In the Wrong House, chapter 1
IN THE WRONG HOUSE (chapter 1)
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
Acknowledgements to:
...the one and only JKR for this spectacular sandbox. I don't own it!
...Kaydeefalls for first planting the idea that maybe James and Sirius weren't fast friends from the moment they met like we tend to assume, in "The Years of the Rat."
...Sam Starbuck for the idea that the Sorting Hat put Remus in Gryffindor because "he needed courageous people around him," in "The Sorting Hat" (part of his "Moon Meadow Anthology").
…Jules, I think, was the first I saw give James' dad the profession I've also found fitting for him, in her epic-length story "The Life and Times."
...plus whoever it was that suggested - though they phrased it far more elegantly - that Remus and Peter ended up in Gryffindor, when many would have pegged them as Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff respectively, because the Marauders were simply so very much meant to be.
Story:
CHAPTER ONE
"You're in the wrong house, Black," James Potter snapped, his entire slender 11-year-old frame radiating aggression. "Dunno how you ended up here, but we don't want you."
Sirius Black, just as self-assured, just as angry, glared back from across the dormitory. "Lucky for me then, Potter, I don't care what you think. At least I don't just go along blindly with whatever my daddy did."
Remus Lupin, hovering by the door and clutching his schoolbag, looked back and forth between them. Two more boys, whose names Remus didn't yet know, were also hanging back, equally unsure how to react to their hot-tempered dorm mates.
Remus was pretty good at reading body language, and he figured the two dark-haired boys facing off from opposite sides of the room were just moments away from coming to blows. The very thought made him feel physically ill.
James advanced a step. "Oh yeah? Well I know what I wouldn't do - show my face in a noble house like Gryffindor, if I had a family like yours."
"You leave my family out of it!" Sirius yelled.
James took another step. "I've heard funny things about some of your cousins."
"I said leave my family out of it. I don't want to have to fight you, Potter." Sirius was a bit taller than James and definitely broader built, but he still looked a little worried. Maybe he thought they would all gang up on him, once James started. Then he seemed to realise he was telegraphing his uncertainty and added, "Not that I couldn't take a scrawny Muggle-lover like you any time."
James launched himself at Sirius.
To his own surprise, Remus found himself tossing his schoolbag aside and throwing himself between them. "Leave him alone!" he shouted, pushing James back from where he'd grabbed hold of Sirius' collar.
Everything in the room came to a halt, as all the boys stared at the skinny little Lupin kid, with his slightly mismatched clothes and a strange scar down one side of his face, standing up to the scion of the Potter line.
James was agape. "He's insulting Muggles. Muggleborns. Why would you defend him?"
"Just don't hit him. You don't solve anything by hitting people."
James stepped back slowly, sizing Remus up. "Well. At least we know why you're in Gryffindor."
Remus flushed, but held his ground.
James threw up his hands. "Fine. Whatever. I promise not to hit him…for now. And by the way, I want this bed." James threw himself onto the four-poster nearest the door before anyone could protest.
The other two boys - a Dearborn maybe? And a boy named something like Paul or Peter? - took the opportunity to creep back out to the common room.
Sirius breathed out. "Didn't need your help," he muttered to Remus.
"But you got it anyway," Remus replied, amazed how calm he was able to make his voice. He was pretty sure he'd never stood up to anyone like that before in all his life. He could practically hear James listening from behind the half-closed curtains of his newly-claimed bed. "So you might as well be grateful, instead of acting like a git."
Something in Sirius' face closed at that and his words unconsciously echoed James'. "Fine. I'm grateful and all. Whatever." He turned toward the door.
"Where are you going?"
"Out."
"It's almost curfew," Remus reminded him, worried this unpredictable boy was going to get all of them in trouble their very first night.
Sirius shrugged. "I won't get caught, then."
He left and there was nothing but silence from James' bed. Remus cautiously selected the four-poster in the corner furthest from the door, and began unpacking his things. Hopefully there he'd be out of the way enough that the others might not even notice when he wasn't in his bed on full moon nights.
He'd have to be more discreet, though. He didn't know quite what had come over him just now, but it was never a good idea to draw so much attention to himself. And Remus was usually so good at fading into the background.
