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fox_confessorTitle: These Four Kings (5/7)
Author: Dani (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
escribo)
Word Count: 3110
Rating: PG
(Pairings: in the future will be remus/sirius, lily/james)
Timeline: March 1 (Wednesday) 1972
Summary: James offers Remus some help and advice
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended. I've not made nor seek any profit.
one/ two/ three/ four
James had gone to bed that night with the thought that there was little in his world that wasn't good and right. It was February 29th, the day that didn't exist, and Sirius and he had pulled a spectacular prank on Severus Snape, one that had made even Lily Evans grin a little before she had remembered to scowl. An hour after lights out, James was still lying in his bed thinking about it and laughing to himself. He was positive he could improve upon it if he could talk Remus into showing him the book that the held the specific sticky hands charms they'd used.
Sitting up, James looked at Remus' bed, still undisturbed for a second night. A thought had begun to form in his head about that--Remus' disappearances, his illnesses--but it was still new enough that he hadn't even shared it with Sirius yet. As if summoned by his thoughts, the door to the dormitory eased open, a slice of light spilled across the bottom of James' bed, and Remus slid into the room. He knelt by his trunk for a moment and then picked up his book bag and walked back to the door.
"Remus," James whispered, reaching for his glasses as he caught Remus with his hand on the door. "Where are you going?"
"To the common room. I need to finish my homework. Go back to sleep, James."
As James tumbled out of his bed to follow Remus from the room, he cast a glance at the curtains drawn tightly around Sirius' bed before he sleepily padded out of the room and down the stairs. It was very late and very cold, the fire in the common room already banked for the evening. Remus had sat himself at a table and was pulling books and parchments from his bag. James sat across from him but Remus didn't look up.
"Sirius wanted to wait until you got back before we set the prank on Snape," James said around a yawn. "You weren't back by dinner, though."
"It's all right."
"We could have waited until tomorrow at lunch. I just thought you'd be gone longer." James stopped, tapped his fingers on the table, and then offered his empty hand up. "Like before."
Remus shook his head but didn't say anything. He used his wand to light the candle on the table and took up his quill, dipped it into his ink well, and carefully wrote his name, Remus J. Lupin, at the top of his parchment.
"What are you working on?" James finally asked.
"I didn't finish the Potions' assignment set for tomorrow, and there's twelve inches for Transfiguration. I thought I would have time before I left but I didn't get to it."
"Here," he said, sliding the parchment from beneath Remus' hand and dragging it closer to himself. James knew that Remus hadn't forgotten but didn't get it done because he'd been helping Sirius and James with the prank, and he felt a little guilty about that. "I'll do the Potions. You're rubbish at it anyway."
For a minute, Remus looked as though he might protest but then just passed a quill to James and took a clean parchment from his bag and another quill for himself. They sat quietly, each working, until Remus finally looked up. "Was Snape really mad?"
"He didn't even know what had happened until forever, at least until that git Malfoy worked it out."
"What happened?"
"Sirius took the detention and points." James grinned at the memory of the dinner again, the whole Great Hall laughing when they realized the joke. At least it had felt like the whole school. "I swear I saw Dumbledore laugh."
"You didn't." But now Remus was grinning, too.
"Anyway, Snape deserved it after what he did to Peter."
"He was aiming at you."
James nodded in acknowledgment as they both remembered Snape's anger during Potions the week before when James had managed to impress even Slughhorn by making a perfect Septisumarius potion, beating Snape out during practicals for the first time since Christmas holidays. Snape was sure that James had cheated and he was right. James had. The hex had come in the halls, Snape letting his anger get the better of him when reasoning with Slughorn hadn't worked. Sirius had managed to push James out of the way and Peter had caught the brunt of the hex, the skin on his neck bubbling with boils and sending him to the infirmary. James didn't doubt that Snape deserved the prank.
For a long time, James was silent, working on Remus' Potions assignment, and then watching as Remus scratched his quill across his Transfiguration essay. He noticed now that Remus' hand had a cut across his palm that sliced up his wrist and disappeared into the sleeve of his shirt. Looking more closely, he also saw that Remus had a fading bruise along his hairline and a nick on his ear. "What happened to you?"
