. But his heart didn’t seem to understand logic. It kept beating erratically and sending him into near panic again and again. Eventually Weebles returned from her hunt, the remains of some rodent poking out of her beak. Her heightened night senses told her that James wasn’t in his bed so she came pushing her way through the hangings onto Sirius' already crowded bed. Surprisingly, instead of going straight to James as she normally would, she settled herself into Sirius’ lap as if she knew he needed comfort. It worked too, as Sirius found himself finally getting sleepy as he stroked her. He and James lay down on his bed with the owl cuddled between them. It was cramped, but Sirius was glad James stayed - just in case he got panicky again and needed him. His last thought before he fell asleep was a vow that he would go to the hospital wing first thing in the morning and break the door down if he had to in order to see Remus.

Chapter Text

Lily

Lily’s first evening at Hogwarts was pretty good but not perfect. She got to introduce herself to her dorm mates, Marlene McKinnon, Alice Fortescue and Mary MacDonald, and they were all friendly. But she wasn’t in the same house as Severus and that was sad. Marlene told her that it wasn’t uncommon to have friends in other houses but Slytherin and Gryffindor were enemies by trade according to Marlene’s older brother. The girls asked Marlene a lot of questions their first night, staying up until an older student came and poked their head in to tell them to go to sleep. She was the only one with an older sibling who had already been to Hogwarts. Alice was an only child and a halfblood, which Lily learned was the name for when you had one magical and one muggle parent. Alice had cousins who had been to Hogwarts but they were all much older than her so she didn’t know them that well. Lily and Mary were both muggleborn and Mary only had younger siblings. Mary had just assumed that they would be magical as well and was surprised to learn that Lily had an older sister who wasn’t a witch.

The next morning Lily walked down to breakfast with Mary and Alice, Marlene insisting she needed an extra fifteen minutes and would follow them shortly. When she got into the great hall, Lily looked over at the Slytherin table and saw Severus waving at her. “Do you mind if we go say hi?” She asked the girls. They nodded and the three of them walked over. Severus’ smile slipped as he noticed she hadn’t left her friends, and Lily’s thoughts flickered to concern for a second before she pushed it aside.

“Morning Sev,” she said cheerfully once they had reached his spot at the table. “These are my friends Mary and Alice. Mary, Alice, this is Severus, my friend from back home.”

“Hi” the girls said in unison. Severus just gave them a brief nod before turning to Lily.

“Do you have your timetable yet? I think there are some classes we might have together.”

“Not yet, we only just came down. I hope we do though, that would be nice. How was your first night? Do you have nice dorm mates?”

“It was fine, I don’t really know my dorm mates yet. I mean everyone just went to bed didn’t they.”

“ We stayed up so late we had to get told to shut up by a prefect,” Alice interjected and Mary and Lily nodded in agreement.

“It was so fun, like a big sleepover!” Mary giggled.

“Right well. You’d better get back to your table, I think that’s your head handing out timetables,” Severus said bluntly. He hadn’t even looked at Alice and Mary when they spoke.

“Okay, see you later maybe,” Lily said. She and the other two girls turned and headed back to the Gryffindor table.

“Well that was certainly an interesting experience,” Alice mused.

“I don’t why he was like that,” Lily sighed, “He’s normally really nice.”

“I could take a guess,” Mary said quietly. She looked like she didn’t really want to say what she was thinking, but Alice looked expectantly at her and she elaborated. “Well, you heard Marlene last night. Gryffindors and Slytherins don’t get on, and while he’d probably make an exception for Lily I would guess he doesn’t think we’re worth his time. He probably wishes you’d shun us and only be friends with him.”

“Sev’s not like that!” Lily said a little angrily. But she quickly realised how she sounded, “sorry I didn’t mean to snap, and you’re right he was a bit weird to you. I think maybe he’s just shy, it took him months to talk to me after he worked out I was a witch.”

“Maybe try talking to him alone next time,” Alice suggested. “We don’t mind sharing so long as he gives you back.”

Mary and Lily giggled and the three girls fell into their seats together just as they saw Marlene practically sleep walk into the hall. She clearly was not one for mornings, but she did smile at them groggily, sitting down on the other side of the table and pulling a plate of sausages toward her. They all began to tuck in, and so when Professor McGonagall, their head of house, came down the table to them a moment later none of them could say a word with their mouths full of food. She didn’t seem to be bothered though, handing them each a timetable from the stack in her arms and walking on to the next group of students.

Mary swallowed and began reading her timetable aloud, “We’ve got Herbology first, with the Ravenclaws, then morning break then Charms, just the Gryffindors. After lunch we’ve got Defence Against the Dark Arts, woah that sounds spooky. Then we finish up with Potions shared with the Slytherins, you’ll get to see Severus again Lily.” She continued to rattle on, telling them what they would have for the entire week. By the time she’d finished none of them could remember what she’d said their first lesson would be and had to look at their own timetables anyway to find out. They didn’t mind though, Lily was just as excited as Mary about the prospect of all these magic lessons, and Alice and Marlene were happy enough humouring them.

After breakfast the four girls raced down to the Herbology greenhouses for their first lesson. There was a large group of students milling around, including the rest of the Gryffindor first years and all the Ravenclaws. Lily noticed that the four boys she had briefly shared a carriage with on the train were all crowded together as thick as thieves. Lucky them, they all got the same house she thought a little grumpily, but Mary brought her attention back by squeezing her arm excitedly and she realised she was lucky too. She had a good group of friends surrounding her even if Severus wasn’t there.

Professor Sprout stepped out of the greenhouses to welcome the new students. She led them all inside greenhouse one and instructed them to split into groups of six and gather round a planter. A Ravenclaw boy and girl standing near Lily came towards them.

“Can we join your group? I’m Dorcas Meadowes and this is Hakim Issawi,” the girl said, and the boy gave a little wave and smiled.

“Sure! We need two more,” Marlene replied decisively. They all crowded round a planter to wait for Professor Sprout’s next instruction. It took a little while as other groups took longer to form and she had to come down from the front to chivy some of the stragglers. Eventually though the class had managed to split into five groups and Professor Sprout began to tell them about the plants they could see in front of them. They spent the lesson working together in their groups to identify features on the plants in front of them that differentiated them from their non-magical counterparts. It turned out that most magical plants blended into muggle nature very well, sometimes too well in fact and then the ministry would have to intervene to save injured and befuddled muggles who might be wondering why their daffodils had suddenly started trying to suck their blood anytime they got close. Lily and Hakim, the Ravenclaw boy, both found the lesson fascinating. The two of them paid more attention than the rest of their group, who kept getting distracted by poking the plants to see what might happen.

At the end of class the four Gryffindor girls walked to break with Dorcas and Hakim, chatting about their lives before Hogwarts. Dorcas was a halfblood from Durham with an older sister who was a fifth year at Hogwarts and a younger brother due to come in a couple of years. Hakim was pureblood and from Scotland, a little coastal town called Aberlady not far from Edinburgh. Hakim was the youngest in his family, with four older brothers. He said it was really nice to hang out with girls for once without getting teased. Marlene was from South London; Alice apparently lived with her uncle above his shop in Diagon Alley as her parents travelled an absurd amount for their jobs and so they didn’t have a permanent home; and Mary was from Brighton. Lily was surprised to learn Alice lived with her uncle, she hadn’t mentioned it the night before. But where they all lived hadn’t come up till now so maybe that was the only reason.

They all kept chatting till the morning break was over and it was time to head off for their next classes, the Gryffindors to Charms and the Ravenclaws to Transfiguration. In Charms it was three to a table and Lily ended up with Alice and Remus, the welsh boy she had liked on the train. Lily’s initial assumption that she would like Remus proved true. He was quiet but friendly, and he worked really hard in class. His friends sitting at the table in front of them were another matter. James and Sirius were as raucous as they had been on the train and Peter was getting less and less quiet the more time went on. The Charms teacher Professor Flitwick didn’t seem to mind though, he was happy for the class to be loud and a bit silly as they practised the incantation he was teaching today. They all had their wands safely stowed to prevent unprepared magic from causing total chaos but nonetheless things almost got out of hand when Sirius and James decided to see who could say the charm loudest and they actually managed to make James’ ink bottle hover off the desk for a second. Professor Flitwick intervened quickly and brought the boys down to a slightly more manageable level of noise.

At lunch Lily sat and chatted with the girls and in Defence Against the Dark Arts they all sat together. This was another Gryffindor only class, so Sirius and James were again the life and soul of things until Professor Mulligan threatened them with a point deduction if they didn’t behave.

After that class it was potions and, as Alice had suggested, Lily went to go sit with Severus away from her friends. He seemed thoroughly back to normal, happy to see her and excited for the lesson. She asked about his day, and he quietly told her he’d gotten to know two of the boys in his dorm slightly but he wasn’t sure if they were friends yet. Their names were Avery and Mulciber. Lily could see from Sev’s face that he’d found the time since they were on the train quite hard so she decided now wasn’t the time to push him about how he’d treated her friends at breakfast. She knew he was shy and didn’t like big groups of people, so really it wasn’t surprising that he was struggling a bit. They worked diligently together and by the end of the class they had successfully brewed a basic shrinking solution. Lily was very proud of their work but Severus kept muttering about things he could have done better. His mum was a potioneer Lily remembered, she’d probably taught Severus loads over the years and had high expectations for him.

Lily and Severus walked to dinner together after potions, chatting lightly about nothing much. When they entered the great hall though, Severus got a little stiff and said they’d better not eat together. Lily wanted to ask why but he’d already said goodbye and hurried away to the Slytherin table. She wandered slowly to the Gryffindor table, hoping her friends would catch up by the time she got there. Sure enough, just as she was sitting down she felt arms fling themselves around her and Marlene was giggling in her ear about some joke that Alice had made a moment before.

“How was your date with Severus?” Marlene asked in a sing-song voice.

“It wasn’t a date! We’re just friends,” Lily said, but she knew Marlene was just teasing so she didn’t really mind. “He’s okay I think. It’s a lot for him being around so many new people, he’s always been really shy.”

“Alright we’ll let it go,” Alice said, and seamlessly switched the conversation to whether they needed to start their homework right away or if they could instead build a blanket fort in their dorm. A compromise was reached by the end of dinner, they would build a blanket fort in which to complete their homework.

The rest of the week continued in a similar vein. Lily spent potions lessons with Severus, and sometimes morning break in the courtyard, but they didn’t eat together and she spent the rest of her time with her dormmates, Remus and occasionally Peter, and Dorcas and Hakim. They studied in the library or their blanket fort - they had been able to make it permanent when more blankets appeared in their dorm one evening after class, brought by house elves according to Marlene - and played board games in the common room or wandered around the grounds when it wasn’t too cold. About once a day James or Sirius (who she’d started calling Potter and Black after noticing that it was common to call people by their surnames unless you were friends - and she definitely wasn’t friends with Black and Potter) would do something thoroughly annoying and Lily would glare at them while others laughed. And that pattern continued into the next week and the next and Lily could feel the routine of her life at Hogwarts settling in around her. Sometimes she wished that Severus would try to be nice to her other friends, but mostly she just enjoyed the time she had with him. Occasionally she had to remind herself of the promise she’d made to herself before coming to Hogwarts, she and Severus were friends forever and that was that. This would happen whenever he did something a bit mean to a Gryffindor, like laughing when Mary’s potion went wrong one day in class or sticking out his foot to trip Peter on the stairs. Lily always told Sev she didn’t like it when things like this happened, but as he always looked extra uncomfortable and would quickly change the subject, she never really got the chance to push it and actually question him on why he liked her but not her other friends, and why he never introduced her to his friends.

It was a strange dynamic, but Lily decided that if this was all the Severus she could get then she would take it and not complain. Overall things were good but not perfect, and after all could anyone really say their life was perfect?

Chapter Text

Remus

After he managed to get away from Peter, Remus hurried to the hospital wing as fast as he could. He knew he didn’t have a whole lot of time to spare with the feeling of the moon pulling at his muscles and bones as the sun sunk closer and closer to the horizon. It would be his first full moon away from his parents and his family home. They had moved to the clifftop house right after Remus got bitten so that he could be hidden away from other people. So for the past seven years he’d spent one night every month locked in one of the outbuildings, modified to withstand a wolf’s escape attempts. He didn’t know where he’d be tonight and it terrified him. The wolf had been unsettled in his head since the move to Hogwarts, and Remus was sure it would let him know all about how it had been feeling when it took control in a little while.

He reached the hospital wing and hurried inside. He’d been told by Professor Dumbledore that Madam Pomfrey would be escorting him to and from his transformation place outside the castle. She was indeed waiting for him, tucking sheets into beds. She looked up as Remus entered and he could see tension in her face, though she didn’t look directly afraid which he guessed was a comfort. She was looking at someone about to turn into a horrible monster after all.

“Mr Lupin, at last!” She said sternly. Remus winced at the volume of her voice, which to anyone else would probably sound quiet, but this close to the full moon his every sense was heightened and it was like a cacophony in his ears. “Are you all right?” she asked, hurrying over to him.

“I’m fine, it’s just the noise,” Remus replied in a whisper. Madam Pomfrey’s eyes widened a little, but her next words were quieter.

“Right then, I think we’d better get you to the shack. It’s nearly evening after all and I want you safely settled in before sunset.” She led him to a back door of the hospital wing and down a flight of stairs that took them all the way to the ground floor of the castle. They were able to make their way into the grounds unnoticed by any students or teachers, and as they walked across the front lawn Remus realised they were clearly headed towards the whomping willow. He remembered Dumbledore warning everyone about it at the start of term feast. It had been planted this year and was highly dangerous, prone to flinging its branches at anyone who got too close. A few students, including James and Sirius, had already had near misses after making a game out of it.

Sure enough though, Madam Pomfrey was leading Remus to the whomping willow. They got quite close before she stopped and pulled out her wand. “Do you see that knot in the wood by the base?” she asked Remus, pointing with her other hand.

“I think so,” he answered, working to get his eyes to obey him and focus on the tree in front of him instead of scouring the sky for any sign of the moon. Sunset was getting close, he could feel his joints starting to loosen.

“The trick to getting the tree to stop attacking is to hit that knot. I’m going to do it tonight, but we’ll work on teaching you so you can do it yourself if you ever need to.” She raised her wand and performed a swishing movement followed by a flick that sent a large stick from the ground floating towards the knot she had pointed out. As soon as it tapped the knot, the tree stopped waving its branches menacingly and was as still as any other tree.

Remus and Madam Pomfrey walked toward the tree, and suddenly in front of them Remus noticed a hole in the side of the trunk large enough for a person to slip through. He followed Madam Pomfrey through it and into a low roofed tunnel. They walked along in silence for a while before the path ended and a ladder appeared in front of them leading up to a trapdoor. Up they climbed and arrived in what Remus could tell was to be his home for this night and many more.

“You have the run of this house, there’s a room upstairs with a bed and blankets in case you get cold and there’s some food in the cupboard over there. Professor Dumbledore said your parents normally leave some raw meat for you so I’ve done that. And there’s changes of robes in another cupboard if you need them in the morning. Now I’d better leave you to it, I’ll be back just after dawn to bring you back to the castle,” Madam Pomfrey rambled a little as she spoke, clearly getting a bit anxious.

Remus just nodded and stood still watching her leave. He waited until he heard her scramble through the hole at the end of the tunnel, the sound echoing all the way back to him. Then he began to explore, testing the magical boundaries he could feel in place. They were strong, Dumbledore had clearly done a good job. It didn’t seem like there would be any risk of the wolf getting out. And then all of a sudden Remus knew he only had a matter of seconds before the transformation proper would start and he frantically stripped off his clothes and pushed them into one of the cupboards to protect them. He could hear the wolf howling joyously in his ears and feel every muscle and joint in his body loosen and then tighten in preparation. His last thought before he was lost to the pain was I hope the boys don’t miss me tonight .

* * *

Remus woke to the worried voice of Madam Pomfrey. “Mr Lupin, Mr Lupin! Please wake up now,” she called to him. He grimaced as he began to feel the extent of how badly the wolf had acted last night. His shoulders ached and he could feel bruises forming from the pounding they had taken. He thought he must have thrown himself at the walls trying to get out. Worse than his shoulders though, was the line of fire tracing its way down his side. There were other minor scratches that hurt and stung, but the one on his side cut deep into the muscle. Remus thought there was even a chance he’d hit his ribcage in one or two places. He could taste his own blood in his mouth, he hoped it was only from licking his wounds, but with the wolf you never knew.

“Mr Lupin, can you hear me?” Madam Pomfrey was insistent and sounded very worried.

Remus sighed and opened his eyes to look at her. “Hearing has never been my problem,” he said hoarsely.

“Oh thank goodness! If you’re joking you must not be feeling as bad as you look.”

“It’s not that bad really, considering…”

“This scratch on your side is very deep and you’ve lost quite a lot of blood, Mr Lupin. I won’t sugar coat it, things are pretty bad.”

“No broken bones, and no bites, I’d call that a win for throwing the wolf into a new environment like this.”

“Oh!” was all Madam Pomfrey could manage as she looked down at Remus, realising he was being completely serious. She busied herself working spells on his cuts and bruises, trying to hide her eyes from Remus. But his senses were still heightened enough that he could smell the tears forming in her eyes. It reminded him of his mum, who always cried when she was healing Remus after a moon, and that made him homesick. But Madam Pomfrey was better than his mother at healing, and in a few moments Remus felt well enough to decide he could sit up and start to feel embarrassed about his nakedness.

“I put my clothes in the cupboard, could you-?”

“Of course, here let me help you get the robes on. I think the rest can wait till you’re a little more able. Let’s get you back to the hospital wing to rest and recover.” She wrapped Remus’ robes around him and helped him to stand gingerly. They walked together toward the trapdoor, and Madam Pomfrey used magic to lower Remus through so he didn’t have to try and climb down the ladder. Then she took most of his weight as they made the trek back to the willow and then up to the hospital wing. When they got there Remus was only too happy to accept the bed she had made ready for him in a dark corner, tucked away behind curtains. He grabbed a piece of chocolate out of his bag and slipped into his mouth before falling almost instantly asleep to the soothing taste.

Sirius

Sirius woke as soon as the first traces of light started to creep into the Gryffindor dorms. James was already awake, laying quietly across from him. Sirius blinked away the blurriness in his eyes and James started to get out of the bed, whispering as he did so.

“Let’s not wake Pete, you know he’s not a morning person. We’ll just write him a note saying where we’ve gone and he can follow us when he wakes up.”

“Good idea,” Sirius agreed, pulling his robes on as James tiptoed over to his own bed to find quill and parchment and clothes.

They left the dormitory a couple of minutes later and made their way quietly through the tower and out the portrait hole. Once they were in the corridor James pulled his invisibility cloak out from under his robes, “I think we should use this, it’s so early we don’t want to get in trouble.”

Sirius was a little surprised. James had so far refused to use the cloak for any of their pranks, but of course this was different. They had to see Remus and a run in with Filch or another teacher would be disastrous right now.

The two of them fit easily under the cloak, and it allowed them to take the most direct route to the hospital wing. They got there at exactly 5am according to James’ watch, a muggle one that Sirius’ parents would never have let him wear. The hospital wing doors were predictably shut and locked, but they had expected this and would not be put off. James knocked quietly at first, then a little louder when no one came. Finally Sirius banged on the door and a very angry looking Madam Pomfrey appeared in her dressing gown.

“What on earth do you boys want at this hour?” she asked, eyes pinning them in place fiercely.

“We want to see Remus,” James said.

“He came here with a minor headache yesterday evening but then he never came back to Gryffindor Tower. What happened?” Sirius added, anxiety colouring his voice.

“Mr Lupin is sleeping, you can’t see him right now I’m afraid,” Madam Pomfrey said.

“But what’s wrong with him?” Sirius demanded.

“He will be perfectly fine in a day or two. He needs rest and quiet and that’s something he can’t get with you boys.”

“But he was fine till yesterday, and we didn’t do anything different. I swear we weren’t extra noisy. What could we have done that hurt him?” Sirius’ voice rose in pitch with his anxiety.

“I did not mean to insinuate that you caused Mr Lupin’s illness Mr Black, merely that you can’t aid in his recovery,” Madam Pomfrey, her voice softening for the first time that morning, “but now I really must insist that you head back to your common room. It’s much too early to be up and about.” And with that she shooed them away, shutting the door behind them.

“Don’t worry, we’re not giving up,” James said quickly, watching the expression on Sirius’ face.

“He really was fine till yesterday,” Sirius mumbled, letting James lead him slowly away down the corridor.

“I know mate, I was there too.”

“Do you think she’ll let us in later if we promise to be really quiet?”

“We’ll keep trying, but don’t get your hopes up. I have a feeling Madam Pomfrey is even more stubborn than we are.”

They lapsed into silence, Sirius trying to decide if he felt better for having heard that Remus was going to be okay or worse for being told he couldn’t help.

Remus

He heard Madam Pomfrey shut the hospital wing door and walk towards her office. “Did they really look worried?” he called out, his voice still hoarse - he must have done a lot of howling in the night.

“Oh I’m sorry Mr Lupin, I should have known all that banging would wake you. How are you feeling dear?”

“I’m fine- my friends?”

“Mr Potter and Mr Black were concerned for your well being, they missed you last night it seems. But I don’t believe they suspect anything untoward.”

“I didn’t think they’d worry. I didn’t know that friends-” he cut himself off.

“-that friends worry? But of course they do. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if they return later today to try and see you again.”

“Really? You think so?” Remus knew he must sound silly, getting all excited over something so mundane.

“I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to see them. We need to get your scratches seen to first, and that will take a full day and night I expect.”

Remus slumped but nodded in agreement. He wanted desperately to see his friends, but they wouldn’t stay his friends if they saw the way he looked right now.

“How about you try to get a couple more hours of sleep then we’ll see about some breakfast,” Madam Pomfrey soothed. Remus nodded and snuggled down into his bed, sleep already nudging at the corners of his brain.

He spent the day like that, waking for periods to eat and then drifting back to sleep. It was afternoon before he felt like he was starting to come back to his usual self. Madam Pomfrey must have noticed somehow, because she came over from where she had been organising a cabinet on the other side of the room and sat down beside him.

“Are you feeling up to some brainstorming?” she asked.

“What are we brainstorming?” Remus asked in reply, a little confused.

“Your friends have turned out to be very attentive to your health. I don’t think it would be long before Mr Black or Mr Potter put two and two together if you kept getting sick each full moon, from what Professor McGonagall tells me they are both very bright students. So I thought we could come up with some things you might have to do that would take you away for a couple of nights each month. That way you could tell your friends you’ve got to go ‘visit a sick relative’ say and then they wouldn’t worry about you.”

“That’s a really good idea, thank you Madam Pomfrey!”

They spent an hour or so coming up with an elaborate story for Remus to tell his friends. In the end they decided it would be his mother who was unwell, and that he would have gotten special permission from Professor McGonagall to visit her for a couple of days each month. They planned out how he would tell his friends it was a new illness next month and then after the moon he would tell them about the arrangement. For this month Remus would just say he’d had a headache and Madam Pomfrey had decided he wasn’t getting enough sleep and forced him to stay in the hospital wing. “I suggest you complain about it to your friends, tell them I was overreacting and you were bored out of your mind,” Madam Pomfrey said.

“I guess I could do that,” Remus agreed hesitantly, not liking the idea of making Madam Pomfrey out to be some controlling overprotective biddy. Then he let himself ask the question he most wanted to, “did my friends come by again?”

“At morning break, during lunch, and before dinner. They brought Mr Pettigrew too, though he did seem a little worried they would miss out on eating.”

Remus tried to control the grin smothering his face but it was a losing battle and after a moment he gave up. Madam Pomfrey smiled a slightly smaller smile and headed off to her office, taking Remus’ empty dinner tray with her. It was a pretty good feeling, having friends, Remus decided. He spent the rest of the evening reading a book he’d had in his bag, a muggle story his mum had given him about elves and wizards and strange creatures called hobbits. His dreams that night were of quests and adventures, sometimes with the magical storybook characters and sometimes with his own magical friends.

The next morning Remus felt completely ready to get back to normal life, and once Madam Pomfrey had agreed that his healing scars were faded enough not to catch notice he headed out in search of breakfast and his friends. He found the latter sooner than expected when James, Sirius and Peter materialised out of nothing in front of him right outside the hospital wing.

“You’re alive!” Sirius cried, launching himself at Remus with his arms wide. Remus twisted just in time to avoid Sirius whacking into the still healing wound on his side and hugged him back enthusiastically.

“I survived the trenches!” he exclaimed, laughing and waving a hand feebly at James and Peter who grinned back at him. “I hear you caused a bit of trouble for dear Madam Pomfrey, wouldn’t leave her alone yesterday huh?”

“ Dear Madam Pomfrey gave us no choice. She kept refusing to let us see you, made it sound like you were as tired as an old grandpa and couldn’t possibly be disturbed,” James explained.

“Were you really? Are you okay now?” Peter asked.

“I’m fine! Honestly I’ve been fine since yesterday, but Madam Pomfrey’s a right warhorse. She wouldn’t let me leave, practically tied me to the bed and force fed me a sleeping draught after I mentioned I’d not been getting much sleep for a couple nights,” Remus said, wishing he wasn’t right outside the hospital room where she might overhear and hoping she would know he didn’t mean any of it.

The boys all headed off to breakfast together, and Remus felt things click back into place as normality resumed. He knew it would get broken again in a month’s time, but maybe with his and Madam Pomfrey’s plan they could bring the moons into normality too. Sirius kept an arm around Remus’ shoulders the whole way down to the great hall, a new development. And Remus was unsure whether it was just because he’d been away or if it was something that might keep happening now that it had started. He rather hoped it kept happening, or to be more precise the wolf rather hoped it kept happening.

And just in that moment Remus had a flash of memory from the night of the full moon: Howling and howling, why couldn’t he hear? Why wasn’t he coming? The wolf desperately wanted his friend-mate to play with but he wasn’t there and no matter how much the wolf cried for him he didn’t come. He could smell him, just a hint of him from far away when the wind turned, so he knew he must be close. He called and called, and he tried to break free from the prison he’d been locked in, smashing shoulders and slashing at walls but to no avail. Eventually in frustration his claws turned to his own skin for distraction. Pain helped but little and he spent the night lonely in a way he hadn’t been before he met the beautiful blue-eyed black haired boy. The rush of feelings sent him stumbling and of course it was Sirius who caught him, looking at him with worry flashing across his face. Remus managed to mumble something about not looking where he was going and they continued on as if the world hadn’t just shifted around them.

Chapter Text

Sirius

As the four boys entered the Great Hall, Sirius relished in the smell of pancakes and hot tea. Yesterday without Remus all food had tasted like sawdust and James had actually threatened to spoon feed him if he didn’t eat something by himself, but today all was right in the world again and he could be carefree and enjoy the simple pleasures. Or so he thought until he saw the blonde haired Slytherin girl walking determinedly in his direction. “I gotta go,” he said quickly to James and, slipping his arm off Remus’ shoulder, he hurried to intercept his cousin before she caused a scene.

Narcissa Black had steel in her gaze as she bore down on him. “We need to talk cousin,” she told him haughtily. She grabbed his arm none too gently and steered him through the crowds and out into the quieter entrance hall.

Once she had dragged him into a secluded alcove Sirius asked, “what’s all this about? I can’t remember doing anything terribly family shaming recently.”

“Your mere presence in a house filled with mudbloods and blood traitors is a shame on the family,” she sneered. Sirius cringed internally at her use of the slur, but kept his face carefully blank.

“Then why associate with me?”

“Because despite what you and your little friends like to think I’m not a slimy snake only fit for evil. Your brother has been trying to write to you, have you gotten any of his letters?”

“Reg has been writing to me?”

“Do you have another brother?”

“All right I get it, enough with the snark. I haven’t had a letter from home since Mother wrote to tell me what a disgrace I was back in the first week.”

“I thought as much, here.” And she thrust a letter into his hand. “For now Regulus’ letters to me are still getting sent, so until your parents cotton on you can communicate that way. Give me your reply tomorrow and I’ll send it with mine.”

“Thanks Cissy,” Sirius said quietly.

She nodded curtly and turned away, pausing just briefly to throw over her shoulder, “Don’t let anyone know. If anyone, and I mean anyone, even hints that I might be friendly towards you then this arrangement ends.”

Narcissa swept out of sight and Sirius made his way back to the Great Hall. He hoped he would be able to brush it off as family weirdness to his friends and they wouldn’t pry too deeply. He wasn’t quite ready to dig into that can of worms with them yet.

“What was that about?” Peter asked as Sirius sat back down

“She just wanted to tell me some family news, you know us Blacks - always the flare for the dramatic,” Sirius made himself laugh as he answered and was glad to see it seemed to work. Aside from a quietly curious look from James, no one seemed to think much of it and they all returned their focus to the food in front of them.

It wasn’t until he was hidden behind his curtains in his bed that evening that Sirius could take out the letter Narcissa had given him. He opened it with some trepidation, what would Regulus have to say about his only brother being a flaming red Gryffindor? Well, there was only one way to find out. Sirius began to read:

Sirius smiled to himself as he read the letter, hearing Regulus’ voice in his head as he imagined him writing it sitting at his little desk in his bedroom across from Sirius’ at the top of the stairs in Grimmauld Place. It was just like Regulus to ramble about meaningless nothings to Sirius. Sirius was pretty sure he was the only person who had ever gotten to see the rambly side of Regulus. He always worked so hard to appear sophisticated and befitting of the name of Black, except for when Sirius and he were alone or when Sirius managed to get him involved in some form of mischief making.

Sirius leant out of bed and grabbed a quill and paper off his nightstand to write a reply with.

Once he’d finished, Sirius folded the letter neatly and tucked it into his robe pocket for tomorrow. He’d have to find an opportunity to subtly slip it to Narcissa to add to her own letter. He settled in for what he thought might be a better night’s sleep than he’d had in a while. For now, everyone he normally worried about seemed to be doing okay. Remus was back from his weird adventure in the hospital wing, Regulus hadn’t sided with the rest of the family after all, and even Narcissa turned out not to hate him as much as she pretended.

James

The debacle of Remus’ headache had provided James with a host of new experiences. Finally using the cloak for the first time had been incredibly exciting, and now that he’d used it he wanted to get it out all the time. The other new experience he wanted to repeat as soon as he could was having secret midnight meetings with Sirius. It would be great to sit and talk about all their silly ideas (and their less silly ones too), but in order to do this they were going to need to learn a silencing spell so they wouldn’t wake Remus up. James was confident Peter would snore his way through anything, but he had noticed over the last month that Remus was a very light sleeper combined with having a knack for hearing even the quietest sound. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Remus or Peter to join their conversations, but he was a bit worried about Remus not getting enough sleep and Madam Pomfrey stealing him again. And having time with just Sirius was fun, they could be silly together in a way the other two weren’t.

So the day after Remus came back James headed to the library after classes finished and began to search for a book that would teach him a silencing charm. He quickly realised that it wasn’t as straightforward as he’d thought it would be. He found a silencing charm quickly, but the book it was in said the spell would make the whole area silent, meaning no one could make any noise. It sounded good for sneaking around so James made a note of it, but it would be no use for holding conversations. Eventually he had to give up for the day and go find the other boys for dinner. They were curious about what he’d been doing for so long but he managed to convince them he’d just been looking for prank inspiration. He showed them the area silencing charm, and Sirius immediately wanted to use it in a class the next day. Remus agreed that it would be a good class prank, but thought they should wait till they had a class discussion or similar scheduled so it could have the most effect.

“If we can cast the spell right in the middle of someone saying something, we might get away with it. But we’ll have to be careful and prepared that we might still get caught,” Remus cautioned them.

“We should probably practice it in our dorm tonight so we’re ready,” Peter suggested.

“Hmm, maybe not in our dorm. What if it goes wrong and we’re stuck with a silent dorm forever,” James pointed out, internally worried that his plan for midnight chats would be ruined.

“Let’s find an empty classroom and practice in there,” Sirius said.

“Great idea, we can go tonight and use my cloak so no one knows we’re there.”

“Are you sure? I thought you wanted to save using the cloak for really important things,” Remus asked.

“Nah, it’s way too much fun not to use. You missed out being stuck in the hospital wing. We used it to come and try to visit you, but couldn’t get past Madam Pomfrey,” James told him. “I reckon it’s easily big enough for all of us to fit under together, do you guys think?” he added, tilting his head toward Peter and Sirius questioningly. They both nodded, and so Remus agreed to the late night escapade.

They finished up dinner and made their way upstairs to Gryffindor tower, along the way bumping into Frank Longbottom, Aidan Finch and Kiaan Patil, the other Gryffindor first year boys. Kiaan suggested they all play a game of exploding snap in the common room that evening, so after dropping their school bags in their dorms they all headed back downstairs. The seven boys had become comfortably friendly with each other but they had definitely split into two separate groups based on their dorms. James liked the other boys but didn’t think they quite had the mischievous streak of Sirius or Remus' mastermind prank planning skills. He caught himself thinking Peter was a bit more like the other group than their group, but quickly shut the thought down. Peter was one of them, and if he was a little quieter and more nervous for now that wasn’t a problem. He never said no to a prank or adventure, and he was absolutely definitely one of their group - James would hear no opposition to it, even from his own brain he thought firmly to himself.

The game was a lot of fun, and ended in a mad tussle between Aidan and Sirius over whose card had caused the final explosion. James noticed Lily Evans and her friends staring over at them like they were a bunch of madmen, and compulsively he jumped up and threw himself into the tussle, causing even more mayhem. When he snuck another glance at Lily she had pure disgust on her face and was turning away to go up to her dorm. James snickered to himself and went back to wrestling his friends. A minute or so later one of the prefects came over and broke them up, sending them all to bed early for their antics. All seven of them walked upstairs together, saying their goodnight’s at the top of the stairs and heading into their separate dorms.

James insisted they had to wait till the common room quieted down a bit more before they snuck out, or they would risk bumping into people on their way through. The other boys agreed, but when Remus suggested they use the time to work on some homework Sirius laughed and said that was taking it too far. So Remus did his homework by himself and the other three planned their route through the castle, comparing ideas on where the caretaker Argus Filtch and the prefects were most likely to be patrolling.

After an hour James decided it was late enough and they could head off. They all pulled thick socks on to muffle their footsteps. This had been Peter’s suggestion and he was very proud of it, explaining “It’s how I always used to sneak downstairs for midnight snacks at home.”

They crept through the nearly empty common room and waited till no one was looking before opening the portrait hole and slipping through. The Lilac Lady looked around in confusion, huffed and went back to snoozing. The boys walked more boldly now they were out in the silent castle, and soon they had made their way to the abandoned classroom on the fifth floor without incident. They stepped inside and James pulled the cloak off them so they could spread out.

“Right, who’s going to try the spell first?” Sirius asked, his wand already in his hand hopefully.

“I think James should, since he found it,” Peter put in loyally, but James shook his head.

“It’s a charm, and we all know Remus is best at charms. Remus, how about you try and just silence that desk over there?”

“Are you sure James?” Remus asked. James nodded, so Remus pulled out his wand and took the piece of paper with the spell on it that James held out to him. He read it carefully then pointed his wand at the desk in the corner and said, “impercussus.” They all felt a woosh as the spell flew toward the desk, then nothing happened.

James hurried over and tapped on the desk with his knuckles. A very quiet sound came out, and Remus frowned a little sadly. “That was really close, good work Remus!” James said enthusiastically. He came back over to the others, and pointed his own wand towards a different desk, repeating Remus’ words and actions. Sirius checked this time, but James had done no better. The sound was quieter but not silent.

It took them three hours and two classrooms to finally master the spell fully. By the time they were done every desk and chair in the first classroom had been spelled multiple times, and they had successfully made the entire second classroom silent for a whole ten minutes before the spell wore off. They made their way back to Gryffindor tower tired but elated at their success. They had to poke the Lilac Lady to get her to wake up and she was very unimpressed but she let them inside and they hurried up to their dormitory to collapse into their beds.

The next morning James was first awake, as usual. He got dressed and let Weebles out into the dawn sky with a letter for his parents tied to her leg. Then he waited impatiently for the other three boys to groggily wake up. It took them longer than usual thanks to their late night adventures, and Peter in particular did not want to wake up. James convinced him by suggesting that if he didn’t get up now he would run the risk of missing out on breakfast. As it was they had to eat in a rush to make it to their first class on time, and since it was transfiguration they did not want to be late. Professor McGonagall was fierce about tardiness, and her friendliness with James’ family only made her harder on him at school. They made it in time thankfully, and Remus stopped them just outside the classroom to say, “Not this class, remember. We’re waiting for optimum chaos.” They all nodded their agreement and headed in to take their seats.

That afternoon, their opportunity came. They had potions with the Slytherins and Professor Slughorn had decided that today they would work in groups of four on a collaborative project. The class split off, and James, Sirius, Peter and Remus managed to get a table together. They grinned at each other, knowing without having to say anything that this would be their moment. They waited till the noise of talking students, clattering scales and chopping knives had reached a peak and then all four together subtly pointed their wand at different parts of the classroom and muttered “impercussus.” The effect was instantaneous and perfect. The whole room fell silent, though nothing else changed. Students kept trying to talk to each other, getting more and more confused as no noise came out of their mouths. Slughorn was waving his arms trying to get everyone’s attention, but they were all so distracted it wasn’t working.

Remus nudged James and showed him their potions book, with the recipe for today’s potion on display. The four boys began working as best they could without talking, using gestures and touch to indicate what each would do. Slughorn seemed unable to work out a counter charm, and so by the time their spells wore off twenty minutes had passed and the class had dissolved into a mix of chaos and students desperately trying to work with the silence. Lily Evans and Severus Snape would probably have done well if it weren't for the fact they had been paired with two very bossy Slytherins who didn’t follow direction under the best of circumstances. When noise returned, the majority of the class cheered loudly, while a small number grumbled their displeasure at the whole situation. Snape was among those grumbling, and his face looked awful.

Due to a mix of luck and comradery the four boys had managed a half decent potion, and Sirius was able to complete the required spellwork now that he could speak again. To their surprise, this earned them top marks in the class, and a commendation from Slughorn for working well in a crisis.

As soon as they were out of the class and on their way upstairs the boys burst into hysterical laughter. “Working well in a crisis!” Sirius wheezed, bent over double trying to catch his breath.

“And you told us we should be prepared for detention Remus, hah!” James crowed. Remus could only laugh, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Our best prank yet boys,” James said, once they had recovered themselves enough to head to their final class for the day. He was incredibly pleased with how well the whole thing had gone really. They had had a fun adventure under the cloak, learnt a new spell successfully without help from a teacher, and performed a flawless prank that actually earned them points rather than getting them in trouble. He also weirdly agreed with Slughorn that they had proved they could work well in a crisis. All right, perhaps it wasn’t a totally fair situation as they had an advantage over the rest of the class in knowing what was going on, but they had worked very well together to get their potion done. They hadn’t broken down in tears like Mary MacDonald, or whacked each other round the head like Avery and Mulciber. They had calmly gotten on with the task at hand and had managed to communicate with each other very effectively without words. They hadn’t even planned ahead for that part of the prank.