- - - - -
Remus was hurrying back to the common room from the library just before curfew, clutching a stack of books, when he glimpsed movement in one of the recessed window ledges along the corridor that led to the Gryffindor common room. It appeared to be a leg, nearly hidden in the shadows. Remus paused, and closer inspection revealed the window ledge to contain not only a leg, but the entirety of Sirius Black.
"Hey," Remus said cautiously.
Sirius shifted in the shadows. "Hey."
"Um, it's almost curfew. Just if you didn't know."
"I know. And I'll be inside on time."
"Oh, okay. Sorry." Remus switched his books, grown heavy, to the other arm. "Uh…what are you doing here, then?"
"Nothing."
Remus threw caution to the wind, surprising himself for the second time that week. "Can I sit there too?"
There was an agonising pause, but then limbs shifted in the dark and there was space free on one half of the ledge. Remus set down the stack of books, rubbing his tired arms with relief. The full moon was only a few days away and he was feeling it in his body already. This would be his first time transforming away from home and he was trying valiantly - and failing spectacularly - not to think about it. Remus wriggled his way up onto the makeshift seat.
"That Potter kid is a prat," Sirius said.
"Oh?" was all Remus could think to say.
"He put a centipede in my bed. And some kind of itching powder yesterday. What'd I ever do to him?"
"…Oh." Remus repeated.
"I wish I was in Slytherin. At least there, I'd know the people who hate me. And why they do."
"I'm sure they wouldn't hate you," Remus offered. "Besides, don't you have cousins in Slytherin?"
"Exactly," Sirius said.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand."
"I wouldn't expect you to. You're Muggleborn, aren't you?"
"No," Remus said, annoyed yet again that this was always assumed to matter. "Only half. My dad's family are all wizards."
"Are they? But not one of the old families, then. I mean, I've never heard of any Lupins."
"What does it matter?" Remus snapped.
Sirius leant forward, his face finally visible in the light from the torches along the wall. "It doesn't."
"Then why are you acting like it does?"
"Because it does in my family."
"That doesn't make sense."
"Most of the time, it doesn't matter. We can all do magic so, whatever, we're all wizards. Doesn't matter who your parents are. But, see, my parents think it does. They're always going on and on and on about the family and our pure blood and how much better we are than everyone else. I mean, you heard the Howler at breakfast." Sirius' cheeks flushed at the memory. "My mum's disgraced. She actually tried to convince my dad to pull me out of Hogwarts. 'Gryffindor? That's just a bunch of common riffraff!'" He imitated what Remus could only assume were the shrill tones of his mother.
"But you get to stay?"
"Yeah. But only because Father thinks me leaving school would be even more of a disgrace."
"That doesn't mean anyone in Slytherin would hate you, though."
"Yes, it does. They know I'm not like them, and I should be." Sirius shivered a little and pulled his legs in tighter. "Like I said, I wouldn't expect you to understand it."
Remus gritted his teeth. Just when he'd thought they were actually getting on, without Sirius condescending like he always seemed to. "I have to go," he said. "It's practically curfew."
He jumped off the ledge and grabbed his books, just barely glimpsing the way something sad or disappointed flashed across Sirius' face in the shadows as Remus turned away and headed for the portrait of the Fat Lady.
Sirius Black, he thought, was just as arrogant and annoying as James Potter. The pair of them, honestly.
Remus climbed through the portrait hole, found a table, and bent his head over his homework assignment for Charms.
- - - - -
Remus really, really didn't mean to get involved. He'd told himself to keep his head down and do his work and not get mixed up in things, but he'd spent most of his childhood mediating between people, and couldn't seem to stop.
"Why do you hate him so much?" he asked James, after James and Sirius had been thrown out of Potions class for coming to blows - blows that had unfortunately resulted in a certain degree of damage to their classmates' Cheering Concoctions.
James was just coming back from Professor McGonagall's office, nursing a black eye and a dangerous looking scowl, when Remus came across him. Mostly by accident.
"He's a Black," James spat out. "They're as dark as they come, Remus."
