In the Wrong House, chapter 2
IN THE WRONG HOUSE (chapter 2)
Summary:
Sirius Black, Remus thought, was just as arrogant and annoying as James Potter, and he wished the two of them would stop getting into fights. Because Remus kept finding himself stepping in to stop them, and calling that kind of attention to himself was really the last thing he needed during his first year at Hogwarts.
It didn't matter if they were unpredictable Blacks or show-off Potters, or even someone harmless like Peter Pettigrew. None of these boys could be his friends, and it was time Remus started remembering it.
He didn't mind, Remus told himself. He didn't need friends.
Characters: Remus, James, Sirius, Peter and supporting cast
Warnings: None
Chapters: 7 + epilogue
Story:
CHAPTER TWO
Remus found a quiet table in the library and set out his school things, anxiously rearranging the quills. He'd agreed to help Peter Pettigrew with his Transfiguration homework and still wasn't certain whether it was a good idea. Did this violate the No Friends rule? Remus wasn't sure.
A second full moon at Hogwarts had come and gone, and Remus had survived. No one seemed even to have noticed his absence in the dormitory, since he was generally awake and out of the room before most of them anyway. The Shrieking Shack was a safe place to transform, no better or worse than the cellar back home, and Madam Pomfrey knew how to heal his injuries afterward at least as well as his mum did.
Still, he ought to be careful not to get too close to anyone. Even if it was only for homework help.
"Hey," panted Peter, who appeared to have jogged all the way to the library. "I'm sorry, I ran into Peeves and - well, it took a while before he would let me go past." He shuddered. "I really don't think I like him."
"It's okay," Remus said. "Have a seat."
Remus pulled out a chair and Peter flopped into it, pulling books and quills and rolls of parchment haphazardly out of his bag. "Transfiguration book…Transfiguration book…" he muttered, but couldn't seem to find it. He looked at Remus penitently. "I'm sorry. I swear I had it with me."
"Don't worry," Remus said. "I have mine." He pulled the book out of his own schoolbag and opened it, then closed it again. "Actually…no."
Peter looked worried. "What do you mean, no?"
"Let's start with some more basic stuff. Where do you keep your school books?"
"Er…in my bag, I guess. Or in the dormitory."
"Where in the dormitory?"
"I don't know. Next to the bed? Or on the table?"
"What if you set up one place that was always for school books? And then some kind of system for them - arranged alphabetically, by when have each class during the week?"
"Okay…" Peter said doubtfully.
"Just try it out and see if it helps in keeping track of things," Remus suggested.
"I guess so."
"And what about a homework planner? Have you got one?"
"No…?"
"Huh. Okay, I can make you one, I guess." Remus cast an eye over their various belongings scattered across the table, but didn't see anything that could easily be converted into a homework planner. "We'll do it later, in the common room. Then you can write down your assignments and when they're due, and you'll never have to worry about forgetting anything."
Peter was looking at him more and more oddly. "How do you know all this stuff?"
"Well, it's basically what we did in primary school. Just with different classes."
"I didn't go to primary school."
It was Remus' turn to be surprised. "Really? You didn't go to school at all?"
"My mum taught me things at home. It's what most people do. Why did you go to Muggle school?"
"Well, I mean, you have to learn to read… and do some maths…? Learn about history and geography and all that?"
Peter shrugged. "It's not like we need to know Muggle history. And like I said, my mum taught me the basics, how to hold a wand and things."
"Wizards are weird," Remus muttered.
"Your parents aren't wizards?"
"Yeah, they are. But we lived among Muggles, so we had to know how to act like them, right? And people in the neighbourhood would have thought it was strange if I was the only kid not going to school."
"Oh, I don't know if I'd like that," Peter fretted. "Living among Muggles."
"But Muggles are just…normal. You know that, right? They act just like us except that they don't do magic."
Peter looked as confused as Remus felt. "But magic…that's everything."
Remus sensed they had hit an impasse for the time being. "Um. Maybe we should start on the Transfiguration assignment. Before it gets too late, I mean."