They spent the rest of the day sneaking grins at each other, and ended the night with a celebratory pillow fight that ended with them sleeping in a mad pile on the floor of their dormitory. The final cherry on top was when a half-asleep Sirius smiled over at James from the other side of Remus and mouthed, “BEST. DAY. EVER.”

Chapter Text

Remus

As the October full moon approached, Remus noticed his anxiety levels getting worse. As expected, his hearing got overly sharp and his eyes got very light sensitive. However, this month he was hyper focused on appearing completely normal to everyone around. Last month he hadn’t done a good enough job, so he knew he had to make up for it this time around to reduce suspicion. There was also the anxiety around what his friends would think when he told them his mum was unwell and he had to go visit her. He knew they would be sympathetic of course, James especially so if his apparently perfect relationship with his own mother was anything to go off. But he worried about just how many questions they would ask, and how he would manage to keep the story straight. There were so many things to keep straight in his head at the moment, that it was a bit of a miracle he managed to keep his grades from dropping too noticeably.

It was with an odd sense of relief, therefore, that he welcomed the sight of Professor McGonagall approaching him as he exited his last class of the day. James and Sirius immediately shrank back, glancing at each other in confusion as they tried to work out which of their rule breaking actions she had found out about. Peter was distracted with a bag of sweets and only looked up as Professor McGonagall reached them.

“Whatever you’re thinking, it wasn’t us-” James began, but he was interrupted.

“Mr Lupin, I have had an owl from your father. Your mother has taken ill and your presence is required at home immediately,” Professor McGonagall said in her brisk no-nonsense tone.

“O-okay” Remus made himself stutter, schooling his features into concern and willing his eyes to water.

“Remus, your Mum! Are you gonna be alright?” James was, as Remus had predicted, immediately sympathetic and worried. Remus let himself show James a flash of all his nerves and anxiety in answer.

“Come now Mr Lupin, no time to dawdle. Your father is waiting for you to floo from my office. The rest of you, off to dinner. Mr Lupin will be back in a day or two I believe,” Professor McGonagall said as she began to lead Remus away.

He gave a little wave to his friends, mouthing “I’ll be okay” as he followed her off up the corridor.

Professor McGonagall did indeed lead Remus to her office. Once there she guided him to a chair in front of a coffee table on which sat a plate of steak sandwiches, the steak enticingly rare. “Here, you’d better have an early dinner to keep your strength up. Madam Pomfrey will come by shortly to take you down to the Whomping Willow.”

“Thanks,” Remus said, already picking up a sandwich. The wolf in his head didn’t think it was particularly satisfying, but accepted that any meat was worth eating.

A little while later Remus heard Madam Pomfrey approaching. His hearing was so dialled up by this point, he could detect her footsteps well before she approached the door, and so had scoffed his last mouthful and was standing up as she knocked and entered.

“Good evening Minerva, Mr Lupin,” she greeted them.

Professor McGonagall smiled at her and turned a suddenly gentle look toward Remus, saying “off you go now, and try not to have too rough of a time. I don’t relish the prospect of explaining to Potter, Black and Pettigrew that you’ve had to extend your family visit.”

“I’ll do my best,” Remus replied, knowing full well he had no say in what the wolf did each full moon.

Madam Pomfrey led him carefully through the castle and out to the Whomping Willow, taking a route that would avoid their being seen by anyone wandering about. She froze the tree and they hurried through the tunnel, Remus feeling the usual joint spasms beginning as they walked. This time, when they reached the ladder up to the house Remus went up alone and Madam Pomfrey locked the trapdoor behind him.

Remus estimated he had around half an hour to prepare before the moon would crest the horizon and the wolf would take over fully. He took his robes off and swapped them for a blanket wrapped around him for warmth. It was noticeably colder than last month, autumn’s chill clearly present. He then sat on the floor with crossed legs and concentrated on relaxing his mind. He thought back to the brief glimpse of memory he’d had of the previous moon, a moment he had contemplated many times over the intervening weeks. Sirius is in the castle asleep, he can’t hear the howling. Your friend-mate can’t play tonight, but that’s okay. You can see the moon out the window; you can explore the house; there’s more fresh meat to eat and bones to chew; bones are better than chewing on me, I promise they’re much more fun. He had no idea if it would work, the wolf wasn’t really listening to him - too excited about the feel of the moon getting closer to be able to focus on much - but Remus kept repeating the thoughts over and over in his head, spurred on by the look he’d seen on Professor McGonagall’s face as he left her office.

The change came as suddenly and painfully as ever, one moment Remus was thinking his calming mantra and the next his joints were tearing themselves apart and he was writhing on the floor screaming with the pain of it. The tearing, ripping, breaking pain lasted for longer than it ever had before but finally Remus lost all sense of thought and the wolf took over.

The Wolf

The nights always started with the fading ache of pain, but tonight it was worse. The wolf didn’t know why, but whatever the reason it made him instantly angry and he threw himself at the wall with his claws out as if somehow that would help. He started howling, crying out to the empty night. Friend-mate, where is friend-mate! Lonely! Bored! Come play! Can smell you, where are you? Castle… friend-mate sleeping… can’t play… alone explore… see moon… chew bones… not chew Remus… The wolf’s howls slipped to quiet whimpers as he remembered Remus’ thoughts. He didn’t like that his mate wasn’t there and wouldn’t come, he would probably howl some more about that later, but exploring the house had been a clever idea of Remus’ and the wolf decided to do that for a while.

He made his way to the doorway on the far side of the room. Last moon he had been so focused on trying to get out of the building he hadn’t paid any attention to his surroundings except in how they stopped him escaping. Through the doorway the wolf found a corridor with a set of stairs at the far leading up to the second floor, as well as three more rooms on this floor. The house was small, and each room was petite, but it took the wolf the whole night to properly investigate every smell in every room. This was how the wolf found the meat and bones that had been left for him. They were some kind of cow, killed over a week ago with stale blood resting in sad muscle. The wolf tried to remember what Remus had thought about chewing the bones, but they just didn’t smell appetising.

And so, as the moon neared the horizon, the wolf finally grew bored enough to take up his usual pass time of self attack. His blood was fresh when it spilled and the pain certainly couldn’t be considered boring. He thought angrily of his mate, tucked away in the castle instead of here to play with him, and the howling and slashing got riotous in the last moments as the moon began to disappear behind the low horizon. Remus would have control again in just a few moments and the wolf would take his backseat for the rest of the month, surviving on second hand experiences of smells, sounds, sights, and - if he was lucky - touches from his mate.

Not fair! Want friend-mate! Want friend-mate now! Remus mean… Remus greedy! were the last thoughts to filter through the wolf’s brain as he lost control and his body cracked and shrunk painfully back into its human form.

Peter

Remus was gone for two days visiting his sick mother, and when he came back he looked a little sick himself. But he assured Peter that his mother’s condition was not catching, he was just tired from the whole experience and Peter didn’t blame him. Peter had no idea what he would do if he found out his mother had a terrible incurable illness.

None of the boys really knew what to think about poor Remus and his ill mother. Remus had explained when he got back to school that his mother was ill with some complicated magical illness he couldn’t explain and so he was going to be allowed to visit her once a month to spend time with her. He didn’t say much more than that and seemed to want to just go on as they had before. Peter knew that James had tried to draw Remus out, wanting to offer comfort but he had been pretty unsuccessful, and Sirius hadn’t tried at all. Peter thought that actually he might be best equipped of all of them to offer Remus comfort, and so for the next wee while he made an exerted effort to keep Remus quietly busy. He asked for help with homework, he suggested group study sessions with Lily Evans and her friends, he shared his precious sweets, and he simply kept Remus company without demanding high energy from him as was Sirius’ want, or expecting an abundance of oversharing like James would have done.

It was the first time in their group friendship that Peter began to truly value himself as one of them, and not just a disposable extra who had been in the right place at the right time to get brought into the fold. This self discovery did wonders for Peter’s confidence, and in turn for his schoolwork and friendships (though the improvement to his schoolwork may have been in part due to all the extra time spent in the library). He found himself becoming less shy, though still pretty quiet a lot of the time.

* * *

Peter’s attention was thoroughly diverted from Remus when the week of Halloween began. Halloween had been Peter’s favourite holiday before coming to Hogwarts. To say he had a sweet tooth would be an understatement, Peter absolutely loved anything even remotely sugary, so all the sweets and chocolates that came along with Halloween made for his idea of heaven. At the beginning of the week he received a giant package from his mother, full to the brim with all his favourites. James also received a large package from his parents, and Remus got a small package of muggle chocolate from his mum, but Sirius didn’t get anything from his family. He laughed it off at the time saying he didn’t want anything from his psycho parents anyway, but Peter caught a disappointed expression on his face once everyone else’s attention had drifted away. And even though Peter’s initial desire was to keep all his sweets for his own, he made himself share with Sirius. Sirius took some convincing, but thanks to his newfound confidence Peter was able to stand his ground and insist that Sirius help himself. He was rewarded for his sacrifice by a genuine smile from Sirius and a reduction in teasing remarks for the rest of the week.

His kind behaviour to Sirius did not prevent him from being the butt of a treat related prank on the eve of Halloween however. James and Sirius, knowing his sweet tooth, left out cupcakes in the common room where they knew he would find them and sure enough Peter picked one up and took a bite only to find his mouth and hand glued together by the icing. It was only a short term sticking charm, but Peter still had to walk around with his hand held to his face for a couple of hours while it wore off. The prank got a lot of laughs, and Peter’s confidence took a corresponding dip nearly back to as low as it had been before. James had a great time with it, asking Peter if he was hungry or if he wanted to try one of the sweets James was eating and laughing hysterically when all Peter could do was glare at him around the cupcake.

Surprisingly, of all the people who might have stuck up for Peter, it was Lily Evans who came over and told James and Sirius to stop being so mean. She said in a heated voice “would you two stop being horrible for five minutes! Can’t you see Peter doesn’t like it?”

And when James said it was just a prank she retorted “Oh haha… so funny, picking on your friend because he has a bit of a sweet tooth and it's Halloween. How original… not!” And she stalked away grumpily, dragging Peter with her to try and work out if there was a counter spell to release him. She didn’t find any though and Peter just had to wait it out.

The next day was Halloween, and the four boys spent the day admiring the castle decorations and messing around with pumpkins and suits of armour. Peter was glad that at least they were all having fun as a group, something that had been a little lacking in the time since Remus’ return. They finally seemed to be getting back to normality. The excitement of the holiday had distracted James from worrying about Remus and the prank on Peter was forgotten (at least by the others) in the light of morning.

Halloween evening proved to be the most exciting night of the whole year so far (and Peter thought it might trump a great number of nights to follow). The feast was spectacular, with every kind of roasted food you could think of, delicious sweet potato mash, exquisite buttery green beans, and an unimaginable variety of deserts. Remus practically fainted when he saw the actual vat of chocolate mousse. Peter was pretty sure he considered throwing himself into it face first for a moment before settling on just entirely covering a large slice of chocolate cake in it and shoving his mouth into that (they were eleven year old boys after all - one couldn’t expect perfect levels of restraint from them).

It wasn’t just the food that made Halloween incredible. The best part of the night happened right as everyone was getting up to leave the great hall. Through the large windows came a horde of charging ghost horses with their headless riders attempting to ride standing on top of the saddles with heads held aloft to get them as high as possible. Unsurprisingly this was mostly unsuccessful and there were soon ghost bodies falling left and right off their horses in the middle of the room, tripping through living people and making them scream at the horrible cold feeling it left. The really marvellous part though was that every single rider who fell off managed to lose control of their detached head. And so not only were there flailing bodies, but there were also rolling ghost heads disappearing under the tables and into corners of the hall. The whole place descended into total chaos as headless, blind ghost bodies wandered around randomly trying to find where their heads had gotten to. The heads meanwhile were shouting incredibly unhelpful directions such as “I can see legs! Find the legs!”

Eventually the students settled down from the initial shock and fright of it all and set to helping reunite the heads and bodies. It took a fair while and a bit of swapping back and forth but eventually all the members of the headless hunt were reacquainted with both their heads and their horses and they mounted up - sitting this time - and rode off back into the night to continue their Halloween traditions. Dumbledore then sent everyone to bed shaking his head and hiding a smile in his beard - clearly he had enjoyed the chaos even if none of the other teachers seemed to have.

James and Sirius kept recounting their favourite moments from the evening as they all made their way up through the castle. James particularly liked a moment where one of the headless bodies had accidentally kicked another one’s head and it had soared nearly the entire length of the great hall, screaming curses all the way. He was trying to memorise all the curses so he could use them again in the future.

It took them all a long time to fall asleep, but eventually their full bellies overcame their excited thoughts and dreams took them. Peter dreamed of shadowy riders bringing him chocolate and maple pudding cakes, but every time he went to take a bite the pudding would turn into a ghost head and stare at him with cold unblinking eyes. It was no wonder that he didn’t wake till late the next morning, well after the other boys had already gotten dressed and left the dorm. Peter didn’t mind though, as it meant he was left alone to enjoy some of his remaining Halloween sweets in peace.

Chapter Text

Sirius

Sirius was concerned about Remus’ mother, of course he was. Remus was his friend and so of course he cared that his mother wasn’t well, and he knew how hard that must be for Remus. The problem was, Sirius didn’t like parents as a rule. His own were rather horrid, and so were the parents of everyone he’d known as a child since he’d only ever known the children of people who were cronies with his parents. So it just wasn’t in Sirius’ nature to feel sorry for someone’s parent, and anyway hadn’t Remus said he wanted to go on as normal, so wasn’t Sirius being silly and playing pranks doing exactly what Remus had asked for?

James didn’t think so though, and he made this clear to Sirius in the weeks following Remus’ return to school. During one of the afternoons when Remus and Peter were in the library studying, shortly after the debacle that had been Halloween, James came into their dorm where Sirius was relaxing on his bed, procrastinating the herbology homework that was due the next day.

“We need to do something about Remus,” James said bluntly.

“What about Remus?” Sirius asked, having a pretty good idea what the answer would be but wishing it was anything else.

“His mother, Sirius! She’s really unwell, I mean Aunty Minnie wouldn’t let him go home for monthly visits if it wasn’t super bad.”

“I suppose, but Remus said he doesn’t want to talk about it. We shouldn’t force him should we?”

“He’s just saying that ‘cause he doesn’t want to be a burden. If it was my mum I’d be hoping and hoping for someone to ask me about it.”

“Well I wouldn’t, so I’m not going to ask Remus anything.”

“Sirius!” James shoved his shoulder roughly.

“It’s true. I might even throw a party if my mother ever got ill, except that I wouldn’t want to jinx it till she’s actually in the ground. She’d be just the sort to pull back from something deadly to spite me.”

“Are you being serious?”

“It is my name isn’t it?” Sirius asked, and James couldn’t help but burst into hysterical laughter at the joke. It effectively ended that topic of conversation, but Sirius could tell James hadn’t forgotten any of it.

A couple of days later James brought it up again, this time with both Sirius and Peter. “Boys, I know Remus says he doesn’t want to talk about it but we need to show him he can trust us to support him with his mother’s illness.”

“You might not have noticed, but I’ve been doing my bit to support him,” Peter said, his confidence surprising Sirius.

“What have you been doing Pete?” James asked, like he was expecting a progress report.

“I’ve been keeping him busy, and giving him peaceful company. We study together most days with a small group in the library. And I share my sweets with him, he especially likes chocolate so I save those for him. And sometimes I mention things from home, like how my cousin just had a baby and was in St Mungos overnight.”

“Wow, that’s really great Pete!” James said, a genuine smile creasing his face. He turned to look at Sirius, the smile slipping into a preemptively disappointed look, “and what about you Sirius?”

Sirius glared at him, “Remus said he wanted us to act as if everything was normal. As his friend,” Sirius paused for emphasis, “I’m respecting that, and not pushing my own opinions about how he should be feeling or acting onto him.”

“Sirius, look, I know you don’t have a good relationship with your parents. But we know that’s not the case for Remus. Don’t you remember him telling us about how he grew up with just his parents, and how basically everything he said he loved doing was with his mother. Can you not see how maybe he’s feeling really sad and worried about maybe losing her, but because of the way he was raised he doesn’t know how to confide in us. And we know he has this silly idea that he’s got to earn our friendship or something, so what if he’s scared that if he goes on about his mother we’ll get bored and drop him and he’ll be completely alone? We just can’t let him think he’s got to be all alone in his feelings, it’s not good for him… And you both promised me you would help teach Remus how to be a normal kid with friends, so you have to help Sirius - you have to, please!” James finished, sucking in a breath after his rushed speech.

Sirius’ reply was one word, “no.” And he got up and left the room.

Sirius took himself off to the library, hoping James wouldn’t think to look for him in a place he normally avoided with a passion. As he walked down the corridors, Sirius got angrier and angrier at James. He just could not understand James’ viewpoint, whichever way he tried to look at the situation. Perhaps it was because they were raised differently, but that didn’t check out. James was doing exactly what Sirius’ parents always did, if he’d really been raised better by happy kind parents shouldn’t that mean he wouldn’t be overbearing and controlling?

For all of Sirius’ childhood his parents had made it clear that they knew best, they were always right, and Sirius should always do exactly what they said. Sirius remembered the first time his mother had punished him for not being what she wanted as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. He had been around two years old and he had been playing in the tiny backyard at Grimmauld place, dancing around to music that was only in his head. His mother came out and told him to stop behaving like a little girl at once. He was so shocked he sat down on the ground and started to cry. And instead of comforting him as she normally did if he was crying because he’d gotten hurt, she just stood over him glaring until he eventually stopped on his own. And then she spoke words that Sirius had never forgotten, words that rang in his ears every time he did something or even just thought something that was so much as a hair’s width from Walburga Black’s idea of acceptable.

Two year old Sirius’ mother had said, “My son wouldn’t cry over nothing, sitting there like a weak little girl. My son wouldn’t do that, you want to be my son don’t you? Don’t you Sirius?”

Sirius had nodded as fast as his little head could, and he had wiped away his tears and followed his mother inside to be quiet and respectful, like ‘her son’ would be. And for a while he had believed her, and he had strived to meet her expectations, to never stray from the perfect, calculated, pureblood persona she instilled. But as the years wore away, and especially when Sirius got to spend more time with his cousin Andromeda, he realised for himself that his mother’s word wasn’t the ultimate truth. Andromeda, or Andy as she liked to be called when the adults weren’t around, showed Sirius that individuality wasn’t this awful evil thing to be pushed down and ignored. Instead, it was something to be explored and experimented with, and even had fun with. And because Sirius felt it was his duty to pass onto Regulus everything he’d learnt from Andy, he stopped trying quite so hard to be his parents’ perfect son at home, and started doing things just because he felt like it. And it got him in a lot of trouble, it got him punished in ways he would never tell Regulus. But Sirius began to slowly learn who he was inside, and he began to uncover his own personality (and perhaps in that he found the courage that led him to get sorted into Gryffindor).

For all those years before Hogwarts, not only had Sirius had his identity and personality squished and pushed down by his parents, but he had never, not once, been taken at his word and believed. No one had ever listened to him say “this is what I want, this is what I need” and said “okay, I believe you, you know what you need” but he had always hoped that one day someone would do that simple thing for him. And so, because this had been a constant part of Sirius’ childhood, when Remus had an experience that would typically lead people to think he wanted sympathy and comfort but he instead asked for normality and not to talk about it of course Sirius was going to take him at his word and not push him to talk about his feelings or do anything other than act as if everything was normal.

It really hurt Sirius that James couldn’t understand that he was actually being the most caring he could towards Remus by not doing anything. When James talked about how they had to “teach Remus how to be a normal kid” it was too close to something Sirius’ parents would say to him. He agreed in principle that they should help Remus learn how children their age interact with each other because Remus had grown up with only adults, but to him this came in the form of pranks and making jokes and chatting about whatever they wanted, not in forcing Remus to open up if he didn’t want to or in deciding what was best for him without listening to his views. And then, when James pushed Sirius to join him in doing what he’d decided was best for everyone, Sirius’ temper got white hot furious and he couldn’t deal with it. It was exactly how Sirius’ parents acted, only slightly different in that James was suggesting stifling someone with care and affection while the Black parents’ suggestions were more along the lines of actually stifling someone.

Sirius had gotten nowhere with his angry thoughts by the time he wandered into the library and to his horror found himself face to face with one Remus Lupin. He started to turn to leave but Remus had already looked up and noticed him with a small smile that made it impossible for Sirius to walk away. “Damn” he whispered to himself as he walked over to his friend.

“What’s the matter?” Remus asked.

“Nothing, nothing, just ya know passing through,” Sirius tried to make his reply chill and breezy.

“I’m not buying that, what scheming prank have you and James got going on?”

It was the way Remus said James’ name so casually that made Sirius lose it.

“There’s no prank with James! I’m not doing anything with that tosser! I hate him!” he burst out, his voice raised dangerously high for their surroundings.

“Whoa whoa whoa, hang on a second. Let’s take this outside for a walk eh?” Remus was holding his hands out in a ‘calm down’ gesture.

Sirius nodded, and waited, dancing from foot to foot with pent up energy, while Remus methodically packed his belongings into his bag. Finally they were heading out of the library and Remus was leading the way downstairs. Sirius didn’t speak, and Remus didn’t ask any questions, until they had stepped out of the entrance hall and were heading towards the lake in the hazy afternoon light of Autumn.

“Okay, so tell me why you hate James,” Remus prompted, a surprising lack of judgement in his tone.

“Ugh, I hate that I’ve dragged you into this now,” Sirius sighed. But he knew it was pretty unlikely Remus would let it drop after his outburst, and he didn’t think he was capable of making up any kind of believable lie right now.

So he went on, “James thinks you need to talk about your mum being ill and how that’s making you feel. He thinks me and Peter need to help him make you talk. I mean he says we need to make you ‘feel comfortable enough to talk to us’ but it’s the same thing right? And he doesn’t care that you said you don’t want to talk about things and that you just want things to go on as normal. And he won’t stop pushing me to do something, even though I told him outright I won’t because who am I to judge how anyone should feel about their parents?”

“I’m sure James’ heart is in the right place,” Remus interrupted.

“But that’s not the point! Just because he’s being all controlling out of love or whatever doesn’t make it okay, that doesn’t make it any better than when my parents try to control me to do some icky pureblood thing. I’ve spent my whole life around people trying to control my every action. I really thought I’d got away from it, but here’s one of my best friends doing it all over again. I can’t stand it, Remus, I just can’t stand it.”

Sirius felt himself getting close to hysteria, and he forced himself to hold it together long enough to ask with one final gasping breath, “Am I never going to get away from this? Is the whole world just people telling me how to think and feel and act?”

And then he was crying, crying like he hadn’t since before that first time in the backyard with his mother, and Remus was pulling him in and holding him tightly. They stood together like that for a long moment until Sirius’ sobbing finally settled to something more manageable. Remus gently pulled away to look him in the eye and began talking softly.

“The whole world is not people telling you how to think and feel and act, I promise. I will not be one of the people telling you who to be, and once I’ve kicked some sense into him neither will James. And just so we’re clear on this, your parents are absolute shite! Also, thanks for not pushing me to talk about my mum, I really mean that. She’s going to be ill for a really long time, and I don’t want to spend every day upset about that, so thank you for giving me normal, really really thank you!”

Sirius smiled weakly through his still streaming tears, and gave a little hiccuping laugh. Remus moved so that their hug morphed and they were walking again, Sirius tucked into Remus’ side. They didn’t speak for a long time, and when they did it was about more mundane things: the homework neither of them had finished yet, and what they might have for dinner tonight.

Chapter Text

Remus

As he and Sirius entered the great hall Remus saw James and Peter sitting huddled together talking at the Gryffindor table. He knew that in the middle of dinner in front of everyone was not the place to confront James but he could tell that it was going to be an awkward meal with the four of them sitting together probably not saying a word to each other.

Sirius nudged him, pointing at another spot further down the bench. “Let’s sit with Evans. You’re friends with her right?”

“I’m friends with Lily , yes,” Remus said. He let Sirius lead the way towards her, passing James and Peter to do so. James looked up as Remus was walking by and opened his mouth to speak a greeting, but Remus avoided looking at him and hurried to catch up with Sirius, who was sitting down next to a very confused and annoyed looking Lily.

“Hi Lily!” Remus said quickly, “mind if Sirius and I sit here?”

“Oh, uh sure I guess. Would’ve thought you’d prefer to sit with Potter and Pete,” she said.

“Nah, James is being a toerag,” Sirius said, slightly too seriously.

Lily gave him a concerned look, but brushed past it. “Toerag, hah! I like that, it suits him,” she snickered.

Sirius grinned at her, relaxing into his seat and putting a slice of shepherd’s pie onto his plate. Lily and Remus groaned together when he proceeded to smother the pie in tomato sauce till it was invisible under the red.

“It’s a murder scene!” Remus cried, making both Sirius and Lily laugh. They spent the rest of dinner being mildly silly. Remus enjoyed watching Lily and Sirius get to know each other. He rather liked Lily, she was a lot of fun in their study sessions, but Sirius and James had made a bit of a habit of pissing her off with their pranks (especially since so many of them seemed to somehow be targeted at her friend Snape), and she had made it clear in response that she thought they were immature and mean and not worth her time. Now though, she seemed to be rethinking that a little.

As they were finishing dessert Remus noticed James and Peter heading out of the hall. “I’ve gotta go, catch you two a bit later okay?” he said, getting up to follow James and Peter. Sirius noticed the retreating figures too and nodded, grabbing a second helping of dessert to have a reason to stay at the table longer.

Remus followed James and Peter, not rushing to catch up till they were out of the crowds. He could follow their scent easily enough and he knew they were probably heading towards Gryffindor tower anyway. Once they’d left the other students behind Remus lengthened his stride to get them back in sight. Sure enough, he rounded a corner and they were just ahead of him, about to mount the next set of stairs towards the tower. “James! Pete!” he called out, causing them to startle and turn around.

“Hey Remus,” Peter said uneasily. That was good, they knew something was up then.

“James, can I talk to you alone?” Remus asked. He had a feeling James would rather not have Peter there to watch him get told off by Remus, though Remus did mean to tell Peter off as well, if perhaps not quite as thoroughly.

James nodded, and turned to Peter saying “I’ll catch you up yeah?”

“Okay, see you in a bit then.” Peter made his way up the stairs.

“Let’s talk in here,” Remus suggested, leading the way into an empty classroom just behind him. He could tell there was no one close enough to hear them now so he sat down on a desk and paused briefly to get his thoughts sorted. For some strange reason he felt a surge of anger towards James, paired with a desire to tackle him into a fight. He resisted this very animalistic feeling and returned to his planned words. “You were out of line with Sirius today James,” he began, but James interrupted.

“I was out of line? He’s the one who doesn’t care about your feelings! I can’t believe he’s dragged you into this and made you be his defender.” James’ voice dripped with sureness and a hint of superiority that made Remus’ anger rise again.

“He didn’t drag me into anything, and don’t you ever say he doesn’t care about me. I know you all care about me, and I know you think you know what’s best for me James, but did you even pause for a moment to think that maybe it might be the other way around and it might be Sirius who knew what was best? Did you?”

“I- uh-”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so. Now listen James, I’m trying not to be angry with you, but you really hurt Sirius today and that’s not okay. Sirius was doing what he thought was best for me. He listened to me say what I needed and he gave it to me. And that was the best way he could show that he cared, because that’s something he hasn’t gotten from anyone. His parents are so controlling, they have never listened to him and never believed that he could possibly know what was best for himself, so by doing that for me he was giving me the care he wishes he’d been given.”

“But-”

“No buts! Let me finish James. When you told Sirius that listening to me was wrong, and that you knew what was best for me even if wasn’t what I said I wanted, that made you seem rather a lot like his parents. It was controlling and invalidating of his feelings and of my feelings, and that’s about the worst thing you could have done to him. I don’t think you realise it, but I’m pretty sure you nearly lost him for good today. In fact we might have all lost him if he hadn’t accidentally run into me in the library. If you push Sirius too hard you’re going to push him away and he’s going to isolate himself from everyone. So you need to not push him, you need to listen to Sirius and let his voice be heard and let him be himself, okay?”

“I had no idea! Why couldn’t he have told me about his parents?”

“He probably did tell you James, but you weren’t listening. Did he say why he was doing what he was doing?”

“Oh... I guess he did kinda. He said he was being your friend and respecting what you’d said. I’m sorry Remus!” James looked remorseful for the first time that evening.

“It’s not me you need to apologise to James. Though I would appreciate it if you could go back to acting normal around me please?”

“Yeah, totally. So long as you know if you ever do want to talk, about anything at all, I’m here for you. That’s the last time I’ll say it, promise!”

“Good. And thanks James, I know this is your way of showing you care, and I’m grateful. While you’re promising me things though, can you promise you won’t push Sirius like that again? Even if you think he’s completely wrong about something I need you to promise me you won’t try to force him into your viewpoint.”

“Am I allowed to tell him my viewpoint at least? Or do I just have to let him have all the ideas and never try to persuade him of another option?”

“Ugh, James, of course you can share your views, just don’t shove them down his throat and actually listen to his side of things and consider that either one of you could be right.”

“Right, then yeah I can promise that.”

“Good, now go find him and apologise.”

“Yes Mum…” James teased, but he was already heading to the door so Remus felt okay about it.

Lily

She had been startled when Black sat down across from her at dinner, though slightly mollified by Remus following after him. Lily hadn’t yet had a friendly conversation with Black, and they were now into their third month as students together. Black and Potter were trouble makers, and they picked on Sev, so she had no reason to like them. Remus and Peter were different. Despite their strong friendship with the other boys, they were more studious and less confrontational, Remus especially had a calm engaging presence that she was particularly fond of. But as dinner went on Lily began to realise that perhaps Sirius (oh gosh when had he stopped being Black?) wasn’t quite as bad as she’d convinced herself he was. Calling Potter a toerag had been a great start, Lily loved the word and immediately committed it to memory to use the next time Potter did something to annoy her. The conversation went easily from there, Sirius and Remus made silly harmless jokes, they all chatted about classes, and Lily even found herself asking Sirius questions about himself and sharing her own stories in response.

This was where Remus left them, when he abruptly got up from the table and headed off. Lily noticed that he was following Potter and Peter, and also that Sirius clearly had no intention of going with them, instead picking at a second helping of dessert that he had just served himself. Lily was incredibly curious about what had caused this rift in the group of boys, but was also aware that she couldn’t just up and ask Sirius, that was way too nosey. So instead she just kept talking about her family, rambling about Petunia and how annoying she could be.

“If only she’d been a witch too, I think we’d have been fine if we were both at Hogwarts. The problem is Petunia’s at home continuing to be a muggle and I’m here learning all this new stuff. I’m not sure I’ll even know her properly when I go home,” she wasn’t really sure Sirius was even paying attention to what she was saying.

He surprised her though by replying, “I get that, it’s kinda the same with my brother Reggie - oops I mean Regulus, he’d die if he ever heard me using that nickname in public. Anyway, Regulus has another year at home before he comes to Hogwarts and I reckon he’s gonna be so different when he does. He’ll have had this whole year by himself with just our parents and his tutors, living in that world without me. Ah well, it’s not like there’s anything I can do ya know, I write to him and I guess I’ll see him at Yule and that’s all there is to it.” Sirius abruptly laughed to himself, explaining when Lily looked at him weirdly that he’d been rambling exactly how Regulus often did, “I hope that part of him doesn’t change, it’s so him. I really would feel like I didn’t know him if it stopped.”

“Is Regulus your only sibling?” Lily asked.

“Yep, just the two of us. The Heir and the spare, though I think we might have switched roles after my break from the traditional family colours,” Sirius replied, lifting his tie and waving it gently.

“Oh, are your family not normally in Gryffindor?”

“I keep forgetting you’re a mu-muggleborn, you don’t know anything about the famous Black family history. There’s never been a Black who wasn’t in Slytherin before, not once since the beginning of Hogwarts, and yes we can trace our family tree back that far if you’re patient enough to try.”

“Wow!” Lily breathed, impressed and a little unnerved by this fact, “Are your whole family magical then? Aunts and Uncles, Grandparents, random third cousins twice removed?”

“If there were ever any that weren’t they’ve been burned off the family tree, or worse. My cousin Narcissa - see that scary Blonde at the Slytherin table? - she’s the only other Black currently at Hogwarts, but there’s a good few of them grown up and doing other things.”

“She does look a little scary,” Lily giggled, then changed the subject as she stood up from the table, “Right! I’m gonna head to the library now, I need to get started on the transfiguration essay Professor McGonagall set today and I’ve got a Herbology worksheet that’s not quite finished.”

Lily was surprised when Sirius followed her as she left the hall. She was fairly confident she had never seen him enter the library before, and she had just assumed he would go up to Gryffindor tower or stay in the great hall. But he did indeed seem to be coming with her as she left the main stairway for the library corridor. He was continuing to tell her about his family, mentioning Narcissa’s two older sisters Bellatrix and Andromeda.

“Andy’s pretty chill, she just got married to this guy, Ted I think he’s called, and they’re living somewhere out of London. I’m not really sure though since she got herself cut off from the family, Ted’s a muggleborn you see. Mum blasted Andy’s name off the family tree and everything. Gosh that was a crazy evening, Andy decided to try and bring Ted to a big family dinner, but she totally misjudged how dangerous a house full of Slytherin Pureblood supremacists can be when they get angry. She and Ted only just managed to get out in time. So that’s my family for you, a bunch of nasty Slytherins who’d hex your nose off just for being muggleborn. Andy’s the only nice one, and even she’s still a Slytherin.”

Lily frowned at that, “there are nice Slytherins you know,” she pointed out.

Sirius huffed a laugh, and turned to her with lips curling into a smirk. “Who, Snivellus? No way, he’s too greasy” he said.

Lily glared at him, “Don’t call him that! It’s mean.” Then she turned on her heel and stalked away from Black, all progress towards friendship lost. She left him standing alone in the corridor, and refused to let herself wonder about where he would go to avoid Potter now (if that’s what he was doing).

James

After being thoroughly told off by Remus, James was embarrassed. He knew he had to apologise to Sirius though. Everything Remus had said about Sirius’ parents, and how James had made him feel, made sense and showed James just how insensitive he had been. The challenge now was to find Sirius, and to work out what he was going to say to get Sirius to forgive him and be friends with him again.

Even just half a day (possibly less) of being on the outs with Sirius had felt horrible. James wanted it to be over and back to normal as soon as possible. Luck was on his side, and he found Sirius quickly. He was standing in the library corridor watching Evans walk towards the library. The scene was a little weird, but James was too focused on his mission to really pay attention to it.

“Sirius!” he called out, “can I talk to you?”

Sirius turned around, and his face was tight with apprehension. “That depends on whether you’ve come to apologise or stick your head in the sand,” he said edgily.

“I’m sorry, and I’m not just saying that ‘cause Remus threatened me - though he can be pretty scary when he wants... Anyway, I’m really sorry mate, I was out of line earlier. I should have listened to you or I dunno asked you what you meant or something.” James took a slow breath, looking at his friend nervously.

Sirius shrugged his shoulders and didn’t quite meet James’ eye mumbling, “Yea, whatever, forget about it.”

James reached out a hand, not quite touching Sirius’ arm. “You sure mate? I really am sorry, to you and Remus ya know.”

Sirius’ eyes seemed to flash at that, but he bumped his arm gently against James’ hand and nodded his head sighing, “I hate that he got dragged into this, we should be able to settle our own problems without him having to play mother hen.”

James tugged Sirius forward and into a quick hug before pulling away and saying with a smile, “he makes a pretty good mother hen though, I bet he’s giving Pete his turn at a telling off in the dorms right now.”

“Should we go save the poor boy?”

“Yeah, we’d better.”

The two boys walked together up to Gryffindor tower, James’ arm draped around Sirius’ shoulders. “So what’s Evans like when she’s not being swatty?” James asked, “Or is she that way permanently?”

“Nah she was actually kinda cool - until she got pissy about me calling Snivillus greasy that is. I don’t think we’re any closer to being friends after tonight.”

James and Sirius laughed together, and were still smirking to each other as they entered their dorm a few minutes later. A somber scene greeted them. Pete was sitting on his bed looking a mixture of confused and sorry for himself, while Remus on the other hand was calmly reading his book curled up in the window seat. James looked at Sirius, raising his eyebrows comically, and the two boys burst into laughter again. Remus didn’t look up, but James could see his eyes crinkle above his book. And poor Pete just looked even more confused.

“Well, lads. Tomorrow’s the first quidditch match of the season, what do ya say we make a fabulous banner to support our blue feathered friends,” Sirius suggested.

“Oh, are we supporting Ravenclaw?” James asked.

“Well duh! No way I’m supporting those slimy snakes, it would completely ruin my rep.”

Chapter Text

Remus

Remus was relieved that James and Sirius seemed to be back to their usual selves. He had been worried that even with his nudging they would still get themselves into another pointless argument. His conversation with Peter had been incredibly awkward for both of them and he really just wanted the whole thing to be put in the past.

James and Sirius were now gathering materials for Sirius’ quidditch banner idea, and Peter had hesitantly joined them. Remus looked back down at his book for a moment, but he had only been pretending to read so putting it down wasn’t really a sacrifice. When he got to the other side of the room James was already in his element, listing off instructions for Peter and Sirius about how the banner should look. Remus fell in easily, trying to copy the blue swirls Sirius was painting with his wand. They turned out okay, better than Pete’s uneven lines at least, but Sirius was the real talent.

“Dude! You’re like an artist or something,” James grinned. Sirius ducked his head and muttered something about it just being calligraphy.

James added his own flair to the banner, casting a glitter spell that doused the whole thing in bronze sparkles which Peter accidentally inhaled through his nose. This led to a bout of uncontrollable sneezing that ended with all four boys in hysterical laughter on the floor. After this they spent a little longer adding tweaks to the banner before finally getting ready for bed, each taking turns in the bathroom to brush their teeth, and in Remus’ case put his pyjamas on where the other boys couldn’t see his scars. James had snickered and called him a prude the first time he had noticed that Remus would only get changed in private, but he hadn’t mentioned it again and neither Sirius nor Peter had ever said anything much to Remus’ relief.

That night Remus lay awake listening to the breathing of his friends. Pete was snoring quietly and the other two’s breaths were even and calm. Normally these sounds soothed Remus to sleep, but tonight he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was betraying their trust. When Madam Pomfrey had helped him come up with the lie to tell them he had thought it was the perfect cover for his monthly excursions, but now he just felt incredibly guilty. James had been so desperate to help Remus with his emotions, Peter had been innocently sweet about the whole thing, and Sirius had trusted Remus enough to share a glimpse of how awful his childhood had been. But here Remus was, flat out lying to their faces, playing on their sympathies to get them to stop asking questions, and pretending his mother was ill instead of being honest about the monster he really was.

