Is It Over Now?

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/51601258.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: Multi
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Relationships: Regulus Black/Remus Lupin, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Barty
Crouch Jr./Evan Rosier, Pandora Lovegood/Xenophilius Lovegood,
Marlene McKinnon/Dorcas Meadowes, Regulus Black & Pandora
Lovegood, Pandora Lovegood & Remus Lupin, Regulus Black &
Pandora Lovegood & Remus Lupin, Sirius Black & Remus Lupin &
Peter Pettigrew & James Potter, Sirius Black & Remus Lupin
Characters: Remus Lupin, Regulus Black, Sirius Black, James Potter, Lily Evans
Potter, Severus Snape, Barty Crouch Jr., Evan Rosier, Pandora
Lovegood, Peter Pettigrew, Albus Dumbledore, Mary Macdonald (Harry
Potter), Marlene McKinnon, Poppy Pomfrey, Dorcas Meadowes
Additional Tags: Sirius Black's Prank on Severus Snape, Post-Sirius Black's Prank on
Severus Snape, The Prank, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, Albus
Dumbledore Bashing, Slytherins Being Slytherins, Good Slytherins, First
Wizarding War with Voldemort (Harry Potter), Pre-First Wizarding War
with Voldemort (Harry Potter), Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Marauders
Friendship (Harry Potter), Not Canon Compliant, Slytherin-like Remus
Lupin, Regulus Black & Pandora Lovegood Friendship, Regulus Black
& Remus Lupin Friendship, Pandora Lovegood & Remus Lupin
Friendship, Horcrux Hunting, original order of the phoenix,
Consequences, Slytherin Parties, wild magic, Dark Magic, Secret
Relationship, Title from a Taylor Swift Song, Inspired by All the Young
Dudes - MsKingBean89, BAMF Remus Lupin, BAMF Regulus Black,
BAMF Pandora Lovegood, One-Sided Sirius Black/Remus Lupin,
Sneaky Remus Lupin, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2023-11-26 Updated: 2024-02-11 Words: 46,464 Chapters:
12/?
 Is It Over Now?
by SeaSkate

Summary

After Sirius’s prank in their fifth year, Remus doesn’t so easily forgive the eldest Black
brother and pulls away. In a bout of self destructiveness, he goes right to a younger Slytherin,
finding an unlikely friendship along the way.
They say that in Slytherin House you’ll find your true friends, but a Ravenclaw and a
Gryffindor couldn’t hurt too, right?

—-

Or

How different could things have been had Remus gone to the younger Black brother and
made him and others have a change of heart much sooner than before?

Notes

The personality of Remus is based off of that from All The Young Dudes, so are any
mentioned past meetings and such, but you don’t have to read it to read this because it will
only be loosely based. Though I do say that it’s really good.
This will be going from The Prank in third year to probably about 1981 ish.
 Chapter 1

Remus sighed as if he was releasing his dying breath as he laid his head down. In the things
tome for Ancient Runes, careful of the drying ink just bedside it. Not for the first time the
Gryffindor found himself wishing that Pince would let them smoke in the library, because he
would just about kill for one just about then.

The library was stock full with students due to just how close OWLs and NEWTs were, the
numbers only increasing more so as the usual finals reared their ugly heads as well. So every
table was full of quietly mummering students, and heavily bored ones weighed down by
equally heavy books lining their arms. Normally this was something that Remus could find it
in himself to tolerate, enjoy even as silence was something that typically set the boy’s nerves
on edge after never having it before, but so close to the moon sound was like some kind of
personal offense to the lion. The other students seemed to realize it too as his was the only
table that anyone in the entirety of the library had to themselves.

That was why it had come at so much of a surprise and yet none at all when Regulus Black of
all people had stopped before him, books in hand with two familiar boys and one fair haired
girl behind him.

“Mind if we sit, Lupin?” The younger black had asked in that posh accent of his that all of
the purebloods seemed to hold. The one that always served to remind the Gryffindor of the
Cockney accent that he had come to Hogwarts with first year, and had been systematically
killing every year since. The only time that the teen used it was during the summer holidays,
but it was always best not to think of those during the school year. “Everywhere else is full.”

Remus eyed the four younger students carefully, wondering if this was some angle that the
younger Black was playing. The war had been on everyone's minds this year, and it was no
secret where all but one notable expectation of the Black family stood with it. But though the
wood within him begged for a good fight, the part of him that had been trying so hard this
year to be kinder thought better of it.

“You’re taking Ancient Runes, right?” Remus asked instead of properly answering the
question outright as he knew that he should.

The older boy watched with a twinge of satisfaction as confusion pooled on that of the
Slytherin boy’s face, the younger Black’s face morphing into an expression so like his
brother’s that Remus almost had to remind himself that the boy before him was not.
Eventually the other boy nodded primly and Remus did as well.

“You Slytherins like deals, right? Help me with this problem and you’ll hear no complaints
from me,” the older boy said, pointing to the questions that they had been assigned easier in
class that day.

“Why? The studious Gryffindor can’t figure it out himself?” One of the other Slytherins,
Barth Crouch Jr., had asked with more than a heavy level of annoyance and scorn, only to be
hit on the shoulder by the last boy- Evan Rosier.
Remus glared up at the boy, more amused by the title that he had been given then offended by
the rude accusation attached to it. It was always strange to hear how others thought of him
outside of the Marauders who knew that Remus was the one that was the brains behind most
of the group’s bigger pranks throughout their years at Hogwarts. No one ever thought that it
was him.

“Can’t remember one of the theorems from last year,” the older boy said, shrugging as he
kept a cool head- something that he had become very good at during his time as prefect.
“And I don't want to have to bloody well fight my way to the tower and back for the notes on
one measly problem, now do I?” Remus remarked firmly.

He watched as the younger boy seemed to eye him consideringly- as if he was seeing
something that he hadn’t before- but shifted his gaze away when the younger Black brother
moved to stand beside him at the table, looking down at the paper with that too familiar pinch
in the younger boy’s brows. Remus had seen it on Sirius more times than he could count
when the four of them were drawing out the lines for the map. He’d always had to look away
from the older Black when he did that and found himself instinctively doing the same with
the younger.

“You’re going to need to out the Algiz before the Dagaz rune,” the younger boy decided after
a moment, “simce with this Theron you can use literal translations.”

“So it will be ‘shielding from change’, that way the painting will remain unabated by time”
Remus remembered quickly before grabbing his quil to do just that, only stopping to gesture
to the three Slytherin boys and the one Ravenclaw girl to take their seats as they had agreed
to before.

For the next few hours the odd group sat at the table in a comfortable silence that was soon
filled with the quiet complaints at the work and questions being exchanged with one another.

Remus found that the Ravenclaw girl was named Pandora Lestrange and was a particularly
gifted witch in just about everything that she tried, and was often prone to experimenting
with spells- even right before finals it seemed as none of her mountain of books were about
anything that they were currently studying, but her current fascination instead.

Bart Crouch and Evan Rosier seemed to share one mind as the pair filled the table with
scathing remarks that Remus somehow found himself adding to when familiar names came
up. Somehow plans for an exorcism were brought up for Professor Binns, and Moaning
Myrtle before long. The only problem that the group found was how to make sure that it was
limited to just the two ghosts and cover their tracks enough that it would look like a natural
passing.

Regulus Black had been the most surprising of the odd group, the quiet boy that seemed the
best behaved if the lot holding more than his fair share of his brother’s talent for trouble as
Remus caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a modified duplication spell created just for
alcohol so that it wouldn’t modify the taste or strength of the original or the copy. The
younger Black brother had only smiled when he saw what Remus was looking at and the pair
had adjusted one or two things together, ‘the exact opposite of what a prefect should be
doing,’ as the Slytherin boy had felt the need to point out.
Remus hadn’t known it then, but that simple decision to allow the group close had changed
everything.

—-

Pain was the first thing that Remus had known when he woke up the morning after the last
full moon of fifth year. It was the mind recking sort of agony that the boy hadn’t endured in
so many months that the Gryffindor had almost forgotten just what it felt like. Confusion
swept up on the boy quickly because he knew that this pain wasn’t right, it wasn’t supposed
to be his just then.

And yet it was happening.

Blood spilled down Remus’s chest as he pushed off of the dirty floor and to the equally
appalling bed, alone in a room that should have held three others. The wolf’s frustration
curled in his chest as Remus pulled the blanket over himself and his mind ran away with him,
filling itself with all of the things that could have led to him being without the other
Marauders; terrible phantom images of the other three bloodied somewhere at his doing.
Because nothing short of something absolutely horrible could have kept them apart on the
night of their last hurrah.

A miserable feeling curled in the boy’s stomach as he wished for Madam Pomfrey. It didn’t
die once the witch finally did come.

The poor school nurse had a nervous air about her when she walked into the room, one so
strong that Remus could smell it from a good deal down the hall before he even saw the
unusually pale looking witch. Saw the sad gaze that the older woman held so openly.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Madam Pomfrey said with hints of pity that the werewolf would only
ever accept from the older witch. She’d been caring for him since he was eleven, and she’d
held him in her arms as he had asked her to let him die, and had kissed him on the forehead
with the tenderness of a mother that the boy had never known before then. “It’s been a bad
night all around, hasn’t it?”

“What do you mean ‘all around’?” The boy asked, trying to sound more curious of the
complications of spells gone wrong than anxious of the sort of damage that could never be
undone.

But the medi witch only brushed Remus off and continued to heal the boy before taking him
to the hospital wing. There, under the school nurse’s watchful eyes, Remus drank down all of
the sleeping draught that he had been given. He didn’t fight her on it like he normally might
have, the Gryffindor wasn’t feeling as brave in that moment as the house might suggest.

When Remus woke again sometime later, he wasn’t alone this time. Later he would find
himself wishing that he was.
“Prongs?!” The boy croaked quietly at the disembodied head of his friend, only to be
immediately shushed by the boy in question.

“Are you okay?” The other boy asked earnestly, but there was a look in James’s eyes that the
werewolf recognized too much from his own every time that he looked in the mirror.
Everytime that he thought of Sirius in a certain way, or came back from a twig to the library
with a certain group of fourth years that the other Marauders didn’t know a thing about.

Shame.

Guilt.

“I’m really sorry, Moony,” James said before Remus could even answer the boy’s question or
properly think of his own. He could hear the pain there in the other boy’s voice and
desperately wanted to know just what had placed it there.

“What happened?” Remus asked for the second time that day, his voice hardening from the
softness that it had taken on that year.