"Yeah," Peter agreed, and his face mirrored Remus' relief.
Remus pulled his textbook toward him again and flipped it open. "Okay, so she wanted us to explain Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration, then state the five exceptions, and explain why they're exceptions."
Peter looked lost again already, and waited for Remus to prompt him.
"Gamp's Law - what is it?"
Peter still looked helpless.
"Okay, let's break it down. First, just Transfiguration. What is Transfiguration?"
"Er…changing one thing into another thing?"
"Exactly!" Remus gave him an encouraging smile. "So there you've got half of it already. And 'elemental' just means that it describes the basics, right? Here, read this and tell me what you think." He pushed the book toward Peter, who dutifully bent his head over the part Remus had pointed to.
"Oooh, Pettigrew!" came a shrill voice behind them. Teresa Nott had crept up on their table, flanked by two of her sycophantic girlfriends, and was now gloating at Peter. Many of the Slytherins seemed kind of scary to Remus, but Teresa was both scary and loud. "You're getting tutoring? Seriously, it's not even Hallowe'en, and already you can't keep up?"
Two bright red spots were appearing high on Peter's pudgy cheeks. "Leave me alone, Teresa," he muttered, looking down at the table.
"Honestly, you're so thick! Why aren't you in Hufflepuff?" She snickered loudly, apparently finding this a very witty joke. Her two friends echoed her laughter.
"He's not in Hufflepuff because he's distinguished himself as a true Gryffindor through acts of bravery," announced James Potter, who had materialised seemingly out of nowhere and was now leaning against the side of their table opposite Teresa.
"Oh?" asked Teresa.
James nodded. "You should have seen him when we snuck out to the kitchens last night. Peeves got in there and was terrorising the house-elves, but Peter scared him off."
"I'm supposed to believe you know how to get into the school kitchens?" Teresa scoffed.
"That I do."
"Oh, yeah? Prove it. How do you get in?"
"If I told you, then I'd have to put up with seeing you there, wouldn't I?"
"See, you don't know."
"Oh, but I do. And I can tell you what's for dinner tonight. Pork chops. And peach cobbler for dessert."
"Right." Teresa rolled her eyes.
"You'll see. And think of me when you're eating your cobbler, would you?" James flashed her a jaunty smile. "Now scram, Teresa. Some of us have revising to do."
And to Remus' complete and utter amazement, Teresa Nott actually did scram.
James threw himself down into a chair across from Remus and Peter, still grinning. "I thought that went well."
Remus opened his mouth, then closed it again. "How did you do that?" he asked finally.
"Oh," James shrugged modestly. "I'm just charming."
"Do you really know how to get into the kitchens?" Peter wanted to know.
"Of course. Found the entrance the first week of school."
Peter was gazing at James with even more longing and admiration than usual.
"I'll show you, if you want. Tonight. You keen?"
"Yes," Peter whispered.
"You could get in trouble," Remus reproved. "I'm sure students aren't supposed to be in there."
"That's why we'll go after curfew, when no one's there to see us."
"No! You can't do that, then you'll be caught for certain and you'll lose us House points."
"Ah, Remus," James said. "Remus, Remus. You need to live a little. Want to come with us tonight?"
"No!" Remus was scandalised.
James heaved a great sigh. "Guess it wasn't meant to be." He pushed back his chair and stood up. "See you two at dinner. And Peter - tonight."
Dinner was, in fact, precisely what James had said it would be, and delicious as usual. But Remus found it hard to enjoy his peach cobbler as he worried his two not-actually-friends might get caught sneaking down to the kitchens that night.
- - - - -
Everything seemed so easy for James, Remus thought. Magic came to him like breathing, so he never really had to try in classes, but still got top marks. He also had an uncanny ability to be mates with absolutely everyone - except, of course, Sirius Black.
Remus noticed these things, just like he noticed that Tristan Dearborn and Alvin Graham were the only Gryffindor boys so far to really pair off into best mates, or that Ben Davies spent most of his time with the Ravenclaws instead, since he had a cousin there who was also a first-year.