Something, almost like a voice in his head, seemed to whisper not a monster at him, but the strange feeling was gone before Remus could explore where it had come from and he was back to guilt. Remus had no idea how he was going to manage to go on keeping this secret for the rest of his time at Hogwarts. They were barely a couple of months into first year, and already he felt like his secret was eating him alive. He hated that his lies had been the cause of a fight between James and Sirius, especially when it was his selfish desire to have the convenience of a sick mother without having to act the sad child that had started the whole problem. James had been right after all, if Remus’ mother actually did get sick he would be a broken wreck crying into his friends’ shoulders at every opportunity. Remus knew that from a cold logical point of view James and Sirius’ fight had been helpful. It had given him the perfect opportunity to make sure his friends would never ask questions about where he went every month. Even if James or Peter got suspicious again they would probably be too scared to broach the subject with Sirius, and Sirius would never push Remus to talk about something unless Remus initiated it. So his lies and stories had worked perfectly and the solution was brilliant, coldly and logically brilliant. But even so Remus hated it, and he hated that his friends seemed to trust him so easily when he didn’t deserve that trust in the slightest.

Eventually Remus drifted into fitful sleep, filled with dreams of his friends yelling at him about betraying their trust and what a horrible monster he was.

Sirius

Sunday dawned with clear, sunny skies and the lightest autumn breeze. Perfect weather for the first quidditch match of the year. Sirius was so excited, and he bounded out of bed as soon as his legs had woken up enough. James was already dressed (crazy early riser that he was) and sitting on his bed bouncing. He grinned at Sirius when he saw him getting up.

“Morning!” James called loudly across the room, not a care in the world for the still sleeping Remus and Peter. Unsurprisingly they grumbled awake in response to his ringing words.

“Quidditch today!” Sirius called loudly back to James, entering into the excitement with vigour.

“Could you two give my ears a second to wake up do you think?” Remus asked, actually wincing at their volume.

“Sorry!” James stage whispered, and then skipped across the room to sit bouncing on Sirius’ bed instead of his own.

Sirius snickered and rummaged through his trunk looking for some clean-ish clothes. Remus was dragging himself slowly out of bed, still looking half asleep, and Peter had actually pulled the covers over his head in an attempt to get a little more sleep.

“Come on Pete, today’s no day for lolling about. We’ve got important business that needs our attention down in the grounds,” Sirius called.

“It’s too early!” Pete’s muffled voice whined from his bed.

“Nonsense!” James said, “I’ve been up for two hours, and breakfast has been open in the great hall for at least 40 minutes.”

At the suggestion of breakfast Peter pulled his blankets down just the tiniest bit. Remus was making his way back from the bathroom now, fully dressed and looking a little more awake.

“Come on Pete, these two will just get worse if we don’t go along with their craziness,” He coaxed as he stuffed his pyjamas under his pillow.

“Fine, I’m getting up,” Pete grumbled, and James cheered.

The four of them made their way down to the great hall which was only around a third full with other students. Clearly there was a school wide split between the quidditch crazy and the rest of the school.

While they ate, James began to tell the rest of them everything he knew about both the Ravenclaw and Slytherin teams. Sirius enjoyed the commentary, and the energy that was coming off James in waves was pretty pleasant to experience too. He let himself be sucked into a discussion about whether the Ravenclaw seeker Andrew Plumber’s slim build would be enough to counteract the faster broom of the Slytherin seeker. Sirius was pretty sure the faster broom would give the better advantage, but he had to admit he hadn’t seen either of them practice before so he couldn't be sure.

James stopped their discussion abruptly when he noticed the Ravenclaw team get up from their table to head down to the pitch. “Come on! We’ve got to make sure we don’t miss anything,” he cried urgently, all but dragging Peter up from the table as he tried to finish his pancakes.

“Bring them to go,” Sirius suggested to Peter, prising James’ hands off him gently. Peter nodded with relief and thanks, picking up two buttered pancakes.

They all headed outside, but the Ravenclaw team had already slipped into their changing rooms and nothing else was happening yet. Arriving this early did mean they were able to get excellent front row seats though. James and Sirius set to work carefully attaching their banner to the railing in front of them. By the time they had it secured to James’ satisfaction they were no longer the only students in the stands. They got complimented on their banner from some older Ravenclaw students who had found seats nearby, which made James grin and say it was all Sirius’ genius talent. Sirius found himself ducking his head to hide a blush.

He was really rather proud of how well the blue script and eagle emblem on their banner had turned out, and actually getting compliments from older students was rather thrilling. Sirius loved art, it was his one joy that his mother had not stolen from him. He had been better than Regulus at writing in cursive script and that had been just enough to stop his mother from taking his pencils away from him. He had always been very careful to keep his art within the bounds of what she would find acceptable, becoming excellent at sketching the Black family crest, and at drawing tidy, accurate portraits of his family members. So to show his skill in public like this, and with a subject matter his mother would never approve of (especially when Slytherin were the opposing team), was a novel and slightly scary experience.

Sirius didn’t have too long to ponder his art decisions though, for soon enough the stands were full and the referee was walking out onto the pitch carrying the quaffle under one arm and holding a rattling case that clearly hosted the bludgers and snitch in their free hand. Moments later the stands erupted in cheers and shouts as the two house teams walked out from their respective changing rooms and came to the centre of the pitch, brooms over their shoulders. The two captains shook hands fiercely, then the teams mounted up and took off on the referee’s whistle.

“And the game has begun! Slytherin chaser Midori Sato takes first possession, racing for the Ravenclaw goal. Can she make it?” a magically raised voice spoke with excitement from the commentator’s box.

Sato got her shot at the goal hoops but the Ravenclaw keeper caught the quaffle just in time and made a long throw to one of his teammates who caught it and zoomed back in the opposite direction to retaliate against Slytherin.

The game went on at a fast pace, and Sirius was absolutely loving every moment of it. He’d always loved listening to the commentary of games on the wireless and reading the game reports in Quidditch Monthly, but had never actually had a chance to watch a game in person. His father had taken Regulus a couple of times but Sirius had somehow always been left behind as punishment for some misbehaviour or other (sometimes he was pretty sure his father had fabricated the misbehaviour just to avoid having to spend time with his less favoured son).

But now Sirius was getting to watch a real quidditch game and it was wonderful. They might just be house teams, not professional players, but all the team members on each side clearly cared a lot about doing their best to win and it was brilliant to watch game plays he had only ever heard described before. When the Ravenclaw chasers executed a successful Keller’s strike maneuver Sirius thought he might have screamed louder than anyone else in the stands, he was just that excited. The commentator was clearly excited by it too, as she went off on a tangent about the history of the maneuver and the many times it had been used in international games before Professor McGonagall called her attention back to the game at hand.

The game lasted almost two hours, long for a school match, and ended in an exhilarating snitch chase that ended with James being right about Plumber’s lighter build giving him an advantage as he was able to turn sharper than the Slytherin seeker and catch the snitch mid direction change. The crowds screamed and cheered, and the Ravenclaw students who had been near Sirius and his friends came over to join them in raising and waving their banner in celebration. When they asked if they could borrow the banner for their after party Sirius surprised himself by telling them they could keep it. James nodded his agreement saying, “It’s Gryffindor next match so we’ll need to make a new banner anyway.”

They headed in to lunch, hungry and thirsty after all the shouting and jumping up and down they had done. The great hall was noticeably quiet, only Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors choosing to eat here. The Ravenclaws were in their tower celebrating, having stopped only briefly to grab food to take with them, and the Slytherins hadn’t even come in at all, clearly preferring to suffer their loss in private.

James and Sirius dissected every aspect of the game together over lunch, and up in the common room afterwards. It was one of the best days Sirius had ever had, and any rift he and James may have still felt was completely forgotten. When they finally ran out of quidditch things to talk about Sirius pulled out a quill and parchment and started a letter to Regulus. They had written back and forth a few times via Narcissa, and while it wasn’t as easy as their relationship had been when they lived together Sirius now had hope that he might not lose his brother to pureblood supremacy after all. He wrote as much as he could about the game, trying not to neglect the Slytherin team’s actions as he knew Reg would want to hear everything and wouldn’t appreciate Sirius being selective about his favourite parts. Sirius wasn’t sure when he’d get to send the letter, as he would have to wait for a chance to surreptitiously hand it to Narcissa, and she was obviously sulking with the rest of her house today.

Just as Sirius slipped his finished letter into his pocket he was startled by a loud knocking on a nearby window. A small brown owl was perched on the sill tapping its beak against the glass asking to be let in. It was strange for any owl that wasn’t Weebles to deliver mail outside of the normal morning post, so Sirius hurried over to let it in, wondering who it was searching for. He was completely taken aback when it followed him to his seat and held its leg out for him as if he were the intended recipient. Sure enough though, when he took a proper look, the letter was indeed addressed to one Sirius Black. He hastily untied and opened the letter, the owl settling on his knee in a friendly way. Once he had the letter open Sirius recognised the curling script and had to swallow down the instant lump in his throat. It was from his cousin Andromeda.

Dear Sirius

I’m sorry I haven’t written before now, but I felt I needed to be sure it wouldn’t cause you trouble. If I’ve timed this right Arlo will arrive in the evening so there shouldn’t be any Slytherins to see you receiving mail.

I’d like to congratulate you on being brave enough to follow your heart (I’m sure that’s how you ended up in the lion’s den). I don’t know if it’ll surprise you given the house rivalries, but I had a number of Gryffindor friends when I was at Hogwarts and every one of them was good and honourable.

I am very proud of you, but I also want to warn you to be careful. I’m sure you remember how I was treated any time I mentioned something that didn’t follow the family line, even before I told anyone about Ted. The thing is, I was still in Slytherin so I had a safety buffer that you don’t have. I’ve heard some things from friends I have who are still in touch with various members of the family, and none of it sounds good. Aunt Walburga is very angry, she seems to be convinced you did this on purpose to embarrass her, and Uncle Orion hasn’t allowed anyone to even speak your name apparently.

So please promise me you’ll be careful. Now is not the time to be rebellious, now is the time to be safe. When you go home for Yule, toe the family line, tell anyone who asks that Gryffindor is filled with the stink of mudbloods and blood traitors and you hate associating with their kind. Don’t talk back to your parents no matter how much you want to. Lie through your teeth, stand tall and proud as a Black, just for the brief days while you’re home. At Hogwarts you’re safe with your friends and teachers, but outside the Blacks are too powerful for an eleven year old to cross.

Anyway, enough of the heavy stuff. Married life is lovely, Ted and I are living in a little house in Epsom with a bit of garden. It’s near where his parents live so we get to have Sunday roast with them most weekends. I’m thoroughly enjoying these little bits of muggle life I get to have.

If you feel you can, Arlo would love to bring me a reply. You can tell me everything about your first few months of school. Have you made friends with any of those delightful non-purebloods? I’m sure you have but I’d love to hear all about them.

Ted and I send our love xoxo

Andy

Sirius read and reread the letter, absently stroking Arlo’s feathers. It was a real mix of lovely Andy quips and scary family drama. Sirius had known already that things would likely be a bit off at home over Yule, but Andy’s words made him think it might be even worse than he’d imagined. If she, the most rebellious Black, was telling him to reign himself in then it was probably pretty important. He hated the idea of acting like a ‘proper Black’, no matter if it was just a lie. But he supposed he would just have to suck it up.

Sirius shook himself and stood up to throw Andy’s letter into the fire. Arlo fluttered onto his arm, and he quietly asked the owl to go to the owlery and come back the following night to get his reply. The owl blinked slowly up at him then took off out the window. Sirius rejoined his friends and managed to bring himself back to the joy of the day with only a little difficulty. James was still exuberant over the quidditch match and Sirius was quickly pulled back into more of their earlier match analysis.

Chapter Text

Lily

As the days turned colder and Christmas neared, Lily found herself marvelling at how quickly the first few months at Hogwarts had gone. She enjoyed all her classes, even History of Magic with the ghost Professor Binns and his slow drone. Well okay, it wasn’t that she enjoyed History of Magic classes per se, but the assignments were interesting and she really did enjoy reading about the history of magical Britain. Her favourite bit of the subject so far had been learning about the latinisation of British spells after the invasion of the Roman empire. Before that, British magic had been primarily Druidic and used very differently to modern magic. Professor Binns had droned on for several lessons about why Druidic magic had died out during the time of roman invasion, but he had not actually provided much detail on what Druidic magic had been like. Lily came to the realisation, after trying to research it in the library for several weeks, that this was because he didn’t know. Madam Pince, the librarian, had directed Lily on which books to look in for information about Druidic magic, but none of them had talked about its actual practical use. One book had even gone so far as to include the phrase ‘It is no longer known what Druidic magic may have once looked like as none who were alive to see it made any record that outlived their own time’ .

When her search for answers continued to be fruitless, Lily gave up on learning anything definitive about Druidic magic and the lives of druids. She was disappointed to not be able to get an answer to her question, but all that extra reading was taking too much time away from the rest of study, and her friends had been complaining about her lack of time for them. So when she entered their dorm blanket fort (somehow still standing three months into the school year) after finally putting down her pet project, she was only a little surprised by the cheers of excitement her friends gave.

“Lily’s back!” Marlene had cried, as Alice and Mary tackled her with hugs. Lily apologised for her distraction, and briefly explained her failed mission to learn about Druidic magic. The others giggled at her only a little bit before drawing her into their circle of hair braiding. Mary’s mother had sent her a muggle magazine for her birthday that had instructions on how to create braid crowns with these unique woven patterns of braids that criss-crossed across the person’s head. The girls spent the whole evening practising the complicated braid crown on each other, chatting away about their friends and classmates until Alice eventually pointed out how late it had gotten and they all brushed their teeth and slipped under the covers, falling asleep quickly.

The following morning, they did each other’s braids again and went down to breakfast as a matching set. The Gryffindor boys laughed at them, especially Aidan Finch, who said they looked like “silly flower girls” but to Lily’s surprise Black was not among those laughing or teasing. Instead he was fingering a piece of his own hair that was curling just below his ear. He stopped as soon as he caught her looking, and quickly laughed at a joke Potter had just made about something Lily hadn’t heard. She busied herself with breakfast, while Marlene threatened to hex anyone who was still laughing by the time she’d gotten her wand out of her bag. Marlene had built a reputation for being quite good at hexes so the boys turned their faces sombre and emotionless as quickly as they could when they heard her threat, and the rest of the meal was spent in blissful silence.

Today was a herbology day, which meant they would get to see Dorcas and Hakim. Lily always looked forward to the classes she shared with Hakim since he was such an intelligent person to talk to. He was just as fascinated about the history of Arab and Middle Eastern magic as Lily was about British magic, as that was where his ancestors came from. Hakim’s family had moved to Scotland several generations back, but he still felt a strong pull to discover as much as he could about his roots. Hakim said he blamed this on the Ravenclaw in him, and Lily wondered what she could blame her own curiosity on.

Marlene also seemed to look forward to their shared classes with the Ravenclaws, but not for Hakim’s intellectual conversation about Arabic magic. As soon as they reached the greenhouses today Marlene was looking around almost frantically to find Dorcas, and once she had she all but ran up to the other girl and flung her arms around her enthusiastically. Dorcas was used to Marlene’s over the top levels of affection, and just hugged her back laughing. The two girls immediately began to fill each other in on every little thing that had happened since they had last been together, which in all honesty had probably been only the afternoon before when they were studying together in the library. Dorcas begged to be given her own braid crown, and Marlene roped Alice in to help her get one done before class. Their fingers nearly froze, as they had to take their gloves off and the wind was bitingly cold, but just as Professor Sprout called everyone into Greenhouse one they twisted the last strand in against her head. Now there were five girls with matching braid crowns, but none of the boys were brave enough to even smirk about it after Marlene’s earlier threat.

Today’s class was a practical lesson that involved planting Eashreek bulbs that didn’t particularly want to be planted. By the end of the hour there was soil all over the place and the students tramped out to morning break looking like a group of Victorian chimney sweeps. No one lingered to chat, instead rushing off to the nearby bathrooms to clean up before their next lesson, so Lily didn’t get a chance to tell Hakim she’d finally given up on her search for Druidic magic. She thought Severus might be interested when she saw him later in potions, but he just wanted to talk about the upcoming Christmas break.

“You’re definitely going home right?” he asked for perhaps the fourth time that week.

“Of course Sev! I haven’t seen Mum and Dad and Tuney for months, why wouldn’t I go home?”

“I don’t know, I just wanted to make sure. It’d be really dumb if I signed up to go home and you were staying here that’s all.”

“Well don’t worry, I’m definitely going. We’ll both be in Stoke, and we can hang out when I’m not stuck doing family stuff. Ooh I know, I’ll ask Mum if you can come to the Barrow-Leigh New Years party. You’ve never gone before have you?” Lily asked excitedly. The Barrow-Leigh’s threw a huge party for all the families from her old school every New Years Eve, and Lily loved the games and the music and getting to stay up till midnight.

“It’s some silly muggle thing isn’t it? Why would I want to go to that?” Severus scoffed.

This caught Lily by surprise and she had to pause for a moment so her reply wouldn’t sound upset. “I just thought it would be fun if you came too, but if you’re doing something else don’t worry about it,” she explained quietly.

Severus shrugged his shoulders saying, “Yeah, maybe. Wouldn’t it be more fun to do something magical though? You know you don’t have to be stuck in the muggle world anymore.”

“The Barrow-Leigh New Years party is actually quite fun. And I don’t know any magical parties. Plus I want to spend time with Tuney, and she’ll definitely want to go to the party.”

Their conversation ended as class began properly, Slughorn calling the class to order and guiding them through the steps they would be following to make a start on shrinking solutions. Lily tried not to be annoyed with Severus for not liking her idea about the party, but it was hard not to notice that his negative comment had been about the fact that it was a muggle party. Lily couldn’t work out what the problem was with it being a muggle party. It wasn’t like Severus didn’t know how to interact with muggles, his dad was a muggle after all and he’d gone to the same school as Lily before Hogwarts. But Lily couldn’t remember Severus having ever been invited to a party like the one the Barrow-Leigh's threw before, so maybe he just felt left out. Yes, that must be it. Severus felt left out, and didn’t want to be Lily’s charity case at the party. Well she would just have to work extra hard to convince him it would be fun and then to make sure he had a good time. That shouldn’t be hard since the Barrow-Leigh’s really did know how to throw a fun party, even without magic.

The Wolf

The wolf wanted to be angry with Remus, but he was just too cold tonight. He had spent the last month listening to Remus lie to his friends about where he went every full moon, feeling his guilt as he pretended his mother was sick. He had also had his own emotions watching his friend-mate Sirius be hurt by James, they had been so strong he had almost convinced Remus to attack James. But Remus had held the wolf’s anger in, using his words instead to scold and cut, and he had even managed to twist the situation to meet his own unfair ends. The boys would now be too worried about upsetting each other to bring up suspicions over Remus’ pretend trips home. This made the wolf incredibly angry. Did Remus not understand that he and Sirius were mates and that went both ways. The wolf was sure that was how it worked, though no one had ever told him. He felt in his soul  -in their soul, the soul he and Remus shared- that Sirius was as bound to them as they were to him. But Remus either couldn’t feel it or was choosing to ignore it. The wolf had been planning his revenge ever since the altercation with James, but now that his chance was finally here he was too cold to do more than huddle under the pathetically thin blankets and wait for the night to be over. He was too cold to even think properly, couldn’t even plan how his revenge would be all the greater at the next moon for having to wait.

Somewhere in his animal mind, the wolf knew it was wrong to hurt Remus. They shared body and soul after all, and what hurt one of them hurt the other. But there was no one else for him to hurt, no one else on whom to expel his frustration, anger, loneliness, boredom. So because he failed to provide playmates for the wolf, Remus got punished. Perhaps one day, when they were both a little older, the wolf would be able to communicate better and Remus would finally realise that all he needed to do was not leave the wolf alone. The wolf knew instinctively that he was supposed to have a pack, friends who would follow him and play with him and comfort him and just simply be with him. Sirius, his friend-mate, was obviously part of that pack, but the wolf thought James might be too. He was trying to be a good friend to Remus after all, even if he didn’t do the best job of it. The other one though, Peter who always smelled so sickly sweet, he was not in the pack. Remus liked him well enough, but the wolf found him annoying and a little too desperate for attention. Peter tried too hard to be liked by the other boys to ever actually be able to fit in. And the wolf never trusted anything that came out of that boy’s mouth, dripping with fake sincerity as it always seemed to be.

The wolf didn’t sleep this cold night, but he did fade in and out of focus. Eventually he was startled to feel the beginning of his return transformation to a human body. He barely reacted, just curled further under the blankets and hoped Remus would get them out of there quickly, or that the nice witch would come with warming spells and hot drinks. Sure enough, he felt from his background place when the witch arrived a little while after moonset with spells and potions and a kind arm to help Remus back to the castle.

Chapter Text

James

December 17th 1971

“Race you to the carriages!” James yelled over his shoulder as he ran down the dormitory stairs. He heard Sirius, Peter and Remus’ footfalls and scuffling as they tried to catch up. They all landed in a pile at the bottom of the stairs, stumbling and tripping like dominoes. Sirius was the first up and running again, the other three scrambling together for a few moments before chasing after him.

Remus easily caught up to Sirius, but James noticed he couldn’t seem to take the lead (it almost looked like he wasn’t trying to). Neither James nor Peter could catch up to the other two, and Peter was falling steadily behind as they ran along corridor after corridor and down flights of stairs, dodging around other students. As the group reached the grand staircase James pulled out his ace and launched himself onto the handrail, sliding elegantly past everyone to land triumphantly several steps ahead of Sirius and sprint the last stretch to the open front doors. Sirius knocked him over again once James had stopped, and the two boys fell into the snow in front of the carriages. Remus stood over them laughing for a few moments before offering his hands to pull them up to standing. Peter arrived a few minutes later, panting and wheezing, despite the fact that he had clearly given up and walked the last couple of floors. Sirius and James, too, were panting and huffing in the cold air. Remus alone looked like the run hadn’t troubled his fitness, something that confused James. He had never seen the other boy going for runs, and Remus certainly didn’t like to play around at rough and tumble games the way Sirius and James did, but here he was after a mad dash through the castle looking like he’d merely been for a stroll.

They all climbed into one of the carriages together, and waited while the rest of the students heading home for winter break exited the castle in a more sedate manner. Then the carriages took off, pulled along by some unknown magic or invisible creature. James was sure he could ask Remus if he was curious and get an in depth answer as to how the carriages worked, but he was officially on holiday and that felt too much like schoolwork for his current state of mind. So instead, he nicked a sweet out of Pete’s hand and entertained himself with the sugary confection till they arrived at Hogsmeade station.

Once they got there Sirius led the way onto the train, and down the carriages till he found the same compartment they had all sat in on their journey to Hogwarts back in September. Sirius insisted this should always be their compartment, and that they should mark it as so by carving their initials into the panelling just inside the door. Peter eagerly agreed, and James pulled a muggle pocket knife out of his trunk (magically waiting in the luggage rack above their seats). Remus grabbed the knife off James to go first, but instead of carving his own initials he wrote out ‘SOB’ carefully.

“When did you become Sirius Orion Black?” the so-named boy asked, a teasing tone to his voice.

“Now if anyone notices and they ask each of us if we carved our initials we can say no and not be lying because we will have carved each other’s” Remus explained.

“Clever!” James laughed, and took the knife back, carving ‘PP’ . “You don’t have a secret middle name we don’t know, do you Pete?” he double checked after it was too late.

“No, Mum didn’t think I needed one,” Peter sighed. He took the knife when James offered it, and carved a messy ‘JFP’ just below his own initials.

“I guess I’m left with you Remus,” Sirius grinned, taking the knife from Peter and slowly, oh so delicately and mysteriously, with his hand covered so they couldn’t see, he wrote something. It took almost twice as long as any of the others had, but finally he stepped back and they could see why. The initials ‘RJL’ were carved in an intricate script, with swooping curves and curls, and flicks at the ends of each letter.

“That’s not fair! We should have made you do all of them,” James whined. Sirius poked his tongue out in response, shut the pocket knife and chucked it at James, then threw himself dramatically down onto a seat by the window.

The four boys spent the train ride to London playing games of exploding snap, wrestling on the floor (in the case of Sirius and James, and occasionally Peter when they accidentally knocked him off the bench, but never Remus who carefully lifted his legs out of their way every time they came near him), gorging themselves on snacks off the trolley, peering out the window at snowy landscapes, and listening to Remus read aloud from a book of muggle Christmas stories.

Dusk had well and truly fallen by the time the train pulled into Platform 9 ¾. The boys had changed into muggle outfits, and had pulled each of their trunks down from the luggage rack ready to disembark. James, Remus and Peter were wearing scruffy jumpers and warm winter trousers with no care for how they looked. Sirius, on the other hand, was wearing a full suit, complete with jacket and tie and shiny black shoes. James wanted to tease him about it, but a fierce look from Remus made him quickly shut his mouth and bite back his joking words. The outfit was explained when they disembarked the train and Sirius walked stiffly off in the direction of a stern looking woman wearing what looked like dress robes glamoured to appear as a formal muggle dress suit.

James’ attention was pulled away from watching Sirius greet the woman who must be his mother when he caught sight of his own parents, grinning and waving to him from a little way down the platform.

“Mum! Dad!” James shouted, and ran headlong into their arms. He hadn’t realised till he saw them just how much he missed them. His dad scooped him up and spun him around, while his mum ruffled his hair and stroked his arms where she could reach.

“Hi buddy!” Monty said, putting James back down.

“Hi! Come and meet my friends.”

James grabbed one of each of his parents’ hands and pulled them to where he’d left his trunk and owl cage, Weebles hooting happily inside. Peter was still standing there, while his mother fussed over him, and Remus was a few steps away enveloped in what looked like a suffocating hug from his mother. James caught himself looking at her carefully, trying to spot signs of her mysterious muggle illness. He couldn’t see any, but he brushed it off and moved forwards to introduce his parents.

“Mum, Dad, this is Peter and Remus,” James said, pointing at each of his friends, “and Sirius had to rush off.”

His parents and friends and his friends' parents all introduced themselves to each other. Peter’s father hadn’t come, and his mother was clearly in a bit of a rush to get home, but Remus’ parents were happy to stay and chat for a few minutes. Hope seemed delighted that Remus had made friends, and kept shooting happy little smiles at her husband and son. Lyall seemed similarly happy to see that his son had friends, though he was a touch more reserved. They chatted a bit about school, and their plans for the winter holidays. Effie invited the Lupins to come to their New Years eve party and Hope looked set to accept, but Lyall coughed and stepped in saying, “We’ve got that appointment remember darling” and shooting a quick look at Remus where he stood between them.

After a little more conversation the Potters and Lupins said their goodbyes and headed off to their separate platform entrances. Once they had walked through the archway and were making their way out of Wolverhampton train station, James noticed Lily Evans and her family climbing into a car across the street. She must live somewhere close to him, he realised. He considered pointing her out to his parents, but they weren’t exactly friends per se so he decided not to. Monty was already pulling a glowing portkey out of his pocket, so there wasn’t time anyway. A few seconds later they were all standing in the front yard of Potter Manor.

December 20th 1971

“I’ll be back in time for dinner!” James yelled over his shoulder as he headed out the front door. Just like each of the days since he’d gotten home from Hogwarts for winter break, James was heading into the village to meet up with his muggle friends at the village hall. Since it was school holidays there were a number of things on, like supervised crafting for the little kids, and carol singing classes run by the elderly ladies who normally sat doing their knitting on the couches. There was also a small games area where James and his mates hung out. Things had been a little awkward the first day when James showed up and everyone wanted to hear all about his adventures at boarding school. He couldn’t tell them about falling in the lake with a magical giant squid or all the magical pranks he and his friends had pulled. He managed to come up with a few slightly altered stories where he made the pranks sound muggle enough to get away with though, and no one cared about what he was learning in class so that was easy to avoid. Now that a few days had gone by they were all as thick as thieves again, playing rough and tumble and annoying all the other daytime inhabitants of the village hall.

Despite the fact that both of James’ parents were from pureblood families going back generations he had experienced a very muggle childhood. Once Effie had been sure James was old enough that he wouldn’t accidentally break the statute of secrecy he had been enrolled in the local school, and had spent many an afternoon on playdates with various of his classmates. This had served well to keep James humble in his magical abilities, as he had been able to directly see how muggles got by in their day to day lives just fine without it. It had also made him a lot more understanding of the discrimination muggleborns faced in the wizarding society. As a child of clearly visible indian descent (a couple of generations removed on his mother’s side), James had been teased about his skin colour and had been the butt of some really rather mean jokes. On one quite bizarre occasion he had even experienced an older boy joking about how his blood must be muddy, and had gone home crying to his mother about how it wasn’t fair and didn’t they know that was a horrible slur you’re not allowed to use? Effie and Monty had sat James down on the couch that day and explained to him that muggle and magical kind had two different sets of prejudice. In the magical world some people discriminated and made mean jokes based on a person’s blood status, while in the muggle world where magical heritage wasn’t a thing they found their own ways to discriminate based on blood differences - by comparing skin colour and ethnicity instead. Little James had cried even harder when Effie had to explain that skin colour wasn’t even the only way muggles discriminated against each other, there were so many ways that muggles had found to separate themselves into the in-group and the out-groups. Most of James’ childhood had been filled with happy times with his muggle friends though, and the teasing had never bothered him too deeply once he understood where it came from.

Today was a purely fun-filled day. The kids played a range of games throughout the day, getting steadily louder and louder as time wore on, and by the end of the afternoon the separate groups had all joined together to play a giant game of dodgeball (James may have cheated and used a teeny bit of wandless magic to avoid getting hit). They got kicked out by the old ladies afterwards, who insisted they would all be late for their dinners but probably just wanted the place to themselves so they could hear the music for their singing practice and not risk interruptions from flying projectiles.

The kids spread out back into their smaller groups, hurrying to get home out of the cold. James had the longest walk since his family manor was a bit of a walk outside the village. His group had thinned out as they neared the edge of the village, waving goodbyes as they reached each kid’s house, and now it was just James and Anthony, a boy he’d been friends with since preschool, walking together for the last couple of blocks before they reached Anthony’s house.

“Hey James?” Anthony started, sounding a little nervous.

“What’s up mate?”

“Do you miss us when you’re off at your fancy boarding school?”

James glanced over to see Anthony staring down at his shoes, refusing to make eye contact. He leaned over and bumped their shoulders together conspiratorially. “You know I do, mate. I’d take you with me in a heartbeat if I could, but you know how it is with all the family legacy rules and stuff.”

“But like, you’ve probably got all these new friends. Aren’t you too busy to miss us?”

“I’d never be too busy to miss you Ant. We’ve known each other since we were barely crawling, that kinda friendship doesn’t go away just ‘cause we spend a few months apart dummy.”

“Dummy yourself,” Anthony sniggered, tripping James so he fell sideways into a bush.

“You have made friends though, right? You haven’t really talked about it much,” Anthony continued.

“Yeah, a few. I share a dorm room with three other guys: Sirius, Remus and Peter. They're kinda like my brothers at this point. I dunno why I haven’t talked about them, I guess maybe I feel like my life here and my life at school are two different worlds so it feels weird to talk about.”

“Can you say their names again? Serious? Is that even a name?”

“Sirius, the dog star ya know, not the emotion. And Remus is apparently some character from a Roman myth. Poor Pete and I got lumped with the boring normal names.”

“Tell me about them. What are they like? How do they compare to my utter and complete awesomeness?”

Now it was James’ turn to snigger and roll his eyes. They had reached Anthony’s house though, so he simply said that he would tell him all about his new school friends the next day. They made a plan to hang out just the two of them at Anthony’s place, maybe play some board games or kick a ball in the backyard if it wasn’t as cold as today. And James promised he would dish all the gossip on his school friends.

James spent the rest of his winter break in a similar manner, hanging out with Anthony and the other village locals whenever he could and enjoying his parents' company in the evenings. They celebrated winter solstice just the three of them, with delicious food and an extravagance of presents, and on New Years eve Potter manor was filled nearly to bursting with every friend Effie and Monty could think to invite. James thoroughly enjoyed annoying Professor McGonagall in a setting where she couldn’t threaten detention. He knew Aunty Minnie didn’t mind too much though, if the fond eye rolls she sent his way were anything to go by.

Lily

December 17th 1971

Sitting curled on the couch waiting for her dorm mates to finish packing, Lily watched as Potter hurtled across the common room and out the portrait hole followed closely by his three friends. For once their antics didn’t really bother Lily, it was Christmas after all. She was quite excited to see her family after so many months away from home. And all the trappings of Christmas, with presents and food and music, were calling to her.

Marlene, Alice and Mary came down the stairs only a little while later and the four girls headed down through the castle. They all squished into one carriage together, hanging out the window to call hello’s to friends like Dorcas and Hakim who were with a few other Ravenclaws in their own carriage. The short ride to Hogsmeade station was uneventful and soon the girls were onboard and making their way down the train in hopes of finding a large, empty compartment they could share with the Ravenclaws. On their way they passed Potter, Black, Lupin and Pettigrew engaged in some suspiciously quiet conversation huddled in one of the smaller compartments. Lily waved at Remus, but he was too engrossed in whatever Black was doing to notice and her group had passed by before she could call out a Christmas greeting. Not much further down Marlene decided she had found the perfect compartment and dragged them all inside before jumping out again herself to go find Dorcas and her friends and bring them along too. Lily briefly considered going to find Sev and inviting him to join them but she knew he would be uncomfortable in such a big group, plus she would get to see him over the break so she didn’t let herself worry about it now.

Their train ride passed in a bubble of games and holiday chatter. Lily got introduced to Hakim’s dorm mates Rodger and Ivan, and Dorcas’ older sister Mel popped by for a bit to play a round of exploding snap. All too soon they were pulling into Kings Cross, packing up their belongings, and shouting chaotic goodbyes along with wishes for a Merry Christmas, Good Yule, and all manner of winter holiday well wishes.

“Bye, see you in a couple of weeks!” Lily called to Mary as the latter ran away down the platform to where a group of younger siblings were waiting excitedly for her. Lily cast her eyes around, looking for her own family and saw them standing a little ways away waving at her madly. She ran over and launched herself into her dad’s open arms.

“I missed you! I missed you! I missed you!” she cried, hugging him desperately tight. Her mum joined the embrace, but for some reason Petunia held back. She stood aloofly to the side, looking anywhere but at Lily.

“Tuney, Hi!” Lily tried to hug her sister, but Petunia leaned away and Lily was forced to give up after a moment of awkwardness. She had had some idea that Petunia might still be weird about the whole magic boarding school thing, but it was Christmas for goodness sake! Couldn’t Petunia be a nice big sister at least for a little bit?

Their parents either pretended not to notice, or really were just that oblivious. They led the way out of the platform, through the archway that would get them to their part of England, and off to where their car was parked. The drive home was a little awkward, but Lily filled any silences Petunia left with stories of school and her friends and her classes. Soon enough they were home, and after a quiet dinner Lily headed to bed early, tired from the long train journey.

December 31st 1971

A week and a half of being home had taught Lily a few things. Firstly, Petunia no longer seemed to be in the least jealous of Lily’s magic. Now she was just spiteful and snobbish. She spent all her time out of the house with her school friends and didn’t talk to Lily unless their parents forced her to. Secondly, Severus was a much better friend when they weren’t at school. He and Lily spent a lot of time together, just hanging out in her room. They didn’t talk about their other school friends at all, but rather read their textbooks together and talked about cool spells they could try or potions they wanted to brew. Sev did say the occasional mean thing about Petunia, but since she was being rather mean too Lily didn’t let it bother her. Thirdly, keeping magic a secret around her muggle grandparents was much trickier than Lily had expected. They came over for lunch or dinner several times, and the whole family went to church together each Sunday and also on Christmas morning. Each time they visited, Lily’s grandparents asked her to talk about her boarding school and she had to come up with lies and stories that didn’t reveal the fact that it was a magic school. Petunia didn’t make it easy, snorting or rolling her eyes every time Lily talked about chemistry class or essays for English. Equally, Lily had to stop herself rolling her eyes in church during the pastor's sermons. She did know, vaguely, that there were students at Hogwarts who believed in God, but Lily had gotten so engrossed in her interest in history of magic that the idea of one all-powerful deity seemed a bit silly to her. There was also the consideration of the teeny tiny fact that Christians had attempted to burn witches at the stake only a few centuries ago and still believed that anyone who called themself a witch or wizard was a devil worshipper.

Christmas came and went, and now it was New Year’s Eve and Lily and Petunia were on their way to the Barrow-Leigh’s famed party. As soon as they got there Petunia disappeared to find her friends, abandoning Lily on her own to wait for Sev to turn up. Lily had managed to wrangle a promise out of him that he would come, even if he swore it was just so he could laugh at the silly muggle fireworks. While she waited, Lily looked around and realised that she knew several of the children who were here, but they all seemed to be avoiding her. No one came up to say hi, not even the group of girls she used to be school friends with. Eventually, Severus turned up and the two of them grabbed food and drinks and sat in a corner watching everyone else dancing and partying.

“You used to be friends with these kids?” Sev asked, his tone surprisingly gentle for a statement he would normally fill with mild derision.

“I went to school with those girls over there,” Lily pointed, “but now they look away whenever they catch my eye. I know it’s been a few months, but I don’t know what I can have done to make them not even say hello.”

“I bet your sister said things.”

“She wouldn’t! She knows she’s not allowed to talk about magic Sev.”

“Nah, not about that, just mean things probably. I reckon underneath it all she’s still a bit jealous. She probably wanted to take whatever she could from you.”

“Oh…”

“Sorry, Lils. I know she’s your sister and that’s supposed to mean you’re friends but I really think she’s trying to be mean.”

“What does she want from me! It’s not like I could just stop being a witch, ahh it’s so silly,” Lily groaned, slumping against the wall.

“Let’s just forget about her. Do you wanna go outside and do some astronomy?” Sev asked, standing and reaching his hand down to help Lily up. She put her hand in his and smiled.

“Thanks, Sev! You’re a really good friend.”

Severus’ smile went a little off for a moment, but then he was leading the way outside before Lily could notice it properly. “Come on! Let’s see if we can spot Auriga,” he said as they walked.

They did find Auriga, and a number of other winter constellations, lying on their backs in the grass outside. Time slipped away as they pointed at spots of light and chatted together, and Lily forgot all about the muggle party she had been so thoroughly excluded from. Suddenly they were reminded of it though, as a loud chant began inside.

“Ten, nine, eight, seven…” the crowd of children was shouting. Lily looked over at where Severus was laying next to her in the grass still watching the stars. As the countdown ended she smiled and leaned over to place a chaste kiss on his cheek.