“Look, don’t be angry with him,” James began to stammer hurriedly. “He’s an idiot, but I
don’t think that he realized. I did. Think that he meant to…”

But Remus wasn’t listening to the other boy’s excuses, not when he knew that there was only
one person that he would give them for with such desperation.

“What did Sirius do?” Thenboy asked, his voice growing harder still as the panic grew in
James’s.

Remus felt an all too famIliar anger rise up within him as the other boy spoke, as James
dulled and bent the truth as much as he could so that it wouldn’t just yet break. So that
Suriusi came out looking less tarnished than he should have. Only it didn’t work at all
because unlike James two had grown up around unconditional love and truth, Rmeus had
grown up around liars and could hear them as easily as breathing. Even white lies.

“He fuckign told Snape,” Remus summarized bluntly, his voice coming out in much more of
a growl then either of the boys wanted to hear, but - for the first time - Remus didn’t bite it
back.

“Not… not exactly,” James said carefully, still trying to play the peacemaker. “He told him
how the willow worked, and Snape…” Remus almost found it amusing how difficult it was
for the boy before him to say just what the other two boys had done. Almost. “No one was
hurt,” James hurriedly continued, “but Snape he…”

“He saw me,” Remus said, not needing the other boy’s confirmation to know that it was true.
Not wanting it either. “James, please leave.”

“Remus-”

But the scarred boy wasn’t having it, not when he knew that once the shock and betrayal of
all of this had properly worn off that James would be right back at Sirius’s side as if none of
it had happened at all.

If it even took that long, Remus thought darkly.

“James, get out,” the boy said coldly, making the other boy look at him with a panicked
expression.

“But Moony…”

“Please.”

“Okay… okay, but I’ll be back.”

Remus didn’t answer him, he only closed his eyes and waited for the other boy to leave.
Eventually he fell back asleep once more.

—-

The next time that Remus Lupin opened his eyes he wasn’t alone, nor did his visitors do
much to make it seem as if he was.

Gathered around his bed were the figures of three Slytherin boys and one Ravenclaw girl,
each in varying stages of consciousness as Pandora and Regulus quietly talked about the
book between them, and Evan and Barry silently slept on theirs. Despite everything Remus
found himself looking on fondly at the scene before him, or maybe it was because of
everything.

“Anyone going to wake the dunderheads?” The Gryffindor asked as he pushed himself up on
the bed.

Regulus looked mildly alarmed for a moment at the new voice, flinching from the
suddenness in a way that caused Pandora and Remus pain to see, but quickly covered the
reaction with a pleased nod that Remus easily returned.

The Lestrange girl was a different story, as he stood up from her chair - passing the book
fully to Regikus in the process - and climbed up onto the cot next to Remus, laying herself
fully at his side in a way that shook have made Remus blush had he been any other boy. But
instead it was like resting with a little sister.

“Hello to you too, Dora,” the Gryffindor said weakly, his voice much too raspy for his liking.

“Evening, Remus,” the Ravenclaw girl whispered somewhat quietly as the younger Black
brother leaned forward and grabbed the glass of water on the bedside table, handing it to
Remus without having to be asked to do so.
The fifth gratefully accepted it and took a greedy sip of the liquid before deeming it enough
and leaning forwards with a smirk playing across the boy’s lips that he saw Regulus
mirroring. With a quick move, the rest of the water found itself on the frames in the two
sleeping boys.

“Fucking shit!”

“Bloody Hell!”

The other three snickered as the other two boys cursed, but the violence in their eyes was lost
once the pair’s eyes fell on the Gryffindor.

“Lupin,” Evan said excitedly before his eyes fell on the now empty glass in the Gryffindor’s
hands. “Lupin,” the Slytherin said in a much different tone than before.

But Remus only smiled. “Careful, Rosier,” the boy taunted. “Pomfrey’s a right terror if you
get on her bad side, especially for attacking an injured student.”

“Sometimes I wonder why you’re not a Slytherin when you say things like that,” Barth said
before shaking the water out of his hair like a dog, moving to the displeasure of everyone else
there that got hit by the water.

“So Remus darling,” Pandora started once the boys had calmed down enough to listen, or at
least to be still, “what landed you in here this time?”

No one missed the way that the boy’s face shifted into something stony, or how the four
could almost feel the older boy's anger as it rised, as if it was something tangible that they
could physically hold if they wanted to. When Remus’s gaze fell on Regulus, somehow they
could all tell that the anger wasn’t directed at the Slytherin boy, but rather someone that
shared his resemblance.

“Your brother happened,” the Gryffindor said bluntly, his voice gruff.

No one missed the way that the younger Black brother flicked back at the older boy’s words,
but Pandora was quick to grab onto the dark haired boy's hand and held it tight, just as she
held Remus’s as well.

“He did this to you?” Regulus rasped, his vice coming out strangely at the mention of the boy
that had always stood in front of him during their mother’s rage doing such a thing to another.
But Regulus knew that cruelty ran in their family as thick as the blood in their veins.

“Not directly,” the Gryffindor replied quickly upon seeing the other boy’s pale skin and
haunted eyes, “but it was his actions that caused it, his plan. This,” Remus said bitterly,
gesturing to himself laid out in the bed, to the bandages peeking out from beneath his clothes,
“was the best outcome.”

And wasn’t that shocking for the other four to hear? None of them wanted to know what the
other outcomes could have been that a boy getting married and hospitalized was the good end
of the deal. But nothing was more surprising than what the angered Gryffindor said next:
“Your mother would be so proud.”

Pandora held fast to both boys' hands as both were in varying states of falling apart. This
wasn’t how she had wanted to spend today, not when the sun was shining as it was and until a
few hours ago she’d had three participants to try a new spell on and had thought that she
would have had a Gryffindor boy to help as well.

“So how are we getting the bastard back?” Barry was thrumming his fingers across the book
like a beating heart, like running feet. There was a cold look on the boy’s face, but Remus
thought that he quite liked it right then. “We are getting back at him, aren’t we?”

“Of course we are,” Evan said surely, his knee knocking the other boy’s as he leaned forward
and ideas started to spill from his lips.

That was the moon that everything changed.

—-

Madam Pomfrey let Remus go a little ways into dinner, which was given by the Gryffindor
boy who had long grown restless once more, shifting in the bed as if his skin didn’t fit right
over his bones. Remus supposed that it truly didn’t.

Eyes were on the Gryffindor boy from the moment that he walked into the Great Hall. Mary,
Lily, and Marlene all had small smiles on their faces at seeing the boy back from his latest
stint in the hospital wing, as concerned glances were exchanged between two of the
remaining Marauders, and apologies sprung to the lips of the last one. But none of them got
to speak to the boy at all because he never walked over to the Gryffindor table.

More and more eyes drew to the scene as Remus, the supposed tamest of the Marauders,
walked in the opposite direction of his house table, not slowing down in his stride as Pandora
Lestrange left her own table and walked at his side. It was a pairing that no one had ever seen
before, raising more than one mummer from the lions watching the seven unfold with rapt
attention, watching as they walked together straight to the Slytherin table as if they were
meant to be there.

Barry Crouch and Evan Rosier could be seen smiling like madmen as they saw that the older
boy was truly doing it. Regulus was almost inclined to agree but he’d known that the other
boy would do it the entire time, he was too hurt not to. They both were.

Whispers broke out across the hall as the Gryffindor boy sat down at the Slytherin table and
was welcomed with an arm slung across his shoulder by Rosier and a raised glass from
Crouch. Sirius made a move to go after the other Marauder, but was stopped by a hand on his
wrist pulling him back down.
“But James,” the boy protested, watching as the last of their little group sat surrounded by
snakes. As Remus sat in front of his little brother saying something that made the dark haired
boy smirk.

“No,” the boy snapped back with enough force to draw a few eyes to the pair as well.
“You’ve already done enough,” James said with a voice that was much colder than Sirius had
ever heard it directed at him, remembering the look in their friend's when Remus had learned
of what Sirius had done. It was the first time that he had ever been afraid of the other
Gryffindor boy.

Too busy watching the scene unfold, no one saw the hard look in Dumbledore’s normally
kind eyes.

—-

The group at the Slytherin table rose as one when they were done, heading straight for the
door with satisfied smirks on their faces. This time James wasn’t fast enough to stop Sirius
from going after the other boy, but was quick to follow the other boy, Peter right behind him
as well. The strange group was barely down the hall when Sirius caught up to them.

“Moony!” The boy called desperately, causing the group to still as James and Peter caught up.
“Moony, I’m sorry! Whatever this is please-”

But Sirius never got to finish his sentence because the next thing that anyone knew the boy
was sprawled out on the ground, blood flowing freely from what looked to be a broken nose,
as Remus looked down at him as if he was nothing more than another boy from the care
home, and Sirius hazard up at the boy that he had known for years as if he was seeing a
stranger.

“Don’t call me that,” the taller boy growled before spinning on his heel and walking away
with the others closing ranks around their friend. “You lost that right last night,” was the last
that the Marauders heard from the lion among snakes and eagles.

Only Regulus stayed behind as James and Peter pulled the fallen boy to his feet, a bored look
in the Slytherin’s face, but Sirius could see the anger in his eyes.

“Regulus, I don’t know what game you all are playing with Remus, but this needs to stop.”

But Regulus Black was paying no mind to the demands of the boy that had stolen his brother
from him all those years ago. He only had eyes for the ones that mirrored his own.

“Remus won’t tell us what happened,” the Slytherin said, feeling sick at the relief that shone
so bright in the older boy’s eyes at his words, “but he did tell us that our mother would be
proud. Guess it only took sixteen years.”

As Regulus walked away, his brother fell apart.

Good .
 Chapter 2
Chapter Summary

Summer

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

The last two weeks of the school year passes in a haze of weed nicked for the Hufflepuffs by
the greenhouses, and expensive booze from the Slytherins. The strange group stayed with one
another as much as they could as the summer drew close.

Barty, Remus and found out, liked his father about as much as Regulus did; which was a
pretty way of saying not at all. The Gryffindor understood then just what held the two snakes
together as they tried so desperately to be the perfect sons for people that they all knew would
never care. As they each slowly stopped caring as well.

Evan came from a house much like that of the Blacks, but he didn’t fit with their views as
much as he should have, not when the boy had asked Remus about motorcycles, and had
already tried to enlist the Gryffindor’s help in stealing one. He had already successfully
gotten Pandora’s help in figuring out the runes that would be necessary to let it fly similarly
to that of the way that a broom does, something that the lion was sure was at the least three
kinds of illegal- and was just as sure that he would be helping in. Remus had no doubt in his
mind that his already extensive criminal record - both muggle and magical - would be
expanding sooner or later, but he couldn’t find it in himself to truly mind. Not when he and
Regulus were already researching charms to replicate a muggle bike, and were going to ask
Dora to help them modify the spell so that it wouldn’t break down as fast as most products of
spells like the Gemini curse tended to do.