But James simply got on with everyone. Tristan and Alvin liked him and Peter fairly worshipped him. James spent a fair amount of time with the three of them in various combinations, but he was friendly to Remus too, and with the Ravenclaws and some of the Hufflepuffs. He even got on well with most of the girls in their year, with the one notable exception of Lily Evans, whom he seemed to love to torment.
It must be nice to be liked by everybody and not have any secrets, Remus thought. At the moment, James was laughing and joking with Ben and a couple of Ravenclaws as the two Houses' first-years trooped back up to the castle after a joint flying lesson, carrying their borrowed school brooms.
James was also a natural at flying, of course. Sirius too. Remus, meanwhile, was dismal - his mum had always been afraid to let him fly, so he'd never really had a chance to get the hang of it. Even Peter could outfly Remus easily, and Peter was the kind of person who usually tripped over his own feet.
Remus gave himself a mental shake, because that wasn't a nice thing to think about a not-quite-friend. Yes, Peter was clumsy, but he was also kind and loyal. And it wasn't anybody else's fault that Remus had an overprotective mum and a terrible secret, so he should just stop taking it out on his schoolmates, even if it was only inside his head.
"Hey, Remus!" James called and dropped back a bit from others to let Remus catch up with him. "What are you going to be tonight?"
Remus looked at him blankly.
"For the Hallowe'en feast. We're all going in costume. It'll be a fancy dress feast." James grinned and gave a mock twirl of his school robes to the laughter of the others around them.
Remus felt a panicky constriction in his throat, the same one he got on the rare occasions when a professor asked a question he didn't know the answer to. "I haven't got anything like that," he managed. "I haven't got any costumes or fancy dress things."
"You can borrow something of mine," James offered carelessly. "Come up to the dormitory before dinner, we're going to try things on."
And James dashed off to catch up with the others again before Remus had a chance to work an answer past the anxious tightness in his throat. Costumes and friendly dormitory camaraderie and a James Potter plan…this couldn't end well.
- - - - -
In the end, Peter was a pirate and James an astronaut, after Remus unthinkingly suggested it and then had to spend a quarter of an hour explaining the concept of Muggle space travel to an enthusiastic James. Ben had wandered off again, but Alvin and Tristan joined in and became more or less recognisable as a bat and an eagle respectively.
Tristan had wanted to be a werewolf, actually, but Remus, panicking quietly, proposed various other predators until one mercifully stuck. James really did have an impossible array of strange clothes and stray items in his trunk.
"Now what about you?" James mused, turning his attention to Remus, the only one still in his normal robes. Remus shrugged, nervous at having so much attention focussed on him. "You'll be… Oh, brilliant. What if he's a professor?"
"A professor?" Peter repeated.
"Because you're so serious anyway, Remus. You kind of have that air. So we'll just make his robes look a bit more like what the professors wear…give him specs…"
"And a class roster!" Tristan suggested. "Like he's checking everyone's homework."
Remus found himself surrounded as the other boys adjusted his clothes and handed him props. He noticed movement in the doorway out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Sirius stopped short there, looking at them.
"Hey, Sirius -" Remus began, but the other boy had already turned on his heel and left.
James shook his head in annoyance. The others didn't even seem to have noticed.
"I wonder if Sirius wanted to put together a costume too," Remus offered timidly.
"Nah," James said. "Slytherins don't do 'childish' stuff like this - I heard Chadrick Bole going on about that - and Sirius is still pining for Slytherin."
Maybe he wouldn't be pining for Slytherin if you hadn't told him he wasn't welcome in Gryffindor, Remus thought, but he was too overwhelmed by James being so nice to him to say it.
"There, you're done," James proclaimed. Then he shuddered. "Ugh, I wouldn't want to have to turn in late homework to you."