“Happy New Year Sev,” she whispered.

“Happy New Year Lils,” he whispered back, finding her hand between them and squeezing lightly. They returned to stargazing, only stopping when Petunia’s angry voice called for Lily that their parents were there and they had to go home.

Chapter Text

Peter

December 28th 1971

Peter snuck out the front door of his house, though he wasn’t sure it really counted as sneaking if he was just walking normally and no one noticed him go. He hadn’t exactly been the centre of attention since coming home for the winter holidays. His mother had fussed over him in the same way she had his entire childhood but it wasn’t in such a way that she actually noticed him. She fussed with his shirts and smoothed out his hair, and reminded him to do his best not to spill when he was eating, but she didn’t really look at him. She didn’t notice that he actually wasn’t spilling his food anymore and he liked to have his hair a little messy (not that he was trying to copy James or anything). So, after being put at the kiddie table at the big family Winter Solstice dinner and all his older cousins excluding him from their Yule activities, Peter had had enough. He wasn’t quite sure where he was going to go when he walked out the door that morning, but anywhere had to be better than staying home to be babied some more. He walked in the direction of the shops, just for something to do, but stopped when he passed a park where a bunch of muggle kids were hanging out. Peter wasn’t sure about going to say hi, but his newfound confidence from his friendships at Hogwarts emboldened him. He entered the park and walked in the direction of the other children. It seemed like there were a couple of distinct groups of kids, this must be a local hang out spot Peter realised. When he got near enough a boy who looked about his age or maybe a little older noticed him.

“Do you wanna join our game? We’re playing snow soccer,” the boy asked with a grin.

“That sounds fun! What are the rules?” Peter asked, hoping this wasn’t some really popular muggle thing he would be expected to know all about.

“It’s like normal soccer but it’s also a snowball fight the whole time so you’ve gotta try to score goals but if someone hits you with a snowball you have to freeze for five seconds.”

The boy pointed out where the goals were and who was on each team. Peter had no idea what soccer was but he worked out pretty quickly that it seemed to be about trying to kick the ball into the goals. He did his best to play along, though he kept getting hit by snowballs, and was quite proud of himself when he managed to kick the ball to one of his teammates and they went on to score a goal. It was the most fun Peter had had all winter break, and after the game was finished a handful of the other kids introduced themselves and they all hung out chatting about how lame school was and the cool things they’d gotten for Christmas. The kids thought it was really cool that Peter went to boarding school and asked him loads of questions about it which he had fun making up answers to. He figured that since he couldn’t tell them the truth about Hogwarts there was no harm in making up stories that would impress the other kids. He may have gotten a little bit carried away and one or two of the kids rolled their eyes and snickered quietly behind their hands at his more outrageous stories but on the whole it was fine. Eventually the group broke up as it got close to dinner time. Peter was one of the last to leave, waving goodbye after agreeing to see his new friends the next day at the community centre in town.

Peter walked quickly in the direction of home, wondering if anyone had even noticed he was gone. No one had come looking for him but maybe they just didn’t care. His morose thoughts were interrupted by a slightly jeering call from a group of teenagers.

“Oh look! It’s weird boarding school boy, what’s your name again? Petey was it?”

Peter sped up his walk and wished desperately that James or Sirius were there.

“Come on, don’t ignore us now Petey.”

“Yeah! Why don’t you come tell us more about your school, I’m sure we didn’t hear everything when you were talking before. It’s not like you talked for hours and hours or anything.” The boys sniggered and laughed and crowded around Peter.

“Leave me alone!” Peter shouted, trying to run past them now. But they were bigger than he was and blocked his path easily.

“Oh little baby Petey’s scared. Oh the poor thing!”

“Does he want his mummy?”

“But baby Petey is a big tough baby, he’s so popular at his school and he’s got all the friends.”

“You’re right, Petey would never go crying to Mummy, he’s too tough.”

“Let me go. Please!” Peter begged, trying very hard not to cry.

The boys kept crowing and laughing and started pushing him back and forth between their group with jabs to his ribs and nudges from their elbows.

“What’s going on here?” called a voice from up the street. Peter cowered even further as he recognised his father’s voice. The group of teens turned and ran, clearly not interested in getting into anything with an adult. His father hurried over and began berating Peter for going out alone, and telling him how silly and dangerous that had been. He spent the rest of the short walk home holding Peter firmly by the shoulder and delivering a stream of reproaches. By the time they were home Peter was more than ready to be handed over to his mother for cuddles and hot chocolate. It was an awful end to what had been a rather nice couple of hours. The end overshadowed any of the fun though, and Peter lay in his bed that night wondering to himself why on earth he’d thought muggles were any good to be friends with. They’d obviously all just been laughing at him the whole day, they’d probably even planned for the older kids to lay in wait and pick on him. Muggles were the worst! Peter hated them all!

Peter spent the rest of the winter holidays firmly ensconced in childhood, no longer complaining about his seat at the kiddie table, nor asking to join in with the Yule activities. By the time he was watching his mother pack his trunk ready to go back to Hogwarts Peter felt just as nervous as he had the first time around. He wasn’t even sure anymore if his Hogwarts friends were really his friends, he wondered miserably if he was just a charity case to them.

Sirius

December 17th 1971

Sirius darted his eyes around as he walked towards his mother but he couldn’t see Regulus. Their mother must have decided not to bring him. She acknowledged Sirius’ formal hello with a curt nod before turning and leading the way off the platform. They didn’t speak a word to each other the entire ride home, which surprised Sirius. He had expected her to either spend the whole time berating him about his sorting or grilling him about his housemates. Her silence was almost more terrifying, it gave no hint as to what might come.

They arrived at Grimmauld Place a few minutes before dinner was due to start so Sirius didn’t have any chance for a private reunion with Regulus and instead had to sit through a formal meal where he was only allowed to speak when his father asked a question. The questions were simple enough: what was his grade in this class or that, had he been introduced to the child of this important political ally, was he managing to avoid the blood traitors and mudbloods that riddled his common room and dormitories. Sirius was honest where he could be and vague where he couldn’t. Outright lies were risky when there were so many Slytherins who might report on him to Orion or Walburga through the grapevine. But Sirius kept Andromeda’s words fresh in his head, and reminded himself he was just playacting at being the perfect Black son.

It wasn’t until dinner had ended and the brothers had been sent to bed that Sirius got to talk to Regulus. In preparation of the beginning of Yule celebrations the following day the boys were sent to bed earlier than perhaps would be normal, but a threatening glare from Walburga forestalled any complaints that might have been made. Shortly after they’d each entered their own room under her gaze, Sirius heard a quiet patter of feet followed by four rhythmic taps on his door - Regulus’ secret knock. He hurried to open the door, and found himself with an armful of ten year old boy.

“I missed you!” Regulus sobbed, gripping desperately tight to Sirius’ shoulders.

“I missed you too, numpty” Sirius murmured, rubbing soothing hands up and down his brother’s back.

They stood that way for a while, until Regulus eventually got himself under control and they were able to move to sit on Sirius' bed.

“Tell me all about Hogwarts,” Regulus insisted. “Your letters have been far too short.”

“Well, let’s see… classes are way better than tutoring lessons were. It’s not all memorising boring theory and reciting creepy family history. We get to do loads of practical stuff, learning spells and potions, and even the theory lessons are better.”

“What spells have you learnt so far?”

“So many Reg! And not just stuff in class, my friends and I have learnt a bunch out of books for doing pranks. James found this really cool one that makes everything silent in a room. We used it in a potions class and it was so funny seeing everyone try to work together without being able to talk. No one worked out it was us either!”

“James is your friend? You mentioned him in a couple of your letters.”

“Yeah, James is awesome! He’s a Potter, so he’s in our set technically but his parents live near a muggle village and he grew up going to muggle school and everything.”

“He sounds fun,” Regulus said, his voice turning dejected.

“They all are: James, Remus and Peter,” Sirius said, not immediately noticing Regulus’ dropping mood. “We share a dorm together, the four of us, and we spend basically all our time together. Remus goes off studying sometimes, plus he has to go home to visit his sick mum once a month. But otherwise we’re like a gang of adventurers or something.”

“Seems like you’ve got everything you could want at Hogwarts. I’m surprised you even came home for Yule.”

“What do you mean? Of course I came home! What are you on about Reg?”

 “It’s just… You went off to Hogwarts and got all these new friends. Why would you want to come home? It’s not like there’s anything fun here.”

“You’re here Reg! You don’t think just ‘cause I’ve made a few friends I’d forget about my brother?”

“They’re way cooler than me,” Regulus mumbled.

“They’re not. Reg, I missed you so much! Every time we learnt some cool thing in class, or one of the boys did something silly I wished you were there so I could laugh with you about it. You’re my brother Reg, and no one could ever replace you. I promise!”

“O- okay... Sorry I was so silly about it.”

“Reg, I’m sorry! I’ve been so excited about being at Hogwarts, I just didn’t realise you’d think I’d forgotten about you. I can’t wait for you to come next year, you know. It’ll be perfect, being there together - even if you do end up in slimy Slytherin.”

“Snakes aren’t actually slimy, Siri,” Regulus groaned.

Sirius tackled him back onto the bed, stretching fingers to ruffle his hair vigorously. They spent the rest of the evening discussing Hogwarts and all the things Sirius had done so far. Regulus no longer expressed any concern about being replaced, and instead asked eager questions about hidden passages and gossiping portraits, and all the weird facets of life in an ancient magical castle. The brothers eventually fell asleep tucked under the covers in Sirius’ bed, the elder’s arms wrapped securely around the younger in the best expression of love and affection these two boys knew.

December 22nd, 1971

Sirius had been doing so well. He had played his part quietly and carefully, saying and doing all the right things just like Andy had told him to in her letter. But he supposed now, it was inevitable he would slip up at some point. A guest at the Solstice dinner had said something utterly awful about how muggles were stupid and backwards and they couldn’t understand how any mudbloods got by in the wizarding world. And Sirius had muttered too loudly that actually muggles seemed to be doing alright for themselves, and he knew a muggleborn who had beat him on their last test.

And now he was cowering in his mother’s sitting room as she advanced on him, wand out, and fury blazing in her eyes.

“How dare you embarrass your family like that!” Walburga yelled. “How dare you speak of mudbloods as though they were anything more than the dirt beneath our feet! And how could you let one beat you in a test? I can hardly look at you, you’re such a disgrace.”

Her wand slashed out, and Sirius felt the cold sting of a cut on his upper arm. He tried to show no reaction to the pain, but betrayed a slight wince that made her laugh. Another slash, and his thigh matched his arm.

“You will do better in future, or it’ll be the worse for you. You may have proven yourself to be scarcely a Black by landing yourself in that useless Lion house, but you still carry our name and you will honour it as it deserves. Won’t you Sirius dear?” her last words were uttered in a silky tone, so calm and delicate.

“Yes mother, I’m sorry mother,” Sirius replied, keeping his eyes turned to the ground.

“Get up! We’ve got guests waiting downstairs.”

She waved her wand as she left, healing Sirius’ wounds and repairing his clothes so there would be no trace of his punishment. He hurried to follow her, working to control the fear shaking his bones. He couldn’t break down now, he had to wait till later in the safety of his bedroom…

There he could cry and shake all he liked, till sleep and nightmares took him. Nightmares he would unwittingly share with someone on the other side of a strange bond, hundreds of miles away in snowy Wales.

January 1st, 1972

It was shortly gone midnight on New Year's Day and Sirius was playing his part. He was the perfect pureblood heir, he hated muggles and mudbloods. He didn’t do it quite so well as Regulus, and he tried not to let it concern him just how well his little brother fit in with their pureblood aristocrat guests. Walburga’s little taste of punishment on the night of the Solstice dinner had served its purpose in reminding Sirius to hold his tongue, but it took effort to make the derogatory words flow and his conversation was slightly stilted. Sirius pondered how little time it had taken for his inner thoughts to shift away from what he’d been taught. It had only been a few months ago that he’d caught himself thinking of Lily Evans as a mudblood, and now he could barely form the start of the word without cringing or making a face. It was all down to James, Sirius knew that for certain.

James was the heir to a pureblood family almost as ancient as the Blacks, but he couldn’t have had a more different upbringing from Sirius’ own. He lived near a muggle village, he went to muggle school, he had muggle friends, he owned muggle toys and equipment. James talked about his childhood in such fond terms, and so often, that Sirius had learnt a whole new way of thinking from him. It had come about through their midnight conversations. James had turned them into a bit of a routine after the first one when Sirius was out of his mind worried about Remus that time. James had found a silencing spell that allowed them to talk inside the hangings around his bed without anyone outside hearing, and at least once a week he dragged Sirius inside bubbling with some story or mad idea. Sirius had opened up too sometimes, telling James some of the more tame stories of his own childhood. He was careful never to mention any of his punishments, he knew it would only hurt James to hear about them when he couldn’t do anything. But he told James the way his parents and tutors talked about muggles and muggleborns, and James refuted every anti-muggle claim with evidence from his own experiences. Sirius was glad to know better, even if it made playing his part at these official gatherings that bit more challenging.

Sirius’ musings over his changed thinking came to an abrupt halt when his solitude was interrupted by his cousin Bellatrix. She found him hidden away in a corner of the parlour, and trapped him there, subtly blocking any escape back to the main party.

“Hello little cousin,” she crooned, her voice sly and menacing.

“Hello cousin Bellatrix,” Sirius replied stiffly.

“I was hoping I’d get to have a little chat with you tonight. You’re on a dangerous path, and I think you’re in need of a touch of guidance.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Sirius tried to sound confident in his reply.

“Nonsense! You know exactly what I mean. I’ve heard rumours you’ve been friendly with mudbloods. I’ve still got friends at Hogwarts, though Cissa might be too soft to report on you properly.”

“I haven’t been friendly with mu- mudbloods. I can’t avoid talking to them sometimes, but I haven’t been friendly!”

“So word that you shared a meal with a mudblood girl and left the great hall in her company is a lie?”

Sirius stared at her in shock. He’d eaten with Lily Evans once, only one time, and someone had told Bellatrix.

Bellatrix nodded at his stunned silence. “I had hoped it was bad information, but from the look on your face I’d say it wasn’t. Well, take this as a warning, little cousin. If you keep hanging around with dirt like that, you’ll end up as dirt too. Your mother’s not as kind as mine when it comes to betraying the family. Andy was allowed to go when she took up with dirt, but I don’t think you’d get the same easy exit.”

She walked away, flicking her wand over her shoulder as she went so that Sirius tripped and smacked into the wall. His ankle felt sprained, and when he pulled his pant leg up he saw bruises blooming across the sliver of visible skin. In that moment Bellatrix had erred. Had she left it at verbal threats, Sirius might have brushed it off, but the sight of his red and purple skin and the painful twinge he felt with every step pissed him off and made him determined to spite her. He spent the rest of the time he was forced to stay at the party deciding how best to woo Lily Evans into becoming his friend. He was also determined to work out who was spying on him so he could exact his revenge on them. He told himself he was doing it for Lily too - she didn’t deserve to be the focus of pureblood hatred, even if she was silly enough to be friends with someone as slimy as Snivellus.

Chapter Text

Remus

December 24th 1971

The first week of the winter break had been uneventful in the Lupin household. Remus hung out with his mum while his dad was at work, either pottering around the house putting up muggle Christmas decorations or braving the outside to collect herbs and work in the garden (magically warmed by some rather complicated charms Lyall had worked on as a birthday gift for Hope a few years back). Remus even headed off down the cliffs for a day of nostalgic adventuring, wrapped in as many layers as his mum could stuff him into and insisting that his wolf side would keep him warm anyway. Aside from that he spent his time regaling whichever parent was around with tales of mischief he and his friends had gotten up to at school or his favourite parts of certain lessons. He hadn’t talked as much or as freely since before going to Hogwarts, what with the constant secrets he had to keep from everyone. Hope may not fully understand everything about Remus’ condition or about magic in general given her muggle background, but she was always a willing listener and there was no danger of her running away screaming like there was if he slipped up in front of his friends. Lyall on the other hand had plenty to say about the magic Remus was learning, and the two of them shared a certain comradery during their discussions of Hogwarts and magic which had been a little tense during Remus’ childhood.

The winter solstice landed on December 22nd, and they celebrated with a small Yule feast and the first half of gift giving. Their gifts to each other were small but thoughtful. Remus and his mum had made a huge batch of Lyall’s favourite kind of cookies that he would be able to keep in the freezer and enjoy for the next few months probably. Remus had found an intact conch shell on his day adventuring, and had convinced his dad to charm it so that his mum could hear harmless Syren music whenever she raised it to her ear. Hope had been besotted with the idea of Syrens ever since she learned that they weren’t a myth. Hope and Lyall gave Remus a dark red winter cloak with a gold clasp as well as a small bag of his favourite Honeydukes chocolate. Remus absolutely loved his new cloak with its subtle Gryffindor colours and its warmth that he would certainly enjoy in the iciness of January in Scotland. It was a more luxurious present than he had been expecting, and there was still Christmas and the muggle half of their winter celebrations to come in just a few days.

The calm peace that Remus and his parents had been enjoying came tumbling down when an unfamiliar car arrived at their house in the early afternoon on Christmas Eve. Remus and his mum were out in the garden coaxing potatoes out of the ground in preparation for the roast they would cook together the next day when they heard the rumbling engine and looked up to try and see who on earth would come this far out in the snow at Christmas. Hope quickly waved her hands to shoo the potatoes back into the ground (Lyall’s charms were really rather magnificent, the whole garden obeyed Hope’s every whim) and stood up to get a better view of the two people in the car. Remus stood too, his every nerve on edge and the feeling of the wolf, tense and ready to strike, in the back of his head. Hope and Remus watched from the garden as an older couple climbed slowly out of the car and came towards them, waving as they did.

“Merry Christmas!” the two strangers called, almost in perfect unison.

“Mam? Tad?” Hope asked, surprise and shock colouring her voice.

“Hi darling! Well don’t look so surprised, come and give us a hug hello,” the woman, apparently Hope’s mother, said sweetly. Hope walked hesitantly over to the garden gate where her parents stood, but Remus did not follow. He couldn’t if he wanted to, locked as he was in the wolf’s stress and confusion.

“What on earth are you doing here?” Hope asked her mother.

“Oh well you know, it’s Christmas and we had heard from Bertie that you were living out this way - he saw you walking down the street in Holyhead a couple of months back you know. Your father and I have wanted to see you for such a number of years but you never gave us a chance.”

“We thought we might have some luck coming at Christmas, no room at the inn and all you know,” Hope’s father put in chidingly.

“Don’t say you’ll turn us away after we’ve come so far,” her mother finished.

“No I don’t suppose I will, now you’re here. You’d better come inside, let me help you with your bags. Remus, come and meet your grandparents.”

But as Hope turned toward Remus she was bumped aside by her mother who rushed towards her grandson crying, “Oh, I never saw you there my baby! Come and give your nain a hug.” She went to Remus with her arms out and at speed, which, all things considered, was about the stupidest way to approach an already skittish werewolf. But since she had no idea that magic existed let alone that the reason her daughter had practically disappeared seven years ago was because her grandson had been bitten and turned by a werewolf there could perhaps be some understanding for her foolish actions. This did nothing to change Remus’ reaction though as he jumped out of her reach and bared his teeth in the beginnings of a snarl, his eyes flashing from green to gold and back.

Hope was in between them in the next moment, her back to her mother and all her focus on calming Remus down. She crouched down to his eye level, but didn’t touch him and instead began murmuring very quietly in Welsh, “mae'n iawn cariad, does neb yn mynd i’ch brifo. Mae gen i ti, rwyt ti'n iawn, popeth yn iawn.” [“it’s okay love, no one’s going to hurt you. I’ve got you, you’re okay, everything’s fine.”]

Remus got control of himself quickly, holding the protective wolf fiercely in check and giving his mother his best apologetic look. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. It was just so fast,” Remus whispered.

“I know dear, it’s okay. You just got a fright. Do you think you can say hello now?” Hope soothed.

Remus nodded, and edged around his mother to smile and wave at his grandparents. “Hi, I’m Remus. But you probably know that, don't you?” he said.

His grandmother still looked a little shaken by his reaction to her attempt at a hug but his grandfather gave him a jovial smile in response and replied, “we sure do know you young man, though you were just a wee lad last time we laid eyes on you. I’m your taid, and this one here who gave you the fright is your nain. She’d not hurt a fly ‘cept for with her enthusiasm.”

Remus grinned at him, and stuck his hand out to shake. His taid shook it firmly with a little chuckle. Then Remus turned to his nain and held his arms out to her asking, “could we try that hug again?” That seemed to wake her from her shocked state and she enveloped him in a soft embrace.

“All right, let’s get everyone inside out of the cold,” Hope interrupted, “and Remus dear, will you run and find your father and let him know we’ve company for Christmas? I think he went down to the far shed for something.”

Remus immediately ran off to find his dad, going as fast as he could (or more accurately as fast as he thought an eleven year old boy should be able to) down the garden path and through the numerous gates. Once he was out of sight of his grandparents he stopped for a few moments to let the wolf breathe. It felt like it was stalking back and forth in the confines of his head, tense and angry and not at all happy to have visitors invading its home. But Remus knew it couldn’t just be the arrival of his grandparents that had the wolf on edge. After all he had to hide his abilities all the time at Hogwarts, and he’d never reacted like this to one of his friends jumping out from behind a statue. No, there was something else about the way his nain had come at him with her arms out that had set the wolf off, though Remus couldn’t pinpoint what it was and neither could the wolf. All Remus was getting was feelings of stress and fear and something shadowy about a woman. Remus’ inner searching was interrupted when he smelt his father’s scent on the wind. He was reminded of his actual task and hurried on down the garden path to intercept his father so he could be prepared for their muggle guests.

Remus ran into Lyall a moment later and filled him in on everything that had happened, including his weird reaction, as they walked slowly back to the house together. Lyall was concerned about the wolf’s reaction, and reminded Remus a little harshly of the importance of keeping his non-human side hidden. They entered the house together through the back door, and as they did so Lyall took his wand out and waved it in a complicated pattern to cast a non-verbal illusionment charm that would subtly hide the non-muggle-friendly features of their house, such as their moving family portraits and the self-stirring pots in the kitchen. Hope was in the front room chatting with her parents casually, telling them a load of fibs about what she’d been doing hiding her husband and son on a remote clifftop for the last seven years. They all looked up when Remus and his dad walked in, and while there were smiles for Remus, it was clear that Hope’s parents blamed Lyall for their separation from their daughter and grandson. Hope’s tad was stiff in his handshake greeting and her mam did no more than nod from her seat on the couch without rising. As Hope tried to bridge the tension with offers of more tea, or a rest in the guest room, Remus wondered to himself if this was how the visit would play out. Would it be all awkward interactions and glossed over tension? Whether it was his grandparents’, his father’s or the wolf’s it did seem rather likely that Christmas would not be the cosy relaxed event they had planned.

December 31st 1971

Remus waved goodbye as his grandparents finally drove away down the bumpy gravel road towards Holyhead, and beyond that their long drive home to southern Wales. It had not been easy to get Remus’ grandparents to leave before the New Year and in the end Lyall had resorted to casting a couple of carefully orchestrated muggle repelling charms to compel them away. Their week-long visit had been a strange experience for Remus, but on the whole he thought he was glad they had come. It had been fun to have more people around for Christmas dinner and his taid had taught them all a rather hilarious range of fireside games that they played each evening. His nain had made a few of her favourite baking recipes with him, which had been interesting as Remus had never cooked or baked entirely without magic before. He had also been showered with muggle gifts, more than he’d ever had from his parents. That had been a little awkward, since the Lupins had their traditions of mostly handmade gifts and it was clear that much more money had been spent by Remus’ grandparents than by his parents. But Remus had made sure to hug his mum and dad extra hard after opening his presents from them, the hat, scarf and gloves to match his cloak, and they had seemed to understand that he was happy with all his gifts.

The wolf had not showed any further distaste for his nain after their first encounter, though Remus had had rough sleep each night, his dreams plagued with a shadowy woman bearing down on him as he snarled protectively. He had worked out after a couple of nights of the same dream that he wasn’t afraid of the woman for himself, but instead there was someone behind him who she wanted to hurt and he was trying to stop her. He had no idea where these dreams had come from, and what if anything they might have to do with his nain, but they made him anxious for how the wolf would act on tonight’s full moon.

Remus spent the afternoon after his grandparents had left doing his best to prepare for the moon. He took a relaxing bath with his mum’s favourite calming oils, he practiced his steady breathing and centering his thoughts, and then he went for a run along the clifftops in an attempt to tire his body out so the wolf would have less pent up energy. These were all strategies he had used before going to Hogwarts that hadn’t been possible while he was trying to hide it from his friends so it felt nice to get to use them again. He didn’t really know if they helped, but it felt good to do something at least.

As the sun started to set in the early evening, Remus hugged his mum goodbye and followed his father outside and down the garden path. They stopped outside the stone outhouse a short distance from the house. Lyall raised his wand and used it to open the wrought iron door so Remus could enter. “Make sure you place the locks extra strong Dad,” Remus said nervously. Lyall nodded curtly in response, and the last thing Remus saw before the iron door shut was his concentrated face as he waved his wand and muttered spells of locking and protection. Remus sat down in the dark, and began to think his mantra to the wolf. You’re tired, I went for a big run so you can sleep and rest tonight. Sleep and rest tonight, sleep and rest tonight, sleep and rest tonight…

The Wolf

Sleep and rest tonight…

No way would the wolf be sleeping. His mate was in trouble and he needed him. The wolf knew that Sirius had been hurting ever since the winter solstice. He hadn’t been able to tell what was wrong till Remus’ nain came at them with her arms out and threatening. When that had happened, he had gotten a clear flash of another woman with arms out, wand raised and slashing in one hand. The woman was hurting Sirius, the wolf knew this without a doubt. But Remus had not been able to hear his warnings, had ignored the thoughts he shared in their dreams, had pushed aside his constant worry to enjoy his time with family instead. But that didn’t matter anymore because the wolf was in charge and they were going to find and save Sirius tonight. So he set to work, he threw himself at the door, he clawed at the walls searching for weak spots, he attempted to dig into the ground, he got his teeth around the hinges of the door, he did absolutely everything and anything he could in his animal body.

It took hours longer than he had hoped, and he cursed Remus for his intuition to warn his father to cast stronger spells. But finally the wolf broke the door down and he was out and running. His legs stretched out and his strides were strong and he was on his way. He would make it to Sirius, he still had time. But what is that smell? Human flesh? Is it pack? No, it’s prey. Must hunt… NO! MUST FIND MATE! But the smell is getting closer, I can hear the heartbeat. FIND SIRIUS! I can see the human prey-man, it’s too late for him.

The wolf turned its stride and lunged towards Lyall where he stood looking in horror at the beast that was not his son, not really. It had escaped from its prison and it was hunting. Before the wolf reached Lyall his wand was up and shining silver ropes were shooting through the air to bind the wolf. The spell caught it around the left hind leg and the wolf fell to the ground mid leap in a howling heap. AGONY!!! IT BURNS! Dying… I’m so sorry Sirius, I tried. I love you.

And then the moon was setting and the wolf’s agony turned to the agony of a small boy. The howls turned to screams and Lyall was pushed aside as Hope ran to her baby boy. “Heal him!” she screamed at her husband, but he was already raising his wand. This time a patronus flew out of it and disappeared into the predawn darkness. He conjured cloths to press against the wounds and used what spells he could to stem the bleeding on his son’s leg but it didn’t seem to be helping with the pain as Remus was still screaming.

Chapter Text

Poppy Pomfrey

January 1st 1972, very early morning

“Remus is hurt. We need your help,” came Lyall Lupin’s voice from the bear patronus floating in front of Poppy’s bed.

Poppy leapt up, accio’d her clothes and threw them on as fast as she could. Then she grabbed her healing kit, lit her fire with floo powder and stepped through crying “Lupin cottage!” as she went. The house was dark and the fireplace she stepped from was unlit on her arrival. But no directions were needed to know where the injured boy was. Poppy could hear his screams coming from outside. She ran out the front door and across the short distance to where Hope and Lyall crouched on the ground, Remus cradled between them. Lyall stepped aside when he saw Poppy standing above them. The dittany was already in her hand as she knelt and in seconds it was sizzling on the boy’s leg wounds. The bleeding slowed, but did not stop. It was enough for now though, and Poppy could turn to the more important task of getting Remus’ pain under control. She cast a number of numbing spells and slipped a sleeping potion through his open lips. Finally his screams faded and his blazing golden eyes shut.

Poppy continued to work on the boy’s leg for a while longer before she decided he was stable enough to be moved into the house. She levitated him to his bedroom and laid him atop the covers so she could apply a few more charms and ointments before leaving him to his healing rest.

When she came into the kitchen a little while later, Poppy found Hope and Lyall sitting at the counter in frozen silence. She flicked her wand to turn the muggle lights on, and to start a kettle boiling on the stove for tea. Then she sat opposite them and asked in the calmest voice she could manage, “What in the name of all that is good on this earth did you do to your son?”

“The wolf got out, I had to stop it somehow, it wasn’t my son,” Lyall replied defensively. Hope just sniffled and hunched her shoulders.

“The wolf got out? How many years have you been dealing with this Lyall Lupin?” Poppy asked reproachfully.

“This wasn’t like it’s been before! I even put extra spells on tonight. I think maybe Remus knew it would try to escape, that was the last thing he said before I locked him in, he told me to make it extra secure.”

“You used silver on him! How long did you have to bind the wolf for?”

“Only a few moments really. It was right before moonset, it took the wolf the whole night to get out. I should have realised my spells weren’t holding, I should have gone down earlier and made them stronger. Merlin I’m an idiot! Hope I nearly got you killed, I am so sorry.”

Hope straightened her shoulders at that. “I’m not the one you cursed with silver, I’m not the one who needs your apology Lyall,” she said coldly.

“I had to!” he snapped back at her.

“Enough!” Poppy interrupted. “If it was that close to moonset I’m surprised you didn’t just ward the house and let him run around till he changed. But there’s not really any point in us hashing over what you should have done is there? It’s done now after all, and all that’s left is to look after Remus and work out how to make sure this never happens again.”

With that, she stood up and began to help herself to breakfast supplies from their kitchen. It would be several hours before the sleeping potion wore off, and Poppy had worked up an appetite with all her exertions.

* * *

Poppy sat calmly beside Remus’ bedside, knitting needles working away in front of her while she watched her patient sleep. His parents were resting in the sitting room down the hall, too nervous of Poppy’s wrath to force their way into his bedroom. Based on the time on Poppy’s watch and her calculations of his werewolf metabolism of sleeping potions, Remus should be waking any minute now. His leg was healed enough and the pain spells and potions Poppy had used were strong enough that he wouldn’t be screaming as he had before.

“MmmMmm,” Remus groaned quietly, his face scrunching as he started to wake.

“Alright now dear, take your time and don’t move too much,” Poppy soothed. She cast a quick diagnostic charm and saw to her relief that his vitals were normal, no elevated heart rate or adrenalin spike. His pain seemed to be under control.

“Am I at Hogwarts?” Remus asked, squinting through mostly shut eyes in Poppy’s direction.

“You’re in your bedroom at home Remus. You had a rough moon last night and your parents called me to come help.”

“Is Sirius okay?”

“Sirius Black? He’s home with his family for the holidays I believe. You didn’t hurt anyone dear.”

“Someone hurt him I think. The wolf, he was trying to tell me and I didn’t understand, that’s where - last night - that’s where he was trying to go when - oh!” Remus stopped in the middle of his confusing train of words to stare at where the blankets covered his leg. “How bad?” he whispered, sounding properly terrified.

“Your leg should be fine, though it’ll take a while and I’m afraid it will likely hurt quite a bit at times. I was able to kickstart the healing, and you’ve got a lot of pain blocking spells and potions working on you at the moment.”

“I’m not gonna lose it?”

“Goodness! No, of course not.”

“It just hurt so much, he was so scared and I couldn’t get him to stop screaming. I really thought the silver had gone the whole way through.” Remus sounded both relieved at Poppy’s words and haunted by his memories.

“Remus, dear, I hate to ask when you’ve been through so much, but do you think you could tell me what you remember from last night?” Poppy asked tentatively. The boy kept saying things she didn’t understand, almost as if his werewolf side could communicate. But that wasn’t possible.

“Just between us?” Remus’ voice was firm as he asked, and his eyes seemed to flash gold for a fraction of a second.

“Your privacy is safe with me.”

“Okay here goes. It doesn’t make any sense but I dunno,” here Remus paused to shrug,  “all last week I’ve been having these dreams about a woman coming at me, or at someone behind me, and I couldn’t work out who the woman was or who she was trying to hurt. I just brushed it off as weird nightmares ‘cause I got a fright when my nain tried to hug me and it started after that but I think it was maybe kinda the other way around and when my nain hugged me the wolf recognised this vision he’d had in the back of his mind- our mind? Gah I don’t know! Anyway- last night I sorta knew it was gonna be bad so I told Dad to make the protections extra strong but it still wasn’t enough ‘cause once the wolf had full control he just had one thing on his mind which was to get out and find Sirius and stop whoever was hurting him. The wolf knew it was Sirius, he thinks Sirius is his mate, friend-mate he calls him- uh, I’m being told he knows, not thinks , that Sirius is his mate.”

“Wait, the wolf is talking to you in your head? Right now?” Poppy interrupted, finally understanding something in Remus’ strange rambling.

“Yeah... I know, weird right? It’s only since this morning that he’s actually talking, and it’s not like complex sentences and a lot of it is still just vague feelings and stuff but he’s definitely thinking and communicating in my head.” Remus looked nervously at Poppy, clearly worried he was about to get carted off to the St Mungos mind injury ward.

“We’re going to come back to that later, but continue please,” Poppy encouraged, trying not to look as concerned as she was feeling. She had never read anything or heard anyone mention werewolves wolf sides being sentient and communicating with their human side.

“So the wolf was trying to get out and he eventually did. I wasn’t really there for any of that, but I have a vague memory of breaking the door and finally being able to run. We were on our way to look for Sirius. I don’t think he’d thought any of that through really, I mean Sirius is miles away in London and it was nearly moonset, but he’d been worrying about him all week and he doesn’t think like a human when it’s the moon. I think he was basically just gonna run as far and as fast as he could and see where we got, but then he smelt prey and the beast part nearly took over and hunted Dad- Ohmygod, I nearly attacked my own father!” Remus was clearly freaking out over that last revelation.

“Lyall is fine, Hope is fine. You didn’t hurt anyone, you didn’t get close to hurting anyone. It’s okay Remus,” Poppy tried to soothe him. Remus took a couple of minutes of heavy breathing to calm down, but eventually he did.

“Thanks Madam Pomfrey, sorry I’m just kinda going through it all and each time I get to a memory I haven’t seen yet it hits me.”

“No need to apologise, this is new for both of us. When you’re ready, please continue.”

After a couple more long moments of deep breathing, Remus took up his story again, “so the beast part of the wolf wanted to hunt Dad, and the other part was fighting to go find Sirius but the beast won and we lunged at Dad and he sent silver at our leg and-” Remus shuddered and glanced at his leg, “we thought we were dying. He won’t let me remember how much it hurt, I think he’s trying to protect me. But I know he was screaming and screaming. He stayed in control even when we turned back to human, I think the pain was too much for us to switch properly and that’s why he’s still kinda in my head now maybe. But that’s it, then I woke up here,” Remus finished, sinking into his pillows.

Poppy let herself sit in silence for several minutes, processing everything Remus had said.  She remembered the blazing gold eyes of the screaming boy, and the flash of that same gold she had seen when Remus was worried she would share his secrets. The gold seemed to belong to the werewolf entity, and not in the sense that an animal took over Remus’ mind and body and turned him into a monster, but in the sense that another set of intelligent thoughts and feelings were resident in the boy’s head. There was also the matter of him claiming he was mated to Sirius Black and had some kind of connection telling him the other boy was being hurt. If it was true, this was very concerning, but Poppy had no idea how she could check if Sirius Black was okay without raising all kinds of red flags. He was a Black after all and they were incredibly politically powerful, not to mention inherently distrustful people. Poppy allowed all these thoughts to wash around in her head, before finally returning to the present moment with Remus.

“I am worried about Mr Black, though I cannot think of any way we could check up on him that wouldn’t reveal your identity and put you both at considerable risk. Do you think you can tell through your connection whether he is still being harmed?” she asked.

“He’s okay I think. It’s not much of a connection though,” Remus replied tensely.

“Hmm, I think we’ll have to rely on it for now. If you get any flashes of new harm or danger I want you to have your father send a patronus immediately and I will get the headmaster involved at that point. But with just a feeling we haven’t really got any power unfortunately.”

“I don’t want Sirius to know about me. He’d have to find out and he’d hate me. Is that selfish? That I care more about him hating me than about him getting hurt?” Remus asked.

Poppy was about to reply in the negative when Remus’ own voice answered him. “It’s unfair is what it is,” he huffed with golden eyes. His normal green returned a moment later, but it was clear evidence of Poppy’s suspicions around how the wolf mind worked.

“It is unfair, I agree,” she answered, “but I think that’s the best we have at the moment. Our next matter is obviously the new set of thoughts in your head. I have not heard or read anything about werewolves having a second identity in their head, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. Literature on werewolves is scarce, and literature that actually includes knowledge from real werewolves is even less common. I will try my best to find more information on this, and I think we should meet regularly to talk about developments so we can track it and understand it. I don’t want to involve St Mungos unless you seem to be in danger because I don’t trust them to have your best interests in mind. It’s an unfortunate truth of our society.”

“What if he says something, like just now, and everyone realises I’m a werewolf?” Remus asked, panicked about the out-loud response the wolf had given a few moments prior.

“Can we ask him what he thinks about that? Wolf, do you understand that Remus needs to be kept safe? You need to be a secret to keep him safe.”

“He says he understands. He won’t burst out like that again. But I dunno, he’s got a bit of a temper. Ugh he doesn’t like that apparently.” Remus rolled his eyes and snickered.

This, more than any other part of their very strange conversation, gave Poppy hope that the boy would be okay. The two of them (or should she more accurately say three?) continued to talk for a while longer. They agreed that it was no longer safe for Remus to transform at his parents’ home, and that Hogwarts would be a much better option for all future months. Poppy also suggested Remus steal an item of clothing from Sirius’ trunk to take to the shack after he mentioned that the wolf always missed Sirius during full moons. They didn’t talk much about the whole ‘friend-mate’ concept, but Poppy was glad to see that Remus didn’t seem horrified by being linked by fate with another boy. She wondered why the wolf made the ‘friend’ distinction and if that would change as he aged and hit puberty, or whether the connection was purely platonic. If it did develop beyond platonic, that bond would be just another thing to make life difficult for Remus in the prejudiced magical (and muggle) society. Poppy thought of her own hidden relationship, and felt an immense rush of kinship for the boy.