"I fell," Remus said as if by rote, not even looking up at James.
"It looks more like you cut your hand on something."
"I did."
"When you fell?"
"Yeah."
James looked at Remus as though he didn't quite believe him but Remus still didn't look at James, just kept his eyes on his parchment, though he hadn't added anything to his essay during their exchange. James was bothered by the flat cadence of Remus' voice, his mind on what Sirius thought and on his own growing suspicions, not wanting either of them to be true.
"Do you know what the Fifth Law of Permutation is?" Remus set down his quill and began flipping through the pages of his Transfiguration text while James continued to study him closely.
"What did you cut it on?"
"The book lists four but Professor McGonagall said she wants all five. I thought I read it in here."
"Remus."
"What?"
Remus had finally looked up, his mouth and shoulders set in a way that really didn't invite questions. James had seen Remus like this before, but it was Sirius who could break past Remus' barriers and shake loose a smile from Remus even if he still managed to evade answering a question. It always made James feel vaguely uneasy when he tried to do it, in a way that he didn't particularly feel when he crossed lines with anyone else. Still, Sirius was asleep and James felt it was his duty to press onward.
"Your hand," James said, reaching across the table to take it in his own and raise it up. "What did you cut it on?"
"It's nothing, James." Remus flinched when James pressed a bit too hard at the edge of the bandage and tried to pull it away, but James wouldn't let him. "I fell. You know how clumsy I am."
"I've never seen you fall."
"Yeah, well you're not with me all the time."
"Even when you looked a great git trying to ride a broom for the first time, you didn't fall."
"It's not a big deal," Remus said, finally jerking his hand away. "And thanks for that."
"Most all of the other muggle born kids did, is all."
'Only my mum is a muggle. My dad is a wizard."
"Oh." James catalogued that away as one more bit of information he hadn't known about Remus and wondered if Sirius had. It seemed like something too basic to have not known and he wondered what else there was. "It's just Slughorn had said you didn't grow up magical and you don't know a lot of the things that kids who grew up in the wizarding world know already. You act like it's all new to you. Sometimes it's like it's the first time you've seen magic. Like Evans does."
"I didn't know that you spent a lot of time noticing Evans."
"I don't," James protested. His cheeks were turning a bit pink in the dim light but he wasn't willing to let Remus distract him. "If your dad's a wizard then why didn't you know--"
"My dad doesn't use magic."
"He lives like a Muggle?"
"There are worse crimes."
"I didn't mean it like that. I just didn't know. I've never heard of a wizard who doesn't use his magic." James rested his chin on his fists stacked one on top of the other on the tabletop and contemplated a world without magic--without brooms, or warming charms on cold days, or Quidditch, which was really too dismal to be borne. "Does he not have a wand or anything?"
"I have his wand," Remus said, and this time it was his turn to blush, embarrassed, James knew, at the suggestion that perhaps his family hadn't enough money to buy him his own wand. "He went to wizarding school. He's a proper wizard."
"Not here though," James says, as if confirming. "He didn't come to Hogwarts."
"No, it was in Romania. That's where he grew up." Remus went back to his parchment, dipping his quill into the ink stand again, and then scratching out a few more lines on his essay in his neat penmanship.
James answered another question on the the Potions assignment before he sat back in his chair, playing with the quill and watching Remus. His thoughts were still on how one would go about living like a Muggle, about why one would even want to try. "Why doesn't your dad use magic?"
"He just doesn't."
"So what does he do?"
"He teaches school in the village."
"To Muggle children?"
"Yeah. He doesn't need magic to do that. Besides my mum doesn't like it." Remus looked up, startled, as if he hadn't meant to make the admission. For a moment, James wondered if Remus would extract a promise from him to never repeat it. In the end, he didn't. He only just lowered his eyes back to his essay. "I need to get this done, James."
"Sure, but--" James chewed on the end of the quill he was holding and stared at the top of Remus' head. He looked again at the bruise on Remus' forehead, looking more brown in the light, as if it were old though he knew it hadn't been there at breakfast the day before, and then again at Remus' hand.
"Sirius thinks your mum and dad beat you," James said casually, almost as if it were part an extension of their previous conversation, and watched carefully for Remus' reaction, not sure what to make of the way Remus' eyes widen in surprise.