- - - - -
The Halloween Feast was nice enough, Remus supposed, but mainly it was loud. It was getting to the point where he was having trouble thinking, that's how loud it was. He slipped away from the table and out the doors to the Entrance Hall, debating with himself whether or not he was allowed to go just outside the castle doors for fresh air. It was after the usual curfew time, which meant normally they wouldn't be allowed out, but then, this certainly wasn't a normal night, since everyone was still in the Great Hall. Maybe if he just stood in the doorway but didn't go all the way out…?
He heard voices. Indistinctly, but coming from the corridor to his left. Remus hesitated, wondering if he should just go back to the Feast now and stay out of trouble.
One of the voices sounded like Sirius.
Remus sighed, crept a little closer and peered around the corner.
What he saw was Sirius, backed up against the wall, and Lucius Malfoy, looming over him. Lucius was Sirius' cousin's boyfriend and an arrogant seventh-year Slytherin prefect, not to mention much, much taller than Sirius.
"…and because Narcissa is too nice to say this herself, I'm going to do it for her," Lucius was saying. "You do anything else that makes her look bad, and you're going to have to deal with me. Is that clear?"
Remus gulped. Sirius glared back at Lucius defiantly.
"I asked you if that's clear?"
"And what are you going to do to me?" Sirius demanded.
Lucius laughed, a measured and mirthless sound. "Oh, this for starters." He waved his wand and Sirius toppled over. When Sirius tried to get up, his legs seemed to be stuck together. Lucius leant over him. "Really, Sirius? You want to stand up to me? I'm a prefect, I'm a Malfoy, and you're just the Black family black sheep. Please." He raised his wand again.
"Leave him alone!" someone shouted and then James Potter, of all people, barrelled past Remus and down the corridor, wand at the ready, still wearing his absurd silver astronaut costume, with the makeshift helmet coming askew. Remus blinked and sank a little further back into the shadows.
James skidded to a halt in front of a very surprised Lucius, who had straightened up and was looking at the new arrival through narrowed eyes.
"You're a Malfoy, Lucius, huh? As if we didn't know. Well, I'm a Potter, and my dad's the Head of the Auror Office, so why don't you just stop picking on people half your size?"
"Or you'll do what, Potter?" Lucius snapped.
"Or I'll hex you."
"I'd like to see you try."
"Fine." Without a second's pause, James shot a jinx at Lucius. The older boy parried it easily, but he looked angry.
"Get out of here, Potter," he hissed. "I don't take orders from babies in…in…" The word for whatever it was James was wearing clearly failed him. "…in dress up clothes."
"Oh, I forgot to say," James added pleasantly, "another one of my friends is waiting back there in the Entrance Hall to get Dumbledore the second you try to hurt me." He smiled as if he had not a care in the world.
"Get out of my sight, pipsqueak," Lucius snapped. But it was he, not James, who turned and stalked away.
James, grinning from ear to ear, gave Sirius a hand up and said the counter-jinx for his legs.
"You have a death wish or something?" Sirius muttered.
"Nope," James replied. "But that was fun. Who knew Lucius Malfoy was so easily spooked?"
Sirius shook his head. "You're nutters. And…thanks, I guess."
James shrugged, looking uncomfortable for the first time. "Don't mention it. Anyway, I'm going back to the feast, there's still pie on the tables last I checked."
James and Sirius both turned back toward the Great Hall, and Remus skittered away down a different corridor, suddenly desperate not to come face to face with the other two boys. He felt embarrassed for Sirius, who surely didn't want Remus to have seen him being bullied by Lucius Malfoy. And he was embarrassed for himself, because he'd been there first, but he hadn't stepped in to help the way James had, and had James seen him lurking in the shadows when he went by?
But most of all, Remus was very confused, because with his own eyes he'd just seen James Potter and Sirius Black be civil to one another.
James and Sirius seemed to find it a baffling state of affairs as well, and they were wary around each other for the next few days. But when Sirius saw Severus Snape coming up behind James in the corridor between classes, he shot off a stinging hex before Severus had time to do anything more than raise his wand. James, turning and seeing this, gave Sirius a small, cautious smile.
It seemed they had reached an uneasy truce.