Remus fell into step beside James, turning back toward Gryffindor tower. "You seemed friendly with him on the train. The Hogwarts Express? I saw you getting off from the same wagon at the station."
"Yeah. That was before I knew he was a Black."
"So you must have liked him all right before you knew his name."
James stopped walking and turned to face Remus. "Look, Blacks are Dark wizards. They're twisted, they have all these mad ideas about being better than everyone else. You don't want to get mixed up with a Black, believe me." He proclaimed this with an air of confidence and started walking again, clearly considering the matter closed.
"But maybe Sirius isn't like that."
"There's no maybe! They're all the same!"
"How can you know that?"
"Believe me, I just know."
"How?"
"It's just stuff you know when… I mean, I just know."
"Just come out and tell me I can't understand because I'm not a pureblood, would you?" Remus recoiled as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He hadn't meant to shout.
James looked affronted. "I would never say that!"
"But you meant it."
"No! No. I meant… Look, my dad's really high up at the Ministry. He runs the Auror department. So it's his job to catch Dark wizards, yeah? I just hear a lot from him, that's all. Merlin, Remus, I wouldn't ever say something like that." James' gaze was intent as they walked on, and it struck Remus that he managed to look startlingly dignified even when apologising. Not hard to believe his dad was head of the Auror department. In fact, that explained rather a lot about James.
Remus was about to answer, when a flash of red hair came into view at the end of the corridor ahead of them. Just as quickly, the maturity or dignity or whatever it was James had been exuding was gone, and he was once again a messy-haired 11-year-old with a mad grin on his face.
"Catch you later, Remus!" he yelled over his shoulder, already trotting off down the corridor. Remus heard a shriek as Lily Evans' pigtail got pulled, then the sound of girlish shouting and some sort of medium-sized objects being thrown.
- - - - -
James Potter was levitating and juggling all the items in his breakfast, as Peter Pettigrew and Ben Davies watched and applauded the particularly impressive moves.
A bit further down the Gryffindor table, Sirius Black slouched lower over his breakfast and muttered, "Show-off," into his porridge.
Privately, Remus was inclined to agree, but the second full moon of the school year was approaching and he was feeling anxious again about drawing attention to himself. Better to stay out of it.
Peter and Ben applauded again. Sirius straightened. "Parlour tricks," he said clearly.
James fumbled his eggcup for just a fraction of a second, but pretended not to have heard.
"Cheap parlour tricks," Sirius added, to no one in particular.
With unhurried precision, James caught and set down each item he had held aloft at wandpoint, then stood up. The other boys around them fell silent. James walked past Ben and Remus, stopping just behind Sirius. Sirius didn't turn.
"You got a problem, Black?"
"Yeah, I do."
"With what?"
Now Sirius stood up and turned to face James, only the bench separating them. "With you. You arrogant…faker. There's nothing so great about you. You just want to be the centre of attention."
Remus, busy hunching his shoulders and trying to pretend he didn't exist, had a not entirely welcome flash of insight. James and Sirius were both the pampered sons of wealthy, pureblood families. They were both used to being the centre of attention, to getting everything they wanted. James Potter and Sirius Black were too…similar? That couldn't possibly be true.
"Yeah, well what about you?" James demanded. "Hexing people just because you can? If you're looking for attention, that's not the way to do it."
Again, a strange ripple of recognition: Hexing people just because you could… Remus had seen James send a tripping jinx at Severus Snape's back in the corridor just the day before.
"At least I don't need a bunch of fawning admirers to feel like I'm worth something," Sirius snapped.
"Oh, bragging about the fact that you've got no friends, are you? Clearly something to be proud about."
"You watch it, Potter," Sirius growled. "Because I have got friends here, even if you're too dense to notice."
"Oh, what, invisible ones? The ghosts?"
"No." Sirius let his gaze flick over to the Slytherin table on the other side of the Great Hall.
James' eyes widened. "Are you threatening me, Black?"
Sirius shrugged.
James took a step in, pushing up against the wooden bench that separated them. "I'm not scared of you. Not for a second."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah."
Before the others around them had even registered what was going on, they were shoving each other, and again, Remus acted before his brain had a chance to catch up. He found himself by Sirius and James, pushing ineffectually against both of them, yelling, "Stop it!"