"What? No." Remus looked up at James to see if maybe he was joking, then he shook his head dismissively and went back to his essay, and James thought then that Sirius had it wrong. It wasn't Remus' parents, of that he was pretty sure.
"You'd tell us if someone was hurting you, right? Sirius or me."
"It's not my mum and dad," Remus said, his voice raising as he met James' eyes again and cut his hand in the air between them.
"All right, but if someone was hurting you--"
"Tell Sirius that it's not my--"
"I will. Forget I said it."
Remus stared at James for a long time, his mouth pinched together as it had when James announced his plans to prank Snape in front of the whole school, but like then, Remus didn't say anything. When he went back to his essay, he rested his hand in his lap so that James couldn't see it anymore. After another few minutes, James began working on the Potions work again, finishing the questions quickly enough and passing it back to Remus, who didn't look up.
"Did you find the Fifth Law?"
"What?"
"The Fifth Law of Permutation. Did you find it?"
"No."
"It's on page 259, about the inverse permutation reverses the action of any given permutation when--"
"Oh, right. I remember. Thanks."
"Evans said the Lestrange brothers had you cornered once. Told you they were going to perform an Unforgiveable to make you cry."
"They didn't. I mean, they told me that but they didn't do it."
"Are they the ones who--"
"I fell James," Remus said, cutting him off and looking up at him with something like pleading, which took James aback. "I cut my hand when I fell."
"Fine, but--"
"Look, if my parents thought I was being hurt, they wouldn't let me stay."
The plea was still there and it made James shift in his chair. Sirius would know what to say to that, James knew, and he wished he had woken Sirius as he had thought to do before following Remus. James just nodded, leaning across the table and opening his hands on the table in front of him as if to encourage Remus to continue. James was thankful when he did.
"Every other letter my mum sends, she asks if I want to come home. And I don't, all right. I want to stay at Hogwarts. That's why I told Lily not to say anything about what happened. They didn't hurt me, not much. They just showed me a stupid boggart and threatened to perform the Cruciatus, but I didn't believe they could even do it."
"They can."
Remus lifted his chin a bit, the space between his eyebrows scrunching up as he considered the possibility. James knew this was another place where Sirius would push, wanting to know what the boggart had looked like and which brother had hurt him when he said not much, Rabastan or Rodolphus, and demand to know why Remus hadn't told them immediately and why he was wandering around by himself in the first place. James was tempted again to march up to the dormitory and shake Sirius awake. Remus seemed to sense it, though James didn't really think that's possible, by holding up his hand, the bandage around his palm stark white and not doing much to cover the cut or scratch that disappeared into his sleeve.
"This wasn't that. It wasn't them. I fell on my way to the library last night after dinner and McGonagall saw it. She sent me to the infirmary."
"But if the Lestrange brothers--"
"It was a long time ago. I just stay out of their way now. I told Lily not to tell. She promised."
"Don't blame her, all right? I made her tell me."
"I thought she hated you."
"Yeah." James couldn't stop his mouth from quirking up into a grin. Lily's hatred was a point of pride for James because she liked everyone in Gryffindor except Potter and Black and yet couldn't resist smiling at even his worst jokes. But the smile faded quickly as he remembered the events of last night. "She was looking for you after dinner and got all scared when we said we didn't know where you were. She said she heard some sixth years talking about how Rabastan got into trouble for doing something to a first year."
"Davy Gudgeon. He's in Hufflepuff. He was in the infirmary this morning." Remus looked down at the bandage on his hand, squeezing his hand into a fist in a way that made James' skin crawl. He knew it must have hurt but Remus didn't show any pain. "They said he got too close to the Whomping Willow and almost lost an eye."
"Yeah. Lily heard it was Rabastan but didn't hear who. She was practically in tears, saying she knew she should have told, and I made her. Sirius went mental. He sneaked out to see if it was you but you weren't in the infirmary. Madame Pomfrey caught Sirius and said you weren't there. He saw Davy."
Remus looked up at James and bit his lip. James knew then he'd caught Remus in a lie, or at least a partial lie. James wondered again about Remus' parents, wondered about Snape or another Slytherin. Wondered again about the idea that seemed most ridiculous of all. Wondered about the full moon and Remus' illnesses and missing days.