(continues in CHAPTER 3)
Summary:
Sirius Black, Remus thought, was just as arrogant and annoying as James Potter, and he wished the two of them would stop getting into fights. Because Remus kept finding himself stepping in to stop them, and calling that kind of attention to himself was really the last thing he needed during his first year at Hogwarts.
It didn't matter if they were unpredictable Blacks or show-off Potters, or even someone harmless like Peter Pettigrew. None of these boys could be his friends, and it was time Remus started remembering it.
He didn't mind, Remus told himself. He didn't need friends.
Characters: Remus, James, Sirius, Peter and supporting cast
Warnings: None
Chapters: 7 + epilogue
Story:
CHAPTER TWO
Remus found a quiet table in the library and set out his school things, anxiously rearranging the quills. He'd agreed to help Peter Pettigrew with his Transfiguration homework and still wasn't certain whether it was a good idea. Did this violate the No Friends rule? Remus wasn't sure.
A second full moon at Hogwarts had come and gone, and Remus had survived. No one seemed even to have noticed his absence in the dormitory, since he was generally awake and out of the room before most of them anyway. The Shrieking Shack was a safe place to transform, no better or worse than the cellar back home, and Madam Pomfrey knew how to heal his injuries afterward at least as well as his mum did.
Still, he ought to be careful not to get too close to anyone. Even if it was only for homework help.
"Hey," panted Peter, who appeared to have jogged all the way to the library. "I'm sorry, I ran into Peeves and - well, it took a while before he would let me go past." He shuddered. "I really don't think I like him."
"It's okay," Remus said. "Have a seat."
Remus pulled out a chair and Peter flopped into it, pulling books and quills and rolls of parchment haphazardly out of his bag. "Transfiguration book…Transfiguration book…" he muttered, but couldn't seem to find it. He looked at Remus penitently. "I'm sorry. I swear I had it with me."
"Don't worry," Remus said. "I have mine." He pulled the book out of his own schoolbag and opened it, then closed it again. "Actually…no."
Peter looked worried. "What do you mean, no?"
"Let's start with some more basic stuff. Where do you keep your school books?"
"Er…in my bag, I guess. Or in the dormitory."
"Where in the dormitory?"
"I don't know. Next to the bed? Or on the table?"
"What if you set up one place that was always for school books? And then some kind of system for them - arranged alphabetically, by when have each class during the week?"
"Okay…" Peter said doubtfully.
"Just try it out and see if it helps in keeping track of things," Remus suggested.
"I guess so."
"And what about a homework planner? Have you got one?"
"No…?"
"Huh. Okay, I can make you one, I guess." Remus cast an eye over their various belongings scattered across the table, but didn't see anything that could easily be converted into a homework planner. "We'll do it later, in the common room. Then you can write down your assignments and when they're due, and you'll never have to worry about forgetting anything."
Peter was looking at him more and more oddly. "How do you know all this stuff?"
"Well, it's basically what we did in primary school. Just with different classes."
"I didn't go to primary school."
It was Remus' turn to be surprised. "Really? You didn't go to school at all?"
"My mum taught me things at home. It's what most people do. Why did you go to Muggle school?"
"Well, I mean, you have to learn to read… and do some maths…? Learn about history and geography and all that?"
Peter shrugged. "It's not like we need to know Muggle history. And like I said, my mum taught me the basics, how to hold a wand and things."
"Wizards are weird," Remus muttered.
"Your parents aren't wizards?"
"Yeah, they are. But we lived among Muggles, so we had to know how to act like them, right? And people in the neighbourhood would have thought it was strange if I was the only kid not going to school."
"Oh, I don't know if I'd like that," Peter fretted. "Living among Muggles."
"But Muggles are just…normal. You know that, right? They act just like us except that they don't do magic."
Peter looked as confused as Remus felt. "But magic…that's everything."
Remus sensed they had hit an impasse for the time being. "Um. Maybe we should start on the Transfiguration assignment. Before it gets too late, I mean."