Eventually Hope and Lyall came in and were told a very bare bones version of what Poppy and Remus had discussed, leaving out almost all parts about Sirius and the wolf voice in Remus’ mind. They agreed to the proposed ‘transform only at Hogwarts’ plan very easily. Finally all that was left was to discuss Remus’ wounded leg. Lyall didn’t apologise to his son for what he’d done, and Poppy could see it hurt the boy that his father wasn’t sorry for his pain. Remus should heal fine, though he would have a nasty scar his whole life and because of the nature of the wound it would take a while to heal. He would probably have a noticeable limp for the next month or so while it slowly got better. Poppy suggested pretending it was from an incident with a wild moke. A tail attack from a moke would roughly match Remus’ leg scars on the off chance that his dorm mates saw them and a moke injury would normally take a month or so to heal given their shrinking barbs that discouraged wound healing.

With all the details agreed, Poppy left the Lupin household and returned to Hogwarts where she hoped for a long nap and no children requiring her immediate assistance. She was lucky in her wish and was able to tumble back into bed upon her return. As she began to drift off she pondered where she might find better werewolf resources. Irma Pince had shown her everything the school had on the subject, including those unpleasant books in the restricted section, so it seemed like it was time to branch out further in her research if she was going to be able to find any explanations of Remus’ strange experiences. And she desperately wanted answers for the boy. He deserved to understand what was going on in his own body after all. The matter of the wolf having its own thoughts and feelings, and the mate connection with Sirius Black were both matters that Poppy could see causing significant challenges for all involved as Remus got older.

Poppy’s last thought before she fell asleep was not of werewolf mysteries but of the very stoic bravery of an eleven year old boy forced to deal with much more than should ever be put on the shoulders of one so young. He spoke with a level of maturity much above that of his classmates, and seemed to take every new challenge thrown at him perfectly in his stride.

Chapter Text

Sirius

“You promise you’ll write?”

“Of course Reg, I’ll write as often as I can get Cissa to send letters for me.”

“And it’s only six months till summer. Oh Circe! Six months is so long Sirius.”

“I know, I wish I could take you with me now Reg. But it’s six months of keeping your head down, and maybe doing one of those little pranks I showed you on the tutors. And then I’ll be home for the summer and then before you know it we’ll be going to Hogwarts together.”

“Okay, I can do it. It’ll be fine, I’m okay.”

“Yeah, you are. I’ll miss you Reg.”

Sirius hugged his younger brother tightly, then reluctantly let go and made his way downstairs to where his mother was waiting impatiently to take him to the train. He was careful to hide his limp. Bella’s hex had been a nasty one and was still bothering him a whole week later.

“Come along Sirius! Enough of your sentimental childishness, get your things and let’s go,” Walburga intoned haughtily once she saw him appear in the front hall. She made no attempt to hide the disdain in her expression. She was not happy with her eldest son, despite all his efforts to behave over the holiday period.

* * *

Sirius was one of the first onto the train, and he beat the other three boys to their compartment. He was glad for the time to settle his feelings over having to say goodbye to Reg, he didn’t want anyone to think he was so emotional as to cry over that sort of thing (no matter what he might want to do in private). Eventually the compartment door opened and Peter walked in. The two boys greeted each other, but Peter didn’t try to start up a conversation and Sirius was still too stuck in his own head to make any effort to engage. James bounded in a few minutes later, and immediately began chattering a hundred miles a minute about all his muggle friends he’d been catching up with, and the crazy New Years party his parents had thrown.

“You won’t believe what I did to McGonagall!” he was exclaiming as the door opened for the final time to admit Remus. Sirius could tell something was fundamentally different about Remus, though he had no idea what. That the boy was limping, and badly, was obvious - but there was something else too that Sirius couldn’t put his finger on. He let it go in favour of paying attention to what James was asking.

“Remus! How was your break? Are you limping? What happened?” James asked rapidly.

“Hi James,” Remus replied, using a much calmer tone and rolling his eyes. “My break was good, I spent it with my parents and my grandparents. Yes I’m limping, well done captain obvious. I got on the wrong side of a Moke when I was out with my Dad on a field trip one day, got a nasty whip from the tail and it’s taking a while to heal. Something to do with barbs keeping the wound open, I didn’t really understand the whole thing.”

“Wow!” breathed Peter, the first thing he’d said in a while.

“Yeah, wow! Are you gonna have a scar?” James asked.

“Have you got something for the pain?” Sirius interjected. He didn’t like the sound of Remus’ wound with barbs in it.

“I’ll probably have a bit of a scar, yeah. I’m okay, it’s a little sore but I’ve got some potion I can take if it starts to hurt properly.”

As he spoke, Remus looked straight at Sirius and his eyes flickered oddly for a second before he turned back to the others. It was almost as if a flash of gold had reflected in them, but it was for so short a moment that Sirius was sure he must have imagined it. Or maybe there had been something bright out the window behind him.

Conversation moved back to James’ New Years party antics and how ridiculously he’d annoyed Professor McGonagall. James’ story was brilliant really, and the others all thoroughly congratulated him for his genius. The group talked on and off during the day about each of the winter break experiences. Remus talked a lot about gardening with his mum, James rambled on and on about the muggle kids from the village near his home, Peter vaguely mentioned a number of cousins and distant family members crowding into his small family home, and Sirius himself mentioned very little that was true about his own holiday. He told a short anecdote about a drunk uncle at one of the dinners, and said it was nice to hang out with Regulus, but he carefully avoided all hints of pureblood nastiness or parental punishments.

Sirius couldn’t help but be glad when the train slowed, indicating they’d finally arrived at Hogsmeade station. He hid his own limp successfully by putting all attention onto Remus and making a big deal out of helping him with carrying his stuff. Once they reached the school, they were all tired enough to head straight to sleep after a quick dinner and no further holiday questions were asked.

Lily

In the first week back after the winter break, Lily was surprised to find that Black was behaving completely differently toward her than he had previously. She could think of no reason for his sudden change of attitude. He greeted her in the halls, offered to pass her food at meal times, and even appeared in the library when she was studying with Remus though he never lasted long before Madam Pince would kick him out for creating some disturbance or other. After one particularly strange charms lesson when Black had actually clapped at Lily’s success with the new charm they were all learning, she cornered him away from his friends and demanded an explanation for his behaviour.

“Why are you being so weird, Black?” she asked, glaring at him.

“I’m not being weird!” he retorted.

“Yes you are, before the break you completely ignored me and now you’re all smiley and saying hi all the time. It’s weird.”

“Well I wasn’t trying to be weird okay, I just want to be friends.”

“Why?” Lily asked baldly.

“Do I have to have a reason?”

“Obviously.”

“Ah- well- you see…” Black fidgeted, looking a bit embarrassed.

“Spit it out Black!”

“My cousin Bella said some really nasty stuff about us fraternising - you know… that time we talked at dinner - and then she threatened me if I ever spoke to a mud- muggleborn again. And I just wanted to get back at her, but also you’re pretty alright aside from the whole being friends with Snivellus thing. And I remember you complaining about your sister and she sounded kinda like my cousin and so I dunno I was just trying to be friendly and now I sound absolutely barmy,” Sirius blurted (crap, why did he have to start being ‘Sirius’ in her head again, Lily did not like him - she didn’t!).

Lily stared at Sirius for a while, keeping him trapped in the corner of the hall. After a solid minute of silence she finally spoke.

“What did your cousin say about me? How did she even know about us eating dinner together? That only happened once. Explain that, and maybe we can think about being friends. But you have to stop being mean to Severus, if you want to be my friend you have to be nice to my friends. That’s only fair.”

“You don’t want to know what she said, trust me. Apparently she has spies at Hogwarts keeping tabs on me, not creepy at all-” Sirius paused to shudder, “- look, I can’t be nice to Snape, there’s just no way. I don’t have a problem with any of your other friends though.”

“Tell me what she said please, I have a right to know, I think,” Lily asked.

“She called you - and these are her words not mine - she called you mudblood filth and said I was making myself dirty by talking to you. She said if I kept talking to dirt like you I’d get kicked out of the family and worse.”

“That’s about me being muggleborn right? I’ve heard that word, mudblood, whispered in the halls once or twice.”

“Yeah, it’s a bad word for muggleborn. That’s the whole thing with filth and dirt and being tainted. There’s this idea that how far back you can trace magic in your family is important, it’s a status thing. And mixing magical blood with muggle blood is breaking that status, so it makes the blood dirty. Hence the word.”

“Is there any backing for it?” Lily asked, her curious side taking over from her offended side now. “I mean I don’t have any magical people in my family but somehow I came out magical, so how does that work? And does magical lineage make your magic stronger or is it just a status thing?”

“I don’t really know, I grew up hearing all this pureblood stuff and I’m still learning how much of it is rubbish. Before Hogwarts I didn’t really know anything about the muggle world, and I used all those words because they were drilled into us growing up. I would have called you a muggle in public and a mud- I don’t like to say it -behind doors. I don’t think it really makes any sense though, I mean you scored top in the class in all our tests so clearly you’ve got plenty of magic. Plus there’s the whole thing where all the Purebloods end up marrying their second cousins because we’ve got to stay in the ‘sacred twenty eight’. That can’t be good.”

“Oh my god! That’s terrible, tell me you’re joking! You don’t actually marry your cousins?” Lily spluttered.

“We try to avoid first cousins, though I think if you look at the family tree carefully my parents are quite close. Very pure, if you get my drift.”

Lily laughed properly at Sirius’ poor joke, and shook her head in a mix of distaste and bewilderment.

“I think I’d rather be a mudblood, even if it made me weaker, than be part of a messed up family tree like that,” she sighed.

“Me too,” Sirius groaned.

“Okay, we can be friends. But let’s come to a compromise. When I’m around you’re not allowed to call Sev names or say mean things about him. I know you won’t stop completely so I won’t try, but just keep your tongue in your head where I can hear. Can you do that?”

“Deal.”

Sirius held his hand out, and the two shook solemnly before giggling and rolling their eyes and each other.

“We’ve missed lunch,” Sirius remarked suddenly and his stomach grumbled as if on cue a moment later.

Lily led the way to their afternoon herbology class, sharing a muffin she’d saved from breakfast with Sirius as they went.

After that conversation Sirius quickly became a proper addition to Lily’s friend group, though Potter remained firmly outside the group and didn’t seem to have any interest in changing his status. Sirius took to her dormmates like a fish to water, and they spent many an evening in the Gryffindor common room playing games or reading. Mary, the self titled braid queen of Hogwarts, convinced Sirius to let her have a go with his hair. It wasn’t long enough for any of her more elaborate creations, but a few small braids stayed quite well and gave him a slightly pirate-ish look which he seemed to enjoy. Marlene the jokester loved to tease back and forth with Sirius and the two of them always seemed to have a running nonsense conversation that they picked up in the middle of every time they saw each other. And Alice beat Sirius at chess every time they played, though he swore he’d win one day. Sirius did actually join their study group in the library on occasion, though he still got himself kicked out more often than not. He surprised Lily by being quite good at his schoolwork, especially when he actually applied himself. He even indulged her and Hakim in a conversation about ancient magic one afternoon. Lily left the library that day inspired to not give up on finding evidence of druidic practice. Sirius had said a thing or two about his own family history that led her to think there might actually be information out there if she could only find the right places to look.

There was one person who really did not like Lily and Sirius’ new friendship. Severus was completely shocked when Lily admitted that she no longer detested Sirius, and her attestations that Potter was still a horrible toerag did little to placate him. Sev grumbled and complained about how Sirius was taking her away from him, and Lily ended up spending more time with Severus to try and assure him their friendship was still important to her. Something had definitely changed though, and it made Lily a little uncomfortable. Whenever it was just the two of them he would sit closer to Lily and sometimes he put his arm around her shoulder or let their hands brush in a way that didn’t seem accidental. Lily didn’t want to seem rude or hurt Sev’s feelings so she couldn’t exactly push him away whenever he did this. Instead she just sat very still until she could come up with an excuse to move out of reach. She was sure Sev didn’t mean anything by it, they were friends after all- best friends.

Apparently kisses on the cheek were now also something Severus and Lily did on special occasions. On Sev’s birthday in early January, just after they got back to Hogwarts, he kissed Lily on the cheek as a thank you for her gift of a couple of new potions books that she’d owl ordered from Flourish and Blotts. In the moment she sort of just went along with and smiled awkwardly and told him he was very welcome, but later that night she lay awake in her bed trying to understand her reaction. She had kissed Sev on the cheek at New Years because that was a muggle tradition and it hadn’t felt weird, but his birthday kiss left her completely wrongfooted. She knew that for older people kissing on the cheek often led to kissing on the lips and other things she’d read about in Mary’s magazines but didn’t really understand. Lily absolutely did not want to kiss Sev on the lips, she didn’t want to kiss anyone on the lips. But she was worried that he might think they were old enough for on the lips kissing, even though Lily was sure eleven was too young for any of that. She wondered if she would feel different when she turned twelve at the end of the month.

Lily did not feel any different when Severus kissed her on the cheek on her birthday three weeks later. He gave her her gift in the morning and kissed her on the cheek for longer than he had on his birthday, and Lily found herself excusing herself to the bathroom shortly after. In the bathroom she scrubbed at her cheek trying to get it to feel clean. She wished she had never given Sev that New Years kiss! But she had no idea how to tell him she didn’t like it now without hurting his feelings. And Lily hated to hurt anyone’s feelings but especially her best friend’s. Lily tried to imagine being older and wanting to kiss Sev, or any boy, but she just couldn’t get the idea to feel right. She guessed she would understand when she actually was older, maybe when she was thirteen.

Luckily it seemed like the kissing on the cheek was limited to birthdays and New Years parties so Lily wouldn’t have to worry about it again for a long while (and if she strategically avoided Severus for the entire day on Valentines who was to know?).

Chapter Text

James

It was a Saturday afternoon in mid January and James was walking alone through the Hogwarts corridors. Sirius was hanging out with the Gryffindor girls and Remus and Pete were finishing off an astronomy essay in the library. James didn’t mind the time to himself, it was certainly preferable to forcing his unwanted presence on Evans or working on an essay he’d already finished. James got on fine with the rest of the girls, but Evans glared anytime he came near her. Sirius had explained that it had something to do with the names they called Snape and the pranks they played on him and the other Slytherins, but how Sirius and Evans had gotten past that and made their friendship work was a mystery. All this to say that James found himself alone more often these days, and today he was using the time to wander around exploring the castle under his invisibility cloak.

James was making his way along a narrow corridor on the eight floor when he suddenly found himself caught between two students walking from either end. He squeezed himself as flat as he could against the wall, hoping they wouldn’t bump him as they passed. He leaned right up against the wall, and then suddenly he was leaning through the wall, leaning and leaning and falling! James found himself sitting on the floor of a passageway that had not been visible a moment before. He could still see the corridor in front of him, but the students passing did not seem to notice the passageway that had appeared, or the boy who’s invisibility cloak had slipped halfway off as he fell. He waited until after they had left to step back out into the corridor. Looking around he could not see the passageway, and he couldn’t push his way through with his hands. But when he turned and leaned his back against it again, the stone gave way like liquid and he stumbled inside again. This time he managed to catch himself before he fell. James looked around, making careful note of what the corridor outside looked like so he could find the place again, then began to walk along the passageway. Not far along, the passageway turned into a steep staircase that twisted in a sharp spiral. At the top of the staircase was a tiny door that would not budge. James tried leaning backwards again, he tried leaning sideways, he pushed with his hands, his elbows, his knees, he shut his eyes and imagined it opening, but nothing seemed to work. Finally he gave up and decided he would have to ask the rest of the boys for help. Maybe they could find a spell that opened doors, Remus was good at that sort of thing.

James told Sirius about the passageway when they had their midnight chat and the two of them agreed they should tell Remus and Peter about it the next morning and all go and look together. Remus thought the passageway sounded brilliant when he heard about it, and immediately started brainstorming different ways to try to get the door to open. Peter agreed that it was cool, but he didn’t seem interested in coming up with any ways to open it. Or at least, not any that he shared out loud. Peter had been staying quiet a lot lately, and James was beginning to get concerned about it. But today was a day for adventuring. Puzzling out Peter would have to wait for another day.

After breakfast, all four boys headed up to the eighth floor in search of James’ secret passage. They didn’t take the invisibility cloak, because even though they could all fit under it together it was a bit awkward and they often ended up standing on each other’s toes or poking an elbow out from under the cloak. The cloak was better for nighttime walks, where the dark could hide any stray limbs. Luckily, the eighth floor was quiet today and they were able to make their way to the narrow corridor and the bare patch of stone without any trouble. James demonstrated leaning, and the others quickly followed after. Once in the passage, they all marvelled at the way it was completely undetectable from outside.

“This would be great for pranks, even if we can’t get the door at the other end to open,” said Sirius.

“Yeah, we could hide in here and send hexes and no one would know where they came from,” agreed Remus. “Let’s try the door though, I’ve got loads of ideas,” he added.

Everyone nodded in agreement, and James led the way along the passage and up the spiral staircase. At the top, Remus tried ‘Alohamora’ on the door. The unlocking spell didn’t work, and neither did about twenty other things he tried.

It was Sirius who eventually got the door to open. “Will you just open, you silly door!” he grumbled, and it flew open.

“Wait! We just had to ask it?” James gasped.

Sirius, grinning with his unexpected success, stepped through the now open door and out onto the side of the castle roof. The others followed, and they found themselves on a flat ledge tucked into the roof tiles. It was about 3 metres along and 2 metres wide from the door to the edge and there was no railing to prevent a deadly fall. All four of them stayed well away from the edge, though Remus ventured close enough to look out and see that it would indeed be a nasty slide down the tiles and then a straight drop to the ground a long way below. Peter wouldn’t even leave the doorway, and kept squeaking at the others to be careful and watch where they walked. There wasn’t much to explore so they headed back inside pretty quickly, shutting the door securely behind them.

“I bet there are loads more passageways like this one hidden around the castle,” said James as they headed back down the corridor.

“How do we find them all though?” Remus asked, “Do we just go around leaning against every bit of wall to see if we fall through?”

“I mean, yeah, basically. But it’ll be paintings and mirrors, and alcoves and everything too. And I bet sometimes it’s leaning a certain way, sometimes it’s a spell. We’re gonna have to try everything,” Sirius put in.

Peter looked daunted, but James couldn’t wait to start looking for more of the castle’s secrets.

“We’ve got seven years here guys, we can totally do this,” he declared.

“We’ll have to keep some kind of record so we don’t forget any,” Remus said.

“Oh! We could make a map, like a map of the whole castle that shows all the secret passages, trick steps, everything!” James cried.

“Sirius, you could draw it. You’re so good at art,” Peter put in quietly.

“Yeah, I totally could,” Sirius agreed, making Peter smile.

They kept talking animatedly about plans for exploring and documenting all the secrets of the castle as they walked. They each now stopped at random intervals to try leaning on a wall, or lifting a tapestry to see if anything was hidden behind it. In this manner it took them the rest of the morning to make their way down the great hall, and lunch was being served by the time they walked in. The only thing they had found had been a passageway behind a tapestry, but it was clear they weren’t the only people who knew it was there. There were sweet wrappers and bottles in a pile just inside that hinted at late night secret meet ups, probably between a couple of older students.

James was by no means uninspired though. Over the following days and weeks they had small successes, most often during the evenings when they could sneak out under the invisibility cloak and be bolder in their efforts. Sirius began drawing the castle, filling in all the public corridors and classrooms to start with. He used an erasable quill so he could slot in passages when they found them. Remus and Peter took to the library to research spells for discovery and opening, and also to read up on magical map making. Peter reckoned they could find ways to make the map move for the moving staircases.

Remus

The month of January was a hectic one for Remus. First off, Sirius was hiding whatever had happened to him over Yule. He walked with a slight limp for the whole first week back, and his eyes sort of glassed over whenever someone brought up the holidays. It was clear to Remus and the wolf that their dream or whatever it had been had not been made up. Someone had attacked Sirius and he was hiding it. And then there was the whole weird thing where Sirius suddenly became friends with Lily Evans and the other Gryffindor first year girls. He looked happy with them so Remus couldn’t begrudge him the friendships, plus he’d started joining their library study sessions so Remus still got to spend plenty of time with him. Then a couple of weeks into the month James found a secret passage and suddenly they had a mission! Every spare moment was spent trying to find out every secret the ancient castle was hiding.

And on top of all that Remus’ head had become a very noisy space. What had been the occasional vague feeling or reaction before New Years had turned into a chatterbox. The wolf knew he couldn’t take consciousness because it wasn’t safe, but this just meant he voiced his every thought internally for Remus alone to hear. And those thoughts were becoming more and more coherent with every passing day. By the end of January the wolf was thinking and talking as clearly as Remus himself. Though the only times the wolf actually got to talk aloud was at their appointments with Madam Pomfrey. She had insisted on checking how their wound was healing regularly, and on also checking on their mental state. At their last appointment before the next full moon, Madam Pomfrey brought up the topic of Sirius and they devolved into chaos.

“He seems fine,” Remus started to tell her, only to interrupt himself a moment later.

“He’s been limping, someone hurt his ankle.”

“Okay, yeah. He was limping, but it’s nowhere near as bad as our limp.”

“He’s playing it off. And are you saying I’m supposed to be happy with ‘it’s not as bad as ours’? So he didn’t get attacked with silver by his psychotic father, big whoop.”

“My dad is not psychotic! He was scared of you. I don’t know if you know this but you’ve got these massive teeth and these really sharp claws. I’d be scared if you came running at me like that.”

“Whatever! My point is someone hurt Sirius but he’s hiding it. He hasn’t come to you has he Poppy?”

“No wolf, he hasn’t come to me. Have you suggested he should Remus?”

“I don’t want him to know I’ve noticed. He hides it too well, no one else has noticed. It’d be suspicious for me to say anything.”

“He doesn’t hide it that well. I noticed the moment we saw him on the train.”

“He was sitting down. How could you possibly notice?”

Remus’ face contorted into a strange expression that could almost be considered an attempt at sheepish. “I smelt it. It smelt icky,” the wolf muttered.

“Dark magic sometimes leaves a strange smell. You might have smelt the traces of a hex or curse,” Madam Pomfrey put in.

“Okay, you can’t brush that off Remus! Dark magic is not nothing!”

“I’m not brushing it off, but he can’t find out about us. How on earth would I explain smelling dark magic? That’s not normal wizard behaviour.”

“Fine!”

Remus and the wolf subsided into grumpy silence for a minute. Madam Pomfrey eventually directed the conversation again, asking questions about their leg wound, how much pain they were experiencing.

“It hurts a bit still, but the potions are pretty good at helping with it. The biggest problem is the itching-”

“It itches in my thoughts. I can feel everywhere the silver touched like a flutter of wind or a splinter under my skin.”

“But it’s all in our head. If I actually touch the area it doesn’t do anything for the itchiness. The only time it stops itching is when Wolf is sleeping.”

“You sleep at different times?” Madam Pomfrey interjected, sounding surprised.

“Sometimes. Mostly just when Wolf is bored in class or something,” Remus answered

“This is fascinating,” Madam Pomfrey sighed, staring at the boy in front of her.

“So glad we can be your little experiment,” the wolf grumbled.

“I don’t mean it like that! But everything we can learn about both of you can help us to work out how this is all happening and how we can handle it.”

“Have you found anything about this happening to other werewolves?” Remus asked.

Madam Pomfrey shook her head morosely. “I’ve looked in every book and healing journal I can think of and I’ve found absolutely nothing. But it’s not that surprising really. There is so much prejudice, your father for one Remus. Lyall had been a strong advocate for stricter werewolf regulations for many years before you were attacked. And to the public you are a monster. Every book reflects that viewpoint with very little room for compassion,” she told them seriously.

Remus nodded, a small frown on his face but no other hint at his reaction to the awfulness of her words.

“I guess we should just keep being your experiment then,” the wolf relented.

“I’d rather observe you than experiment on you, Wolf,” Madam Pomfrey said.

“What have you observed so far then?”

“The two of you can switch control very easily, mid sentence, mid thought even. And you have different opinions about Sirius and about Remus’ father. Wolf definitely wants more freedom than Remus is giving you, I think you’d have told Sirius about your mate theory the first chance you got if Remus wasn’t holding you back. I’m not really sure what mates means to you though.”

“Lyall loves Remus and would hate me if he knew about me, that's pretty self explanatory. Do we think differently about Sirius, Remus?”

“I don’t know, it’s so hard to tell what’s me and what’s you when we think about him. Right from the first time we saw him you were there in my reactions to him.”

“He was too though you know. He looks at us different to anyone else.”

“Does he, or do you just want him to? I can’t pull it apart enough to tell.”

“This seems to be the crux of things right now, boys. Finding what parts of you are individual and perhaps what parts you share. It will probably take a long time, and I don’t recommend doing anything reckless like telling Sirius he’s your mate until you’ve unravelled yourselves.”

Madam Pomfrey dismissed them after that, saying they’d miss dinner if they didn’t hurry down.

That night they mulled over her words, lying in bed after their dormmates had fallen asleep.

What does mate mean Wolf? You say it with such confidence but you’ve never explained it.

I don’t know… I just look at him and it sings through my- our bones. It was the first actual word I ever thought. That day on the train, we looked at him and he looked at us and you couldn’t hear me but suddenly I was awake and I was looking into this pair of silver eyes and I kept thinking ‘mate’ ‘friend-mate’.

Do you think… Sirius woke you up?

Oh… Yeah!

So if I’d never met Sirius you’d just be an animal that had my body once a month?

Would you prefer that?

You still hurt me.

You do stupid things like get yourself locked in a shack.

If I didn’t you’d hurt someone else.

I wouldn’t. Not if we picked somewhere with no one near.

I’m not in charge of that. But maybe one day we’ll find some wild forest or mountain or something.

So, would you prefer I wasn’t here? The wolf’s internal voice trembled as he thought.

I think I’d be lonely. I wouldn’t have walked into that train compartment without you. I’d be terrified of everyone finding out I was a monster without you. And I think I’d be lonely without you in my head even if I didn’t know what I was missing.

Do you wish you were never bitten?

Deep questions tonight huh?

Do you?

I wish I wasn’t a danger to other people once a month.

You’re locked in a nasty shack, I’m no danger to anyone there.

And yet you escaped.

I wasn’t trying to go hunting.

But you still did.

The shack is better protected. And I maintain that Sirius needed us.

How could we have helped him though?

I could have got him out of there!

And wouldn’t you just have attacked everyone, including Sirius, as soon as you got there?

NO!!!! I COULD NEVER HURT SIRIUS!

He’s human. Do you get that? He’s got the nice smelling human blood running through his veins. When you’re turned I don’t think you’d have the control to do anything but hunt.

He’s my friend-mate, that trumps everything. I’m sure of it, more sure that I am of anything else.

For my sake, let's not test that theory.

It’s not like I can do anything locked in that nasty shack.

I’m sorry it’s so nasty, but I’m not the one who broke the furniture.

Hey!

Was it fun? Breaking the furniture?

Maybe, The wolf sniggered.

They devolved into half asleep mumbling and soon both sets of thoughts where sleeping soundly.

The full moon a few days later went better than any previous moon had gone, and Remus came through with nothing worse than aching muscles and a few self inflicted scratches and very minor chewing bites. Boredom was apparently still an issue but the wolf did seem to be actively trying to look after Remus now.

Chapter Text

James

On the second of March, James woke up to a gentle nudging on his cheek from Weebles. She had been gone for a couple of days and he had missed her, so at first he didn’t even notice that she was carrying a large package tied to her leg. But when it bumped into him as he nuzzled against her downy chest he was eventually reminded that she was more than just a pet to snuggle with and he quickly untied the mail she had brought him. On top of the package was a letter from his parents wishing him a happy birthday month and giving him strict instructions to open his presents on the days they were labelled with. The letter ended with a postscript, ‘ make sure you share with your friends so no one feels left out’ . The package was in fact four smaller packages, one for each week leading up to his birthday. There was one labelled ‘ 2 March’ that James quickly tore the wrapping off.

“What’ve you got there?” called out Sirius, who was just starting to wake up across the room.

“Birthday presents from Mum and Dad,” James told him.

“Oh is it your birthday?” Sirius asked casually.

“No, my actual birthday isn’t till the 27th. But they sent me presents for each week this month. Look, this week I’ve got chocolate frogs, do you want one?”

“Presents for the whole month of your birthday? That’s so cool!” Peter put in, suddenly awake at the mention of chocolate being shared.

Remus also woke up at the mention of chocolate, and quietly thanked James for his frog and tucked it away into his trunk to save it for later. The other three all ate their chocolate immediately, and not particularly tidily. They each ended up with it smeared all around their mouths.

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool huh? It’s this tradition we have, it’s always just little things like sweets. What do your guys’ parents do for your birthdays normally? Hey I just realised I don’t even know when any of your birthdays are,” James rambled.

“Mine’s this month too, on the 10th. Ma and I normally spend the day baking and watching my favourite movies, they’re kind of like photographs that tell a story,” Remus told them all, a small smile on his face.

“That’s neat, we’re birthday month buddies!” James cheered.

“Mine’s the 22nd of August, right at the end of summer. I wish it was while I was at school, that would be so much cooler. We should have a party for you guys,” Peter said.

“Don’t worry Pete, we’ll all send you presents. Maybe we can even meet up in Diagon or something, that would be fun,” James said.

“When’s yours Sirius?” asked Remus, looking over at him. Sirius had gone quiet after all the birthday talk started up.

“November 3rd,” he mumbled now, not looking at any of them.

“Wait!” James exclaimed, “November? But you didn’t say! And I didn’t see you get any cards or presents.”

“My family don’t celebrate birthdays,” Sirius said, a little coldly.

“Don’t- don’t celebrate birthdays?” James stuttered, completely shocked. He could not believe it. This meant Sirius had never had a birthday party, had never gotten a birthday card or a birthday present, had probably never even been wished a happy birthday. He’d had nothing, for twelve years of birthdays.

Sirius just shrugged in response to James’ shock.

“It’s probably a bit weird to see us get all excited about something that’s not a big deal to you huh?” Remus asked.

Sirius just shrugged again, and grabbed his things before heading into the bathroom for a shower. The other three boys looked after him in silence. Once he’d shut the door James turned to Remus.

“Am I allowed to meddle this time Remus?” James asked. He still vividly remembered the telling off he’d gotten from Remus the last time he’d tried to meddle in Sirius’ life.

“What are you planning?” Remus asked.

“Not a full party or anything, just something small to show him what a birthday could be like if he wants it.”

“We should see if we can get him a cake,” Peter suggested.

“Yeah, cake would be cool. And maybe some presents?” James looked to Remus for his approval.

“How about one present from all of us, and we each write him a card and we all have cake together,” Remus said, “That way it’s small but we’re still showing him we care. We don’t want to scare him off, but I think we should try.”

“Yay! Thank you Remus,” James cheered, and he enveloped his surprised friend in a hug.

Remus laughed and shoved him off. The boys all began to get dressed, and by the time Sirius was back from the shower they were all ready to head down to breakfast together.

As they walked down to the great hall, James noticed Remus walking a little stiffly and wincing briefly when Sirius threw an arm around his shoulder, though he didn’t make any attempt to move away. It was odd, as James couldn’t remember Remus doing anything recently that might have caused an injury. The only possible explanation came from his visit home a couple of days ago. James pondered this as they walked down the corridors, and remembered other times when Remus had seemed to limp or hold himself carefully. There had been the injury from a Moke over the winter break, but that wasn’t the only time. And it always seemed to coincide with Remus’ trips home. Before James could speculate further what that might mean he was distracted by Sirius skipping up to him and demanding he listen to a joke he’d just come up with.

Over the next couple of days James, Peter and Remus tried to come up with a present they could get Sirius. It was an arduous task to sneak around behind his back, mischievous mastermind that he was. In the end they came up with a plan to get him some nice quills and ink for his art (James sent his parents the money to buy them and send them back), and Peter bravely asked Professor McGonagall for help in getting a cake. They arranged everything for Saturday evening, and James took Sirius out secret hunting for a couple of hours in the afternoon so Remus and Peter could set up their dorm room to surprise him.

“Come on, Remus and Pete are going to love hearing about the backwards door we found,” Sirius called to James as he raced up the stairs ahead of him. He opened the door and stopped, frozen in his tracks with his jaw dropping.

“Surprise!” James said, coming up behind him. Remus and Peter had done a great job. There was cake and cards, plus their present, sitting on Sirius’ bed under a banner that read ‘Happy very belated birthday Sirius!’

Sirius took a hesitant step into the dorm, looking at each of the boys in shock. A small smile slowly crept onto his face, and James let out a breath in relief.

“This is for me?” Sirius asked, gesturing at the small spread on his bed.

“If you want it,” Remus told him.

“Of course I do, are you crazy!”

“Come open your cards,” Peter said, holding his own out.

Sirius opened and read each of their birthday cards carefully, and opened his present under their watchful eyes. He couldn’t hide his excitement at the gift, grinning animatedly and admiring the different coloured inks. They all sat around eating cake and chatting about the new secret passageway Sirius and James had found that afternoon. They had discovered a door on the second floor that opened into a normal corridor when you opened it with the handle, but if you placed your hand on the other edge of the door and twisted as if turning a handle then the door opened onto a staircase that led up to the fourth floor near their charms class. It would make for a great short cut in between transfiguration and charms classes, though not the other way as the passageway only worked in one direction. The fourth floor end could only be walked through one way, no matter what James and Sirius had tried in order to be able to go back through. Sirius used his new quills and ink to carefully add it to the map they were building. So far it spanned several sheets of parchment and had gotten rather confusing. Adding in this staircase above an already existing corridor was a challenge for Sirius’ artistic talents but he managed to get it to turn out alright.

“We’re gonna have to come up with something that can embed multiple layers I think,” Remus mused.

“I wonder if there’s a spell that would allow the map to move across the parchment with a wand tap or something, so you could kind of drag it to the part of the castle you’re in but you don’t need to sort through the various pages,” Sirius said.

The two boys bounced ideas back and forth for the rest of the evening while James and Peter mostly just nibbled on cake and watched them, occasionally putting in a word here or there.

Later that night, after the others had gone to sleep, Sirius crept into James’ bed for one of their midnight chats.

“How did I get so lucky?” he asked the second he’d sat himself down and cast their silencing charm.

“Lucky?” James asked back.

“Today, no one’s ever done anything like that for me before.”

“You’re our friend, it’s what friends do.”

And suddenly Sirius was crying. Hiccuping sobs were forcing their way out of his surprised face. James reached out and pulled him into a hug, the only thing he could think of to do. He wasn’t quite sure what was making Sirius cry, and it was a little awkward, but he was pretty sure a hug was what his mum would have done. After a while Sirius’ shoulders stopped shaking and he pulled away from James.

“Sorry about that, dunno what happened there,” he mumbled, ducking his head.

“Eh, no worries. My mum says the odd cry is good for you.”

“Is that a normal mum thing?” Sirius asked, a nervous twinge to his voice.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, being all comforting and not telling you off for getting emotional over silly things? Do most mums do that?”

“Oh, yeah I think so. I mean my mum always does, I don’t really know any other mums that well but I’m pretty sure they do too.”

“I wish my mum was normal,” Sirius sighed. He flopped back dramatically to lie at the foot of James’ bed. This gave James a moment to control his initial reaction. It made sense, if he considered all the hints he’d gotten throughout the year. Sirius never talked fondly about his parents. And there had been that whole big blow up when Remus’ mum got sick. But this was the most explicit Sirius had been: his mum told him off for crying and didn’t hug him when he was upset. And he didn’t get birthday presents. Now James wanted to cry.

He said the only thing he could think of, “you can share my mum if you want, she wouldn’t mind.”

“Would that make us brothers?” Sirius asked.

“Yeah! Let’s do it, I wanna be your brother!”

“Okay, yeah. Brothers.”

“We’ve gotta do something to make it official, like sharing blood or something.”

“Sharing blood? Isn’t that a bit risky? Blood magic is pretty powerful.”

“Oh, no I didn’t mean it like that. It’s a muggle thing, I’ve read in books. You just make a little cut in each other’s hand and then rub them together, no spells or potions or anything. It’s a bit silly really I guess,” James explained.

Sirius laughed, “Merlin, muggles are weird! Let’s do the blood handshake.”

So the two boys gently cut a slice into each other’s palms with a pocket knife they found in James’ trunk and shook hands ceremoniously for a full minute before collapsing into giggles. Eventually Sirius slipped out and back to his own bed in the early hours of the morning. They both woke up late, long after Remus and Pete had gone down to breakfast, but it was a Sunday so it didn’t really matter.

As they walked down the corridor from their common room together James asked, “Can I tell my mum? That she got another son?”

Sirius looked a little surprised, “You meant that last night?”

“We’re brothers, aren’t we? We did the whole thing, you can’t back out on me now!”

“Of course we’re brothers. But- the sharing your mum bit, you really meant that? She’d be okay with it? She doesn’t even know me.”

“I meant it. She’ll be thrilled, and I’ve already kinda told her and Dad all about you.

“I guess so then. What would it even mean?”

“She’ll write you annoying letters asking if you’ve eaten enough greens and telling you all about the village gossip that you couldn’t care less about. And she’ll try to smother you in the world’s best hug when you meet her, though she’d probably do that no matter what. She’s very huggy, Mum is.”

“Hah she sounds a hoot! Yeah, sign me up for village gossip,” Sirius grinned.

They bumped shoulders and continued down the hall in tandem, attempting to trip each other every few steps as was their norm.

Chapter Text

Effie

Dear Mum

Thanks for this week’s present! The exploding snap was really fun, we played a tournament in the common room with the other first years. Kiaan Patil won, but he lost his eyebrows so it was really funny.

Sirius loved his birthday present, he told me last night he felt really lucky. He also said this stuff about his mum never hugging him and telling him off for crying. So I told him he could share you, like as an honorary mum. We did that blood brothers thing muggles do too, so it’s official now. Do you think you could send him letters sometimes? He seemed weirdly excited when I told him you like to write about the village gossip, so maybe that sort of thing I dunno.

I hope it’s okay I told him he could have you as a mum without asking you first. Was it the right thing to do?

Miss you! And say hi to Dad

Love James xoxo

Effie put James’ letter aside, and stared out the window at the beginnings of spring growth in her garden. Her immediate desire was to go down to London and break down Walburga Black’s front door to yell at her. How could she not hug her son? It was barbaric! But her logical side knew it would do no good even if it would be very satisfying. There wasn’t much at all that she could do really. The Blacks were a very powerful family, and technically there was nothing illegal about not being a caring parent. Effie was very proud of James in this instance for coming up with his idea, and for being so willing to share his parents with his friend. Writing to Sirius as if he were her son too was the easiest thing in the world for Effie to do, and she hoped it might help a little. She and Monty had always wanted to have lots of children, but it had been so hard to conceive James and the healers had been very clear that it wasn’t safe for them to have any more. With these thoughts swirling tumultuously in her head, Effie pulled out a quill and parchment and set to writing out two letters to her Hogwarts boys.