Remus reached out and grabbed James hand, and James jumped, startled from his thoughts, and met Remus' eyes. "Leave it alone, right James? I really want to stay at Hogwarts."
James nodded. It seemed impossible, suddenly. This was Remus, who spent so much time in the library actually studying, who managed to stay out of trouble completely for weeks on end when he and Sirius spent so much time in detention. Who Evans actually would deign to talk to. This was the same boy who James had watched sit motionless for an entire half hour one afternoon in the snow getting birds to eat bread crumbs from his hand. That this boy--his friend--could be a werewolf of all things was so supremely stupid that James was glad he never suggested it to Sirius. Besides, he reasoned, it didn't really explain the cuts and bruises. Why would a werewolf hurt himself, anyway, James thought, looking again at the bruise on Remus' forehead.
"Thanks for the help with Potions," Remus said and James almost missed it, just nodding when Remus stood up, his bag packed. "I'm going to bed. I'm really tired."
"Yeah, sure."
"Are you coming up?"
"In a minute."
Remus shouldered his bag and headed towards the stair, James still trying to piece together their conversation into something that made sense to him. When he looked back, Remus had stopped on the first step and stood watching him, his mouth tugged down into a frown, as if James had said they couldn't be friends anymore or something. It made him feel bad, as if he had caused Remus' hurts himself. He wondered how Remus did that without ever saying a word and if that was what kept him out of detention even though lately he was usually every bit as guilty as James and Sirius were when there was mischief to be had.
"You have to come up with something better for Sirius," James said, holding Remus' eyes for a moment longer before he looked down at where he was tracing his thumbnail in a long ago carved name on the table. "He won't believe that stuff about the library if I don't. You don't have to tell me but you know Sirius. He'll have it out of you."
"I know."
"And he's already thinking up ways to hex the Lestrange brothers for what Evans said. Maybe." James swallowed and then turned back to Remus, offering him up a small smile as a peace offering. "Maybe you should let him. Maybe they deserve it."
continued...
Author: Dani (
escribo)Word Count: 3110
Rating: PG
(Pairings: in the future will be remus/sirius, lily/james)
Timeline: March 1 (Wednesday) 1972
Summary: James offers Remus some help and advice
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended. I've not made nor seek any profit.
one/ two/ three/ four
James had gone to bed that night with the thought that there was little in his world that wasn't good and right. It was February 29th, the day that didn't exist, and Sirius and he had pulled a spectacular prank on Severus Snape, one that had made even Lily Evans grin a little before she had remembered to scowl. An hour after lights out, James was still lying in his bed thinking about it and laughing to himself. He was positive he could improve upon it if he could talk Remus into showing him the book that the held the specific sticky hands charms they'd used.
Sitting up, James looked at Remus' bed, still undisturbed for a second night. A thought had begun to form in his head about that--Remus' disappearances, his illnesses--but it was still new enough that he hadn't even shared it with Sirius yet. As if summoned by his thoughts, the door to the dormitory eased open, a slice of light spilled across the bottom of James' bed, and Remus slid into the room. He knelt by his trunk for a moment and then picked up his book bag and walked back to the door.
"Remus," James whispered, reaching for his glasses as he caught Remus with his hand on the door. "Where are you going?"
"To the common room. I need to finish my homework. Go back to sleep, James."
As James tumbled out of his bed to follow Remus from the room, he cast a glance at the curtains drawn tightly around Sirius' bed before he sleepily padded out of the room and down the stairs. It was very late and very cold, the fire in the common room already banked for the evening. Remus had sat himself at a table and was pulling books and parchments from his bag. James sat across from him but Remus didn't look up.
"Sirius wanted to wait until you got back before we set the prank on Snape," James said around a yawn. "You weren't back by dinner, though."
"It's all right."
"We could have waited until tomorrow at lunch. I just thought you'd be gone longer." James stopped, tapped his fingers on the table, and then offered his empty hand up. "Like before."
Remus shook his head but didn't say anything. He used his wand to light the candle on the table and took up his quill, dipped it into his ink well, and carefully wrote his name, Remus J. Lupin, at the top of his parchment.