Pandora was probably the tamest of them all in her reasons for the dislike of summer, simply
not wanting to be without the others if she could help it. But Remus pitied anyone that had
Bellatrix as an in - law, even though the girl said that they never saw much of her or Dora’s
brother since the wedding. Even less since the pure blood families started having more and
more political meetings. Since the war.

Regulus didn’t want to go back for the most obvious reasons of them all and Remus couldn’t
fault him for that, not when Sirius had fled during the Christmas holidays as he did. Not since
the Gryffindor boy was sure that Regious had helped Sirius run, leaning the flu powder by the
fireplace, though the older Black brother was too full of himself to realize such a thing.

Remus found himself holding onto the others just as tightly as the promise of returning to St.
Edmund’s loomed over the boy’s head. Though the Gryffindor was now one of the oldest
boys in the home, summer still meant two months of no magic and being locked away in a
room with silver bars on the windows and door as the moon came. It meant two months of
breaking into places and stealing smokes, or fighting with the boys that still thought that he
was a decent target, and being someone tray he knew James would never be able to look in
the eyes if he were to meet him.

So they stayed close to one another.

You could never find one of them without at least one of the others, much to the dismay of
the Gryffindors who so clearly did not approve of the unlikely inter house friendship, and the
fear of the other Slytherins.

After leaving the Gryffindors outside of the Great Hall, the group made their way down to the
dungeons, somewhere that Remus had never liked going to before but liked it then. He liked
the music that he could hear coming from the other side of the Slytherin common room door,
and liked that as dinner ended the snakes made their way down to the posh room as well and
moved the tables out of the way. Alcohol and juice for the younger years were brought out,
and Remus watched as the beginnings of a Slytherin party came about.

At the beginning, the lion thought that it would be like the Gryffindor parties: music, drinks,
and dancing, but that theory was disproved quickly enough when a dueling lame was created.

“Illegal dueling?” Remus asked, and Regulus looked at the boy in a calm, almost appraising
manner.

“You gonna tell on us, Mr. Prefect?" The other boy asked, a sly smile on his lips.

Remus thought of the anger that he’d been biting at him since he spoke to James that
morning, consuming the boy even as his bones ached from the moon.

“That depends,” the werewolf decided, “could I fight too?”

Behind Regulus, Remus saw Barty and Evan grin like devils and knew his answer.

The members of Slytherin house placed bets as the sickly Marauder took his side of the
dueling lane. They all knew that the boy was a gifted wizard, no could truly deny they no
matter how much of a sour taste it left in the snakes’ mouths, but none of them knew just how
strong the werewolf’s magic was in the days leading up to and following the full moon. They
didn’t know how much control Remus held, how much the lion held back.

That night, with anger and adrenaline coursing through the boy’s veins like blood, Remus
Lupin didn’t hold back at all.

Regulus watched every moment of every duel as if he was watching some beautiful
masterpiece unfold. Pandora knew that in a way he was.

—-
For the first time in Remus’s years at Hogwarts, it wasn’t the Marauders that he sat with on
the train. This year the infectious laughter wasn’t from Sirius and James, but rather Barty and
Evan throwing Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans at one another as they tried to get the other
to eat the most disgusting ones that they could find.

The quiet mummerings weren’t from Peter and the Ravenclaw girl that he was with -
Desdemona - but rather Regulus, Pandora, and Remus himself as the trio poured over some
books that Dora had gotten permission to bring home over the summer on the promise that
she would pay for any damages found. The group just didn’t tell Madam Pince that the
project that they were working on was a sort of precursor to the flying motorbike that they
had promised to make. She didn’t need to know that, and Remus truly doubted that she
wanted to. Plausible deniability and all that.

They were each going back to some varying level of hell, but it was fine. They were together
for now, at least.

—-

St Edmund’s was just as horribly mundane as Remus remembered it being and yet it
managed to seem more dreary than it had only the summer before, with the boys whose hair
was all cut short like skinheads, and the identical gray clothing that made them all look just
alike. After living in a world so drowned in color for the better part of a year, it was always a
particular kind of torment to be back here once more. It was like being shown a whole galaxy
and then not being allowed to even look at a single star.

It wasn't long before the letters came; apologies tied to the ankles of a familiar bird and
promosies that they were still okay tucked in along with them from James. Remus hardly
read them at all though. He was sick of apologies that no one meant and empty promises
made by a boy that had never known a day without love overflowing around him.

Looking back on everything with the gift of foresight, the boy knew that the Marauders had
been as thick as thieves and as close as brothers since the day that Remus Lupin struck
Severus Snape across the face in potion back in their first year. Remus guessed now that he
shouldn’t have been surprised as to how all of this had inevitably turned out, the Marauders
knew exactly how Black treated his brother- even if Remus had only ever wanted to be more
than that.

Remus spent the first two weeks of the summer holiday doing the homework that they had
been assigned as the other boys played with a ball out in the yard. No one bothered him in
those days, not when the sun was bright and the rain kept to a morning drizzle and little more.
He did odd jobs with some of the other older boys at night that had been around for some
years now and knew how to not get caught, abstaining from the bigger things that he thought
held too great a risk. Remus was already sixteen after all, he didn’t need to get nicked by the
muggle cops, not with his problem. He didn’t know if anyone from the magical world would
step in and he didn’t want to find out what would happen if they did either.

The boy had already completely prepared himself for one of the most mundane summers that
had experienced yet since starting Hogwarts, when one day thay expectation was broken by a
loud crack .

Remus had been walking what was considered to be the grounds of the children’s home -
only a small chunk of yard and a few trees behind the building - when he’d found a good spot
to read through the defense book for the following year that had already been sent to him a
few days before. He’d only gotten a few pages in when the world had filled with the thick
scent of magic, a kind as familiar as his own and another just slightly more wood - more
pure, almost - than either of theirs.

The werewolf was already looking wildly around the small space before the cracking noise
had torn through the air, and a pale boy with dark hair and a small creature - a house elf -
appeared before him.

“ Regulus ?” Remus breathed, a name that fell so freely from the boy’s lips Ken would think
that it was always meant to be there, because against all odds, that was who was standing
before him.

Dark curls fell in front of gray eyes that got lighter as they went closer to the pupil, pale skin
flushed by the summer’s heat. Remus recognized the younger boy as if he had seen him only
the day before, but before either boy could say anything more - or anything at all really -
another voice spoke.

“How dare the nasty half - breed speak of Master Regulus so casually!”

Both boys looked at the thin house elf, at the nasty sneer as he stalked towards the older boy,
the smell of magic thickening in the air, but Regulus yelled first.

“Kreacher!” The younger boy screamed, his voice thick with surprise and something like
betrayal as he looked between the aging house elf and the Gryffindor. “Remus is my friend ,
treat him as such.”

The house elf’s ears drooped in a way that made the older boy wonder if the younger teen
had ever spoken to the creature in such a way before. The sad look in each of their eyes was
answer enough.

“Of course Master Regulus,” Kreacher said softly, slinking away from the two boys.
“Kreacher will come and fetch Master Regulus when Master Regulus calls for Kreacher,” and
with that creature was gone with a loud pop .

Regulus looked at Remus with sorry eyes, an expression that the older boy never wanted to
see on the face of the younger teen, but knew that he would more and more as the war
pressed on.
“He’s not usually like that,” Regulus said in lieu of a proper hello, Remus didn’t mind,
nothing about their friendship was proper in the least.

“It’s okay,” Remus said carefully, trying hard not to clips his words, though he thought some
of the accent must have leached through anyway if the surprise in the other boy’s eyes was
anything to go by.

“No, it’s not.”

No, it wasn’t , but Remus didn’t say that out loud, just as neither boy mentioned how
Kreacher had called the Gryffindor a half - breed instead of a half - blood . Remus silently
prayed to every god that he didn’t believe in, that Regulus had misheard the house elf.

It was then, as Regulus glanced around the pitiful excuse for a yard, that Remus remembered
exactly where they were just then, and felt an embarrassed blush creep up his cheeks.

“What are you doing here?” The older boy asked, his voice coming out a bit harder than he
thought that it would, the discomfort more evident than he ever wanted it to be. Remus had
never wanted anyone else to see this place.

Regulus’s eyes turned back to Remus, and - not for the first time - the older boy found
himself wondering if the younger could read his mind as Regulus didn’t look angered or hurt
by the other’s tone, though he had every right to be.

“Mother and Father are at the Notts for some political meeting,” the younger teen said almost
solemnly, “they always are these days.”

“So you thought that you’d just fancy coming and paying your favorite Gryffindor a visit?”
Remus asked playfully, cheerfully even. A tone that the boy had no doubt would set Kreacher
- or any of the other Marauders - into a right fit if they were to hear, though for much
different reasons of course.

The younger boy looked away, suddenly finding the tree at Remus’s side to be much more
interesting than the boy himself, but the older teen could still just barely see the dimple that
formed when Regulus smiled just so, and the blush deeping on the other’s cheeks from
embarrassment.

“You know, I could always just call for Kreacher and leave,” the other teen threatened, still
not looking Remus in the eyes, but both boys knew that Regulus wouldn’t do so.

Remus dared a step closer as an idea came to him, a mischievous smile on the Marauder's lips
as he did so. “Tell me, have you ever been to a Muggle town before?”

—-
And that was how the boys spent the days that Regulus visited, skiving off to the muggle
town a little ways down the road from St Edmund’s until the novelty wore off and they’d
seen all that there was to see. But Remus marveled at the younger boy each second that
Regulus wasn’t looking on those days, as the absolute sight of him looking at everything with
such shameless wonder. He’d laughed at the way that the Slytherin had coughed so violently
drinking soda for the first time, the fizz buring the boy’s unsuspecting throat, and had thought
that it was some sort of comic justice for some of the wizarding world sweets that he’d had.

After the adventure of the twin and worn thin, the boys had gone to the old park and sat at the
picnic tables (though Remus admittedly sat atop them, much to Regulus’s supposed
annoyance) with books strewn between them - homework and ones just for pleasure.

Smoke billowed into the air one day as they had gotten to talking, and Remus had laughed so
hard that he’d almost begun to cough.

“You’ve never read Sherlock Holmes? ” The older boy asked, twisting to look at Regulus
fully, his legs pushed up against the younger boy’s side.

“ No ,” the Slytherin replied snappishly, not liking to not know something that others so
clearly did, even if it was muggle. But Remus’s smile only deepened, forming into something
that was all teeth- wolfish.