James did stop and look at him, out of surprise more than anything else. Sirius tried to get in a swing while James was distracted, but James ducked and Remus pushed Sirius away. All three of them were breathing heavily.
"Just stop," Remus muttered. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see motion at the staff table - they were all about to get into trouble. "I don't care what you think about each other or how you act in private, but stop getting in fights in public, okay? You're messing things up for everybody."
James crossed his arms in front of his chest. "All right, no fighting in public," he said, emphasising the word. He seemed to be refusing to look at Sirius, keeping his eyes on Remus instead. "You're lucky your friend Lupin stepped in, Black. Next time, I won't go easy on you."
Remus took an involuntary step backward. Friend Lupin. But none of these boys could be his friends. It didn't matter if they were unpredictable Blacks or show-off Potters, or even someone harmless like Peter Pettigrew, whose main hobby seemed to be idolising James. Remus couldn't let anyone be his friend. He was here to get an education, maybe even make it to NEWTS before his secret came out, and nothing else. And he ought to start acting like it.
McGonagall descended on them then, nostrils flaring. "Mr Potter! Mr Black! And Mr Lupin! What is going on here?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Brawling at the breakfast table! I would think you'd know this is not how we behave Hogwarts, but apparently the three of you require a reminder. Detention at 7.00 this evening in my office."
"Please, Professor…" All of them turned toward the unexpected source of the voice: Peter Pettigrew. "Remus wasn't fighting. He was trying to stop them."
McGonagall raised an eyebrow. "Is this true?"
"Yes, ma'am," James replied promptly.
"Mr Black?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am," he grumbled.
Professor McGonagall considered them all in turn. Remus squirmed under her gaze, James met it stoically, and Sirius gazed off into space, pretending not to care.
"Very well," she said. "No detention for Mr Lupin. But still, I might advise you to keep your distance from Mr Potter and Mr Black. It seems tempers get heated where the three of you are concerned."
"Yes, ma'am," Remus murmured. She needn't even have told him to keep his distance. He was planning to do just that.
(continues in 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
Acknowledgements to:
...the one and only JKR for this spectacular sandbox. I don't own it!
...Kaydeefalls for first planting the idea that maybe James and Sirius weren't fast friends from the moment they met like we tend to assume, in "The Years of the Rat."
...Sam Starbuck for the idea that the Sorting Hat put Remus in Gryffindor because "he needed courageous people around him," in "The Sorting Hat" (part of his "Moon Meadow Anthology").
…Jules, I think, was the first I saw give James' dad the profession I've also found fitting for him, in her epic-length story "The Life and Times."
...plus whoever it was that suggested - though they phrased it far more elegantly - that Remus and Peter ended up in Gryffindor, when many would have pegged them as Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff respectively, because the Marauders were simply so very much meant to be.
Story:
CHAPTER ONE
"You're in the wrong house, Black," James Potter snapped, his entire slender 11-year-old frame radiating aggression. "Dunno how you ended up here, but we don't want you."
Sirius Black, just as self-assured, just as angry, glared back from across the dormitory. "Lucky for me then, Potter, I don't care what you think. At least I don't just go along blindly with whatever my daddy did."
Remus Lupin, hovering by the door and clutching his schoolbag, looked back and forth between them. Two more boys, whose names Remus didn't yet know, were also hanging back, equally unsure how to react to their hot-tempered dorm mates.
Remus was pretty good at reading body language, and he figured the two dark-haired boys facing off from opposite sides of the room were just moments away from coming to blows. The very thought made him feel physically ill.
James advanced a step. "Oh yeah? Well I know what I wouldn't do - show my face in a noble house like Gryffindor, if I had a family like yours."
"You leave my family out of it!" Sirius yelled.
James took another step. "I've heard funny things about some of your cousins."
"I said leave my family out of it. I don't want to have to fight you, Potter." Sirius was a bit taller than James and definitely broader built, but he still looked a little worried. Maybe he thought they would all gang up on him, once James started. Then he seemed to realise he was telegraphing his uncertainty and added, "Not that I couldn't take a scrawny Muggle-lover like you any time."