"Yeah," Peter agreed, and his face mirrored Remus' relief.
Remus pulled his textbook toward him again and flipped it open. "Okay, so she wanted us to explain Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration, then state the five exceptions, and explain why they're exceptions."
Peter looked lost again already, and waited for Remus to prompt him.
"Gamp's Law - what is it?"
Peter still looked helpless.
"Okay, let's break it down. First, just Transfiguration. What is Transfiguration?"
"Er…changing one thing into another thing?"
"Exactly!" Remus gave him an encouraging smile. "So there you've got half of it already. And 'elemental' just means that it describes the basics, right? Here, read this and tell me what you think." He pushed the book toward Peter, who dutifully bent his head over the part Remus had pointed to.
"Oooh, Pettigrew!" came a shrill voice behind them. Teresa Nott had crept up on their table, flanked by two of her sycophantic girlfriends, and was now gloating at Peter. Many of the Slytherins seemed kind of scary to Remus, but Teresa was both scary and loud. "You're getting tutoring? Seriously, it's not even Hallowe'en, and already you can't keep up?"
Two bright red spots were appearing high on Peter's pudgy cheeks. "Leave me alone, Teresa," he muttered, looking down at the table.
"Honestly, you're so thick! Why aren't you in Hufflepuff?" She snickered loudly, apparently finding this a very witty joke. Her two friends echoed her laughter.
"He's not in Hufflepuff because he's distinguished himself as a true Gryffindor through acts of bravery," announced James Potter, who had materialised seemingly out of nowhere and was now leaning against the side of their table opposite Teresa.
"Oh?" asked Teresa.
James nodded. "You should have seen him when we snuck out to the kitchens last night. Peeves got in there and was terrorising the house-elves, but Peter scared him off."
"I'm supposed to believe you know how to get into the school kitchens?" Teresa scoffed.
"That I do."
"Oh, yeah? Prove it. How do you get in?"
"If I told you, then I'd have to put up with seeing you there, wouldn't I?"
"See, you don't know."
"Oh, but I do. And I can tell you what's for dinner tonight. Pork chops. And peach cobbler for dessert."
"Right." Teresa rolled her eyes.
"You'll see. And think of me when you're eating your cobbler, would you?" James flashed her a jaunty smile. "Now scram, Teresa. Some of us have revising to do."
And to Remus' complete and utter amazement, Teresa Nott actually did scram.
James threw himself down into a chair across from Remus and Peter, still grinning. "I thought that went well."
Remus opened his mouth, then closed it again. "How did you do that?" he asked finally.
"Oh," James shrugged modestly. "I'm just charming."
"Do you really know how to get into the kitchens?" Peter wanted to know.
"Of course. Found the entrance the first week of school."
Peter was gazing at James with even more longing and admiration than usual.
"I'll show you, if you want. Tonight. You keen?"
"Yes," Peter whispered.
"You could get in trouble," Remus reproved. "I'm sure students aren't supposed to be in there."
"That's why we'll go after curfew, when no one's there to see us."
"No! You can't do that, then you'll be caught for certain and you'll lose us House points."
"Ah, Remus," James said. "Remus, Remus. You need to live a little. Want to come with us tonight?"
"No!" Remus was scandalised.
James heaved a great sigh. "Guess it wasn't meant to be." He pushed back his chair and stood up. "See you two at dinner. And Peter - tonight."
Dinner was, in fact, precisely what James had said it would be, and delicious as usual. But Remus found it hard to enjoy his peach cobbler as he worried his two not-actually-friends might get caught sneaking down to the kitchens that night.
- - - - -
Everything seemed so easy for James, Remus thought. Magic came to him like breathing, so he never really had to try in classes, but still got top marks. He also had an uncanny ability to be mates with absolutely everyone - except, of course, Sirius Black.
Remus noticed these things, just like he noticed that Tristan Dearborn and Alvin Graham were the only Gryffindor boys so far to really pair off into best mates, or that Ben Davies spent most of his time with the Ravenclaws instead, since he had a cousin there who was also a first-year.