Regulus found that he loved it.

“Who was he then?”

And that was how the boys had spent an entire afternoon with Remus telling the story of how
he had nicked a copy of some of the Sherlock Holmes books from the Matron, and how
Regulus had learned every detail of A Study in Scarlet as if he had read it himself.

He did later that week when Remus had given it to him.

—-

“What are you reading about today?”Remus asked as he finished reading a chapter of next
year’s Ancient Runes text, new ideas already playing beautifully in the older boy’s mind for
things that the teen wanted to try.

Regulus grumbled in a way that Remus knew that he only did when the other boy was truly
interested in what he was studying that day. Sometimes they would go hours without talking
at all on days like this. Remus didn’t mind. He watched as the younger teen slowly closed the
book, bookmark in place and looked at the Gryffindor with none of the aggravation that the
older boy was sure that the teen felt.

“It’s a book on wandlore,” the younger boy said, his eyes bright. “Interesting stuff really.”
But Remus couldn’t match the other’s enthusiasm. “Wandlore?”

It was Regulus’s turn to look confused then, gazing at the older boy as if he’d grown another
head in the past few seconds. “You know, ‘The wand chooses the wizard, ’” the boy’s voice
got very airy in what Remus assumed was supposed to be an imitation of someone that the
older boy should know, but so clearly doesn’t, “and all that.”

“The wand what ?”Remus asked dumbly, as Regulus looked exasperated- even more so than
before.

“ Blimey , Rem,” the younger teen asked, “how did you get your wand then?” Regulus asked
with equal parts genuine confusion and concern.

Remus only shrugged and told himself not to give into the remover rising in his chest as just
how much he didn’t know, couldn’t know because they would involve being allowed into the
wizarding world outside of school to do so.

“It was my father’s,” is all the boy says instead, surprising the younger as Remus had never
spoken of his father before, but Regulus soon tsked once the surprise died down.

“Well that explains why it works so well for you even though it’s not yours ,” the boy said
more to himself than the other teen, but quickly backpedaled at the dark look from the older
boy. “I’m not saying that you stole it,” Regulus said quickly, though they both know that it
wasn’t outside of the realm of Remus’s capabilities, “but the wand doesn’t truly recognize
you as the owner. You didn’t win it from your father in a duel, or kill him for it, so it still -
even after death - belongs to him. That’s why almost all wizards are buried with their wands,
because they could never truly belong to another,” the boy explained.

Remus thought of the way that the wand had always felt just slightly off in the boy’s hand, as
if it was trying to mimic the magic of another instead of his own- two magics that couldn’t be
more different in nature, not with the wolf lingering inside of the boy.

“It works well enough,” Remus had muttered quietly, taking another drag from his cigarette
and wished that it was something stronger. The Gryffindor didn’t want to be reminded of yet
another way that he fell short of most wizards, of just how much harder he had to work to
pull so far ahead so that he might have a chance at a good job after Hogwarts with the laws
that made it so damn hard for those with his condition to survive. The laws that his father had
created.

But Regulus was an unrelenting, unmovable force when there was something that he wanted
and knew that he could have. He was a Slytherin after all.

“Tell me Remus,” the other boy stated, his face carefully blank as it so often was, but his eyes
so bright that it was almost blinding, “you ever been to Diagon Alley?”

That was how Remus found himself stepping into a dingy bar in London and being led out of
the back by an eager Regulus, who drew his wand and tapped on the stones there while
looking at the older boy as if waiting for a reaction, but the Gryffindor could already smell
the thick scent of magic coming from the other side of the barrier.
He still lit up with a childish wonder though upon seeing the sight that he’d been denied for
so long.

Regulus watched as the older boy looked at the alley as if he was gazing at the stars on the
clearest of nights instead of a small wizard shopping street. Regulus felt something clench in
his chest at the sight and pushed it down just as fast as it had come, instead watching as the
older boy’s fingers curled at his sides as if he wanted to reach out and grab the magic around
him. Knowing Remus as he did, the younger teen had no doubt that if anyone could find a
way to do just that, it would be the boy at his side.

Remus let the younger boy take the lead and swoon found himself standing inside of a
rundown shop that not even the boys at St Edmund’s would think to steal from. There were
thousands upon thousands of long, sleeker boxes lining each of the walls and filling every
shelf to the absolute brim. The shop was thick with the scent of magic, intoxicatingly so.

“Ah, Regulus Black,” a wispy voice that Remus recognized from the Slytherin’s immolation
of it said, as a man with graying hair and a crazed look in his eyes came into view. The
Gryffindor immediately felt on edge around the offer man, but couldn’t tell as to why. “Black
Walnut and Phoenix Feather, elven and a quarter inch. Flexible,” Ollivander said, his eyes
looking at the boys but truly seeing neither of them. “Difficult wand to master, but I trust that
it’s been working well for you?”

Remus watched as the other boy’s eyes grew a bit colder before a soft resignation set in once
he caught the other teen’s questing gaze. “So long as I am not deceiving myself.”

“Good. Good,” the man muttered before his ghostly gaze turned to Remus. “Mr. Lupin, I was
disappointed when I heard that you wouldn’t be coming, though I suppose your father’s wand
had worked well for you these last few years. Ten and a quarter inch, Cypress wood and
unicorn hair core. Pliable.” The man’s gaze tragedy uo and down Remus as if he was reading
the boy like a book, then he hummed. “Yes, I can see how that would be a problem now.”

Remus had no idea what the wand maker meant by that and didn’t have time to ponder it as
the man surged forward with a measuring tape in his hand. The Gryffindor thought that he
saw Regulus smirk as the younger boy walked over to the. Hair in the corner of the shop, but
could only glare at the wall in response.

The measuring tape started to move on its own as its owner began to pull out tens of boxes,
the pile growing higher and higher but the moment as the crazed look in the man’s silver eyes
swelled to dizzying heights. Ollivander snapped the fingers and the measure fell to the
ground in an unceremonious heap as the wandmaker gestured the older boy forwards.

Remus stopped before him at the desk and had a wand thrusted into his hand before his legs
had even come to a stop. Holding the wand, Remus knew that it wasn’t meant for him, he
could feel the way that it protested even a hint of the werewolf’s magic.

“Definitely not,” the wandmaker said quickly and pulled the wand hurriedly out of the boy’s
hand, with another one at the ready.
They continued on like this for some time, long enough that Remus found himself glancing
back at the Slytherin boy, expecting to find him in the thralls of boredom, but instead found
the younger teen watching with what could only be described as rapt attention.

‘Right ,’ Remus thought, ‘Reg likes wandlore. This is probably the most interesting thing he’s
seen all week .’

Remus was right of course, just not for the reasons that he thought.

“How about this one?” Ollivander asked more to himself than anyone else in the room as he
pushed the latest wand into the Gryffindor’s hand.

Warmth that the boy had never known before spread through Remus almost instantly, a
feeling of rightness washing over the boy as he held the wand, as if all of the magic in the
world was just one movement away. Remus waved it surely and watched with wonder as
silver and gold sparks shimmered like stars through the air, the magic coming to him in a
thick swell without so much as an uttered word.

Ollivander clapped, a triumphant smile on the crazed man’s face, but Remus only had eyes
for the boy that had come to stand next to him, fingers ghosting over the delicately carved
wood as their sides pressed so tightly together. The pair smiled quickly at one another and
wondered how it could have taken them so long to find their way to one another.

“Beech wood, Dragon Heartstrings, twelve and a quarter inch. Brittle,” the wandmaker said
as he took the piece back and slid it into the box that it had come from. “Yes, this will work
well for you, Mr. Lupin.”

Remus reached into his trousers to pull out what little money he had, but was stopped by a
sire jingling of heavy coins on the counter. When he looked up, the Gryffindor saw that
Regulus had already paid and grabbed the wand box, grinding out of the shop and leaving
Remus no choice but to follow.

“How much do I owe you?” The older boy asked once he’d caught up to the younger, it
taking a bit of time with his bad hip protesting so much, but the Slytherin only waved him off
and pushed the box into the older teen’s hands. “Reg-”

“We’ll just have Barty teach you how to play cards, then you can wipe those lions clean and
pay me with their gold,” the younger boy said almost dismissively, but Remus could see the
blush rising in the other teen’s high cheeks, the embarseed kind that came when one did
something nice that they didn’t want to speak of.

“Thank you,” the lion said quietly, but earnestly.

“You’re welcome,” the snake replied just the same.

—-
“Do you think that Achilles loved Patroclus?”

And Remus looked at the boy sitting next to him in the tall grass with surprise in his eyes,
because this wasn’t something that they were supposed to talk about so openly. Not when
everyone acted as if it was sin. But the earnest look in the younger boy’s eyes told him that it
wasn’t some sort of cunning trick to trap the older boy.

Remus pressed closer to the smaller boy, their knees knocking together as they looked up at
the vast night sky, trading a cigarette back and forth with the gentleness of a kiss.

“I think that he did.”

Somehow the boy felt as if they weren’t talking about the Iliad at all.

—-

Summer soon drew to a close and Remus smiled proudly as Regulus told him that he was
made a Prefect, the congratulations falling from his lips just as easily as it had when Dora had
written him of her reaching the same thing only a few hours or so before. The Gryffindor
couldn't wait for patrols with the other two.

They were laying in a field just beside the old playground, the summer sun shining down on
them and tanning Regulus’s once pale skin to a comfortable glow that made Remus’s heart
race each time that he saw the younger boy.

“This will be the last time that I can see you before the school term starts,” the Slytherin said
as the clouds drifted by with an indolence that Remus felt in his bones, his body resisting
movement more and more after each passing moon.

“So that means that I have a well to change my looks as drastically as possible then,” Remus
said, receiving a glare in return, but the older teen could see an interested glint in that of the
younger’s gray eyes and tried not to think too much if it as ideas bloomed in the boy’s mind
of just what he could do.

“Are you going to forgive him?” Regulus asked, his eyes tujeenyo to the sky and far away
from the other boy, not that Remus wasn’t watching the darkening sky as well, but he still
knew that the other feared the answer. Remus knew that Regulus feared that all of this would
disappear the second they stepped onto the platform and would go separate ways once more.

Remus feared it too.

“I’ll be civil with him,” the Gryffindor decided, neither boy having to ask who ‘he’ was,
“maybe even friends, but I don't think that I will ever forgive him.”

Regulus nodded, relieved, and Remus was too.