James launched himself at Sirius.
To his own surprise, Remus found himself tossing his schoolbag aside and throwing himself between them. "Leave him alone!" he shouted, pushing James back from where he'd grabbed hold of Sirius' collar.
Everything in the room came to a halt, as all the boys stared at the skinny little Lupin kid, with his slightly mismatched clothes and a strange scar down one side of his face, standing up to the scion of the Potter line.
James was agape. "He's insulting Muggles. Muggleborns. Why would you defend him?"
"Just don't hit him. You don't solve anything by hitting people."
James stepped back slowly, sizing Remus up. "Well. At least we know why you're in Gryffindor."
Remus flushed, but held his ground.
James threw up his hands. "Fine. Whatever. I promise not to hit him…for now. And by the way, I want this bed." James threw himself onto the four-poster nearest the door before anyone could protest.
The other two boys - a Dearborn maybe? And a boy named something like Paul or Peter? - took the opportunity to creep back out to the common room.
Sirius breathed out. "Didn't need your help," he muttered to Remus.
"But you got it anyway," Remus replied, amazed how calm he was able to make his voice. He was pretty sure he'd never stood up to anyone like that before in all his life. He could practically hear James listening from behind the half-closed curtains of his newly-claimed bed. "So you might as well be grateful, instead of acting like a git."
Something in Sirius' face closed at that and his words unconsciously echoed James'. "Fine. I'm grateful and all. Whatever." He turned toward the door.
"Where are you going?"
"Out."
"It's almost curfew," Remus reminded him, worried this unpredictable boy was going to get all of them in trouble their very first night.
Sirius shrugged. "I won't get caught, then."
He left and there was nothing but silence from James' bed. Remus cautiously selected the four-poster in the corner furthest from the door, and began unpacking his things. Hopefully there he'd be out of the way enough that the others might not even notice when he wasn't in his bed on full moon nights.
He'd have to be more discreet, though. He didn't know quite what had come over him just now, but it was never a good idea to draw so much attention to himself. And Remus was usually so good at fading into the background.
- - - - -
Remus was hurrying back to the common room from the library just before curfew, clutching a stack of books, when he glimpsed movement in one of the recessed window ledges along the corridor that led to the Gryffindor common room. It appeared to be a leg, nearly hidden in the shadows. Remus paused, and closer inspection revealed the window ledge to contain not only a leg, but the entirety of Sirius Black.
"Hey," Remus said cautiously.
Sirius shifted in the shadows. "Hey."
"Um, it's almost curfew. Just if you didn't know."
"I know. And I'll be inside on time."
"Oh, okay. Sorry." Remus switched his books, grown heavy, to the other arm. "Uh…what are you doing here, then?"
"Nothing."
Remus threw caution to the wind, surprising himself for the second time that week. "Can I sit there too?"
There was an agonising pause, but then limbs shifted in the dark and there was space free on one half of the ledge. Remus set down the stack of books, rubbing his tired arms with relief. The full moon was only a few days away and he was feeling it in his body already. This would be his first time transforming away from home and he was trying valiantly - and failing spectacularly - not to think about it. Remus wriggled his way up onto the makeshift seat.
"That Potter kid is a prat," Sirius said.
"Oh?" was all Remus could think to say.
"He put a centipede in my bed. And some kind of itching powder yesterday. What'd I ever do to him?"
"…Oh." Remus repeated.
"I wish I was in Slytherin. At least there, I'd know the people who hate me. And why they do."
"I'm sure they wouldn't hate you," Remus offered. "Besides, don't you have cousins in Slytherin?"
"Exactly," Sirius said.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand."
"I wouldn't expect you to. You're Muggleborn, aren't you?"
"No," Remus said, annoyed yet again that this was always assumed to matter. "Only half. My dad's family are all wizards."
"Are they? But not one of the old families, then. I mean, I've never heard of any Lupins."
"What does it matter?" Remus snapped.
Sirius leant forward, his face finally visible in the light from the torches along the wall. "It doesn't."
"Then why are you acting like it does?"
"Because it does in my family."
"That doesn't make sense."