"What are you working on?" James finally asked.
"I didn't finish the Potions' assignment set for tomorrow, and there's twelve inches for Transfiguration. I thought I would have time before I left but I didn't get to it."
"Here," he said, sliding the parchment from beneath Remus' hand and dragging it closer to himself. James knew that Remus hadn't forgotten but didn't get it done because he'd been helping Sirius and James with the prank, and he felt a little guilty about that. "I'll do the Potions. You're rubbish at it anyway."
For a minute, Remus looked as though he might protest but then just passed a quill to James and took a clean parchment from his bag and another quill for himself. They sat quietly, each working, until Remus finally looked up. "Was Snape really mad?"
"He didn't even know what had happened until forever, at least until that git Malfoy worked it out."
"What happened?"
"Sirius took the detention and points." James grinned at the memory of the dinner again, the whole Great Hall laughing when they realized the joke. At least it had felt like the whole school. "I swear I saw Dumbledore laugh."
"You didn't." But now Remus was grinning, too.
"Anyway, Snape deserved it after what he did to Peter."
"He was aiming at you."
James nodded in acknowledgment as they both remembered Snape's anger during Potions the week before when James had managed to impress even Slughhorn by making a perfect Septisumarius potion, beating Snape out during practicals for the first time since Christmas holidays. Snape was sure that James had cheated and he was right. James had. The hex had come in the halls, Snape letting his anger get the better of him when reasoning with Slughorn hadn't worked. Sirius had managed to push James out of the way and Peter had caught the brunt of the hex, the skin on his neck bubbling with boils and sending him to the infirmary. James didn't doubt that Snape deserved the prank.
For a long time, James was silent, working on Remus' Potions assignment, and then watching as Remus scratched his quill across his Transfiguration essay. He noticed now that Remus' hand had a cut across his palm that sliced up his wrist and disappeared into the sleeve of his shirt. Looking more closely, he also saw that Remus had a fading bruise along his hairline and a nick on his ear. "What happened to you?"
"I fell," Remus said as if by rote, not even looking up at James.
"It looks more like you cut your hand on something."
"I did."
"When you fell?"
"Yeah."
James looked at Remus as though he didn't quite believe him but Remus still didn't look at James, just kept his eyes on his parchment, though he hadn't added anything to his essay during their exchange. James was bothered by the flat cadence of Remus' voice, his mind on what Sirius thought and on his own growing suspicions, not wanting either of them to be true.
"Do you know what the Fifth Law of Permutation is?" Remus set down his quill and began flipping through the pages of his Transfiguration text while James continued to study him closely.
"What did you cut it on?"
"The book lists four but Professor McGonagall said she wants all five. I thought I read it in here."
"Remus."
"What?"
Remus had finally looked up, his mouth and shoulders set in a way that really didn't invite questions. James had seen Remus like this before, but it was Sirius who could break past Remus' barriers and shake loose a smile from Remus even if he still managed to evade answering a question. It always made James feel vaguely uneasy when he tried to do it, in a way that he didn't particularly feel when he crossed lines with anyone else. Still, Sirius was asleep and James felt it was his duty to press onward.
"Your hand," James said, reaching across the table to take it in his own and raise it up. "What did you cut it on?"
"It's nothing, James." Remus flinched when James pressed a bit too hard at the edge of the bandage and tried to pull it away, but James wouldn't let him. "I fell. You know how clumsy I am."
"I've never seen you fall."
"Yeah, well you're not with me all the time."
"Even when you looked a great git trying to ride a broom for the first time, you didn't fall."
"It's not a big deal," Remus said, finally jerking his hand away. "And thanks for that."
"Most all of the other muggle born kids did, is all."
'Only my mum is a muggle. My dad is a wizard."
"Oh." James catalogued that away as one more bit of information he hadn't known about Remus and wondered if Sirius had. It seemed like something too basic to have not known and he wondered what else there was. "It's just Slughorn had said you didn't grow up magical and you don't know a lot of the things that kids who grew up in the wizarding world know already. You act like it's all new to you. Sometimes it's like it's the first time you've seen magic. Like Evans does."