 The thing that James didn’t seem to unders about what Sirius had done was that if Remus had
killed Snape, or even just turned him, Remus would have been out down like some kind of
wild animal before anyone even told him what he’d done when he wasn’t in control. He
would have died a beast and nothing else would have mattered.

No, Remus Lupin wasn’t going to forgive Sirius Black.

When both boys stood, they knew that there wouldn’t be another summer like this one, not
for either of them.

“I’ll see you on the train?” Regulus asked, his voice unsure. Just because Remus was with
them for two weeks in public at the end of last term, Regulus knew that this didn’t mean that
the Gryffindor would want to so publicly align himself with the snakes once more.

“You’ll come and find me on the train,” Remus said with a finality that he knew the other
wouldn’t question. “We’ll walk to the Prefect’s carriage together.”

“Alright.”

“Right.”

Chapter End Notes

Writing this chapter, I looked at several sources for the boys’ wands, and picked what I
liked best. Regulus’s was never said, but Black Walnut wood on the Harry Potter
website was said that owner would have to basically be honest with themselves or else
the wand would refuse to work for them and the owner would have to buy a new one. I
saw that someone paired that with Reg and thought that it fit really well since he betrays
Voldemort in the books and dies doing so.

The description for Remus’s first wand was the canon for Remus’s wand in the books (I
couldn’t find what Lyall Lupin’s wand was) and it kinda pissed me off when researching
it because Cypress wood is for the self sacrificing, those willing to lay down their lives
when asked, and the wand was said to have been pliable- meaning easily influenced or
shaped by others. Neither of these descriptions really work for who I’m making this
Remus to be, but the wand for canon Remus almost makes it seem like he was putty in
Dumbledore’s hands- a lot like Harry, which is not something that he will be here.

For Remus’s wand I chose Beech wood because pottermore said that it is for those wise
beyond their years and with open minds. It said that the wand is capable of subtlety and
artistry not seen in other woods. I chose Dragon Heartstrings as the core because it is
said to be temperamental and Remus in ATYD is known for his temper (especially in the
early years). I went with Twelve and a quarter inch because it said that normally the
taller the witch or wizard, the longer the wand and Remus is one of the tallest characters
in the book series. It also said that longer wands are best for bold personalities, and that
will be seen later on. The flexibility I chose was brittle because we know that Remus
should have insecurities due to his werewolf condition and the wand with this flexibility
is said to attach itself to the insecure. It is said that the owners are usually contemplative,
clever, and somewhat cynical. I think that it matches well enough.
 Chapter 3
Chapter Summary

September 1st, 1976

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

The Marauders sat anxiously in their usual carriage, apprehension coiling thickly in the air as
three parts of a whole desperately awaited their missing piece. None of them knew if Remus
would be sitting with them at all this time, not when he hadn’t returned a single letter from
any of the other three all summer. Not when the last time that he spoke to Sirius was when he
struck the older boy across the face and left them for the snakes in the year below.

“He’ll come,” James said more for the other two than himself. “I’m sure that he will.”

But the boy only winced at the two almost identical glares of disbelief that were given to him
by the other two teens, the intensity of them stifled by Sirius’s bouncing leg and Peter
popping another chocolate candy into his mouth, going through them twice as fast as he
normally would.

James looked at Sirius who, despite the summer sun from flying and constant visits from
Mary over the holiday, still had something of a worried air that made him almost lesser than
before. He didn’t look like Sirius, he hadn’t in a while.

He had to come.

Then the carriage door slid open, revealing to them an almost perfect stranger.

Peter’s eyes went almost comically wide at the visage of the boy before them, as James
immediately wonders what could have happened to cause such a change - he knew, they all
did, but didn’t want to admit it to himself, not yet at the least - and Sirius’s breath hitched
with something . It was the same feeling that had occurred two years ago, the first time that
Remus came to school with such drastic changes. He pushed it down now too, just like then.

“Alright there?” The stray Marauder asked, an almost predatory smile curling on the standing
boy’s lips even after the soft summer that he knew that he’d had.

The teen took a drag from his cigarette, letting the other three take the change in; watching
their reactions carefully as they did so.

Remus knew how he looked, there was a small bar going through the top of his right ear and
a small cuff below it in the shape of a golden snake - not that the thought that they could see
that much detail of the piece from where the other three were - with the usual beginner’s
piercings on both side - small black studs to match the black bar. On top of that, his hair was
different this year too, the lower handle of his head shaved as small loose curls rained down
from the top.

He watched as three sets of eyes traveled every inch of his face, eyeing every detail as if they
thought it might change back to normal if they were to look away.

The next thing to be scrutinized was his clothes, the black knock off Doc Martens with red
and yellow laces making an appearance once more, as dark torn jeans joined them with the
usual sweaters. It felt something like a merging of timelines without any of the kindness
remaining within them.

Remus rolled his eyes at the other boys’ shocked expressions and sat down in his seat with a
regal mess that he seemed to have picked up from a certain Black brother - not that they
really acted like brothers much anymore. The idea that the younger boy could rub off on him
so much after kinky a month or so alone with one another sent a pleased smirk to the
werewolf’s lips - tne breaking point it seemed for the others.

“ Bloody hell , Remus!” James excamilmed, looking at his friend as if seeing a stranger.
“What do you do to yourself?”

Remus felt his brow quirk up at the other boy’s reactions which was so different from the
polite avoidance of the topic that he’d given the last time that the other boy shouted up to
King’s Cross poking like a skinhead. James noticed it too, but - ever the Gryffindor - refused
to back down.

“Punched a few holes in my ears, didn’t I?” Remus shrugged, taking another drag of his
cigarette. Though the Marauders’s reactions were interesting, they weren’t the ones that he
was waiting for.

A sputtered coughing noise draws Remus’s gaze to the boy sitting next to James, but where
he had expected there to be a pant in his chest - whether from some dulled form of what
could have once been love or anger Remus didn’t know - there was none. Only a sense of
cold apathy that he’d never felt for the other boy before.

“You alright there, Black?” The wolf asked as the ktner boy’s cheeks flushed from a lack of
air, and Peter stood to open the window.

“Fine,” the older boy eventually manages, his tone careful. It was the first civil words that
they’d spoken to one another in months. “How was your summer, Moony?” And Remus can
tell that the other is testing the waters, the nervous looks on Peter’s and James’s faces tell him
that well enough, so he decided to let the other call him what he wishes, only raising a
questioning brow. Especially since another surprise was due soon

The werewolf shrugged, glancing out the compartment door for another figure that he wanted
to see. “The usual, nothing too special,” Remus lied easily - it was Al, that he’d been doing
since he’d learned to speak. Only Sirius knew what ‘the usual’ meant, about the stealing and
fights, but he was too eager to be in the younger teen’s good graces once more to reveal it.
The softening look in James’s eyes and the relaxing of Peter’s shoulders made the deception
worth it.

Remus relaxed into the dear as the train began to move and the. Other three boys told him
stories of a summer spent flying and pretending that the war outside didn’t exist at all. With
the tentative peace between the dog and the wolf taking shape, it wasn't long before the topic
at hand turned to a certain red haired prefect, but the other three Gryffindors were mercifully
saved for hearing more as the compartment door slid smoothly open.

Remus immediately pulled himself to his feet as the two newcomers stepped inside unified,
an easy smile stretching itself across the boy’s lips that none of the other lions seemed to
notice, too confirmed with the visitors.

Regulus Black was standing inside of the Gryffindor compartment with a blank look on his
face as he took in the image of the older boy. He’d known that the lion was planning on doing
something, but never had his mind come up with this . He knew that his mother would curse
him for even poking at the older boy the way that he was, and would do so ten times over if
she knew of the thoughts suddenly consuming him since the middle of the summer.

He didn’t truly care.

Sirius watched his brother anxiously and saw a flicker of something in the younger Black’s
gaze, though he didn’t know just what it was. He didn’t know if he wanted to either, not when
he bought that the other boy might be looking at Moony the same way that he had countless
times before when no one else could see.

“Interesting look there, Lupin,” the younger boy finally said at last, his voice holding none of
the disdain or disgust that most of the Gryffindors present had expected it to. “Very muggle.”

The standing lion walked towards the snake with a casualness that only half of those present
understood. “You like it?” Remus asked, his voice almost teasing in a manner, not that
anyone but the intended truly seemed to notice.

Regulus only hummus and goes for a non answer rather than a true one given the current
company around the pair. “My mother would have a heart attack if she were to see it,” the
Slytherin boy remarks flatly.

“Good,” the Gryffindor boy replies, a hard note in his voice that goes heard by everyone
there.

James and Sirius exchange hurried glances at the strange interaction unfolding before them.

“What are you doing here, Reg?” The elder Black brother asks, his hands moving stiffly to
the wand at his side despite neither of the newcomers showing any hints of hostility.

“Just here to pick up Remus,” Pandora answers airily in the Slytherin boy’s steed as she turns
to look at her Gryffindor, blatantly ignoring the others. Something that she knew that the
other boys were in no way accustomed to. “Remus darling, please put that out,” the
Ravenclaws says almost sternly as she points at the cigarette on the older boy’s hand.
Remus rolls his eyes but nocked the cherry off out of the open window before pocketing the
other half, and looping his arm through the Ravenclaw’s.

The sitting Marauders watched the scene with a quiet bewilderment at the ease that the three
moved around one another. They knew that Remus had hung around the younger Slytherins
the year before - how could they not? The whole school knew - but somehow it felt as if they
were expecting things to come back into a sense of normalcy that they’d created over the
years once the school year started again. Now looking at Remus, it just seems like everything
was changing even more than before. None of them knew what to think about that.

“I’ll be back after the prefect’s meeting,” the fourth Marauder said as if being carted off by a
Slytherin boy and Ravenclaw girl was natural now, as if they all should have seen it coming.

Maybe they should have.

The three Gryffindor boys watched their last member leave and wondered what this meant
for them all that Remus was around - around, but not friends, Sirius refused to let his mind
wander down that path and James and Peter knew better than to let him - Regulus Black of all
people. Someone that should hate to even breathe the same air as the half - blood boy, and yet
almost seemed fond of him.

—-

The trio walked into the prefect’s carriage together, the two boys listening to the Ravenclaws
girl give a recant of the information that she’d found over the summer, and the work that they
still had to do.

So consumed in one another, they seemed to miss the strange looks that they were receiving
from the other prefects, who had all stilled their own conversations to watch as the three took
places right next to each other at the table, with Black in the middle and an open seat left on
Remus and Pandora’s other sides for their respective house partners. But all those that were
staring looked away once the younger of the two boys gave a fierce glare that would chill
anyone’s heart.