But James simply got on with everyone. Tristan and Alvin liked him and Peter fairly worshipped him. James spent a fair amount of time with the three of them in various combinations, but he was friendly to Remus too, and with the Ravenclaws and some of the Hufflepuffs. He even got on well with most of the girls in their year, with the one notable exception of Lily Evans, whom he seemed to love to torment.
It must be nice to be liked by everybody and not have any secrets, Remus thought. At the moment, James was laughing and joking with Ben and a couple of Ravenclaws as the two Houses' first-years trooped back up to the castle after a joint flying lesson, carrying their borrowed school brooms.
James was also a natural at flying, of course. Sirius too. Remus, meanwhile, was dismal - his mum had always been afraid to let him fly, so he'd never really had a chance to get the hang of it. Even Peter could outfly Remus easily, and Peter was the kind of person who usually tripped over his own feet.
Remus gave himself a mental shake, because that wasn't a nice thing to think about a not-quite-friend. Yes, Peter was clumsy, but he was also kind and loyal. And it wasn't anybody else's fault that Remus had an overprotective mum and a terrible secret, so he should just stop taking it out on his schoolmates, even if it was only inside his head.
"Hey, Remus!" James called and dropped back a bit from others to let Remus catch up with him. "What are you going to be tonight?"
Remus looked at him blankly.
"For the Hallowe'en feast. We're all going in costume. It'll be a fancy dress feast." James grinned and gave a mock twirl of his school robes to the laughter of the others around them.
Remus felt a panicky constriction in his throat, the same one he got on the rare occasions when a professor asked a question he didn't know the answer to. "I haven't got anything like that," he managed. "I haven't got any costumes or fancy dress things."
"You can borrow something of mine," James offered carelessly. "Come up to the dormitory before dinner, we're going to try things on."
And James dashed off to catch up with the others again before Remus had a chance to work an answer past the anxious tightness in his throat. Costumes and friendly dormitory camaraderie and a James Potter plan…this couldn't end well.
- - - - -
In the end, Peter was a pirate and James an astronaut, after Remus unthinkingly suggested it and then had to spend a quarter of an hour explaining the concept of Muggle space travel to an enthusiastic James. Ben had wandered off again, but Alvin and Tristan joined in and became more or less recognisable as a bat and an eagle respectively.
Tristan had wanted to be a werewolf, actually, but Remus, panicking quietly, proposed various other predators until one mercifully stuck. James really did have an impossible array of strange clothes and stray items in his trunk.
"Now what about you?" James mused, turning his attention to Remus, the only one still in his normal robes. Remus shrugged, nervous at having so much attention focussed on him. "You'll be… Oh, brilliant. What if he's a professor?"
"A professor?" Peter repeated.
"Because you're so serious anyway, Remus. You kind of have that air. So we'll just make his robes look a bit more like what the professors wear…give him specs…"
"And a class roster!" Tristan suggested. "Like he's checking everyone's homework."
Remus found himself surrounded as the other boys adjusted his clothes and handed him props. He noticed movement in the doorway out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Sirius stopped short there, looking at them.
"Hey, Sirius -" Remus began, but the other boy had already turned on his heel and left.
James shook his head in annoyance. The others didn't even seem to have noticed.
"I wonder if Sirius wanted to put together a costume too," Remus offered timidly.
"Nah," James said. "Slytherins don't do 'childish' stuff like this - I heard Chadrick Bole going on about that - and Sirius is still pining for Slytherin."
Maybe he wouldn't be pining for Slytherin if you hadn't told him he wasn't welcome in Gryffindor, Remus thought, but he was too overwhelmed by James being so nice to him to say it.
"There, you're done," James proclaimed. Then he shuddered. "Ugh, I wouldn't want to have to turn in late homework to you."