Dear James

Oh dear, I hope poor Kiaan grows his eyebrows back quickly. I’m sure Madam Pomfrey knows a spell for that, or any of your prefects should too.

Of course I can write to Sirius. And I don’t know why you think it’s weird, my village gossip is amazing I’ll have you know. In fact, I’ve got a very juicy bit for you this week. Georgia Brakken (Martin’s mum you know) has been sharing her family recipe for apple pie with everyone, but Laura Soltern found out that it’s actually just the recipe off the back of the pastry packet in the supermarket. Poor Georgia was so embarrassed!

I’m proud of you by the way, you did exactly the right thing telling Sirius he could have me. I’m not sure about the whole blood sharing thing, it doesn’t sound very hygienic, please make sure you don’t get any infections.

Your dad’s at work right now. I’ll wait till he gets home to send this so he can add a postscript.

Love Mum xxx

Dear Sirius

Welcome to the Potter clan! I hear from James that I’ve been gifted a lovely new son, do thank him for me ;)

James has told us plenty about you (you know what a chatterbox he is I’m sure), but I do have a couple of very important questions for you: What are your favourite two colours? And do you play chess?

I know you had cake for dinner because you were celebrating your birthday, but I hope you’re making sure to get plenty of vegetables and not living off yorkshire pudding and sausages like James is trying to. It’s so important for growing boys like you to have the right nutrients if you want to get tall and strong.

Anyway, enough nagging, I want to tell you all about the new flowers I can see coming up in my garden as I’m writing this letter. Monty (your new dad, yes this is a two for one deal) is from a long line of potioneers so we’ve got all sorts growing. Right now I can see yarrow and comfrey, and alihotsy right next to nightshade which now I see it I think I’d better go do something about - that’s an insurrection waiting to happen. I can also see tiny buds on the rose bushes along the back fence. They come up different colours every year so I’ll report back in a couple of weeks to let you know what they turn out like.

Let me know how your classes are going, and don’t hesitate to dob James in if he does anything naughty, I promise I won’t tell your teachers, I’ll just tease him endlessly.

Love Mum xxx

P.S. Dad will add a note when he gets home from work.

It was a few hours later when Monty walked in the door, wet from London’s rain. He stripped his outer robes off and came to kiss Effie hello.

“How was your day?” she asked.

“Abraxas Malfoy hung around like a sore thumb for most of it, but otherwise nothing too exciting. How about you my dear?”

“I had a letter from James, you should read it,” Effie told him, handing over the short roll of parchment.

Monty took it and read through it quickly. His eyes raised to hers with a sad look after he finished.

“Is there anything we can do?” she asked, “I’ll write to him, obviously, but I want to do more. I want to throttle Walburga Black and steal him away from her.”

“I wish I could say there was something we could do. But you know what the Blacks are like, even if we had solid evidence they were abusing their children it would never stick,” sighed Monty.

“I’m worried, Monty,” Effie whispered.

He pulled her gently into his arms, rubbing soothing circles across her back. Neither of them said anything more for a while, just holding each other.

“We’ll do everything we can, he’s our son now after all. Have you started letters to the boys yet?” Monty asked eventually.

“Yes, and I’ve left room for you to add on a note to each of them so if you do that after dinner I’ll send them off with Evenstar tonight. You know how he prefers to fly at night.”

They ate together in the kitchen, their favourite thing to do when it was just the two of them in their big family home. And afterwards Monty added a short message onto each of Effie’s letters, telling James they’d have to practice exploding snap together over the summer, and agreeing with Effie that he was very proud of his son. He wrote a full note to Sirius, explaining how he’d snuck the nightshade next to the alihotsy as a trick but Effie had caught on too soon. He’d been hoping for a garden rebellion.

Evenstar was happy enough to take the letters and seemed completely unconcerned that he had two recipients instead of his normal one. As he flew off into the darkening sky, Effie leant against Monty and decided to let herself hope. She would hope that their letters would help, and she would hope that Sirius stopped needing them, that his own parents would step up and do better by him.

Peter

It was the first of April and all Peter’s prank ideas were terrible. He didn’t want to tell the other boys what he had come up with in case they just laughed at him. They had plenty of pranks lined up anyway with Remus’ genius and Sirius’ craziness, so what was the point in Peter suggesting something weak and silly? Well it turned out he didn’t get a choice, since James bounced onto his bed first thing in the morning and demanded to know what he wanted to do for the day.

“Come on, you’ve got to have some prank you want to try? Just a little one? Please Pete!” he whined.

Peter blinked at him and ducked his head. “Exploding soap bubbles,” he whispered.

“Brilliant! Do you have a spell for it?”

Peter shook his head mournfully. This was partly why he hadn’t dared suggest it earlier. He’d looked in the library but hadn’t found anything and he couldn’t get over the feeling he’d had since Christmas that he was worthless and the other boys would drop him the second they worked it out, and if he asked for help that would just make it happen all the sooner. Peter was desperate to keep his friends, whatever it took to fool them into liking him.

James didn’t seem concerned about Peter’s poorly formed plan though. He just turned toward the other side of the room and called out much too loud for the early hour, “any idea how to make bubbles explode Remus?”

“Ooh I know that one!” Sirius interrupted from his bed, “Reg and I used to have bubble fights when we were little and my cousin Andy showed us a spell for blowing them up till they pop.”

“Reckon you can teach it to Pete for his prank today?” James asked.

“Sure,” Sirius nodded, “come over here Pete, and bring your wand.”

The spell was simple enough, and Peter picked it up after a couple of tries. Feeling more confident than he had in a long time, he followed the other boys down to the great hall for what he was sure would be a chaotic breakfast.

Peter had heard stories from his older cousins about what April Fools Day was like at Hogwarts, but it was nothing to what actually experiencing it was like. You could hardly walk down a corridor without getting caught in the middle of some kind of dramatic trap. Even Professor Flitwick got in on the action with a very convincing show of asking for a 14 inch homework essay that was supposedly due but it turned out he’d never actually set. It worked so well because he’d roped in a couple of students to bring along pretend essays to hand in and help convince everyone else they’d forgotten. Peter set his exploding bubbles to fly out of one of the bathrooms during morning break and it worked quite well until a prefect caught him laughing and wrote him up for detention. James and Sirius got themselves matching detention for shooting a tripping jinx at Mulciber, a first year Slytherin, that ended with him face planting into his cauldron and getting some nasty boils that he had to get sent to the hospital wing for. They admitted later that they hadn’t realised he was so close to his cauldron and he’d just been supposed to drop his ingredients everywhere. It had worked great the first time when they did it to Snape. He’d been holding frogspawn and had gotten the harmless but smelly stuff all through his hair.

Remus was the only one who didn’t get detention, and he lorded it over them appropriately. “So immature, pranking our fellow students,” he sighed dramatically at dinner. But at a look of disbelief from Sirius he burst into uncontrollable giggles.

“What was your prank? How did you get away with it?” Peter asked.

“I don’t know what you mean, Peter my dear friend. I would never prank anyone, I’m far too sedate and sensible. You must have me confused with someone far more frolicsome.” But he followed this pompous speech up with a wink that left Peter spluttering.

Peter’s best guess was that Remus might be the one behind the singing suits of armour, and if so it was a very impressive prank. No one had been tied to that particular prank, whereas most of the others had a likely culprit whether or not they were actually caught. The suits remained their normal stoic creaky selves until you bumped into them, at which point they burst into joyful songs. The songs seemed to be muggle in origin, they were certainly not anything Peter had ever heard and he noticed a couple of muggleborns singing along under their breath throughout the day.

Detention turned out to be a group affair, with around 100 students made to stay in the great hall for a few hours after dinner to sit in silence and write a short essay on why their prank was against the rules and how they were going to be better behaved in the future. Peter was sitting opposite Sirius, who kept pulling silly faces trying to get him to laugh. He got told off by Professor McGonagall three times for making noise, before she forced them to move to different seats where they couldn’t see each other for the rest of the evening. They joined back up in the entrance hall afterwards, and walked back to Gryffindor tower with James and Aiden Finch who had also been in the detention.

“Well lads, I feel we’ve set the start of a good trend here,” Finch sniggered as they made their way up the first flight of stairs.

“Think we can make it every year?” James asked, grinning proudly.

“You bet!” Sirius chimed in, “bigger and better next time though.”

Peter smiled, not minding getting in trouble so much when it was with his friends. Sirius threw an arm around his shoulder and they walked like that the whole way to the common room. Remus was waiting on the couches, and clapped them like returning heroes. Sirius and Finch bowed dramatically and got a good laugh from everyone in the common room.

“Welcome to the crew!” called out an older Gryffindor girl who Peter didn’t know, but who he was pretty sure had also been in detention with them.

Lying in his bed later that night, Peter thought to himself that maybe he really did belong in Gryffindor with his friends after all. He fell asleep with a silly grin on his face, and for the next while his confidence stayed high.

Chapter Text

Regulus

The tawny owl flapped smoothly through the invisible window, and landed on the desk. It never failed to impress Regulus that these ordinary looking animals possessed the ability to see through magical wards and always seemed to find their recipient. He carefully removed the letter tied to its leg and gave it a gentle stroke down its back. The owl rubbed against his hand fondly for a moment before throwing itself back out into the evening sky. As he opened the letter, Regulus noticed several separate notes within it. One was the expected letter from Narcissa (it was her owl after all) and of the others, two were from Sirius and one was from a vaguely familiar hand that Regulus wasn’t entirely sure he recognised. Sirius’ notes had dates on them so he knew which had been written first.

Dear Reg

March has been kind of weird. James and Remus had their birthdays, and when they found out that mine was back in November they made a big deal out of celebrating it too. They got me presents and cake and everything, and afterwards James and I had a conversation about some things that his family do that ours don’t — like birthdays and hugs and you know. He even told me I could share his Mum and he got her to write me some letters from home. It’s nice, and she tells me all these really funny stories about things that happen in their village.

How did you get on with pranking the tutors? Did the slime charm work on Pellior?

Sirius

Dear Reg

I haven’t had a chance to pass off my last letter to Cissa yet, so you might get a couple at once.

We did so many pranks for April Fools!!! James and Pete and I all got caught and we had detention, but it was actually kinda fun because all the students who did pranks had to have detention together in the Great Hall and then afterwards we got congratulated by some older Gryffindors. I can’t wait to come up with even better pranks next year!

Andy wrote to me, and put in a note for you so I’ll give that to Cissa too when I manage to sneak these ones to her.

Also got a really funny letter from James’ dad about some chess tricks so I’ve included that here, we’ll have to play some over the summer (maybe with these new tricks we might finally be able to beat Uncle Cygnus).

Sirius

Sirius had indeed included the letter from James’ dad, which had in it, as well as chess tricks, a fond sign off that made Regulus feel rather alone in his quiet bedroom. He hurriedly moved on to what must be Andromeda’s letter.

Dearest Regulus

The rumour mill tells me you’re doing okay. I hear that you’re not seen out and about with my dear aunt too much. I hope that is a good thing and doesn’t mean she’s leaving you locked in your tower.

I know it has been many years since we’ve seen each other and I’m sure you’ve grown up rather a lot since then. I was glad to hear from Sirius that he is able to keep in touch with you, and so I hope he’ll be able to pass along my letter too. Please let me know how you’re getting on if you can, but keep yourself safe first and foremost. And remember what I used to tell you, that family can protect you so long as you follow them but they can also trap you if you’re not careful.

I’m living in London if you ever need me, just find your way to St Mungos and ask for Ted Tonks. I know you never got to meet him before we had to elope, but he knows all about you and Sirius and everyone and we talk often of how we wish we could see you.

Love,

Andy

Narcissa’s letter was longer than the others, containing anecdotes from classes and things her friends in Slytherin had been up to. He knew she put all the mundane details in to give him conversation topics for dinner with his parents, and to help cover the smuggled letters from Sirius. It seemed to work, and it provided a pleasant alternative to his mother’s usual lecturing when he was able to turn the conversation to Narcissa’s stories.

Especially after winter break, Walburga seemed determined to drill the Black family values into Regulus. He must have seemed too friendly with Sirius when he was home. Regulus had had to sit through approximately one lecture a week since January, in which he was reminded of the important lineage of the Black family and his many great and powerful ancestors with their wondrous achievements for the pureblood community. They were all Slytherins of course, every last one since the first days of Hogwarts. Walburga made Regulus trace the family tree repeatedly, pointing out to him that even those family members who failed to uphold their duties were at least decent enough to get themselves sorted into the right house.

“There will be no need for you to associate with anyone outside of Slytherin once you are at Hogwarts next year,” she told him, gripping his shoulder painfully as she stood him in front of an ancient painting in the attic one wet afternoon in May. “In fact I think you had better make it clear from the start that you know where you belong so no one gets any silly notions that you may be sullied by association with your nasty brother,” she went on.

“Yes, Mother,” Regulus replied dutifully. He had been listening to variations of the same lecture from her for months now and it was easy to sound like he agreed. It would have been easy to let himself agree, to let her words turn into the mantra she was clearly hoping for, if only he had not been given another point of focus. But Walburga had made an error in judgement in her methods of bringing Regulus under her wing. She included too much family history in her lectures. Today’s lecture, for example, was based around the grizzly painting she was making Regulus stare at. It depicted long dead Black family ancestors fighting against an invading Roman army. The painting was severely degraded by age, and it was no longer clear what spells the Blacks were using to beat back the Romans. The animation of the painting was worn out and jerky, but it definitely showed hands waving and spells of some kind shooting at the Romans and destroying them (on a loop as paintings of this sort were like to be). What Regulus couldn’t see, was a single wand anywhere in the painting. His mother probably hadn’t even noticed, and if she had then she must have assumed they had just faded over time or been missed by the artist. Regulus didn’t think so though, and he was excited for the moment his mother would release him and he could go to the family library to run down his hunch. Her lecture went on for a while, but eventually she was called away by Kreacher apparating into the room to ask her what she wanted done with some things he had been tidying in one of the sitting rooms. Regulus gave Kreacher a grateful smile as the elf bowed his mother out of the attic, and got a tiny wink in return.

Regulus hurried to the library, and made his way into the lower levels, confident once he reached them that he didn’t have to worry about his mother interrupting. She couldn’t after all, as she didn’t have any actual Black blood. No matter how proud of the family name she was, it was only her’s by name and that meant some of the family secrets were hidden from her. One of these was the full depth of the family library. The first room, which contained only recently purchased books, was open to anyone, but the lower and upper levels existed in a space between the floors of the building and you couldn’t even see them if you weren’t a Black by blood. The upper levels were mostly filled with rare antiques from around the world, foreign books, political reports, and the like. The lower levels were the most secret, and the most special in Regulus’ opinion. The books in the lower levels were all written by Black ancestors. They included a number of creepy dark books detailing spells and potions that had clearly been created and experimented with by various Blacks through the centuries. They also included journals though, and this was what Regulus spent all his free time reading and what he was heading for today. He had recently found what he thought might be the oldest existing journal of a Black ancestor. It was written in a script and language that was undecipherable to Regulus, but luckily some Black ancestor who was not quite as old had written a translation in old English, and with a bit of effort and by asking a few sneaky questions to his ancient languages tutor, Regulus was able to read most of it. The owner of the original journal was one Amergin Black, who wrote about the Roman invasion of Britain. And here was the thing that fit with the painting Regulus had just seen: Amergin hadn’t used a wand or words in his magic, he had written out detailed descriptions and diagrams in his journal of flowing hand movements that pulled and channelled magical energy through the natural essence of the world. Amergin called himself a druid, and now with the context of the painting Regulus thought that perhaps this meant that druids had been the magic users in Britain before the Romans came, and that druid magic had been replaced over time by the Latin spells that were still used now. Regulus was intensely curious to see if he could learn how to do any of the druid magic in Amergin’s journal. He wanted to try before he went to Hogwarts, worried that if he didn’t work it out before he started using spells he would lose any chance he might have by restricting himself with words and wands and his ability to channel magic without them would get blocked.

So with a mix of newfound confidence and ever present nerves, Regulus flicked through the journal till he found a page that illustrated a simple piece of magic that Amergin liked to use on cold nights to keep himself warm. It wasn’t easy, and for a while Regulus had no idea if he was getting any closer to success at all. He paused to eat when Kreacher brought him lunch — for some reason the Black blood requirements didn’t keep Kreacher out, whether because of his unique elfen magic or because he was tied to the family Regulus didn’t know — but otherwise worked nonstop for most of the day. It was getting close to dinner time, when Regulus would have to leave the library or raise his mother’s suspicion, when something finally changed. Regulus moved his hands in the familiar twist and curl he had been doing all day, and in the middle of the motion he felt himself shiver with the slight chill that had just begun to creep into the library. Regulus felt the cold make him uncomfortable and then felt the magic he was trying to reach for tangibly respond to his feeling. Finally the missing piece clicked, and Regulus realised what he’d been doing wrong all day. Once he understood he could hardly believe it hadn’t occurred to him before, it was so obvious. He had to feel the magic, guide it to his desires on an emotional and physical level rather than an intellectual level. He had been thinking about what he wanted from the magic, thinking ‘I want to be warm’, but what he needed was not to think but to actually want, to imagine the feeling of warmth surrounding him.

He tried once more, twisting his hands and feeling the cold and the warmth. And it worked! He saw faint orange smoke curl through his fingers and sweep over his body where he directed it and he felt it warm him like the waves of heat off a blazing fire would. The spell dropped a moment later as Regulus cheered and danced around, unable to contain his excitement. But he knew now that he could do it, and he still had several months to learn more, and with his new understanding he was confident it would be possible, the rest of the book was right there waiting for him.

He wasn’t quite able to hide his happiness over dinner that evening, and his mother rapped him sharply across the knuckles for it. “It is improper to grin like a lunatic in public Regulus. You should be able to keep your emotions under control at all times,” she scowled at him. His father made no reaction from where he sat stonily at the end of the table, and Regulus stopped smiling, instead focusing on not wincing every time he moved his knife or fork. Walburga didn’t go lightly with her lessons.

When Kreacher came by Regulus’ room later to snuff out his candles he asked the boy if Mistress’s comment at dinner meant his project was working.

“It is Kreach! Look, I’ll show you,” Regulus said. Then he carefully twisted his hands and gently ruffled a warm breeze across the elf.

“This is not normal wizard magic,” Kreacher said, “it is feeling different to Kreacher.”

“Yeah, it is different. It’s really old magic, from before we used wands. Do you think maybe it’s a bit like elf magic?”

“Not like elf magic Kreacher thinks, but close. Could be dark if master Regulus isn’t being careful.”

“I’ll be careful, I promise. Goodnight Kreach.” Regulus reached out and patted the little elf’s shoulder with his fingertips. Kreacher patted back with his own before popping away with a crack. It was their secret way of saying goodnight. Regulus had never shared it with anyone, not even Sirius. He couldn’t remember when he’d gotten so close with the elf, but it had been years ago. And now with Sirius gone, he was even closer to Kreacher. The elf wasn’t quite a normal friend, because he had to follow his mistress’s orders and couldn’t pick and choose when to spend time with Regulus. But he had been gifted with the ability to keep Regulus’ secrets, which meant he was an excellent confidant. Orion had arranged this as a reward for Regulus when he beat Sirius on a test about the family history two summers ago. He had stood the boy and the elf in front of his desk and said to Kreacher, “you will listen to master Regulus and you will help him with his tasks when he asks, you will follow his instructions always.” It was the kind of order that no one could overrule because Orion was the head of the family. And so Regulus’ first instruction to Kreacher afterwards had been, “Don’t tell mother anything she doesn’t already know about me, that’s an instruction,” and Kreacher had used the instruction to keep Regulus’ secrets without ever letting on to Walburga that he was hiding things about her son from her. He was a wily elf, and very clever with his words when he wanted to be. And so somehow, after shared secrets and hidden moments of sweetness, Regulus had become best friends with a house elf. Kreacher was a far better friend than any of the stuffy children of his parents’ acquaintances were.

Chapter Text

Sirius

Faster than Sirius could have imagined possible, the end of his first year at Hogwarts was nearly over and there were mere weeks left till the end of term when everyone would head off for their various summer holidays. In Sirius’ case this would mean barely leaving the dark halls of Grimmauld Place unless his parents decided to drag their whole family to France again. But it would also mean the end of his separation from Regulus, so he’d been a bit of a conflicted mess of feelings about the whole thing really.

Sirius tried to distract himself from thinking about the end of term by focusing all his attention on the upcoming quidditch final, Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff. He was not short of talking partners to discuss the players' different skill sets or potential weather conditions with as practically the whole school was buzzing with nerves. Hufflepuff hadn’t had a team make the finals in years apparently, and Gryffindor only beat Ravenclaw by a single quaffle to make it through so it was set to be a real nail-biter of a match.

The evening before the match, the whole of Gryffindor house seemed to be talking of nothing else. The team were huddled together, talking to each other in hushed voices or sitting in tense silence, depending on their particular brand of nerves, while the rest of the house were making bets on who would score the first goal and how the snitch would taunt the seekers. Sirius and James were sitting with Aiden and Kiaan making a set of detailed charts for potential actions that could happen in the game. Kiaan called them ‘bingo cards’, and was explaining to the others how they would play their own game during the match to see who could get ‘bingo’ first. Apparently it was an adaptation of a muggle game that Kiaan’s grandmother played with her friends every week, but they normally just did it with a person calling out random numbers whereas the Gryffindor boys were going to play it with quidditch actions.

“So if you’ve got ‘Hufflepuff keeper sneezes and misses the quaffle’ written down and that happens then you cross it off,” he explained, “and if you get all the squares in a line crossed off then you call bingo, and whoever calls bingo first wins. And then we play for the next line, or for all the corners, or for the whole card. Depends how long the game goes for and how wild it gets. You’ve gotta have a mix of easy and obscure things, so someone can probably get a line if like one or two of the obscure things happen but to get the whole card it has to be a barking mad game.”

“Sounds brilliant!” James cheered, and Sirius and Aiden nodded their agreement.

“I’ve put down ‘Fenley kisses Hufflepuff keeper’, is that too crazy?” Sirius checked. Fenley was one of the Gryffindor chasers, and she was well known for coming up with strange techniques to distract the opposing team but she had yet to go so far as kissing someone.

“That's bloody perfect mate!” Aiden cackled, “No way she’ll think to do that though.”

“Oh I dunno, reckon she’d be up for anything,” Sirius said cheekily. He caught a look from James, and winked at him. James sniggered, and turned back to finish writing his own bingo card.

James could probably guess what Sirius was planning. After all he’d heard from Sirius during one of their midnight chats all about how he’d rescued Fenley earlier in the week from an oncoming crowd of Slytherins trying to run her down and hex her. Sirius had pulled Fenley into one of the tapestry hidden passageways just in time and the Slytherins hadn’t been able to work out where she disappeared to. She’d thanked him and told him she owed him one. The Slytherins apparently always got nasty before the quidditch final even if they weren’t playing in it. They would pick whichever team they hated most and target their players to try to throw them off their game. Sometimes it was just catcalling and sneering, but this particular group had been more of the ‘hex or jinx to actually cause harm’ variety. Sirius knew their sort, he’d attended dinner parties with their sort (and possibly even with those specific students though he hadn’t looked at any of them closely enough to notice if they were familiar), and their hexes and jinxes would be the particularly nasty kind that were only technically not illegal because the ministry hadn’t heard of them yet. It was the sort of thing his cousin Bella excelled at, and she’d shared as many as she could with her fellow Slytherins when she was still at school.

All of this meant that Fenley was grateful to Sirius and might be persuadable to doing him a favour if he asked right. He waited till later in the evening, when Kiaan and Aiden had gone up to bed. He didn’t want them getting wind of what he was going to try after all. If it worked, the surprise would be all the better, and if it didn’t it was certainly better that they not find out he’d put actual effort in. He wandered casually over to the huddled Gryffindor team, and wished them all luck for the following morning.

“Not that you need luck though, you’re all brilliant!” he told them.

“Cheers squirt!” the beater, Donalds, told him with a slightly patronising grin.

“Don’t bother the kid D, he’s a good one. Saved me from Lestrange’s lot the other day,” Fenley said, kicking Donalds gently in the side of his leg.

“Oh that was you, nice going!” Donalds said, much less patronisingly.

“I actually wondered if you might be feeling grateful enough to do me a tiny little favour,” Sirius said.

“Depends how tiny,” Fenley chuckled.

“Well it was sort of a suggestion for a distraction tactic in the game tomorrow as a matter of fact.”

“Ooh, I’m curious now, what’s Fenley gonna have to do?” asked Janner, the other beater.

“So, and this is just a suggestion and if you don’t want to or if you think it’s a bad idea I totally understand-” Sirius began to ramble, getting nervous suddenly.

“Just spit it out Black,” Fenley interrupted.

“Kiss the Hufflepuff keeper,” he blurted.

The whole team burst into laughter at that, and it took a few minutes for them to calm down again.

“Cheers Black!” the captain, Hollaby, grinned at him, “we needed a good laugh to loosen the nerves.”

Sirius smiled, but he felt a little chagrined. He hadn’t thought it was quite so laughable as that.

“I’ll do it!” Fenley declared suddenly, seemingly to everyone’s surprise.

“Really?” Sirius asked.

“Yeah, why not. It’ll be a great distraction, and Carver’s not a bad looking chick. Should be fun,” she grinned at him, and then patted him on the shoulder and told him to get to bed before a prefect caught him up past his bedtime.

Sirius didn’t mind the snub too much. He’d gotten what he wanted after all. And he was pretty tired really, so going to bed wasn’t a bad idea. When he got up to the dormitory James poked his head out from behind his curtains and raised both his eyebrows in a question. Sirius raised just one of his own in return, taunting James with the trick that James hadn’t managed to master yet. James glared and threw a pillow at him, which he threw back casually as he made his way to the bathroom. A few minutes later he was in bed and quickly falling asleep, excited for what would hopefully happen in the morning.

Things at the match worked out perfectly for Sirius. Gryffindor won, which was great on its own, but even better the win was helped by a goal that Hollaby scored while Fenley was distracting the Hufflepuff keeper… by kissing her! It was the best moment of the match, Gryffindors cheering for the goal, Hufflepuffs shouting in anger at the sight of their keeper being very effectively distracted, and Aiden and Kiaan staring at Sirius with their jaws dropped in silent shock as he calmly put a large cross through his centre square and returned his attention to the game. He eventually had to admit to them that he’d asked her to do it the night before, once she came over to their group and said hi at the after party and told him he was a little evil genius and she’d be coming to him for ideas before every game from now on.

“You little cheat ,” Kiaan groaned, while Aiden hid his face in his arms trying not to laugh.

“You never said it was against the rules,” Remus pointed out. He hadn’t been part of their bingo game, claiming he wasn’t invested enough in quidditch to come up with ideas to fill all the squares, but he jumped to Sirius’ aid readily enough now.

“Remus is right,” Peter put in, who had also not played for similar reasons, but likewise was loyal to Sirius at the slightest need. “You didn’t say anything about asking a player to do any of the things on the bingo card. How do we know one of you didn’t ask a player to do one of your things?”

“And really,” Remus added, “if anything, Sirius should get bonus points because he had to go up to Fenley in front of the whole Gryffindor team and ask her to kiss Carver for him. That takes some real Gryffindor courage!”

“Oh Merlin alright, I’ll let you get away with it this time. But not again, no rigging bingo next time, just plain old random crazy options okay,” Kiaan sighed.

“Yeah ‘course,” Sirius agreed, grinning, “it’s only really fun for the surprise value anyway. Hey next time we should make each other’s bingo cards. Oh wait no, I’ve got it — we each start with a blank card, do a row and pass it along and then at the end we mix them up and everyone gets a random one.”

“You’re on,” Kiaan agreed, grinning back at him.

“I suppose this means Pete and I won’t be able to get out of it?” Remus asked.

“No way mate,” James gloated, “you can surely come up with at least five things that might happen in quidditch, and you can double up if they’re on different people’s cards. No more excuses, even Frank will have to play.”

Remus pretended to heave a great sigh of lamentation, but he couldn’t hide his fond smile and James practically bounced with glee.

Frank, who was nearby chatting with the Gryffindor girls, looked up at hearing his name and asked, “what am I gonna have to play?”

“Quidditch bingo,” Sirius told him. He walked over to the other group to explain, slotting himself happily in next to Lily who ruffled his hair affectionately then proceeded to quickly smooth it out at his affronted glare. He told them all how bingo worked (ignoring Mary and Lily when they told him they already knew about it since it was a muggle game originally), and explained how they’d adapted it for watching quidditch games and the new rules they’d made.

“After Sirius’ astounding and unforgivable bit of cheating,” Aiden butted in to joke.

Frank agreed he’d be in, and the girls all did too. Marlene reckoned they could do it for more than just quidditch games.

“We could have like ongoing bingo cards for things the professors do, like ‘Flitwick falls off his stack of books’ or ‘McGonagall gives Sirius detention’,” she said.

“Hey, that only happened one time!” Sirius complained.

“And I didn’t have my bingo card so I didn’t get to cross it out, so really I’m the one who has something to complain about,” she teased.

“Alright, maybe not ‘Sirius gets detention’” Alice appeased, “but there’s loads we could have, like ‘Dumbledore makes up a new word’. That one happens at least once a term, and you could have ‘Nearly-Headless Nick scares a first year with his head flipping trick’.”

It was quickly agreed that they would all meet up after breakfast the following day to sit and write bingo cards using Sirius’ method. It was Lily who pointed out that they should probably save starting them till the next year though since they were so close to the end of term and they all had exams to study for. Remus agreed quickly and the others begrudgingly admitted that they were probably right.

Sirius was proud of himself for not showing any outward signs of the freak out he suddenly started having. He had known exams were coming up soon, but he’d been suppressing that similarly to how he’d been suppressing thinking about the approach of summer. With Lily’s reminder though, all of that was front and centre and Sirius was drowning a little bit in realisation of how important it was that he do well in the exams. After all, if he didn’t get top grades, he didn’t want to imagine what creative punishment Walburga would think up. It would almost certainly relate directly to the number of marks he’d gotten wrong, unless she decided to change tack from her old tutoring methods. When he was much younger it used to be one rap on the knuckles for every mark he’d lost, but it had escalated as he got older and in his last year before Hogwarts it had been lashes on the backs of his calves with her wand. They left no mark but they stung like nobody’s business for hours afterwards. He dreaded to think what would be worse than that.

So, after the quidditch celebration party and the bingo card writing the next morning were over, Sirius threw himself into revising with a vengeance. He had two weeks till exams started and it would be enough time, it had to be enough time. He knew how to study, how to make his brain retain information and spit it out verbatim, or how to apply it to a hypothetical situation. He had a method for memorising his textbooks that he knew worked near perfectly. The rapping and lashes had made that a surety. It was a little harder with his class notes though, as he’d not taken the care with them that he should have. In his excitement to be out of his mother’s reach he’d forgotten how much he was still within it in actuality. So his notes were shoddy at best and entirely non-existent at worst.

It was in the middle of an attempted revision session in the library with said terrible notes that Sirius accidentally cracked and let someone see past his mask momentarily. It was up again as soon as he noticed, and he was brushing it off with laughter and bravado but the moment had happened and could not unhappen no matter how much Sirius might wish it. And of course the person to crack his mask just had to be Remus, his overly observant and persistent friend and something more that Sirius couldn’t put words to even though he could feel it tangibly. Sirius had been trying not to cry as he desperately sorted through his charms notes looking for a page about the levitation charm that he was fairly sure didn’t exist even though he knew Flitwick had said something very important that wasn’t in the textbook and he couldn’t remember because he had been tickling James with his quill at the time. Tears seconds from falling, hands shaking, shoulders bunching with tension, he’d seen a slip of parchment slide into his vision held by a familiar hand. The parchment was covered in Remus’ notes from the exact lesson he wanted, like the other boy had read his mind or something. Sirius had not cried, though it was a near thing, but he had thanked Remus far too profusely and told him he was the best of friends and he’d probably just saved Sirius from a shit summer. And when Remus had asked what he meant his mask had still been down so he’d said bluntly, “good exam results — tolerable summer, bad exam results — shit summer.”

The look on Remus’ face had been confusing. It was tight, like he was controlling his reaction, or like his reaction was fighting itself. His eyes had seemed to flash gold for a split second, but that must have just been a trick of the light. Sirius realised then what he’d said, and how far his mask had fallen, and he yanked it back up and put on his stupid grin and laughed and joked and said if Remus wasn’t careful he’d steal all his notes and Remus would lose his top of the class status. He wasn’t sure if it worked fully. Remus smiled at his jokes, but he also quietly slid the rest of his charms notes across the table at the same time.

In the end it went okay. Sirius did in fact beat Remus out for top exam marks, getting top in the year overall and surprising several of his professors by doing so. He lost nine marks total across all his subjects, so that would mean nine lots of whatever Walburga’s punishment was. Nine was fine, nine would be tolerable, he hoped nine was more than Reg would get, he hoped Reg got zero.

Chapter Text

Remus

Remus was sitting in the hospital wing, waiting for Madam Pomfrey to arrive for their last appointment of the year. Of course, he knew he’d be back in hardly any time for the full moon but it still felt like a goodbye. The wolf was fretting, had been ever since their conversation with Sirius before their exams.

He has to go back to those people, it’s not fair!

I’m just as worried as you are, but what can we do? You remember what Poppy said about evidence, a gut feeling and an offhand comment are not enough.

I knoooow! But that doesn’t help me feel better about letting him go.

You’re way too cocky for someone who only lives inside my head. We’re not ‘letting him go’, we’re not ‘letting’ anything.

Yeah yeah whatev- “Oh hi Poppy.”

“Hello Wolf, hello Remus,” Madam Pomfrey smiled as she greeted them, shutting the hospital wing doors behind her and coming to sit in the armchair next to them.

“So, I really just wanted to check in today to make sure you have everything you need to be all set for the full moons over summer,” Madam Pomfrey said, as she settled in.

“I don’t really need anything in particular do I? It’s just the same as every other full moon,” Remus replied.

“Well it’s not quite,” Madam Pomfrey pointed out, “I have arranged it with your father and he is going to bring you by floo several hours before the moon rises on each full moon day, so you’ll have a few hours to hang about here before I take you down to the shack, and then afterwards you’ll stay in the hospital wing probably for a day or two till you’re well enough for floo travel again. You may want to bring a few books or something to do in the quiet time.”

“Ugh I hate floo travel,” Remus griped, “I bet it’s gonna be even worse after a moon.”

“I’m afraid it probably will, but as the alternatives are side-along apparition or taking the Knight Bus I think it’s the best option,” Madam Pomfrey said.

Remus didn’t even dignify that with a proper response, just put his head down and groaned into his arms.

“Yes, quite,” Madam Pomfrey chuckled, before going on. “We also talked back at the start of term about what you could do about being away from Mr Black. Has anything changed in that situation that I should know about?”

“If you mean, is Remus still being as stubborn as ever about not telling him anything then yes, nothing has changed,” the wolf answered.

“Wolf is worried about him going home for the summer break. I am too, he said something before exams about how his results would dictate whether he had a tolerable summer or a shit one,” Remus added.

“Hmm, I expect several students might feel they are in a similar boat with parents demanding high exam results or they’ll have to spend their summer indoors studying. That may have been all Mr Black was referring to, you know,” Madam Pomfrey suggested, though she didn’t sound particularly convinced by her own explanation.

“Hmph!” the wolf scoffed, and Remus said, “it didn’t sound like that was all it was. He got all shifty right after and changed the subject before I could ask any questions.”

“I wish that were enough for us to do something, but it just isn’t Remus dear.”

“I know. It doesn’t make me feel any better, or get Wolf to be any less wound up about it though.”

“No, you’re right. Let’s see what we can do about that at least then. I can put in a request for the house elves not to wash Mr Black’s blankets right away after everyone leaves as they normally would. We talked about having his scent around being helpful for Wolf, do you think you want to have his blanket in the shack? Or you could take it home with you to have between the full moons if that would be more helpful?” Madam Pomfrey asked.

“In the shack. Can’t take it home, can’t have it near Lyall,” the wolf growled.

“Can’t we just leave it? What if the house elves tell someone? I don’t want Sirius or anyone to find out, I mean what would they think? It’s so weird!” Remus interrupted, sounding rather like a whiny child despite his best efforts to act grown up and mature.

“Oh great, now I’m weird! Awesome!” the wolf snarled.

“Well it is weird, you want to smell him all the time. That’s not a normal thing friends want to do to each other.”

“I’m a wolf! Wolves smell things all the time, it’s perfectly normal!”

“For wolves! But I’m not a wolf, and if I go around smelling things people are gonna think I’m a complete nutter.”

“Alright, enough,” Madam Pomfrey interjected, “there’s nothing wrong with Wolf wanting to smell Sirius’ scent, and there’s nothing wrong with Remus not wanting to. Do I need to remind you again that you’re two different people? Or minds- I’m still not quite sure what to call it. But anyway, you’re separate and you have separate thoughts and desires, remember, and that’s okay. I know you’re worried about people finding out and thinking you’re weird Remus, but if Wolf thinks it would help him stay calmer when Sirius is far away during the full moons then I’d like to do it. The house elves won’t tell anyone if I instruct them not to, and one of them can apparate his blanket into the shack directly from your dormitory so not even any of the teachers could find out. How does that sound for a compromise?” she asked.

Remus nodded sullenly, not in quite enough control to open his mouth lest the ongoing argument in his head slip out again.

Weird wolf that’s me, just an embarrassment the wolf was taunting.

Weird boy talking to a voice in his head, that’s me you realise?

A voice? You think you made me up. I can hear you thinking it, don't deny it.

Ugh, I dunno. You would hear me if I’d just made you up. Maybe I really am a complete nutter.

He tried to keep paying attention as Madam Pomfrey went on about full moon arrangements, and keeping in touch with Sirius by owl if he could, but it was tricky to catch everything she said while his head was so busy with rampaging thoughts charging all over the place. He got the gist of it, and she didn’t seem to pick up on how distracted he was for the rest of the appointment. Eventually she sent him off, saying she would see him in a few weeks and to enjoy the start of his summer.

“Thanks Madam Pomfrey,” he managed to call over his shoulder as he hurried out into the corridor.

Right, make yourself useful, where’s Sirius now? Or James or Pete? Let’s not waste any more time before term ends

You do it. It’s your nose.

Argh! Would you stop being so pouty, you’re making me frown.

Fine! Only ‘cause I want to see Sirius too. He’s somewhere nearby, or he was recently. It’s a little stale.