"I didn't know that you spent a lot of time noticing Evans."
"I don't," James protested. His cheeks were turning a bit pink in the dim light but he wasn't willing to let Remus distract him. "If your dad's a wizard then why didn't you know--"
"My dad doesn't use magic."
"He lives like a Muggle?"
"There are worse crimes."
"I didn't mean it like that. I just didn't know. I've never heard of a wizard who doesn't use his magic." James rested his chin on his fists stacked one on top of the other on the tabletop and contemplated a world without magic--without brooms, or warming charms on cold days, or Quidditch, which was really too dismal to be borne. "Does he not have a wand or anything?"
"I have his wand," Remus said, and this time it was his turn to blush, embarrassed, James knew, at the suggestion that perhaps his family hadn't enough money to buy him his own wand. "He went to wizarding school. He's a proper wizard."
"Not here though," James says, as if confirming. "He didn't come to Hogwarts."
"No, it was in Romania. That's where he grew up." Remus went back to his parchment, dipping his quill into the ink stand again, and then scratching out a few more lines on his essay in his neat penmanship.
James answered another question on the the Potions assignment before he sat back in his chair, playing with the quill and watching Remus. His thoughts were still on how one would go about living like a Muggle, about why one would even want to try. "Why doesn't your dad use magic?"
"He just doesn't."
"So what does he do?"
"He teaches school in the village."
"To Muggle children?"
"Yeah. He doesn't need magic to do that. Besides my mum doesn't like it." Remus looked up, startled, as if he hadn't meant to make the admission. For a moment, James wondered if Remus would extract a promise from him to never repeat it. In the end, he didn't. He only just lowered his eyes back to his essay. "I need to get this done, James."
"Sure, but--" James chewed on the end of the quill he was holding and stared at the top of Remus' head. He looked again at the bruise on Remus' forehead, looking more brown in the light, as if it were old though he knew it hadn't been there at breakfast the day before, and then again at Remus' hand.
"Sirius thinks your mum and dad beat you," James said casually, almost as if it were part an extension of their previous conversation, and watched carefully for Remus' reaction, not sure what to make of the way Remus' eyes widen in surprise.
"What? No." Remus looked up at James to see if maybe he was joking, then he shook his head dismissively and went back to his essay, and James thought then that Sirius had it wrong. It wasn't Remus' parents, of that he was pretty sure.
"You'd tell us if someone was hurting you, right? Sirius or me."
"It's not my mum and dad," Remus said, his voice raising as he met James' eyes again and cut his hand in the air between them.
"All right, but if someone was hurting you--"
"Tell Sirius that it's not my--"
"I will. Forget I said it."
Remus stared at James for a long time, his mouth pinched together as it had when James announced his plans to prank Snape in front of the whole school, but like then, Remus didn't say anything. When he went back to his essay, he rested his hand in his lap so that James couldn't see it anymore. After another few minutes, James began working on the Potions work again, finishing the questions quickly enough and passing it back to Remus, who didn't look up.
"Did you find the Fifth Law?"
"What?"
"The Fifth Law of Permutation. Did you find it?"
"No."
"It's on page 259, about the inverse permutation reverses the action of any given permutation when--"
"Oh, right. I remember. Thanks."
"Evans said the Lestrange brothers had you cornered once. Told you they were going to perform an Unforgiveable to make you cry."
"They didn't. I mean, they told me that but they didn't do it."
"Are they the ones who--"
"I fell James," Remus said, cutting him off and looking up at him with something like pleading, which took James aback. "I cut my hand when I fell."
"Fine, but--"
"Look, if my parents thought I was being hurt, they wouldn't let me stay."
The plea was still there and it made James shift in his chair. Sirius would know what to say to that, James knew, and he wished he had woken Sirius as he had thought to do before following Remus. James just nodded, leaning across the table and opening his hands on the table in front of him as if to encourage Remus to continue. James was thankful when he did.
"Every other letter my mum sends, she asks if I want to come home. And I don't, all right. I want to stay at Hogwarts. That's why I told Lily not to say anything about what happened. They didn't hurt me, not much. They just showed me a stupid boggart and threatened to perform the Cruciatus, but I didn't believe they could even do it."