- - - - -
The Halloween Feast was nice enough, Remus supposed, but mainly it was loud. It was getting to the point where he was having trouble thinking, that's how loud it was. He slipped away from the table and out the doors to the Entrance Hall, debating with himself whether or not he was allowed to go just outside the castle doors for fresh air. It was after the usual curfew time, which meant normally they wouldn't be allowed out, but then, this certainly wasn't a normal night, since everyone was still in the Great Hall. Maybe if he just stood in the doorway but didn't go all the way out…?
He heard voices. Indistinctly, but coming from the corridor to his left. Remus hesitated, wondering if he should just go back to the Feast now and stay out of trouble.
One of the voices sounded like Sirius.
Remus sighed, crept a little closer and peered around the corner.
What he saw was Sirius, backed up against the wall, and Lucius Malfoy, looming over him. Lucius was Sirius' cousin's boyfriend and an arrogant seventh-year Slytherin prefect, not to mention much, much taller than Sirius.
"…and because Narcissa is too nice to say this herself, I'm going to do it for her," Lucius was saying. "You do anything else that makes her look bad, and you're going to have to deal with me. Is that clear?"
Remus gulped. Sirius glared back at Lucius defiantly.
"I asked you if that's clear?"
"And what are you going to do to me?" Sirius demanded.
Lucius laughed, a measured and mirthless sound. "Oh, this for starters." He waved his wand and Sirius toppled over. When Sirius tried to get up, his legs seemed to be stuck together. Lucius leant over him. "Really, Sirius? You want to stand up to me? I'm a prefect, I'm a Malfoy, and you're just the Black family black sheep. Please." He raised his wand again.
"Leave him alone!" someone shouted and then James Potter, of all people, barrelled past Remus and down the corridor, wand at the ready, still wearing his absurd silver astronaut costume, with the makeshift helmet coming askew. Remus blinked and sank a little further back into the shadows.
James skidded to a halt in front of a very surprised Lucius, who had straightened up and was looking at the new arrival through narrowed eyes.
"You're a Malfoy, Lucius, huh? As if we didn't know. Well, I'm a Potter, and my dad's the Head of the Auror Office, so why don't you just stop picking on people half your size?"
"Or you'll do what, Potter?" Lucius snapped.
"Or I'll hex you."
"I'd like to see you try."
"Fine." Without a second's pause, James shot a jinx at Lucius. The older boy parried it easily, but he looked angry.
"Get out of here, Potter," he hissed. "I don't take orders from babies in…in…" The word for whatever it was James was wearing clearly failed him. "…in dress up clothes."
"Oh, I forgot to say," James added pleasantly, "another one of my friends is waiting back there in the Entrance Hall to get Dumbledore the second you try to hurt me." He smiled as if he had not a care in the world.
"Get out of my sight, pipsqueak," Lucius snapped. But it was he, not James, who turned and stalked away.
James, grinning from ear to ear, gave Sirius a hand up and said the counter-jinx for his legs.
"You have a death wish or something?" Sirius muttered.
"Nope," James replied. "But that was fun. Who knew Lucius Malfoy was so easily spooked?"
Sirius shook his head. "You're nutters. And…thanks, I guess."
James shrugged, looking uncomfortable for the first time. "Don't mention it. Anyway, I'm going back to the feast, there's still pie on the tables last I checked."
James and Sirius both turned back toward the Great Hall, and Remus skittered away down a different corridor, suddenly desperate not to come face to face with the other two boys. He felt embarrassed for Sirius, who surely didn't want Remus to have seen him being bullied by Lucius Malfoy. And he was embarrassed for himself, because he'd been there first, but he hadn't stepped in to help the way James had, and had James seen him lurking in the shadows when he went by?
But most of all, Remus was very confused, because with his own eyes he'd just seen James Potter and Sirius Black be civil to one another.
James and Sirius seemed to find it a baffling state of affairs as well, and they were wary around each other for the next few days. But when Sirius saw Severus Snape coming up behind James in the corridor between classes, he shot off a stinging hex before Severus had time to do anything more than raise his wand. James, turning and seeing this, gave Sirius a small, cautious smile.
It seemed they had reached an uneasy truce.
(continues in CHAPTER 3)