Remus paused in the middle of the corridor he was walking down to surreptitiously sniff his nose, refusing to tilt his head the way he could feel the wolf was aching to. Following the stale scent led him in the direction of shouting, which did seem rather promising, so he sped up his pace. Sure enough, down just one flight of stairs and along another passage there was Sirius, accompanied by James, making a complete scene. There were water balloons everywhere, half a dozen dripping wet students from various houses, and Peeves the poltergeist soaring gleefully around trading shots back and forth with the two Gryffindor boys. Remus immediately jumped into the fray with a well aimed Wingardium Leviosa that picked up three balloons and dropped them all directly on Peeves’ head. It was perfect timing as he happened to be right above Snape when they hit, so when the water got released and predictably fell right through the partially incorporeal poltergeist he was the one who ended up saturated.

“Come on you two, let’s get out of here before Filch turns up,” Remus called, waving over at James and Sirius.

“Nice shot Remus!” James cheered, and Sirius grinned broadly at him.

They each threw their last few balloons and took off in his direction. All three of them ran as fast as they could upstairs, eventually coming to a halt in front of the Lilac Lady and gasping the password under her disapproving glare.

“I should leave you out here to get caught you know,” she told them haughtily, but swung open nevertheless.

“Why doesn’t she?” Sirius asked as they climbed through and her portrait shut behind them.

“I don’t think she can, there’s probably some spell or something that means she has to open if someone says the password,” Remus suggested.

“Nah, I think she secretly likes us. My dad told me about this time she made one of his mates wait in the corridor for thirty minutes before she let him in even though he had the password because he made fun of her dress. And another time Dad said there was this kid who kept forgetting the new passwords and she just let her go in without it,” James told them.

“So what I’m hearing is we should make sure to stay on her good side?” Sirius asked.

“Yeah!” James agreed.

“I wonder if there are any other portraits around the school who might let you into rooms if you’re nice to them,” Remus mused.

“Okay, so new rule, be nice to all the portraits,” Sirius announced.

“Better tell Pete too, hey where is he?” James asked, looking at Remus for answers.

“I dunno, I thought he’d be with you guys.”

“He was! He was there when the balloon fight started. He should have come running off with us,” Sirius said.

“I didn’t see him when I got there, he can’t have been beside you at least” Remus said. He refrained from mentioning that he also hadn’t smelt Peter in the corridor when he arrived, his scent had been just a tiny bit stale. Thankfully, the wolf had settled down now and was happy just listening to the conversation without distracting Remus from it. He was always more settled when Sirius was close, using what Remus had come to realise was considerable restraint not to loudly express his desire to talk to the boy. The wolf seemed to value simple nearness to Sirius very highly and wasn’t willing to jeopardise that by aggravating Remus. Of course, Remus was also more settled when Sirius was near, and he still hadn’t been able to work out if it was something they both felt separately or if it was just the wolf rubbing off on him because everything with Sirius was so strong, and so difficult to untangle and decipher.

“Oh no! What if he got caught in the crowd, and we just left him there?” James panicked.

“I had a good view of the whole corridor and I’m pretty sure I didn’t see him anywhere,” Remus said, letting his surety colour his voice to try and calm James down.

“I bet he snuck off when the Slytherins turned up,” Sirius said, “Mulciber was there and Pete’s terrified of him after the other week with the whole pantsing thing.” He wasn’t quite laughing, but there was a bitter hint of it to Sirius’ voice.

“Poor Pete! I wouldn’t blame him. I hope he did just run off,” James said.

“We can go look for him if he’s not back soon,” Remus suggested and James nodded. Sirius flopped down on one of the couches, and changed the topic to talk about how great the fight had been, telling Remus all about every funny shot that had happened before he turned up. It really did sound like it had been a hilarious fight with Peeves and the unfortunate students who got caught in the crossfire.

As Peter turned up five minutes later, and had indeed run away when he saw Mulciber, Sirius was able to make his teasing jibe and in the ensuing chaos of James whacking him around the head while simultaneously assuring Pete that he didn’t blame him for running off, no one had any time to ask Remus what he’d been off doing earlier. He watched James and Sirius tumble to the floor play wrestling and sighed, settling into the couch quietly.

You worry too much, the wolf whispered in his head.

Do I? What’s the right amount of worry for a twelve year old werewolf huh?

They’re oblivious to what’s right in front of their notice. Pete was gone from that corridor for ages before we got there, and they didn’t even notice he was missing till we’d run all the way back to the tower. You could probably have convinced them you’d been there for the whole fight and they would have believed you.

They’re not that oblivious.

Sure they are.

Well not always, at least.

No, I suppose you’re right. Better safe than dead.

… why do we keep arguing? Shouldn’t you be the one person I’m not arguing with?

But I’m not a person. I think that’s why.

You are though, really.

How can I be? Without you I’m nothing, and with you I’m just a voice and sometimes a monster.

Hey, I’m supposed to be the self-deprecating one, not you!

Well you weren’t doing it so I took a turn.

Okay, maybe you’d be nothing without me, I don’t think I can argue that. But I’d be nothing if my Mum didn’t have me, and that doesn’t stop me being a person.

You wouldn’t stop existing if she died though. I would.

Oh.

Sorry.

I would too though.

Well yeah, you’d be the one dying.

No, if you died. If, on a full moon, you died while turned you wouldn’t turn back into a living human at the end of the night. I don’t even know if you’d turn back into a dead human or just stay a dead wolf.

Okay, so we both die. Yay. Lucky us. The wolf deadpanned.

Moving on, the bit about just being a voice isn’t true either. We haven’t had much chance to try it out with so many people around, but you could control my- our body too.

You just called it your body.

I’m getting used to it. And you’re ignoring the point, you could move it if you were in control. If you weren’t staying hidden so no one noticed, I’d bet you could do all the things I can with our body.

Would you let me though? That’s the real clincher, I’m only in control if you let me be. And you don’t let me, so I’m just a voice.

I let you in front of Madam Pomfrey, you’re in control then.

Maybe that’s why we argue so much in front of her, because we’re fighting for control the whole time.

Maybe… I think she also asks hard questions and we don’t have answers, or we have different answers. When we’re just thinking in here, it’s a little like I’m thinking to myself in my own head, but when we’re talking aloud we’re two totally separate people and that’s really different.

But see, you’ve just called me a voice in your head and a person at the same time. That’s a contradiction.

Is it?

…Oh, I get it.

Good. Let’s argue less now, yeah?

Nah, this is gonna get so much worse now, the wolf was practically crowing.

Remus actually groaned aloud in his exasperation, which startled him and reminded him of his surroundings. The wolf settled back quietly, still emanating smugness, but letting Remus return to his friends.

Sirius and James had finished their wrestling match, and Remus couldn’t tell who had won. They were now filling Peter in on their plan to befriend all the portraits around the school to help in their endeavour to learn all the castle’s secrets. He thought it was a great idea, and started going on about which portraits he liked best (notably those who were fond of chatting to students nostalgically, and often got confused about what year it was, and thought you were some long lost family member or a student they used to teach centuries ago). Remus said his favourite portrait was of Caraxus the Cantankerous because he had a tiny little dog painted with him who farted if you poked him which sent James off into a fit of giggles and caught the attention of an older student who shared a story about a rather ridiculous portrait of a knight in one of the upper towers who challenged everyone who passed to a duel but couldn’t stay on his pony long enough to finish a sentence. The student couldn’t remember his name, or exactly where the painting was located, but she assured the four boys they would have no trouble recognising it if they saw it. The only thing that stopped them from heading off to look for it immediately was the stern look they caught off a prefect, who tapped his watch firmly to make it clear they were not going to be allowed to go out at this hour of the evening.

James

The last morning of the school year was a much more sombre affair than racing through the halls at winter break had been. The four boys made their way slowly downstairs; cloaks hanging off their shoulders, unnecessary in the growing summer warmth. They weren’t quite dragging their feet but it was a near thing. It wasn’t just them, the whole school felt a little heavy. James had seen a group of seventh years crying the day before as they said goodbye to the friends they’d shared a dorm with for almost half their life. He knew this was only the first year and they had six more years together to look forward to and that he should be excited to go home and see his parents and his friends in the village, but James had no energy for anything other than the friends he was about to not see for ten whole weeks.

“Are you sure none of you can come visit?” he asked the other three boys.

“Mum wrote to tell me we’re going to Lisbon for the summer for Dad’s work,” Peter said.

“Right, that’ll be fun I bet. You’ll probably be at the beach the whole time and you’ll turn up in September more brown than me,” James said, aiming for cheerful but ending up somewhere in the realm of daffy.

“I think I’ll probably just be hanging out at home with my mum the whole summer,” Remus put in, “she’s really excited about her gardening plans so I’m sure she’ll put me to work doing that for her.”

James nodded, not pushing for more from Remus on that particular topic.

“Sirius?” he asked, knowing already that he wasn’t going to get a different answer than he’d already heard when they talked the night before just the two of them.

“Oh you know, my social calendar is completely booked, I'm afraid old boy. Tea parties, luncheons and state dinners every day, can’t possibly squeeze even one more in,” Sirius replied, putting on the most overdone congenial, haughty ridiculous accent he could that managed to have James and Peter giggling stupidly for a moment.

“We’ll all write though won’t we?” James asked once he’d regained his voice. The others nodded and all firmly voiced their agreement.

“You’ll get so sick of my letters,” Remus told them all, “I’m a terribly annoying correspondent. I’ll tell you all about whatever book I’m reading and I’ll give you daily blow by blow accounts of exactly how Mum’s plants are growing.”

They all giggled together again briefly and as by this time they’d finally reached the carriages they put off further conversation of goodbyes and instead chatted about what snacks they were going to buy off the food trolley and who was certainly going to win the epic game of exploding snap they planned to play on the train.

Not nearly long enough later, the train was pulling into Platform 9 ¾ and they were hugging each other fiercely and promising that they really would write to each other and they’d see each other on September 1st; and ten weeks couldn’t be as long as it sounded and they’d all be together again before they knew it.

They filed off the train, into the waiting crowd of parents. As he’d done at winter break, Sirius split off first. He walked stiffly over towards a man and woman James hadn’t seen before. The woman was not the same one who’d been there the last time, and the man was also a stranger. When Sirius’ cousin Narcissa joined them, James realised they must be her parents, Sirius’ aunt and uncle. James had no idea what that meant, but he didn’t think it was anything particularly good. Sirius had told him the night before that the only thing he was looking forward to about the summer was seeing his little brother Regulus. James felt a sudden stab of worry that Sirius was going to have to stay with his aunt and uncle the whole summer and not get to see his brother at all. He pulled himself out of his worry to wave to Peter as the other boy went to join his mother who hugged him briefly before tugging him along to their exit from the station.

Then it was just Remus and James left, and they found themselves walking to their parents together, because as he should have probably realised, James’ parents had remembered Hope and Lyall Lupin and had come over to chat to them while they all waited for their children to arrive. When the two boys reached them, they each got enveloped in crushing hugs from their respective parents and then eventually released to give each other one last hug before they really did have to go their separate ways, waving as they went.

James and his parents went through their archway right behind Lily Evans and her mother.

“See ya Evans!” James called to her with a wave as she climbed into a car out on the street in Wolverhampton.

“Not if I see you first Potter,” she called back, waving so he knew she was just teasing.

And then he grabbed the portkey his dad was holding out and a few moments later he was home and his first year at Hogwarts was really and truly over.

Chapter Text

8th August, 1972; a roll of parchment passed back and forth through a hole in the Black brothers’ bedroom walls at Grimmauld Place:

An hour later, a complicated tap on Sirius’ wall alerts him to Regulus’ return:

Note written 10th August, found 23rd August hidden in Dorcas Meadowes' suitcase:

Notes between the Black brothers, 31st August, 1972:

Chapter Text

Regulus

Regulus woke to the gentle prodding of small fingers against his shoulder. When he eventually managed to blink the haze of sleep out of his eyes, Regulus saw Kreacher hovering a little awkwardly at his bedside.

“Kreacher came to say goodbye to Master Regulus,” the elf croaked.

“Is anyone else up yet?” Regulus asked. He glanced towards his window and couldn’t see any hint of light behind the thick curtains.

“Kreacher doesn’t think so, Mistress hasn’t called for him yet.”

“One last sunrise then, Kreach?” Regulus suggested. He held his hand out to Kreacher, and the elf apparated them two floors up and outside onto the roof. Tucked in between two peaks of the attic was a small, flat space that was inaccessible by anything other than elf apparition. Kreacher and Regulus had been coming there in the early mornings for years, to watch the sunrise over London, seeing the city come slowly to life with the hustle of muggles heading off to work in the early morning, lorries delivering goods to the neighbourhood bakeries and cafés, trains rumbling in the distance, and if the wind was blowing the right direction they could sometimes hear the screech of gulls at the docks far in the distance.

This morning they couldn’t hear the gulls, but they did spot a freight train on the brief stretch of track that was visible a couple of streets away. Regulus counted forty seven connected cars as the train ambled past and eventually slipped out of sight.

“I’ll miss this,” Regulus said quietly, sitting perched on the lip of the roof.

“Kreacher will miss Master Regulus too,” the elf said, acknowledging what Regulus wasn’t saying aloud.

They stayed up there for a couple more minutes, before Kreacher’s ears twitched and he grabbed Regulus with no warning and brought them both back to his room with a snap before apparating away again in a second. Walburga must have called for Kreacher.

Regulus hurried to get dressed, and to check that all his things were packed and his room was spotless, before heading downstairs to the breakfast parlour. Sirius followed a little while later, and their father ambled in just as they were finishing. His glance slid over Sirius disinterestedly and landed on Regulus.

“Off to school today aren’t you?” he mused. “I’m sure I can trust that you know better than to disappoint us like your sorry excuse for a brother has done.”

Orion spoke without inflection, no emotion detectable in either his voice or his face. There was no way to tell whether he was aiming to threaten or to reassure Regulus with his words. He didn’t speak again, turning away from both brothers and focusing his attention fully on his plate of food and the newspaper he flicked open with his wand.

Regulus and Sirius walked upstairs together, close enough that their shoulders brushed. Regulus drew comfort from it, remembering their conversation of the night before. They brushed their teeth together in the bathroom before splitting off into their bedrooms to collect their trunks and head back downstairs.

The ride to King’s Cross Stations was quieter than it had been the previous year. Apparently Walburga didn’t think Regulus needed the same lecture his older brother had, or maybe she was simply being careful not to repeat anything that could have been influential in Sirius’ sorting. She guided them firmly through the barrier and up to the train. They loaded their trunks on, and Regulus turned to say goodbye. Sirius stayed resolutely on the train, looking anywhere but at their mother.

“Goodbye Regulus,” Walburga said stiffly.

“Goodbye Mother,” he replied. Then she stepped back and a moment later was lost to the crowd of families.

“C’mon Reggie,” Sirius called from where he stood a few steps away in the train doorway, “let’s go find everyone.”

“I don’t know if I should,” Regulus hesitated.

“What do you mean? You’re not gonna go sit with our stuffy cousins or something are you?” Sirius asked.

“That’s what I should do.” Regulus shrunk, collapsing his shoulders down. He watched Sirius’ eyes, waiting for rejection or spite to flash into them, but it never did.

“I’d like you to meet my friends, but you don’t have to,” Sirius told him. He laid a hand gently on Regulus’ shoulder, guiding him to straighten up and look him in the eye.

“Okay, I’ll come. I want to ask Remus if he has the next book he told you about in the hobbit stories.”

Sirius laughed, “of course that’s your top priority, getting your hands on more books. Come on then, let’s go. We’ve got a carriage down the other end of the train.”

The brothers made their way down the still mostly empty train to end up in a compartment that Sirius explained he and his friends had claimed as theirs the previous year. He showed Regulus where they had carved their initials into the wall.

Just as Regulus was putting his things away and making himself comfortable he was startled by a sudden swooping movement in his periphery that was accompanied by a distant clattering noise. The swooping thing turned out to be an overly friendly owl that seemed to be attempting to hug Sirius with its wings and the clattering made itself apparent in the form of a dishevelled boy who tumbled into the compartment with a cry of “Sirius!”

Regulus watched chaos ensue, as the two boys launched themselves at each other with the owl trapped between them. The three tumbled to the ground, the owl quickly wriggling its way out of the mess of limbs and flapping briefly over to Regulus. It landed gently on his lap and cocked its head at him curiously, ruffling its feathers. He cautiously stretched a hand out towards it and was rewarded with a quiet beak click as it rubbed its head against his fingers.

Sirius and the other boy were still doing some strange amalgamation of hugging and wrestling when another boy entered the compartment quietly. He had blonde hair that stood out starkly against his patchy brown skin, clearly tanned from a summer spent in the sun. He grinned at the boys on the ground as he walked in, carefully stepping around them to reach a seat, then appeared almost frightened when he glanced up and noticed Regulus. The owl peered at the newcomer but showed no desire to leave its current perch on Regulus’ lap.

“Hello,” Regulus said politely, putting on the smile he had practised with Kreacher. It was not quite as intense as the grin Sirius would give to people, but it was nicer than the haughty look his mother imparted, or at least Regulus had thought it was. He wasn’t so sure now, as the boy just stared at him without replying.

Regulus’ words gathered Sirius’ attention though, and in a few moments he had disentangled himself from the boy on the floor and seen the newcomer.

“Pete! Hi!” Sirius grinned. He turned to Regulus then, saying “this is Pete and James is the idiot on the floor. And I see you’ve made friends with Weebles already. This is my baby bro, Regulus guys.”

Pete looked only slightly less frightened, but he smiled at Sirius. And James hauled himself off the floor and offered his hand to Regulus to shake.

“Hi Regulus,” he said, and shook hands vigorously when Regulus took his.

“Hello James, it’s nice to meet you,” Regulus replied. “Is this your owl?” he asked, one hand still stroking its head.

“Yeah! That’s Weebles, she’s the best isn’t she?”

“She’s lovely,” Regulus agreed. She was in fact doing a marvellous job of helping him stay calm amidst the nerves of meeting Sirius’ friends for the first time. It was grounding to feel her feathers under his fingers and her firm weight nestled in his lap.

James set about putting his trunk away and settling in, chatting a mile a minute to no one in particular about what he’d been doing over the summer. He rambled on about a whole host of strange things that Regulus didn’t quite understand but which were clearly muggle pastimes. James seemed to live in a muggle town or village, but Regulus knew the Potters were purebloods, as were the Pettigrews, which he was pretty confident was Peter’s family name. The Pettigrews had never been in the sacred twenty eight, originating from some halfblood blending but returning to pureblood ways in recent generations. The Potters were one of the oldest families in Britain though, tracing lineage back to the Peverells through marriage with one of the last daughters of that family. They had still been in the sacred twenty eight at least as recently as Regulus’ great grandparents time he thought, remembering something about Dorea Black marrying Charlus Potter fairly recently on their family tree. But somewhere since then they had forcefully ejected themselves, refusing to attend gatherings or observe any of the many other traditions that came part in parcel with that community. This must explain James’ familiarity with muggle life.

Shortly before the train was due to leave at 11am, the last of Sirius’ dormmates made his way into the compartment. Remus Lupin was notably more graceful in his entrance than either James or Peter had been. In fact, Regulus knew someone was coming before he walked in, not because of any advance noise but because Sirius’ attention was pulled away from James to the empty doorway as if by a magnet. Remus entered quietly and grinned at everyone. “Oh don’t stop your fascinating tales on my account James,” he smirked, his voice lilting with the curvature of a Welsh accent. He lifted his trunk easily into the luggage rack and sat himself comfortably down right next to Sirius, so close their shoulders were surely squished against each other.

James laughed and stretched his leg out to gently kick Remus’ knee in greeting, then went right back into the middle of whatever he’d been saying.

Remus turned to smile at Regulus, somehow leaning even closer to Sirius as he did so. “You must be Regulus, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Remus,” he said.

“Hello Remus,” Regulus returned, and he felt himself smiling right back at him in something that was far closer to Sirius’ enthusiastic grin than he’d meant it to be. As their eyes met, Remus’ almost seemed to flicker gold for half a second, and as they did Regulus felt the magic in his fingertips tingle in recognition of something he himself couldn’t pinpoint. He carefully filed the feeling away to dwell on later.

“I was wondering,” he forced himself to ask, pushing past his nerves, “do you happen to have the next book by Mr Tolkien? The one you told Sirius about in your letters? Only, he let me read the first one you sent and I’m desperate to find out what comes next. Does Bilbo go on any more adventures, what happens with that ring he found? There’s got to be something to that right?-” Regulus cut himself off as he realised with embarrassment that he had begun to ramble.

Remus just grinned at him, “The Lord of the Rings? Yeah I’ve got it in my bag if you want to borrow it? There are three volumes, the first one is the Fellowship of the Ring.”

“So I was right about the ring being important!” Regulus couldn’t stop himself from exclaiming.

“Yep,” Remus laughed, reaching into his bag and pulling out a large book to hand over to Regulus.

After that Regulus was completely lost to the other occupants of the compartment. He read for the entire train journey, only stopping briefly to buy some snacks off the trolley that came around, and to change into his robes when Sirius literally threw them at him. He was vaguely aware of James and Sirius shouting at each other at random moments, and of Remus’ calm voice bringing them back down, but he was so utterly absorbed in the adventures of Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin, that nothing else penetrated until the train jerked to a stop in Hogsmeade and he had no option but to stop reading.

“Thank you for letting me borrow this,” he said, trying to hand the book back to Remus.

“You can keep it till you’ve finished it,” Remus told him, pushing his outstretched hand away.

“I’d better not,” Regulus sighed, “if someone in my dorm sees it I’ll get in trouble.”

“What do you mean?” James asked, butting into the conversation suddenly.

“It’s a muggle book,” Regulus said simply.

“Why’s that a problem?” James asked, but Remus nodded understandingly and took it from Regulus.

Regulus didn’t have to explain himself to James, as they were all swept up in the crowd of students exiting the train at that moment. On the platform, Regulus heard a call of “Firs’ years over ‘ere!” coming from a massive man who looked like he probably had some giant blood in him. He spared one last look at Sirius, who reached out and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. “Whatever you want,” he mouthed at Regulus before he let him go and turned in the opposite direction towards where the mass of students were all heading.

Regulus walked over to the quickly gathering group of other first years, straightening his shoulders and mentally pulling tight the strings of his mask. He recognised two boys he’d met at pureblood gatherings, and made his way over to greet them. “Crouch, Rosier,” he said, putting on the exact haughty tone and look his mother had drilled into him.

“Black,” they both replied, nodding curtly. “Didn’t see you on the train,” Crouch said.

“I got on quite early, and didn’t fancy wading my way through the mud once we were going, I had a clean, quiet compartment so it didn’t seem worth it for potentially better company,” Regulus replied. The words were subtly nasty, and they tasted like ash on their way out of his mouth, but they kept him safe from suspicion and that was more important right now.

They followed the half-giant, who introduced himself as the groundskeeper Hagrid, and ended up on the lakeshore opposite Hogwarts castle. The view was breathtaking, even to the pureblood snobs, and Regulus found himself wishing he could call Kreacher to enjoy it with him.

Hagrid guided them into a group of small row boats and they were soon making their way across the lake. At one point Rosier got very excited and pointed into the lake, catching sight of a flock of grindylow. The trip was otherwise uneventful, with no sighting of the giant squid Sirius had told Regulus about, and they were soon disembarking and heading inside the entrance hall of Hogwarts where they were met by Professor McGonagall who reminded them (or told them for the first time in the case of the muggleborns, Regulus supposed) about the sorting and the four houses. And then, with no further preamble, they were being led into the great hall in front of all the staff and students and the sorting hat was singing about the founders and the house traits. And after a very few ‘A’ and ‘B’ names, Professor McGonagall called out “Black, Regulus” and he had no choice but to walk up to that stool and put on that hat and await his fate.

“Ah, hello there young Master Black,” purred a quiet voice in his ear. “I’d like to be put in Sly- Slytherin please,” Regulus thought, stuttering over the name of the house he didn’t really want to be in.

“Hmm, you’ve some clever ideas in here…” the hat mused, all but ignoring Regulus’ attempts at mental conversation.

“Please, I need to be in Slytherin. They’ll-” Regulus tried to stop the thought from reaching completion, but the hat could surely tell what he was trying to avoid.

“Hurt you?” the hat prodded, finally acknowledging Regulus only to confirm his failure at controlling his thoughts. Regulus gave up on conversation attempts and just let his thoughts exist: nervous and panicky, chaotic and disorganised. The hat went quiet, seeming perhaps to just be listening for a while.

Eventually its echoey tones reverberated through Regulus’ head again, “I think on the whole you will hurt less for this choice. For your parents are not the only ones who can hurt you, you know? You can hurt yourself far more effectively than they ever could, and I’m quite sure if I let you go where you’re so pitifully begging then that will be the end result. And I don’t want that on my conscience.”

“No, wait!” Regulus cried aloud in a last attempt to stop the inevitable, his eyes snapping open a moment before the hat announced its decision to see the hall full of students staring at him in confusion. And then…

“RAVENCLAW!” the hat shouted.

Numb and horrified, Regulus slipped the hat off his head and dropped it to the floor. He walked like a ghost to the table under the blue and bronze banners. The students at the table clapped politely, and an older student wearing a prefect badge gestured for Regulus to sit next to her.

“I’m Pandora Alinac, one of your prefects. It’s nice to meet you Regulus,” she said, smiling gently at him.

It took him a moment to find his voice, but eventually he managed to choke out, “n- nice to meet you too.”

“You weren’t expecting to be in Ravenclaw were you?” she asked, and Regulus shook his head sadly.

“I remember the stir your brother created at his sorting last year, he seems quite proud of you if the look on his face is anything to go by,” she mused.

Regulus’ eyes jerked up, searching the crowd of Gryffindors across the hall till he met his brother’s silver gaze. Sirius wasn’t grinning his normal enthusiastic grin, but he was looking pointedly at Regulus with a small smile and a tenseness in his eyebrows. He cocked his head in a silent question, and Regulus shrugged in reply. Turning his gaze back to Pandora beside him, he caught another set of eyes on his way that made him pause. Narcissa was watching from the Slytherin table and when she saw she’d caught his attention she also smiled at him before picking up her goblet to drink from. It was unmistakable what the gesture meant though: a subtle toast, a show of alliance to him. As he finally returned his gaze to Pandora, he found he was able to smile back at her. It was a very small smile but it was there.

“That’s better,” she encouraged, “you’ll be feeling right at home with us in no time I’m sure.”

It felt like it took an age for the rest of the first years to be sorted, and then for everyone to eat their fill of all the food that had been provided. Then Professor Dumbledore apparently felt the need to make the start of term announcements in the slowest way imaginable with all sorts of strange tangents, but finally Pandora was leading Regulus and a handful of other Ravenclaw first years out of the hall and up many flights of stairs to their common room.

They arrived at a simple door with an eagle door knocker, which spoke when Pandora knocked on it.

“Is a hippogriff more horse, eagle or lion?”

“What do you all think?” Pandora asked, turning to the group of first years. Most of them just stared at her in bewilderment.

“My cousin told me about this,” a girl from the back piped up, “you have to answer a riddle to get into the tower and it’s different every time.”

“Simply put, you’re correct,” Pandora agreed, “however the questions are not riddles exactly. A riddle is something that includes the answer in the question and the challenge is to find it. The questions the knocker asks are more philosophical and there are many acceptable ways to answer. So have a think now and shout out any ideas you have. The knocker will let us know when it hears one it likes.”

Regulus watched the other students bounce ideas off each other, but didn’t offer a contribution. He had an answer to the question, but to admit that would be to accept being in Ravenclaw and he wasn’t quite ready for that. Older students began to arrive and grow impatient with waiting for the first years to come up with a solution, but Pandora stood her ground, quietly reminding the older students that they had all had their first turn once and it was important to let the new students work this out.

Eventually, when after a quarter of an hour no one had managed to come up with an answer that got the door to open, Regulus gave in and stepped quietly up to the door.

“To reduce an entity of magic to the sum of its parts is to undo its majesty and to make it lesser, it is more hippogriff than horse, eagle or lion,” he practically whispered.

“A considered answer, nicely put,” the knocker said, startling the crowd as the door finally swung open.

“Who got the answer?” an older boy near the front asked vaguely, but no one seemed to have noticed it had been Regulus.

Pandora led the first years over to two staircases, and told them which was the girls’ and which was the boys’. “Head right up to the top, the last doors on each staircase are the first year dorms,” she finished and almost everyone rushed off.

“Nice answer,” she called to Regulus as he was about to follow the other boys upstairs.

“Oh- um… thanks,” he said, pausing for a moment.

“You worked that out right away didn’t you?” Pandora asked.

“Sort of, I guess,” he mumbled.

“It’s okay to be shy, you know.”

“I’m not. It wouldn’t be smart to show off that I fit in in Ravenclaw, people might get the wrong idea,” he explained matter of factly.

Pandora looked like she was about to ask something complicated but she was interrupted by the common room portrait opening to admit someone who was very definitely not a Ravenclaw.

“Oh good, I’ve caught you before you went up to bed,” Narcissa Black called as she walked over.

“Hello Narcissa. We weren’t expecting a visitor,” Pandora said, moving her body slightly in front of Regulus.

“Well that was silly of you wasn’t it Alinac,” Narcissa sneered, displaying her trademark Black look. “Now Reg,” she went on smoothly, “I’ve brought parchment and a quill. Why don’t we find somewhere to sit and we can work on your letter home together.”

“My letter home?” he asked, bewildered.

“Yes, of course. And here I thought Ravenclaws were supposed to be smart,” Narcissa sighed exaggeratedly.

“Well they do say book smarts don’t always translate, and we Ravenclaws are really more interested in the theoretical,” Pandora said, calmly interjecting into the conversation again, despite Narcissa’s obvious attempts to push her out.

“Pity,” Narcissa said, “let me spell it out for you then. My aunt and uncle will likely be hearing even now about Regulus’ unfortunate sorting, and so the sooner he can send a letter explaining the situation the better the outcome.”

“Oh,” Regulus gasped, finally cottoning on. The letter home that Narcissa was talking about would be a fiction, aimed to avert a full blown crisis and to salvage what was remaining of his parents’ tolerance.

“Yeah,” Narcissa agreed, nodding at him sympathetically.

“Any ideas?” he asked, walking around Pandora to reach a nearby table. She let him move, but followed and sat down on the far side, leaving space for Narcissa to join them.

“That hat spends all year in Dumbledore’s office, who’s to say it hasn’t picked up on the grudge he has against your father?”

“Professor Dumbledore has a grudge against father?” Regulus asked.

“Probably. Most people have a grudge against Uncle Orion,” Narcissa smirked.

“True,” Regulus sniggered.

“You could tell them you managed to argue the hat down from Gryffindor to Ravenclaw,” Pandora suggested.

“How does them thinking he was almost sorted into Gryffindor help? That’ll just make them angrier,” Narcissa argued.

“Think about it though,” Pandora mused, “is this grudge the hat has picked up on new? Or could it also explain why Sirius ended up in Gryffindor? Perhaps Dumbledore’s goal was to get all of Orion’s children in his most hated house, to steal them away from him? But if Regulus was cunning enough to argue his way into Ravenclaw, that’s almost a win against Dumbledore for the Blacks… And it could even help improve their opinion of Sirius if they think him ending up in Gryffindor was a conspiracy,” Pandora explained.

“Huh, you actually are kind of smart,” Narcissa said, drenching her words in tones of surprise intended to bury an insult in the compliment.

Pandora was either oblivious or didn’t care because she just smiled and thanked Narcissa.

With their help, Regulus wrote a short letter to his parents, and then sent it with Narcissa’s owl which she called in with a whistle from one of the tower windows.

“Won’t they know you helped me write the letter?” Regulus doubted.

“They’ll know I’m on your side, and that’s a positive connection. It shows I’m not shunning you, and I lead a lot of the social opinion in Slytherin so that’s power in your court.”

Regulus submitted to Narcissa’s assurances, and she left shortly after. Pandora sent him up to bed then, wishing him a good night’s sleep.

At the top of the staircase, Regulus opened the last door hesitantly. It had taken quite a while to write the letter to his parents, and he was a little worried about whether everyone would have made friends without him or if they might even all be asleep already.

He needn’t have worried though. As soon as he cracked the door open he was met with the sound of conversation and suddenly the door was pulled all the way open from the other side and he was yanked inside by a pair of hands belonging to a cheerful boy.

“We’ve been waiting for you to finally come up!” the boy explained, leading Regulus over to a group of seven other boys sitting on the floor in the middle of the room.

“I’m Benjy Fenwick,” the boy introduced himself, and the others all followed suit, introducing themselves briefly. Regulus recognised a couple of their names as pureblood. He was pretty sure Cyril Plaskett was a distant relative somewhere on the French side of his family, and Camden Knowles was from one of the newer English lines.

“Regulus Black, I didn’t exactly expect to end up here,” Regulus introduced himself to the circle last.

“Why’s that?” Ian Loughty asked.

“Blacks are always in Slytherin,” Atticus Oversby whispered from beside him. He must be a halfblood, Regulus surmised, to know that.

“Not always,” Cyril put in. “Your older brother’s in Gryffindor right?” he asked Regulus.

Regulus nodded, “Sirius was the first to break the trend. It doesn’t make it any more acceptable that I did too though.”

“Well anyway, we were waiting to pick beds till everyone was here,” Benjy said.

“We were thinking we could do a random draw out of a hat, or we could each put forth an argument for the bed we want and see who has the most compelling one,” Camden added.

“We could also split the room up by who likes to stay up late or get up early,” Regulus suggested, “and there’s preferred room temperature to consider too, so we should think about whoever likes it cooler being near the window and those who like it warmer being near the fire.”

“I snore,” put in Ian.

“There’s a spell for that, my little brother Cass snores and mum’s always doing it for him” Cyril told Ian.

“Oh cool! I didn’t even think of that,” he grinned.

They discussed various sleeping arrangements for probably much longer than was necessary, but in the end everyone was pretty happy with where they’d ended up. Regulus, of course, ended up with exactly the bed he wanted, right by the window with a view out towards the mountains. As he lay in bed on the edge of sleep he wondered to himself if it was latent Slytherin traits that he’d used to manipulate his dorm mates into giving him the bed he wanted, or if it was Black family training that forced the skills into him. Or perhaps it wasn’t much of either. After all, if he’d been in the Slytherin dorms tonight, he would have taken the bed he wanted and dared anyone else to defy him. But what would have gained him respect in Slytherin, would have only lost him potential allies in Ravenclaw.

Chapter Text

Sirius

Sirius watched anxiously as the sorting hat deliberated over Regulus’ house for an agonisingly long time. And then heard along with the whole hall as Regulus protested aloud a moment before the Sorting hat shouted out, “Ravenclaw!” and sent him on his way to the other side of the hall from where everyone had surely expected him to be going. Sirius ignored the chatter of his friends around him as he stared intensely at Regulus until finally his brother looked over and gave a small shrug when he caught his eye. Sirius had to be satisfied with their silent exchange as he knew he wouldn’t get a chance to speak to Regulus again this evening.

“Did you have any idea he might not be in Slytherin?” James asked when he turned his attention back to the Gryfindor table.

“He was worried about it,” Sirius told him.

“Are your parents going to be mad about it?” Peter asked, his eyes darting towards the Ravenclaw table and back.

“He’ll be okay, you’ll look after him,” Remus said, bumping his shoulder against Sirius’ as he spoke.

“Yeah, I will!” Sirius agreed vehemently.

“We all will,” James nodded.

Sirius couldn’t help but notice that Peter looked a little tense at James’ words. But as the platters around them filled with food at that very moment, he brushed it off and had forgotten entirely by the time they were heading up to bed.

The four boys found their way up to their dorms from last year, where their trunks were waiting for them. Kiaan and Aiden were bickering over who got the window bed in their room across the hall, and Frank was rolling his eyes trying not to laugh as he watched them throwing blankets and clothes from one bed to the other in a ridiculous unending cycle.

“Are any of you planning to fight me for the window bed in here?” Remus asked the room at large, grinning cheekily.

“No way!” James laughed, “you’re welcome to it, cold draught and all.”

“Oh I dunno, it is farther away from Pete’s snoring so I may be tempted,” Sirius said.

“But Pete’s gonna learn that nose silencing charm this term aren’t you?” James asked, and Peter nodded rapidly.

“Well there you go Rem, you’re safe after all,” Sirius teased. His chest squeezed when he saw the other boy grin back at him happily.

They all eventually settled into their own beds, and as Sirius lay waiting for sleep he found himself wondering how Reg was doing with his new dorm mates in the tower on the other side of the castle. He got halfway into plotting what he would do to any of Reg’s dorm mates if they weren’t nice to him before realising that was maybe a bit over the top. His mind wandered down happier avenues as he thought over everything that had happened today, sitting on the train with all his friends, eating together, laughing and play-fighting and teasing. He’d known he missed them all over the summer, but until he saw them again it hadn’t hit him just how much. He’d nearly cried when he saw Remus walk through the compartment door, and had probably only been saved from that embarrassing fate by the other boy immediately invading his personal space and not leaving his side the entire train journey.

The next morning at breakfast, Sirius somehow expected to see Regulus sitting alone or being berated by one of their Slytherin relatives. It was quite a surprise to find him in the midst of a large group of Ravenclaws, chatting away as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Sirius decided not to interrupt him then, but he did seek him out at morning break.

“How are you?” he asked, once he’d gotten Regulus alone.

“Fine,” Regulus answered.

“How are you really?” Sirius insisted.

“Fine,” Regulus repeated.

“You’re telling me you’re just completely fine all of a sudden? After you were so worried about this exact thing happening?” Sirius asked, disbelief colouring his tone.

Regulus sighed. “I’m not ‘completely’ fine Siri, but it’s not awful,” he explained.

“Go on,” Sirius prompted, causing Regulus to sigh again.

“Cissa helped me write to Mother and Father. I told them the sorting hat mentioned Dumbledore wanting me in Gryffindor, and that I’d talked it down to Ravenclaw. Cissa reckons they might even believe both our sorting’s are Dumbledore’s fault if we’re lucky.”

“Trust Cissa to always have a scheme in mind,” Sirius snorted.

“Yes, well, I hope it works.”

“And actually being in Ravenclaw, how does that feel?”

“Weird. Good, I think. Everyone’s friendly, I’m not sure I like it.”

Sirius couldn’t help the laugh that escaped, but he controlled it quickly at the glare he got from Regulus. “Sorry! It’s just, that’s exactly how I felt in Gryffindor at the start. I couldn’t believe I actually fit in, and no one was comparing family wealth to determine who got the best seat by the fire or anything.”

“Hmm,” Regulus agreed. “You got used to it though?” he asked hopefully.

“Mostly, and you will too, I promise,” Sirius assured him.