"Most of the time, it doesn't matter. We can all do magic so, whatever, we're all wizards. Doesn't matter who your parents are. But, see, my parents think it does. They're always going on and on and on about the family and our pure blood and how much better we are than everyone else. I mean, you heard the Howler at breakfast." Sirius' cheeks flushed at the memory. "My mum's disgraced. She actually tried to convince my dad to pull me out of Hogwarts. 'Gryffindor? That's just a bunch of common riffraff!'" He imitated what Remus could only assume were the shrill tones of his mother.
"But you get to stay?"
"Yeah. But only because Father thinks me leaving school would be even more of a disgrace."
"That doesn't mean anyone in Slytherin would hate you, though."
"Yes, it does. They know I'm not like them, and I should be." Sirius shivered a little and pulled his legs in tighter. "Like I said, I wouldn't expect you to understand it."
Remus gritted his teeth. Just when he'd thought they were actually getting on, without Sirius condescending like he always seemed to. "I have to go," he said. "It's practically curfew."
He jumped off the ledge and grabbed his books, just barely glimpsing the way something sad or disappointed flashed across Sirius' face in the shadows as Remus turned away and headed for the portrait of the Fat Lady.
Sirius Black, he thought, was just as arrogant and annoying as James Potter. The pair of them, honestly.
Remus climbed through the portrait hole, found a table, and bent his head over his homework assignment for Charms.
- - - - -
Remus really, really didn't mean to get involved. He'd told himself to keep his head down and do his work and not get mixed up in things, but he'd spent most of his childhood mediating between people, and couldn't seem to stop.
"Why do you hate him so much?" he asked James, after James and Sirius had been thrown out of Potions class for coming to blows - blows that had unfortunately resulted in a certain degree of damage to their classmates' Cheering Concoctions.
James was just coming back from Professor McGonagall's office, nursing a black eye and a dangerous looking scowl, when Remus came across him. Mostly by accident.
"He's a Black," James spat out. "They're as dark as they come, Remus."
Remus fell into step beside James, turning back toward Gryffindor tower. "You seemed friendly with him on the train. The Hogwarts Express? I saw you getting off from the same wagon at the station."
"Yeah. That was before I knew he was a Black."
"So you must have liked him all right before you knew his name."
James stopped walking and turned to face Remus. "Look, Blacks are Dark wizards. They're twisted, they have all these mad ideas about being better than everyone else. You don't want to get mixed up with a Black, believe me." He proclaimed this with an air of confidence and started walking again, clearly considering the matter closed.
"But maybe Sirius isn't like that."
"There's no maybe! They're all the same!"
"How can you know that?"
"Believe me, I just know."
"How?"
"It's just stuff you know when… I mean, I just know."
"Just come out and tell me I can't understand because I'm not a pureblood, would you?" Remus recoiled as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He hadn't meant to shout.
James looked affronted. "I would never say that!"
"But you meant it."
"No! No. I meant… Look, my dad's really high up at the Ministry. He runs the Auror department. So it's his job to catch Dark wizards, yeah? I just hear a lot from him, that's all. Merlin, Remus, I wouldn't ever say something like that." James' gaze was intent as they walked on, and it struck Remus that he managed to look startlingly dignified even when apologising. Not hard to believe his dad was head of the Auror department. In fact, that explained rather a lot about James.
Remus was about to answer, when a flash of red hair came into view at the end of the corridor ahead of them. Just as quickly, the maturity or dignity or whatever it was James had been exuding was gone, and he was once again a messy-haired 11-year-old with a mad grin on his face.
"Catch you later, Remus!" he yelled over his shoulder, already trotting off down the corridor. Remus heard a shriek as Lily Evans' pigtail got pulled, then the sound of girlish shouting and some sort of medium-sized objects being thrown.
- - - - -
James Potter was levitating and juggling all the items in his breakfast, as Peter Pettigrew and Ben Davies watched and applauded the particularly impressive moves.
A bit further down the Gryffindor table, Sirius Black slouched lower over his breakfast and muttered, "Show-off," into his porridge.
Privately, Remus was inclined to agree, but the second full moon of the school year was approaching and he was feeling anxious again about drawing attention to himself. Better to stay out of it.