Evans isn’t as shaken by the sight as the others, not after the events at the end of last year
when Severus came running to her in the last few days of the school term with stories of a
werewolf boy and a full moon night. She’d gone to Remus with the Gryffindor idiots on the
train, but found him towards the back of the Hogwarts’s Express with the Slyherins instead.
She’d seen the way that the three were pressed closely together then as they were now in
conspiratorial whispers with the other two Slytherin boys laughing together on the ground,
and had fought back a grimace.

Black, Potter, and Pettigrew might have thought that Remus being with them in the last two
weeks of fifth year did not mean anything, but she knew that it did.
She knew that it was a strange bond that wouldn’t die so easily with age.

Remus wasn’t one to abandon friends unless they had wronged him greatly, and even then he
often didn’t let the separation last long.

So Lily just smiles at the Gryffindor boy and takes the seat that had been left open for her as
if it was normal to do so. Remus smiled at her as well before going back to his conversation
with the other two in just the same manner. She didn’t even balk at the change in the other
lion’s appearance once she saw it, though she found that she liked how even though the boy
was now - as always - so completely surrounded by purebloods, Remus seemed to flaunt his
muggle upbringing even more than ever before.

It eased something in the witch about the whole thing. Because it was a thing now.

Remus hardly listened as the Head Boy and Head Girl of this year went through the same
speech that was given the year previous, only giving enough attention to know when the topic
would change. No, his attention was drawn instead to the shoe pressed against his ankle
under the table. To the occasional, but so transparently deliberate grade of the other boy’s
thigh against his own. To things that could be so easily passed off as accidental if done by
anyone else other than Regulus Black, a boy that seamlessly controlled how his body moved.

The Gryffindor boy knew what the younger was doing, testing the grounds to see if it would
hold, and a wild part of him just wanted to drag the Slytherin boy over the line and let them
both see what would come of it when doing so. But the more rational part of him knew that
he could never hope to do so while the younger boy didn’t know of the beast living just under
his skin

A reckless part of him wanted to give in anyways.

“Now that that’s out of the way,” the Head Girl - s seventh year Hufflepuff that Remus never
did learn the name of - started, “onto scheduling. This year we decided to let you guys pick
who you're assigned with so as to avoid any unnecessary conflict. So who is willing to work
with another house?”

Three hands immediately pushed into the air, drawing an raised brow from the Head Girl that
Remus steadfastly ignored.

“Variant combinations of Lupin, Black and Lestrange I assume?” The Head Boy asked as he
sat over the unwritten patrol schedule, quill in hand. The three nodded as the seventh year
sighed and began to write. “ It’s always the fucking Marauders ,” Remus thought that he
heard the older boy mutter under his breadth.

He wasn’t wrong either way.

“Lupin and Black will patrol tonight then,” the Head Girl decided as the two seventh years
began the slow process of combining houses and years so that no one was likely to kill one
another and everyone was kept honest during their patrols.
Remus only listened enough to know what days he would be patrolling and with whom,
pleased to find that it would be Regulus every Wednesday and Dora and Lily on Saturday and
Monday, respectively. He really didn’t want to deal with any of the other prefects, not with
the way that one of the fifth year Gryffindors seemed a little too put out about not being with
the older boy.

“Library tomorrow?” Dora asked once they were dismissed and everyone else was returning
to their own compartments. Remus gave Evans a small nod to show that he would be along
soon if she wanted to wait. “Usual group?”

Remus was about to object when someone else spoke as if reading the Gryffindor’s mind.

“Library tomorrow, just the three of us,” Regulus countered and Dora frowned at that.

The eldest of the three sighed in a put out way that neither of the other two were foolish
enough to truly believe. “You know Barty and Evan would just be bored stiff the whole time
if invited,” the teen reminded her. “We’ll do something with the five of us this weekend,” he
said in compromise and Pandora nodded at this before smiling at them both and squeezing
each of their hands affectionately before leaving for her own compartment.

She never really was the type to give a verbal goodbye.

The Gryffindor felt his body relax in an all too familiar way as it was just Regulus and him
again, Remus half sitting upon the table as the Slytherin boy remained seated. The seven was
a familiar one to the pair that brought back images of summer days spent in the sun and those
rare summer nights.

He missed it all already like a limb.

But there were still a few strangers from the other houses present and Lily was waiting for
him impatiently outside of the carriage so they could walk back to the Marauders and the
girls together, as both prefects were sure that Marlene, Mary, and Desdemona had found their
way to the boys by now. Remus knew that the moment couldn't last. He also knew that he
would immediately miss the comfortable silence once it was gone. Because Remus liked that
when others demanded him to be loud, whispers were enough between the lion and the snake.

“I’ll pick you up from the dungeons at about thirty before curfew,” the older boy decided,
knowing that Regulus would want to stay as far away from Gryffindor Tower and the boy
inside of it as he could.

When the Slytherin looked at him, Rmeus could almost see a smile there. It was more than he
thought that he would get.

“I’ll be waiting,” the younger teen says simply, plainly even. But fingers brush against his
own as Regulus stands to leave and it feels like playing with fire.

Remus wondered just how long he could last before he became an arsonist.
The Gryffindor followed the Slytherin out a beat or two later, letting the other boy leave as he
took up post at Lily’s side.

“Weren’t you one of the ones that warned me about befriending Slytherins?” The Gryffindor
girl asked in that know - it - all voice of hers that everyone knew better than to question her
but now when she started using it. Remus would have been annoyed, but in her eyes the boy
found genuine concern among the righteousness.

The teen tsked as his fingers itched for a cigarette, or really just about anything to occupy
them. “I warned you about a Slytherin, not all of them,” Remus reminded her as they walked.

The Gryffindor boy had never really understood the innate hatred that Sirius and James had
for the house of cunning, going as far as to abandon a younger brother simply be I as he’d
had been sorted into it. The teen could admit that most of them were assholes, but Remus
would never forget the respect that he held for Narcissa after their second year, or anything
that happened at the end of the last. Most of the Slytherins were raised in hate, the kind that
made you firefly protect those that they called their own.

No, Remus didn’t hate the Slyherins - he never had - he hated those that thought that he and
Lily were lesser for their blood status and muggle parents - those Remus only had the one. He
hated the monster that turned him into one. But he didn’t hate someone just for their house.

Lily sighed. “I just want you to be careful,” the girl sympathetically, knowing a losing battle
when she so clearly saw one, “we Gryffindors haven’t had the best of luck with the
Slytherins in the past.”

A cold laugh of surprise encased the boy’s lips, something cruel rising in his chest that he
half heartedly shoved down. He knew just how much of an understatement that was, how
much worse it was likely to get with the war worsening as it was.

“You and Snape still on the outs then?” Remus asked instead of giving fully into the voice
that whispered in his mind to turn his words into knives. To make her bleed.

Anger had always been one of the werewolf's main issues, with or without the moon to
accompany it.

Lily nodded, something sad entering what was usually such brightly lit eyes. “For good this
time it seems,” the Gryffindor girl admitted before rolling those eyes of hers, “especially after
the stories that he was telling me about you .”

Though the last part was surely supposed to be a lightning force if the jesting tone that it was
given in meant anything, Remus felt his heart beat faster as if he had a hummingbird in his
chest instead.

He stopped, bringing Lily to a sudden halt as well. He looked at her and Remus knew just
what kind of stories that the girl meant. He knew it as surely as he knew the scars lacing his
skin and the moons that they came from. As sure as the pain in his bad hip and fine scent of
magic that clung desperately to his lungs all summer long.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Remus said quietly, watching as realization dawned in the other
Gryffindor’s eyes, something that he didn’t taking root in the other. “Promise me that.”

“I-I would never,” the girl stuttered out, shock heavy on her tongue. Remus watched as
determination as bright as an explosion settled on the other Gryffindor’s face, the curve of her
mouth and gleam of her eyes, and he wanted so desperately to believe it because he’d grown
fond of the other teen over the past few years. “I promise.”

Remus really wished that promises meant anything in this world, but he wouldn’t be him if
he only ever got what he deserved.

“Okay.”

The pair walked back to the other Marauders in a heavy silence, only for it to be broken right
before entering the compartment.

“I like the new look but the way,” the girl said almost teasingly, her smiler fierce yet unfailing
kind. “Very punk.”

Very muggle, was what went unsaid by the other.

Remus heard it anyways.

—-

The Sorting Ceremony and feast were the same as every year before, something they annoyed
Remus more than it ought to have as if never had before. But it wasn’t really the feast that
annoyed the boy, but those around him at it.

Lily kept sending small looks at Remus and then at the Slytherin table on the other side of the
Great Hall where Remus was taking great care not to look. Not when Sirius’s eyes seemed to
be on the scarred boy as much as they were on Mary who was all but sitting in the older boy’s
lap. Having already spoken to the older Black brother that day, Remus didn’t bother to meet
the other’s gaze.

James was almost worse though in comparison to the others, a guilty look on the teen’s face
every time that he looked at Remus that the boy wanted to claw off. Remus didn’t truly mind
the other’s adverse reaction to his change in appearance - had expected it even since the other
teen had barely held his tongue in fourth year, and had frowned spectacularly last Christmas
when the wolf had given Sirius a piercing of his own. The Potters were of a clean sort, the
kind not likely to get a tattoo or a piercing, or even dye their hair if Mrs. Potter had any say in
the matter - she always did.

No, what got under the boy's skin was the way that the other teen seemed to be wishing
desperately to take his reaction back . Remus has been raised in a way that remorse was
expected of you, but completely useless to the point that he didn’t truly understand it at all.
The damage was already done, you couldn’t fix it just by wanting to.

Marlene and Mary were like annoying balms for the boy, the pair of Ms instantly having
noticed the change and all but gushing at him in a way too similar to how they looked at
James and Sirius that it made the Gryffindor boy want to suck up and feel pleased all at the
same time.

“ Careful there, Lupin ,” Mary had said teasingly from Sirius’s side, “ Black here might start
to think that he has competition. ”

Remus had only laughed along with the others, the feeling bitter as he knew that the elder
Black brother had nothing to worry about. Remus wasn’t exactly interested in the same sort
that Sirius was.

Remus stood when Lily did to go to the first years as the feast ended. “The password is ‘lion
heart [1] ’ pass it on to the others,” the boy instructed, he didn’t miss the sharp look that the
elder Black brother paid him at the password, he only chose to ignore it. Sixth years didn’t
choose the password to the common rooms, and it wasn’t the taller boys' problem if the other
teen was suddenly feeling a sense of guilt over it.