They didn’t get to talk anymore after that as the bell rang for their next classes just then and they had to rush off in opposite directions, Sirius to transfiguration and Regulus to potions. But at least Sirius had had his biggest worries assuaged for now and he could join his friends with a smile that was genuine. Over the following couple of weeks he continued to watch Regulus closely, and check in with him when he could, but he didn’t notice any hints that his brother was unhappy with his sorting. He seemed to have made friends with several of the other Ravenclaws in his year as well as with an older girl who wore the fifth year prefect badge. And no awful howlers came from their parents, at least not that Sirius got wind of, so that was something to be thankful for.

Remus

Mate! Mate! Mate! The wolf chanted in his head, as Remus walked down the train corridor towards the compartment he knew his friends were already gathered, waiting for the Hogwarts Express to depart. He caught a hint of a familiar scent and felt the excitement bubble inside him as he resisted the urge to break into a run.

That would not be cool! He berated either himself or the wolf internally, he couldn’t tell which. He held his calm and very soon was able to reward himself by entering the compartment and sitting down exactly where he wanted, squished snuggly against Sirius’ side. He greeted his friends as he came in, before turning to the newcomer to their group. He was in no doubt as to who the boy was. Everything about him screamed Sirius in miniature from his hair to his scent. As he greeted the other boy with a smile, he felt the wolf slip out for a fraction of a second, with the self-assured thought, pack , ringing in his mind. He was distracted quickly by Regulus asking about the Lord of the Rings books, and then by James and Sirius drawing him into their conversation. Remus spent the train ride happily glued to Sirius’ side. He resisted the urge to lean his head on the other boy’s shoulder, but it was a close thing once or twice. He was just so ridiculously relieved to be around him again after so many months apart. Sirius didn’t complain about Remus’ limpet-like behaviour though, so that was something.

Through dinner and the rest of the evening, Remus stayed close to Sirius, though no longer physically touching him once they had all left the train, and he relished in the comfort of doing so. He was happy to be around all his friends again, including the other first years who he chatted to over dinner and on their way up to bed. They were all going on about their summer adventures and about how excited they were to be back at school after the months away. Remus, of course, had been at the castle much more recently than everyone else. Not that he could tell anyone, and admittedly he hadn’t done much more than go from Professor McGonagall’s fireplace to the hospital wing and then the shack and back each visit. It was nice to enter Gryffindor tower, and feel the warmth of the fire wash over him.

Like we’d ever actually give up the window bed, the wolf sniggered as Remus joked with his dorm mates, before tucking himself snuggly in. You would if Sirius asked Remus retorted.

I’d share, the wolf corrected, and Remus had to pass off his shocked laugh as a bout of coughing.

Remus and the wolf had spent a lot of time alone over the summer. They had read books and gone adventuring along the cliffs, and helped Hope in the garden as they always used to do, but there were still hours and hours left for them to fill with nothing other than their thoughts. Those hours were anything but boring however, and the result was a Remus and Wolf who were somehow both more in sync and more separate from each other than before. The wolf often napped while Remus read, and had almost no interest in make believe and fantasy stories. Remus on the other hand had let the wolf take the lead on their adventures, learning the difference between his human and wolf bodies quickly and becoming braver and taking more risks than Remus would have dared. They never fell when the wolf was guiding them though, not even when they climbed down nearly vertical cliffs in order to reach secluded coves.

Remus had learnt to make sure he was always fully in control when his father was around though. The wolf still held a strong grudge for the silver incident from Christmas, and would grumble and gripe in the back of Remus’ head whenever Lyall was nearby. It made it challenging for Remus to know what his own feelings about his father were, as his fond childhood memories contended with the wolf’s dislike. There was also the fact that his father had never apologised for hurting him, or for the ongoing pain the silver burns had caused while they healed. When Remus tried asking the wolf to be quiet for a bit so he could work out his own feelings the wolf pointedly refused and just got louder in his internal dislike. So that Remus could never fully disentangle his view of his father from the wolf’s curtain of dislike.

It made Remus wonder, during the few moments he had alone now that he was back in the bustle of school life, whether his view of Sirius was similarly clouded by the wolf’s feelings. Did I miss him this much or did you? He asked the wolf when it first crossed his mind.

I dunno, me definitely but maybe you too.

What about James and Pete? Did you miss them too? They’re my best friends also.

They’re not my mate. I did miss them though. I’m sure I’d miss them more if you let me talk to them.

Now you want to tell James and Pete as well as Sirius! Are you completely mad? Do you want to get me expelled?

Yes, that is obviously my dream, to get kicked out and never see Sirius again…

Oh very funny.

You’re the one making the joke.

Ugh.

You like me, don’t try to pretend otherwise.

I do not. You are annoying and you slobber and you leave your hair all over everything.

Excuse me! I am not a dog! I do not slobber.

Remus giggled aloud and then had to try to come up with something on the spot to explain it away to Lily who was studying next to him in the library at the time. It wasn’t the last time he and the wolf talked about Sirius, or about slobber for that matter. They jibed and bickered and theorised and pondered, in and out of sync with each other and much less precious with their sensibilities after a whole summer of practise. Though they did pause the worst of their internal antics to each other as the full moon got close, even mental noise grating on Remus’ overstressed senses. It helped having Sirius around again, and Remus felt better than he had during any of the summer full moons. As usual, the day of the full moon he begged off after his last class of the day, telling his friends he was heading away to visit his mum and enjoining them not to throw any exciting pranks without him.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Sirius said, winking.

“Tell your mum hi, and I hope she’s doing okay,” James told him, something that might be concern showing on his face as he waved Remus out the dormitory door.

Chapter Text

Lily

“Aaaaaaaalice!” Lily yelled, taking off down the platform when she caught sight of her friend. The girl in question turned around just in time to catch Lily and stagger back instead of getting knocked flat to the ground by her excitement.

“How are you? How was the rest of your trip? Have you seen any of the others yet?” Lily asked in a rush, squeezing Alice in a death hug.

Alice laughed and hugged her back, saying, “I’m good. The rest of my trip was great! I saw Sirius getting on the train  with a kid who I think might be his brother, but they didn’t stop to say hi and I haven’t seen anyone else yet.”

“Ooh, that must be Regulus. Sirius said he’d be starting this year.”

“How was your summer, Lils? Did you get your nose out of your books at all? Alice teased.”

“Mum took me and Tuney on a girl’s weekend to Brighton, and we did a couple of day trips to see my grandparents and stuff. Oh there’s Mary!” Lily waved frantically at another of their friends, who came over with a young boy hanging shyly off her arm.

“Hi Lily! Alice!” Mary greeted them. “This is Tim,” she said, lifting the hand her little brother was clutching to make him wave awkwardly at them.

“Hi Tim,” Lily grinned, waving back. “Have you got any frogs today?” she asked him, and was pleased to hear him giggle as he shook his head in answer.

“Mum and Dad let him come to the platform this year, since he’s the only one not going to Hogwarts yet and it didn’t feel fair to make him stay home,” Mary explained. Lily felt a twinge of guilt then that she hadn’t even thought to ask Petunia if she wanted to come to the station this time.

Mary’s parents followed their daughter over along with their other son, and Lily’s dad seemed to have finally caught up to her helter skelter run as he hovered nearby with her trunk. The adults helped the three girls and Mary’s brother Lucas load their trunks onto the train and then they all hopped back off for goodbyes. It was getting close to 11 o’clock so they didn’t have time to look for Marlene or any of their other friends now, that would have to wait till they were on the train. Lily kissed her dad on the cheek, and he whispered that he loved her and would see her at Christmas. He slipped a wrapped parcel into her hand saying it was from her mum, and waved as she climbed back onto the train with her friends just as the whistle blew.

“Ooh, I’ve got a bingo square,” Alice cheered, pointing through the steam down the platform where Lily could just make out a figure running and leaping madly to make it onto the train.

“You had ‘someone nearly misses the train’?” Mary asked.

“Yep,” Alice grinned.

“Are you playing bingo?” Lucas piped up. The girls explained about the bingo game they were playing with the other Gryffindor second years, and each of them showed Lucas their cards with all the weird things he might see happen at Hogwarts.

In the midst of that Hakim popped by to catch up, and offered to take Lucas and introduce him to his cousin who was also a first year. Mary went off with them, and came back a little while later without Lucas but with Marlene and Dorcas and a couple of others so their compartment ended up crowded and loud, rather like an impromptu party. Around the middle of the day Lily remembered the package from her mum and opened it to find a tin of homemade chocolate brownies which she shared with everyone. In what felt like no time at all they were pulling into Hogsmeade station and scrambling to pack up sweets and games and make their way into the carriages and up to the school.

* * *

Lily was prepared for Severus to be a little weird again now they were back to school, but it was even worse than she expected. They’d spent a fair bit of the summer hanging out just the two of them, and during those afternoons sitting under the trees on the edge of their local playground neither of them had talked about their other friends. They hadn’t even really talked about Hogwarts much, only sometimes when they decided to do their homework and something came up about one class or another. Lily had tried to find the right time to have a proper conversation with Severus about being nicer to her other friends, but it had just never felt like a good moment to bring it up and Lily was worried that Severus would think she liked her other friends better than him or something silly like that. Now that school had started back Lily really wished she’d found some Gryffindor courage and had the awkward conversation after all.

Severus spent most of their first Potions lesson of the year complaining that Lily had been ignoring him. He was annoyed that she hadn’t sat with him on the train, and got pretty snappy when she explained that she’d wanted to catch up with her friends since she hadn’t seen them all summer and she’d spent all that time hanging out with him instead. He also didn’t like that she’d spent all her morning tea breaks hanging out with her Ravenclaw friends. Lily didn’t dare mention that she had also spent the evening before studying with Hakim in the library. Instead, she invited Severus to join their group for morning tea the next week.

After that, Severus started turning up all the time when Lily was hanging out with her other friends. Lily was happy to see him at first, but when her other friends started to drift away every time Severus got near she started to get quite frustrated about it all. Severus made no effort to be nice to anyone, aside from Lily, so of course they didn’t want to hang out with him. And now that he was around all the time this meant Lily barely got to hang out with her other friends except for in the Gryffindor common room in the late evenings. She hardly saw Dorcas or Hakim at all, since they had to be back in Ravenclaw tower for curfew. Her homework was also suffering, because while Severus was a great potions partner he wasn’t nearly as helpful when it came to history of magic and Lily was really missing her theoretical discussions with Hakim.

It all came to a head in the last week of October, when Lily told him she would be busy that Friday evening because it was Sirius’ birthday.

“Why does that scum’s birthday mean we can’t hang out? Severus sneered.

“Sirius is my friend Sev, you know that,” Lily told him tightly, “I didn’t complain when you were busy last week with that Slytherin house meeting or whatever it was.”

“Friend!? How can you be friends with someone who bullies me?” Severus hissed, his voice raising slightly above appropriate library volume and making Lily look around for Madam Pince hurriedly.

“I don’t like the pranks he and his friends pull on Slytherin, and I’ve told him that many times. But Severus, no one’s perfect. Your friends are horrible to everyone in Gryffindor, and that doesn’t stop me being friends with you.”

“Ugh that’s just common house rivalry, you know that,” Severus scoffed. “Potter and Black target me, and pull pranks to hide it. Black tripped me down a flight of stairs last week. I could have broken my neck, and he just laughed. That’s not a prank Lily.”

“And I heard you called his little brother a freak right before that,” Lily said coldly.

“He is a freak,” Severus muttered.

“Don’t Sev!” Lily cried angrily, “why do you have to be so nasty to everyone I like? I’m sick of it. And I’m sick of making excuses for you to them. You know what, I’m going to be busy for the rest of this week actually. I’ll see you in potions.

And she stormed out of the library, dodging past Madam Pince on her way.

Lily held her tears in until she reached her dorm, but as soon as she’d thrown herself onto her bed the sobs tore their way out of her. Only Alice was there, and it took her a while to soothe Lily enough to work out what had happened.

“If Marlene were here she’d say good riddance,” Alice said once she’d heard the full story.

“But he’s still my friend,” Lily hiccupped.

“I know, which is why I’m not saying good riddance. But I do think you need to work out a more healthy balance, Lils. He can’t have all your time, no one should get to have all your time.”

“But he gets so hurt every time I don’t hang out with him. He feels like I’m excluding him, and I am and that’s horrible.”

“You’re not excluding him Lily, you tried to invite him to hang out with all of us and he was the one who made that a problem, not you. If he wants to spend time with you he has to be nice to the people around you. It’s as simple as that.”

“How do I explain that to him? He’s so socially awkward, it’s hard for him to be in large groups.”

“That’s his problem. I’m sorry Lils, but I think you’re going to have hurt his feelings a little bit. Give him the rest of the week to cool off after this fight, and see if he apologises. But after the week you’re going to have to put your foot down and tell him things are going to change. I’ll help you work out what to say if you like, heck I’ll even come with you for moral support if you want,” Alice said firmly.

“Maybe you’re right, I don’t know Al,” Lily sighed.

“I am right, Lils.”

“What do I say to him then?”

“You tell him that you can’t keep spending all your time with him. You say that you need to split your time evenly between your friends. And that means he gets you every potions lesson, and for a few meals and break times each week. And he has to stop showing up and driving your friends away at other times, like when you’re in the library studying. Hakim and Remus were both saying they’ve missed you recently, Hakim really wanted to talk to you about the latest history of magic essay because none of the rest of us are weirdo’s like you two.”

“I wanted to talk to Hakim about that one too!” Lily groaned, “Sev had no idea what I was on about, and I think I got my worst grade I’ve ever got in history of magic for that essay. I was so embarrassed when Binns handed it back.”

“See! You have to change things, you can’t let Snape hinder your grades. That could be really bad for your future,” Alice said.

Lily nodded forlornly. Alice seemed to decide the conversation was done, because she suddenly jumped up and pulled out her nail polish collection. The evening went better after that, and when Alice came with her the following week to talk to Sev he seemed to accept that he wouldn’t get to see her as much with pretty good grace. He was very contrite and apologetic about his past behaviour actually and Lily felt rather mollified. Their friendship was perhaps more reserved than it had been previously, but Lily consoled herself that she hadn’t broken her promise to herself. She had said they would stay friends and they were staying friends. And that would have to be enough.

James

It was the end of the third week of term when Remus left on his first visit home to see his mum. Remus didn’t seem worried though, cheerfully begging the others not to have any adventures without him on his way out the door. He looked a bit tired, maybe even a little in pain if anything. James tried not to worry himself, remembering the last time he’d meddled in Remus’ visits to his mum. He couldn’t help it though, and as he watched the full moon rise from the common room window that evening he decided enough was enough and he went to find Sirius. He found him up in their dorm working frantically on an essay for Flitwick that was due the next morning.

“Did you only just start that?” James asked as he peered over Sirius’ shoulder.

“Sod off Potter, this is some of my finest work,” Sirius proclaimed.

“I’m sure it is. An absolute masterpiece, no doubt,” James nodded pompously before succumbing to giggles.

Sirius promptly pushed him over onto the bed, and dramatically flung himself on top of him.

“I am a tortured soul James, the Professors do not understand the strife they cause me with these ridiculous narrow assignments that entrap my creativity.”

James just laughed harder.

“All right, just let me finish this last paragraph, then I’m all yours,” Sirius said, pulling himself up again and grabbing his quill to scrawl a few more lines in his fancy calligraphy.

James pulled himself together while Sirius finished off, remembering what he’d come to talk to him about.

“So?” Sirius asked a few minutes later.

“Ummm…” James hesitated.

“Don’t tell me you want to do a prank after we expressly promised Remus not to without him?”

“No no, not a prank. It is sort of about that though.”

“Go on.”

“Well, I know I promised not to bring up Remus’ mum being sick again-”

“You did,” Sirius interrupted firmly, all traces of humour gone from his voice.

“Which is why I’m here to ask your permission instead of just charging straight into it.”

“Alright, fine. What exactly are you asking for permission to do?”

“It’s only been a few weeks since we got back to school, and Remus is already visiting his mum. Doesn’t that seem a little weird to you?”

“He’ll tell us if he wants to talk about it,” Sirius stated.

“It’s not his mum I’m worrying about. It’s Remus,” James explained.

“What about Remus?” Sirius whipped out.

“It might be nothing, but I thought he looked a bit tired or maybe like he had a headache. And I remember him looking like that other times he was going to visit his mum. It just seemed a bit strange, it’s almost as if he’s sick too.”

“He’s probably just stressed about his mum,” Sirius excused, though he looked like he wasn’t sure.

“So no permission to worry then?” James asked dejectedly.

“I… no. Maybe, I don’t know. Find something more, come back when you have better evidence than ‘he looks like he has a headache’ and then maybe you can worry. And don’t say anything to Remus in the meantime okay?”

“Okay,” James agreed. “Thanks Sirius,” he said, giving his friend a hug before heading back out of the dormitory.

James decided it was too late to start anything properly that evening, so he let himself get pulled into a gobstones match with Frank that ended with both of them drenched in stinky gunk and getting shoved in the directions of their respective bathrooms by a pair of annoyed prefects. The following afternoon he took himself off to the library and found himself a comfortable spot at a desk in one of the window nooks. He spread out a roll of parchment and started making notes of everything he remembered about Remus’ past visits to his mum. James remembered the first time, when Remus had been pulled aside after class by Professor McGonagall. Remus had seemed nervous at the time but James didn’t remember him asking any questions, he’d just accepted it and gone with Professor McGonagall. If it had been James getting told his mum was sick he would have probably gone into a full blown panic. James knew that Remus was generally calm in a crisis (as evidenced by the many close calls with pranks where he’d saved them all from detention with his quick thinking), but now that James was analysing everything critically he wondered if Remus hadn’t perhaps been more calm that was natural. Could he have already been expecting the letter? He’d never said anything about his mum’s health before that day though. James added a note about it to his list anyway.

It took James the better part of the afternoon to get his thoughts down, and when he was finished he had two full rolls of parchment covered in what looked rather like the scribblings of a lunatic. At several points he’d gone back and added onto previous notes further up the parchment, cramming words into the margins of his own writing or up the sides, arrows pointing all over the place, and underlined or circled sections standing out from the chaos. Even with all of that, he had no idea what was going on with Remus. He had enough that he’d convinced himself there was definitely some secret that Remus was hiding, but little more than that. And he didn’t think he’d be able to convince anyone else to get on board with it. He would have to pay extra close attention to Remus over the next couple of months to see if he could determine any kind of pattern that might point him in the right direction.

And so, when Remus returned to school the following day, James began his first real entry in his journal, now dubbed the ‘detective notes of one J.F.P. on the case of the mysterious disappearances of R.J.L.’ — he’d gotten the idea from a muggle book his friend Anthony had lent him over the summer. He noted the date, and the time Remus returned, as well as his physical appearance and what James perceived his emotional state to be (though this last part was heavy speculation as James wasn’t convinced he was very good at reading people’s emotions). And he continued on in this vein for the next few months, adding an entry any time he thought he noted some important or relevant piece of evidence.

Chapter Text

Peter

Peter liked school and he liked his friends. Studying in the library with Remus and some of their classmates; pranking with James and Sirius, and Remus too when he lent his aid to improve their schemes; exploring the castle together, or sometimes alone as he was doing one afternoon in the middle of October.

Peter walked down a corridor on the west side of the castle, standing on tiptoes each time he passed a high window to peek out and see if he could spot the quidditch pitch through it. James had been talking recently about how he wanted to try out for the Gryffindor team next time they had an opening, but he kept getting in trouble for sneaking out to watch them practise. Peter thought it would be nice if he could find a window in the castle that James could watch from without getting in trouble. He wanted it to be a surprise, and he didn’t want Sirius to take all the credit for finding it, so he’d decided to go alone that afternoon.

It was just after Peter had finally found the perfect window that everything went wrong. He could see from the little peek he got at his eye level that it had a perfect view of the pitch where the Ravenclaw team were currently practising, and it was close enough that he could even pick out the names on the backs of their quidditch robes. The window was set high in the wall, but it had a decent sized ledge that would be perfect for sitting on if Peter could just manage to hoist himself up. He was making a lot of noise, huffing and panting as he scrambled desperately with his upper torso on the ledge and his feet dangling below, trying to find purchase on the smooth stone of the wall, which meant he didn’t hear the footsteps approaching down the corridor until it was too late. Peter found himself being tugged unceremoniously down and then he was spun and shoved against the wall. Three tall boys in Slytherin robes were looking down at him, their wands twirling idly in their hands.

“What’s a little lion cub doing all on his lonesome?” one of the boys jeered.

“Were you trying to climb with those stumpy little legs? You’re so short, are you sure you’re even old enough to be at Hogwarts?” another one of them added.

Peter tried to find something to say, but they’d given him a fright sneaking up on him like that and he was still shaking off the shock of it. He managed to hold back tears at least, and was proud of himself for that.

“You don’t look much like a lion,” the first boy went on, “must be the runt of the litter,” he cackled at his own joke. The other two joined in, hooting loudly with laughter.

“Stop it,” Peter managed to choke out. The boys just laughed louder, and one of them shoved him into the wall again. Peter felt pain flare sharp in his shoulder and he couldn’t help the whimper that slipped through his lips.

“Oh ickle baby!” the boy who’d pushed him crowed, and Peter felt the tears finally slipping out of his eyes. He wrenched himself away and ran down the corridor as fast as he could. The boys didn’t give chase, just laughed and called after him, “Run stumpy, run!”

Peter didn’t stop running till he was far enough away that he couldn’t hear their laughter anymore. He was relieved when he spotted one of the hidden passages he'd found with James, Sirius and Remus the year before. He ducked behind the tapestry hiding the entrance and sat down gasping for breath.

Everything was awful! His shoulder really hurt, and he was so embarrassed. If it had been James or Sirius they would’ve had a witty comeback on the tip of their tongue. Who was he kidding, they would’ve never struggled to climb that ledge so it wouldn’t have happened to them anyway. This was just like that time last Yule, when those muggle boys had cornered him on his way home. At the time Peter had thought it was just because muggles were nasty, but here was the same thing happening at Hogwarts. And from purebloods no less! Peter couldn’t work out why people kept being so mean to him. At Yule those muggle boys had followed him and cornered him when all he was doing was walking home, and today he’d just been minding his own business trying to do a nice thing for his friend and almost the same thing had happened. They’d even called him a baby the same way the muggles had. It wasn’t like Peter had done something to provoke them, like what he’d seen happen to James and Sirius in the middle of some of their pranks (he’d even been involved in those scraps himself once or twice). This was just random out of the blue cruelty, and Peter was so confused. If he couldn’t work out why it had happened, he wouldn’t be able to stop it from happening again in the future and that was daunting.

It took Peter a long time to feel brave enough to leave the safety of the hidden passage. Eventually his hunger overrode his fear and he made his way down to the great hall for dinner. He was relieved to spot his friends already sitting at the Gryffindor table and hurried over to them.

“Hey Pete!” James called cheerfully as he walked over, “where’ve you been mate?”

“Just wandering around,” Peter mumbled. He didn’t want to tell James what had happened. The longer he’d stayed in that hidden passage, the more he’d thought that he probably overreacted to the whole thing. It was just a little teasing, and he was a big baby who blubbed over nothing. It had crossed Peter’s mind that maybe there was something about him that made people pick on him. And that he’d lucked out in meeting James and his other friends to somehow find the only people who wouldn’t pick on him. And maybe even they would have picked on him if they hadn’t been dormmates right from the start.

“Did you find anything cool?” James asked.

“I found the perfect window to watch the quidditch practices from,” Peter said before he could stop himself.

“Really?” James’ whole face lit up.

“Yeah, but I can’t actually remember where it was now,” Peter said sadly. He hadn’t had time to take special note of anything identifying about the window before he’d been interrupted.

“Oh,” James dimmed somewhat, “Do you remember the general area? Maybe we can find it again.”

“I know the corridor, it was on the second floor on the west side of the castle,” Peter was a little hesitant in his reply. He didn’t really want to go back, in case the Slytherin boys walked that way often and teased him again. But he had worked really hard to find the window for James, and he had seemed so pleased by it.

“Let’s go tomorrow after class,” James suggested, “The Gryffindor team’ll be having their practice then.” He grinned at Peter, who couldn’t help smiling back at him even if he still felt a bit crap on the inside.

***

The next afternoon found James and Peter heading off to the west corridor after their last class of the day, while Sirius and Remus headed to the library. Remus was going there to meet Dorcas to study together, and Sirius was going to try and spy on Regulus who seemed to spend almost all his free time in the library. Peter was on edge the whole way, bouncing nervously on every other step, but James didn’t seem to notice, bouncing with excitement as he was himself.

Peter surprised both James and himself by actually finding the correct window rather quickly once they’d reached the corridor. Maybe it was because he could intrinsically recognise the patch of wall he’d been shoved against, or maybe he’d paid better attention to his surroundings than he thought, but whatever the reason he spotted the window right away when they got close. To his relief, James offered to boost him up first, and followed easily. He really was much more athletic than Peter, it was a good thing he was the one who wanted to try out for the quidditch team and not the other way around. James probably had a real chance of getting picked, while Peter would have been laughed off the pitch before he even mounted a broom.

They spent a rather pleasant afternoon watching the Gryffindor practice. James commentated for Peter, telling him the different moves he could spot and pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of each player. No Slytherins came along to disturb them, and Peter was almost able to forget for a little while that he might be the most disliked twelve year old in the world. He remembered it that night in bed though, and many nights after that, but during the day with his friends around he was able to ignore his insecurities and get on with life fairly easily. And he never did tell anyone about the Slytherin boys picking on him.

Regulus

To the uneducated eye the Hogwarts library would look much bigger than the Black family library. The first time he walked in, Regulus did in fact think it might be. But he quickly realised that while the physical library was bigger, a lot of the space was taken up with study areas. There were tables for group work, and desks for private work, and even a couple of couches and armchairs which were nice for leisure reading. The books on the shelves were not all unique either. There were several copies of the more popular books, to account for the large number of students who might all need the same reference title for an essay in one of their classes. This all meant that in reality Regulus had had access to more books at home than he did now. And of course, at home there had been no such thing as a restricted section cutting down his access even further.

The Hogwarts library did have one section that you would never have found in the Black family library however. During his second week at school Regulus came across a shelf filled with muggle books. Some were clearly fiction, children’s fairy tales as well as stories for older teens, but some had notes on the covers labelling them as muggle non-fiction. Those ones fascinated and slightly terrified Regulus. The part of him that thirsted for knowledge about the unknown longed to rip them all off the shelves and lose himself in learning about the muggle world, but the part of him that sounded a bit like Narcissa’s voice in his ear reminded him that he had to be on his best behaviour and it wouldn’t do to risk giving his mother and father any provision that might weaken their belief in his lie about Dumbledore’s sorting hat schemes. So Regulus resisted the temptation, but allowed himself to read the titles on the spines of the books. He could pass that off easily enough as an accident while trying to find a book for homework if anyone found out. He learnt quite a bit even just from reading the titles, since a lot of them hinted at the contents of the book they belonged to, such as ‘Volcanoes, Earthquakes and other Natural Disasters: The Tectonic Plates and the Earth’s Crust Explored’ which Regulus imagined must be about muggle interpretations of the wild magic that existed under the Earth’s surface.

Some of his time in the library, Regulus spent with Barty Crouch and Evan Rosier, the two boys he’d crossed the lake with and who he’d expected to share a dorm in Slytherin with before the sorting hat messed things up. The two of them had ended up in Slytherin, along with a handful of other children of pureblood families. None of the others were particularly noteworthy in their status though, and Narcissa had felt that courting friendship with Barty and Evan would be enough to appease his parents. She had organised their meetings to start with, using her prefect badge to order all three of them to the library and then instructing them to spend an hour together in civil conversation (her words). The first afternoon had been awkward and stiff, but at the end of it Evan had said they would see Regulus the same time the next afternoon and from there they slowly loosened up and became decent friends.

Barty had a bit of a wild sense of humour, and liked to spend their afternoons trying to make Evan and Regulus laugh loud enough to get them kicked out of the library. He often succeeded, so they took to hanging out in the courtyards on warm afternoons. Evan was quieter, but once you got him talking he always seemed to have the best gossip to share. Regulus found it very useful to hear from Evan what the school was saying about the second Black ever to not be sorted into Slytherin. Narcissa had spread the word to her circles about the rumour of Dumbledore using the sorting hat to steal Sirius and Regulus away as retaliation in some feud he apparently had with their father, and it seemed like the students were willing to believe that. In the first days after his sorting, Regulus had worried that the rumour would reach Professor Dumbledore and he would refute it and all would be ruined. But it either never reached him, or — which seemed more likely — he decided to ignore it. Regulus had caught the headmaster watching him once or twice during meals in the great hall, but the old man had simply smiled and looked away each time.

Most importantly, Walburga and Orion had swallowed the story well enough. They had certainly been angry with Regulus, and the letter he received on his first morning at school had made it clear that it didn’t matter to his mother whether Sirius had gone to Gryffindor willingly or not, he had shown his allegiance to blood traitors and filth in the time since to an unforgivable level. But so long as Regulus toed the family line and didn’t befriend any halfbloods or muggleborns they seemed willing to forgive the colour of his robes.

When Regulus wasn’t with Evan and Barty, in class, or at meals, he was pretty much always in a quiet corner of the library studying alone. And at curfew he would return to the Ravenclaw tower, where he allowed himself his one weakness. His housemates liked to engage in academic debate in the evenings, and Regulus loved to sit with his dormmates and listen to the older students discussing various peculiarities of magic — or sometimes even muggle — knowledge. On occasion he would even have something to put forward into the debate, and on those evenings he went to bed with a grin on his face. And then the next day he would always make sure to spend extra time with Barty and Evan just in case there were any rumours he might need to quell about his opinions on muggles. Regulus liked the two boys rather more than he’d thought he would, though he didn’t feel he could open up to them about the truth of his sorting, nor did he want to share his wandless magic with them. He kept that secret from everyone, practising only late at night behind the curtains of his bed with privacy wards securely in place. But for everything else, Barty and Evan were good company, and they understood well the strain of trying to live up to parental expectations. Barty’s father was a high ranking ministry official who reminded his wife and son at every opportunity that when they were in public they were representing him and they must take great care not to embarrass him or they would risk his career. Apparently he was determined that he would be the next minister for magic when Harold Minchum’s term ended. Evan’s parents were of the same set as the Blacks, related and intermarried to them through various branches on each family tree tracing back generations. He was the younger son too, so he and Regulus had very similar experiences of being raised to be the spare heir, though at least in Evan’s case his older brother wasn’t a disappointment so he was unlikely to be needed.

And Sirius was definitely a disappointment. Being at school with him, Regulus could see first hand how much he rebelled against all the rules their parents had ever had for them. He seemed to be in perpetual motion, bouncing from one prank or adventure to the next, dragging chaos behind him wherever he went. And he also seemed to have singled out as many halfbloods and muggleborns to befriend as physically possible. Regulus often saw him walking between classes with a group of gryffindor girls which he knew included Lily Evans and Mary MacDonald, both muggleborns. Sirius had told Regulus about his friendship with Lily Evans that past summer, had explained how she too felt like an outcast from her family but for the direct opposite reason. While the Blacks despised muggles, Lily’s sister hated magic and her parents didn’t understand it. She and Sirius had a rocky friendship, balancing on a bit of a knife edge because she was also friends with Snape, a Slytherin who Sirius and his friends frequently pranked. Regulus didn’t blame his brother, from what Barty and Evan said, Snape was a whiny git. He was a year ahead of them, so they didn’t have to share a dorm with him, but they caught enough of his complaints just sharing a common room. He would grouch about people putting their feet up on the couches, or leaving their books out on tables, and he was apparently desperate to make inroads with the older students, sucking up to them and parroting their words to anyone who would listen to him. It was surprising that he’d remained friends with Lily Evans honestly, given her birth, but Barty reckoned he had a bit of a crush on her. Regulus thought that if he did, it was a one way crush. He saw quite a bit of Snape and Evans together in the library when he was there, and she didn’t seem to look at Snape any differently than any of her other friends. 

Regulus also saw a fair bit of Sirius in the library, because his brother insisted on stalking him. Regulus would tell anyone who asked that it was incredibly annoying and that he wished Sirius would just leave him alone. But not where Sirius could hear, just in case he believed it and stopped. Sitting quietly a few tables away from his brother was Regulus’ favourite way to spend an afternoon. It reminded him of their childhood being tutored together, just the two of them against the world. He was glad that Sirius still wanted to spend time with him, even with so many other people he could choose to hang out with instead. They didn’t speak a whole lot, but they didn’t need to after years of learning each other’s facial expressions. A twitch of a lip or an eyebrow here, a slight frown or an eye roll, was all they needed to know how the other was feeling.

Chapter Text

Sirius

Even though Sirius had learnt in his first year at Hogwarts that birthdays were something to celebrate he didn’t have high expectations for his thirteenth birthday. He hadn’t reminded any of his friends that it was coming up and none of them had mentioned it at all, so he thought they’d probably forgotten when it was. He went to bed on the night of the second as if it was just any other night of the year, listening to Pete’s snoring…

…and woke with a jerk as the hangings around his bed were ripped back by a grinning James Potter. Remus and Peter were right behind him and all three of them were singing in loud off key voices, “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Sirius! Happy birthday to you!”

As they finished singing, they all threw themselves on top of Sirius in a pile. Sirius laughed breathlessly as he hugged James back who had landed right on his chest. He could see past them now to the filtering dawn light just coming through the window. They must have planned to wake up extra early to surprise him, Sirius realised. He hugged James tighter and tried to pull Peter and Remus in too. Pete grinned at him, and James exaggeratedly choked and gasped as if he was being suffocated. Sirius eventually let him go, but he didn’t move far away.

“Does it feel any different being a teenager?” Peter asked.

“Best year yet so far,” Sirius answered, and then flushed with embarrassment at his pathetic honesty.

“You haven’t even opened your presents yet,” James said.

It turned out each of the boys had gotten Sirius something, as well as James’ parents. Sirius had quite the little haul of chocolates and prank supplies and cards by the time he’d finished tearing the wrapping paper off all the different packages. Monty had also sent him a chess set that had apparently been in the Potter’s family for generations. In the card from Monty and Effie, he’d written that he hoped to get a chance to play with Sirius some time soon since James had never been interested in the game and the chess set was wasted on him.

James insisted that Sirius could not just eat chocolate for breakfast, and eventually managed to drag all the boys down to the great hall for some real food. Frank and Kiaan were in the stairwell and wished Sirius a happy birthday too, much to his surprise. He’d hadn’t realised they even knew when his birthday was. The rest of the day went fairly normally, aside from a sprinkling of other Gryffindors wishing Sirius a happy birthday. Every time it happened Sirius felt a tense little bubble of something fluttering in his chest. By the time he and James made their way back to the common room after their customary after class trawling of the castle for secrets, Sirius was quite ready to collapse in the dorm and gorge on chocolate to end what had been his best birthday by far. So he could perhaps be forgiven for the literal squeak of fright he gave when instead of the normal chatter of students socialising in the common room, he stepped through the portrait hole to a cacophony of voices yelling “surprise!” underneath a banner that read ‘Happy Birthday Sirius’ in large red and gold sparkling letters.

He turned to look at James who was grinning sheepishly at him. “What’s going on?” Sirius asked, his voice a little breathless.

“Happy birthday?” James offered with a shrug.

Sirius huffed the barest laugh and turned back to the crowd to take everything in properly. All the Gryffindors from his year were there, along with a few of their friends from the other houses and some of the Gryffindors from other years who he knew a little bit. He could see Fenley, from the quidditch team, grinning at him from the far side of the room and Dorcas and Hakim from Ravenclaw hanging around near Marlene and Lily. There were tables of snacks and what looked like a few different party games set up ready to go as well. Sirius let himself grin as Peter and Remus pulled him fully into the room and started talking his ear off about what he might like to do first.

Throughout the evening Sirius slowly made his way around each person that had joined the party. He thanked them for birthday wishes, and several cards and even a few more presents from people like Lily and Marlene. They played games, and ate too much food, and Sirius didn’t know when he’d been happier. He remembered formal parties his parents had thrown (including that particularly painful encounter with cousin Bella last New Years), but this was something so completely different that it practically deserved a different word. Or maybe the ones his parents threw did.

And then, around halfway through the evening, a voice behind Sirius spoke just loud enough to be heard, “happy birthday brother.”

“Reg!” Sirius cried, spinning so fast he nearly fell over, “you came.”

“Potter invited me,” Regulus said tightly.

“Isn’t this great,” Sirius sighed, gesturing around them.

“It’s certainly your style,” Regulus gave him a small smile.

“What, crowds of people reminding me how amazing I am?” Sirius joked.

“Noise, chaos, and a hefty dose of ego feeding yes,” Regulus agreed, but his eyes twinkled as he spoke.

Sirius snickered, and reached out to hug Regulus. His brother let him, to his relief, and he took the brief moment to whisper sincerely, “thank you for coming.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Regulus muttered, pulling out of his arms too quickly. “Show me what all the fuss with these ridiculous games is eh?”

Sirius grabbed his hand and dragged him along into the fray. Sirius kept Regulus tucked against his side for the rest of the night, and only let him go when forced to by the curfew that sent the students from other houses back to their dorms for the night. Sirius was glad to see that Dorcas took Regulus into her group readily on the way out. Maybe his brother was doing better at fitting into his new house than Sirius had realised, and maybe all the library lurking wasn’t just because he was trying to avoid spending time in the Ravenclaw common room.

The Gryffindors kept the party going a while longer after the students from other houses had left, since it was a Friday so no one had class in the morning. It was near midnight when the four boys finally stumbled into their dorm, exhausted from all the partying and from having been up since dawn or before in most of their cases. Sirius barely managed to stay awake as he waited impatiently to hear Pete’s snoring start and Remus’ shuffling stop, but eventually they both seemed asleep and he tiptoed quietly over to James’ bed. James was at least halfway asleep himself but had very obviously folded back the edge of his blanket so Sirius knew he wasn’t overstepping when he slid in next to him and whispered their silencing spell.

“Thanks for getting Reg to come,” Sirius whispered, focusing on that small part in an attempt to not be overwhelmed by what James had done for him.

“No problem mate,” James mumbled, “s’what parties are for ya know.”

“You realise you’ve set the bar stupidly high, and I have no idea how I’m supposed to top it for your birthday now?” Sirius complained jokingly.

“Nah, we were just making up for the ones you’ve missed is all. We’ll go back to boring normal parties next year,” James said, slurring his words as sleep tried to claim him.

“Oh is that what your part last year was huh?” Sirius giggled.

“Mhmm,” James barely got the sound out, and was fully asleep in the next breath. Sirius lay awake next to him for a few more minutes before slipping out and back to his own bed. Part of him wanted to stay, and share the companionable warmth, but he didn’t want to answer questions about it in the morning since it wasn’t a pre-planned sleepover.

In his own bed, he fell asleep quickly and dreamed of laughter and cheering and warm bodies blurring around him happily.