"They can."
Remus lifted his chin a bit, the space between his eyebrows scrunching up as he considered the possibility. James knew this was another place where Sirius would push, wanting to know what the boggart had looked like and which brother had hurt him when he said not much, Rabastan or Rodolphus, and demand to know why Remus hadn't told them immediately and why he was wandering around by himself in the first place. James was tempted again to march up to the dormitory and shake Sirius awake. Remus seemed to sense it, though James didn't really think that's possible, by holding up his hand, the bandage around his palm stark white and not doing much to cover the cut or scratch that disappeared into his sleeve.
"This wasn't that. It wasn't them. I fell on my way to the library last night after dinner and McGonagall saw it. She sent me to the infirmary."
"But if the Lestrange brothers--"
"It was a long time ago. I just stay out of their way now. I told Lily not to tell. She promised."
"Don't blame her, all right? I made her tell me."
"I thought she hated you."
"Yeah." James couldn't stop his mouth from quirking up into a grin. Lily's hatred was a point of pride for James because she liked everyone in Gryffindor except Potter and Black and yet couldn't resist smiling at even his worst jokes. But the smile faded quickly as he remembered the events of last night. "She was looking for you after dinner and got all scared when we said we didn't know where you were. She said she heard some sixth years talking about how Rabastan got into trouble for doing something to a first year."
"Davy Gudgeon. He's in Hufflepuff. He was in the infirmary this morning." Remus looked down at the bandage on his hand, squeezing his hand into a fist in a way that made James' skin crawl. He knew it must have hurt but Remus didn't show any pain. "They said he got too close to the Whomping Willow and almost lost an eye."
"Yeah. Lily heard it was Rabastan but didn't hear who. She was practically in tears, saying she knew she should have told, and I made her. Sirius went mental. He sneaked out to see if it was you but you weren't in the infirmary. Madame Pomfrey caught Sirius and said you weren't there. He saw Davy."
Remus looked up at James and bit his lip. James knew then he'd caught Remus in a lie, or at least a partial lie. James wondered again about Remus' parents, wondered about Snape or another Slytherin. Wondered again about the idea that seemed most ridiculous of all. Wondered about the full moon and Remus' illnesses and missing days.
Remus reached out and grabbed James hand, and James jumped, startled from his thoughts, and met Remus' eyes. "Leave it alone, right James? I really want to stay at Hogwarts."
James nodded. It seemed impossible, suddenly. This was Remus, who spent so much time in the library actually studying, who managed to stay out of trouble completely for weeks on end when he and Sirius spent so much time in detention. Who Evans actually would deign to talk to. This was the same boy who James had watched sit motionless for an entire half hour one afternoon in the snow getting birds to eat bread crumbs from his hand. That this boy--his friend--could be a werewolf of all things was so supremely stupid that James was glad he never suggested it to Sirius. Besides, he reasoned, it didn't really explain the cuts and bruises. Why would a werewolf hurt himself, anyway, James thought, looking again at the bruise on Remus' forehead.
"Thanks for the help with Potions," Remus said and James almost missed it, just nodding when Remus stood up, his bag packed. "I'm going to bed. I'm really tired."
"Yeah, sure."
"Are you coming up?"
"In a minute."
Remus shouldered his bag and headed towards the stair, James still trying to piece together their conversation into something that made sense to him. When he looked back, Remus had stopped on the first step and stood watching him, his mouth tugged down into a frown, as if James had said they couldn't be friends anymore or something. It made him feel bad, as if he had caused Remus' hurts himself. He wondered how Remus did that without ever saying a word and if that was what kept him out of detention even though lately he was usually every bit as guilty as James and Sirius were when there was mischief to be had.
"You have to come up with something better for Sirius," James said, holding Remus' eyes for a moment longer before he looked down at where he was tracing his thumbnail in a long ago carved name on the table. "He won't believe that stuff about the library if I don't. You don't have to tell me but you know Sirius. He'll have it out of you."
"I know."
"And he's already thinking up ways to hex the Lestrange brothers for what Evans said. Maybe." James swallowed and then turned back to Remus, offering him up a small smile as a peace offering. "Maybe you should let him. Maybe they deserve it."
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