Peter and Ben applauded again. Sirius straightened. "Parlour tricks," he said clearly.
James fumbled his eggcup for just a fraction of a second, but pretended not to have heard.
"Cheap parlour tricks," Sirius added, to no one in particular.
With unhurried precision, James caught and set down each item he had held aloft at wandpoint, then stood up. The other boys around them fell silent. James walked past Ben and Remus, stopping just behind Sirius. Sirius didn't turn.
"You got a problem, Black?"
"Yeah, I do."
"With what?"
Now Sirius stood up and turned to face James, only the bench separating them. "With you. You arrogant…faker. There's nothing so great about you. You just want to be the centre of attention."
Remus, busy hunching his shoulders and trying to pretend he didn't exist, had a not entirely welcome flash of insight. James and Sirius were both the pampered sons of wealthy, pureblood families. They were both used to being the centre of attention, to getting everything they wanted. James Potter and Sirius Black were too…similar? That couldn't possibly be true.
"Yeah, well what about you?" James demanded. "Hexing people just because you can? If you're looking for attention, that's not the way to do it."
Again, a strange ripple of recognition: Hexing people just because you could… Remus had seen James send a tripping jinx at Severus Snape's back in the corridor just the day before.
"At least I don't need a bunch of fawning admirers to feel like I'm worth something," Sirius snapped.
"Oh, bragging about the fact that you've got no friends, are you? Clearly something to be proud about."
"You watch it, Potter," Sirius growled. "Because I have got friends here, even if you're too dense to notice."
"Oh, what, invisible ones? The ghosts?"
"No." Sirius let his gaze flick over to the Slytherin table on the other side of the Great Hall.
James' eyes widened. "Are you threatening me, Black?"
Sirius shrugged.
James took a step in, pushing up against the wooden bench that separated them. "I'm not scared of you. Not for a second."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah."
Before the others around them had even registered what was going on, they were shoving each other, and again, Remus acted before his brain had a chance to catch up. He found himself by Sirius and James, pushing ineffectually against both of them, yelling, "Stop it!"
James did stop and look at him, out of surprise more than anything else. Sirius tried to get in a swing while James was distracted, but James ducked and Remus pushed Sirius away. All three of them were breathing heavily.
"Just stop," Remus muttered. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see motion at the staff table - they were all about to get into trouble. "I don't care what you think about each other or how you act in private, but stop getting in fights in public, okay? You're messing things up for everybody."
James crossed his arms in front of his chest. "All right, no fighting in public," he said, emphasising the word. He seemed to be refusing to look at Sirius, keeping his eyes on Remus instead. "You're lucky your friend Lupin stepped in, Black. Next time, I won't go easy on you."
Remus took an involuntary step backward. Friend Lupin. But none of these boys could be his friends. It didn't matter if they were unpredictable Blacks or show-off Potters, or even someone harmless like Peter Pettigrew, whose main hobby seemed to be idolising James. Remus couldn't let anyone be his friend. He was here to get an education, maybe even make it to NEWTS before his secret came out, and nothing else. And he ought to start acting like it.
McGonagall descended on them then, nostrils flaring. "Mr Potter! Mr Black! And Mr Lupin! What is going on here?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Brawling at the breakfast table! I would think you'd know this is not how we behave Hogwarts, but apparently the three of you require a reminder. Detention at 7.00 this evening in my office."
"Please, Professor…" All of them turned toward the unexpected source of the voice: Peter Pettigrew. "Remus wasn't fighting. He was trying to stop them."
McGonagall raised an eyebrow. "Is this true?"
"Yes, ma'am," James replied promptly.
"Mr Black?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am," he grumbled.
Professor McGonagall considered them all in turn. Remus squirmed under her gaze, James met it stoically, and Sirius gazed off into space, pretending not to care.
"Very well," she said. "No detention for Mr Lupin. But still, I might advise you to keep your distance from Mr Potter and Mr Black. It seems tempers get heated where the three of you are concerned."
"Yes, ma'am," Remus murmured. She needn't even have told him to keep his distance. He was planning to do just that.
(continues in CHAPTER 2)