The prefects lead the first years to the dormitories with gentle smiles carved onto each of
their lips as they were reminded of what magic was supposed to be - the pureness of first
being so completely surrounded by it without a war looming over them all. Lily had to sway
at the boy when one of the first hears gasped at the moving staircases and asked loudly how it
could be safe - as if Remus hasn’t been wondering the same thing since they were eleven
themselves.

If the Gryffindor boy had ever doubted his duty with fighting in the war, watching as the first
years as they gasped at a world of magic as if it was the most beautiful thing in the world
made just for them would have been enough to make him decide right then and there.

The wood never wanted the young lions to become casualties of war. He never wanted them
to get blood in their hands.

—-

“Going to bed already, Moony?” Peter asked as the boy in question laid down his book and
pushed himself to his feet, biting back a pained groan as his hip resisted the sudden
movement.

“I’ve got patrol tonight, Wormtail,” the teen said not unkindly, if a bit disgruntled, but the
other boys were used to his gruffness by now.
“Is Evans going with you then, Moony?” James asked as he sprung to a sitting position,
suddenly very interested in the conversation at hand. The other three Marauders only rolled
their eyes at the too familiar scene.

“No,” the standing teen said almost pityingly to the bespectacled boy, “I’m with one of the
other houses today.”

Remus chuckled as he watched the boy all but relate at not being able to see the girl that had
already gone up to her dorm to unpack.

“Have fun, Remus,” Mary said kindly from her seat on the small couch where the girl’s legs
were folded in the elder Black’s lap and her body leaning against the boy’s shoulder. The
Gryffindor waited for the usual swell of jealousy and found it missing entirely.

Remus only rolled his eyes in response. “It’s a patrol, Mary,” he reminded the girl. “Can’t get
more boring than that.”

It was a lie, he knew that it was.

“Be safe, Moony,” Sirius said in the bright voice of his that made everyone believe that
everything was normal with the four. Remus only paid the older boy a nod in response and
left.

—-

The snake and the lion walked together with their sides pressed tightly into one another, the
same unspoken thing passing between the teens as it had all summer.

There wasn’t much that the boys had to do, only breaking up the usual secret pairings in the
hidden nooks of the castle, letting the culprits off with a warning until the points system got
into full swing in the coming days. So the teens had plenty of time to talk about whatever
they wished, from muggle books to wizarding stories, and classes and projects they wanted to
pursue this year.

They stopped outside of the entrance to the dungeons at the end of their rounds, a
comfortable silence stretching out between the pair, one that the younger of the two saw fit to
break.

“Slytherin is having a party this Friday,” the black haired boy said as they stood across from
one another, close enough that the older boy could feel the younger boy’s breadth in his neck.

The implication was clear enough to the older boy. “I’ll be there if you want me,” he assured.
“Send Dora to pick me up then on her way?” He asked and the younger nodded, the smallest
of smiles forming on his otherwise still face.
 Remus felt heat blossom in his chest as it did everytime that the boy caused the younger to
break his bearing, and had a sly grin of his own all the way back to the Gryffindor common
room.

James and Peter had long gone to bed by the time that Remus got there, but the boy saw that
Sirius was still awake as if waiting for him.

“Hey Moony,” the lede Black said softly from his own bed as Remus crossed the room.

The taller boy felt his heart pull in that familiar way that it always used to around the older
boy, but this time it wasn’t because it was Sirius , but rather because the other teen sounded
like another that they both knew when he spoke in such a way.

“Padfoot,” Remus said concisely as he gathered his things for bed.

“Good patrol?”

“The usual.”

“Moony, I-” the older boy started, a hint of a familiar desperation entering the other teen’s
voice.

“Good night, Sirius,” Remus said tiredly, his cold tone never wavering as he closed the
bathroom door, effectively ending the conversation.

Chapter End Notes

[1] The star Regulus is the heart of the lion constellation, Leo. It is also considered to be
one of the four “Royal stars” and is often called King and Prince
 Chapter 4
Chapter Summary

Slytherin party

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

When Remus wakes the next morning, it’s to the hushed whispers of boys that seemed to
have forgotten just how well the supposedly still sleeping teen could hear.

“ He’s different now; cold ,” came the low voice of Peter as the other three boys moved as
quietly around the room as they seemed capable.

“ Moony has always been a little distant,” came James’s Layla defense of the supposed to be
slumbering teen - the sad thing was that Remus couldn’t even deny it. James and Sirius
always hung all over one another, wrestling when all four of the boys had been young, and
Peter was always eager to be as close to the spotlight as he could be. Remus had always been
the most reserved of the lot of them, a boy that hid behind more secrets then he would ever
know how to count. This was just the first time that anyone had ever said so much out loud. “
He’s still our Moony though.”

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?”

The voice was unsure and pained, almost unrecognizably so, but Remus still knew who had
spoken even if he couldn’t see them. The hidden teen waited for the inevitable way that
James would jump to the other’s defense - to protect his brother in everything but blood from
the reality of it all as he had done when they were young.

It never came.

Silence hung in the air for a long moment, broken only by a muttered curse as Peter seemed
to have dropped something - likely the boy’s shoe - on himself.

Using the noise as a probable cover, the werewolf slipped out of bed, gripping the banner
subtly as he stood, his bones protesting anything but a death - like sleep.

“Morning,” the tallest of the four boys muttered, his voice thick with sleep as he ignored the
so clearly guilty looks on the faces of his friends in favor of gathering his clothes to go and
change in the bathroom.

When he came back out the other three were waiting patiently by the door for their fourth to
grab his books and wand so that they could all walk down to breakfast. The rumbling in the
wolf’s stomach made the teen eager to comply, but stopped short at the peculiar looks from
the other three Marauders.

“ What ?” Remus asked, his voice a little more than twinged with annoyance.

“Is that a new wand, Moony?” James asked, an almost tangible confusion lacing the other
teen’s voice.

Remus looked down as the pale wood in his hands, his skin buzzing from the magic within it
reaching out to his own in a way that the previous one never had. From how right it felt to
hold it at last. A smile curved on the lips of the teen, sharp like a predator's teeth.

“Yeah,” he answered simply, slipping it inside of his robes as the others watched, seemingly
no less confused than before.

“Did your old one break?” Wormtail asked almost meekly, a shiver running down the rat’s
spine at the glint in the taller boy’s eyes. If Peter wasn’t already friends with the teen, he
might had attempted to become so right then so that such a look would never seek to eat him
whole.

“Nah, just wasn’t mine now was it?” Remus answered, his words inspiring more confusion
than clarity in them once more, but the tallest teen started for the door before the others could
ask anything else.

—-

Classes passed slowly though the rest of the day as long speeches warning of the dangers of
false sense of complacency went into one ear and out of the other with each subject as OWLs
were behind them all, but NEWTs only a year ahead.

Remus would never deny though the small thrill that went through him each time that he used
his wand, the way that the magic seemed to ebb and flow in a way that it never had before. A
stark contrast from the way that the old wand had always taken time to warm up to him at the
start of each new term, yearning for an owner that was long gone now. The boy couldn’t help
but wonder if this ease was how all of the others felt each time that magic poured from their
skin - somehow he thought that it wasn’t quite the same for him as it was for the others.

The end of the school day couldn’t come soon enough though as Remus separated himself
from Mary and Marlene after Care of Magical Creatures with a lie spilling too easily from the
boy’s lips.

Too trustingly believed as well.

The library was quiet when the teen entered, a stillness laying thickly over it that only came
from a strong bout of disuse such as the summer holidays. Madam Pince glared healthily as
the boy as the Gryffindor walked past her and a NEWTs student or two, forcefully ignoring
the compulsion to flip the witch off. It wouldn’t have done him any good to do so, but that
didn’t mean that the thought hadn’t crossed the teen’s mind almost every time that he’d seen
the ancient witch.

A smile crept across the lion’s lips, instantly dispelling his previous mood as Remus saw an
achingly familiar stream of blond hair among the old shelves and a mop of black pouring
over a book or three at one of the tables not far from the other.

“Took you long enough,” Regulus muttered as he turned the page of his book, but there was
no bite in the younger boy’s words, only the barest hint of relief. As if he had feared that
Remus wouldn’t have come at all.

“Care,” the older boy said as he sat down across from the snake, their feet knocking loosely
into one another’s under the table from each of their long legs. Remus couldn’t wait for the
day that the elder Black brother realized that Regulus had outgrown him, though he supposed
that it might never come as the pair were hardly ever in the same room as one another outside
of meal times. Rarer still to be so close to one another to notice such things.

Regulus only hummed in understanding, but Remus didn’t mind. He liked that so many
things could be said through so few - words spilling from silent glances and gestures that
almost no one else could read.

It felt a bit like a magic all of its own.

Parchment and books were scattered across the table hazardously, the papers filled with
Pandora’s familiar messy scrawl. Sometimes Remus found himself wondering how he could
have ever found Ravenclaws to be of one of the neater houses when this was a product of
only one of them - let alone a whole house .

A new book joined the pile, its pages already opened to the needed one by its handler.

“Evening Dora,” Remus greeted to the fiercely imaginative girl. The blonde only waved half
heartedly at the oldest of the two boys as she quickly scribbled another thing down before
discarding the newest book as obsolete.

“ Remus ,” the girl said with more than a hint of surprise as she lifted her head once more, ink
covering her pale finger and somehow smudged onto one of her cheeks. It wasn’t an
uncommon sight in the days that the Ravenclaw girl became invested in projects heavily.

“Evening Dora,” the Gryffindor boy said once more, no heat or animosity in the eldest’s
voice as he spoke.

“How long had he been here?” The blond asked the younger Black brother, not bothering to
whisper as they all knew what the question would be.

“A good minute,” Regulus answered in a voice that sounded utterly devoid of anything at all,
but the other two could see the slightest gleam in the boy’s gray eyes.
Pandora at least had the decency to look relieved that it was such a short time this time,
before waving the matter off entirely. “Doesn't matter. I think that I found some spells that we
could combine with…”

And just like that, the odd trio spent the next two hours or so working through spells and
books, studying Ancient Runes and potential potions to try that could be modified to suit
their needs. History books became their friends as the trio studied past delvings into such a
subject as theirs as other students came and went.

By the time that the three came to a stop, the world outside of the caste windows was already
beginning to grow dark and winter had surely already started not so long ago. The three
packed up and did away with the mess that they had made in the time that they were there,
talking quietly about nothing at all as they did so. It wasn’t until they had gone back to the
table to get her their things that the three spoke of anything of importance.

Remus watched as the younger pair looked at one another proddingly, as if they each wanted
to say the same thing, but neither wanted to have to be the one to do so. In the end, it was
Dora who lost the silent tug of war and Remus bit back something of a genuine laugh as the
Ravenclaw’s shoulders slumped into a pout.

“What is it?” The Gryffindor asked, his stomach grumbling iratably for the not so patiently
waiting food just down a few halls.

Dora sighed as if some heavy burden had been placed upon her. “At the end of every year,
Ravenclaw house has an exhibition of sorts to show off the things that we’ve created this year
- a highlight to our obsessions I suppose you could say.” And Remus almost smirked at the
last part that so perfectly mimicked the charms Professor’s voice that one would think that he
had been standing just behind the Ravenclaw girl. “Students from other houses are typically
invited to watch and judge, but not…”

“But not Gryffindors,” Remus offered, his voice sharp with something that the teen didn’t
know, but he thought that he might want to. “Because everything else is about Gryffindor?”
The lion garnered a guess, knowing that he was right by the way that the younger pair nodded
their heads slowly. A small, self deprecating chuckle escaped the older boy’s lips before his
face returned to something more impassive. “Can’t say that I’m all that surprised,” he
muttered more to himself than the other two. “So are you planning on showing off this then?”
Remus asked, gesturing to the spacers in the girl’s hands, tapping them lightly.

“I would like to.”

“Right then,” the eldest of the three said, slinging his bag over his shoulder and grimacing
internally at how ragged it looked when compared with that of the two purebloods before
him. “Tell me how that goes for you then.”

Remus didn’t bother to look at the other two as he spoke, keeping his head down as she me
burned itself deeply across the elder boy’s face, but then he heard a familiar groan from one
of the other two.
Pandora nodded in conformation, holding out her pale hand that was marred only by thin cuts
from potion knives for the other to shake.

And if Remus smiled like an idiot for the first time in so long that the boy had long lost count
of the days, then that was no one else’s business. Even less so if the other two mirrored it to
some extent alongside the lion.

—-

Remus listened to the soft sounds of the other three boys sleeping, the slow deep breaths
filled the otherwise silent room. With a practiced carefulness, the teen slipped from his bed
with his wand held lethally in his hand.

The halls were dark as the boy crept across them with the fearlessness of youth, not needing
light as those without his condition did. Remus had to admit that it made sneaking around a
lot easier for the teen, even if that was about the only pleasant thing about what he was.
Because of this advantage of his, the lion was able to spot the crouching figures of the others
with an ease that he wondered if anyone else would ever think to envy. He thought that they
might.

“Evan. Barty,” Remus whispered from just behind the other two boys, a silencing spell that
he’d learned from James and Sirius’s late night conversations already hanging thickly in the
air as the two snakes shrieked.

“Merlin Remus,” Barty whispered angrily as his voice was returned to him. “The hell was
that for?”

“Don’t act all high and mighty, as if you wouldn’t have done the exact same to me if given
the chance, Crouch,” the Gryffindor pointed out not unkindly.

Barty looked ready to object, but a swift slap to the shoulder from Evan was enough to stop
the wizard short.

“So what are we doing tonight?” Evan whispered quietly to the eldest boy. Neither of the
other two could see the lion very well, but there was an air about the older boy that told the
pair of a mischievous look in the other teen's eyes nonetheless.

“You’ll just have to follow and see.”

The three boys walked down the hall with the practiced silence of those who spent a great
number of years not allowed to be heard. Remus led them to a hidden room on the seventh
floor behind one of the tapestries, the stitched fairies on the fabric speaking angrily with the
three as they were moved aside to let the trio in.

“Remus, what in Salazar’s name is this?” Evan asked with the most unimpressed voice that
either of the other boys had heard before.
Inside of the wand - lit room everything was barren, completely devoid of anything save for a
slim coil of metal that sat in the middle of the floor and clanked pleasantly when Barty
picked it up.

“Is this muggle?” The younger teen asked as he messed with the silver object, eyes going
wide as he let go of one end while still holding the other and it came back towards the
Slytherin like on the Screaming Yo-yos from Zonko's Joke Shop.

“It is,” the eldest boy confirmed, taking the toy and putting it onto the palm of his hand,
letting the purebloods watch as it seemed to walk away after falling from it. “It’s called a
Slinky.”

“ Brilliant ,” Evan muttered, his voice thick with sarcasm. “The Muggle world’s gift to
wizarding kind. I still don’t see why we couldn’t have done this during the day.”

“Aw, is someone losing out on their beauty sleep?” The Gryffindors cooed coldly as he stood
once more. “Yeah, this thing is about as interesting as one of Professor Binns' classes right
now,” the eldest boy admitted with a non pulsed shrug. “But a couple thousand of these
things and some good timing, well that wouldn’t be dull at all.”

In the dim light, Remus could see the other two boys sly grins mirroring his own, sharp as a
blade.

—-

Friday came quickly, and with it came Friday night.

A now familiar sung in Remus’s chest as he walked back to the Gryffindor common room
after dinner. The other Marauders were already talking about what prank they wanted to plan
first, each wanting to get a good one in this year - to be children before they fully took to the
war following next year. Remus stayed as silent as he always was during these discussions,
only telling the other boys when their ideas were plain idiotic, even by the standards of the
Marauders.

“Remus.”

Though only Remus was called, all four boys turned to look at the girls, James and Sirius
passing furtive glances between one another at the sight of Dorcas Meadows and Pandora
Lestrange done up prettily in clothes fit for a house party. The sixth year Slytherin [1] and
fifth year Ravenclaw wasted no time in approaching the pack of Gryffindors.

“Meadows, Dora,” Remus greeted, a small feeling of dread pooling in the Gryffindor’s
stomach at the idea of what those two could be striving to do together.

Dora looped her arm through Remus’s, grinning at his unanswered questions as if she could
read them on him like an open book. Sometimes the boy found himself wondering if the
witch could do just that. Meadows took his other side, but didn’t hold the boy so familiarly.

Thank Merlin.

The sight still drew quite the baffled looks from the other three Marauders.

“You ladies look nice today,” James complimented as Meadows sent the boy a cool look that
did nothing to measure up to how Sirius was currently glaring at the trio. If looks could kill,
Remus thought that they’d be dead already if Black had any say in the matter. “What’s the
occasion?”

“Ravenclaw is having a party tonight,” Meadows lied smoothly, doing her house proud in
doing so.

Pandora nodded as her airy voice floated between them all. “We’re here to help Remus get
ready.”

“A nerd party?” The eldest Black brother asked, a scoff in the boy’s voice as he went ignored.

“I can dress myself,” Remus protested weakly, but was met with a shushing noise from the
Ravenclaw and an appraising look from the Slytherin girl.

“Not for a party you can’t,” Meadows decided before nodding to Pandora.

The blonde girl gave a loose tug and Remus followed easily, shrugging at the other three
Gryffindor boys that were left to follow as the group made their way to the tower. The wolf
only spared the trio a pitying glance as they were forced to stay downstairs as the girls had
commandeered the boys’ room. The majority of him actually found it quite amusing, seeing
the self proclaimed kings of Hogwarts being ordered around.

Remus sat down on his bed as Dora and Meadows dug through his trunk, talking among
themselves as if he wasn’t there at all. The boy didn’t mind, not when he knew that the pair
were absorbed in a task for his sake.

“I think he should wear the muggle clothes he had on the train.”

“On, I saw him in those, they’ll work, but we’ll need to do something about that sweater.”

“A few too many holes to look entirely fashionable, still go though,” Dora said kindly, a set
smile on her lips as she seemed to remember that the owner of such clothes was still present.
“What about a flannel?”

“The dark green one with black lines could work. Grab the boots, yeah.”

A pile of clothes was dumped into the Gryffindor’s arms as the boy was forced into the
bathroom to change. Remus knew that he could easily shrug the both off if he wished - he
was naturally stronger than almost anyone in the castle due to his condition- but he went
along with it easily.
Remus changed quickly, not entirely trusting the girls not to snoop into the boy’s things if
curiosity became the better of the pair. And when he looked into the mirror, the Marauder
didn’t entirely hate who was looking back at him.

The flannel added a pop of color to the otherwise dark outfit, the shirt and jeans both black as
could be. The scars on his face were visible even beneath the beauty charms that Lily,
Marlene, and Mary had shown him in second year to hide them, but in muggle clothes Remus
found that they looked like the trophy of a great feat rather than the effects of a curse he
could never rid himself of. Something to show with pride rather than to hold in shame.

There was a soft knock on the door and Remus opened it, slipping out into the other room
and shaking his head at the smirks of approval on the faces of the two girls.

“You clean up well, Lupin,” Meadows said, a whistle soon falling from the Slytherin girl’s
lips as Dora nodded along.

“We had an idea, Rem,” the younger girl said softly, stepping closer to the older boy as a
wave of unease ran through the Marauder.

Remus trusted the Ravenclaw - truly he did - but they haven’t known each other long enough
to know what lines are okay to cross just yet.

“And what would that be?” He managed to ask.

Meadows came closer as well. “We want you to take off whatever concealment charms it is
that you wear to dull your scars,” the Slytherin girl said bluntly. “Even if only for tonight.”

The request hit the Gryffindor boy like a stinging jinx, knocking all of the wind from the
Marauder’s lungs as worry and panic built up in the boy’s chest. The persistent, ever
lingering fear that anyone would look upon him and just know .

They’ll know anyway in just over a year , a voice inside of the wolf whispered and in a
moment of reckless self destruction, Remus found himself agreeing.

“Fine.”

Dora stood up in her tiptoes to ruffle the older boy’s hair and Remus leaned into the touch.

—-

The Marauders watched as the two girls from earlier walked down the stairs to the boy’s
dorms with Moony quick in toe. A Remus that looked as muggle as he did on the train to
school only a few days before.

A Remus who’s scars stood out proudly against the tan of his skin.
The three boys glanced at one another in shock, knowing just how much shame the other boy
always held for those very scars.

Sirius, sitting on the couch with an untrusted Mary quietly talking to Lily about the scene
before them curled up on his side, wondered just how much someone could change before
they became another person altogether.

—-

Remus grinned sharply at the now familiar sight of the Slytherin common room done up for a
house party, amd took pleasure in knowing that it was a look cutting enough to keep those
smart enough to remember the first time that the Gryffindor was here and keep their distance.

For now at the least.

“Rem! Dora!”

The older boy rolled his eyes almost affectionately at Barty’s already tipsy call drawing
Pandora and Remus closer, as Meadows peeled off to go join her own friends now that her
job was done for the night.

Evan was sitting next to the boy, their shoulders pressed tightly together as a bottle was
neatly nestled between the pair. The blond teen nodded in welcome as the lion and the eagle
sat on either side of the bigger couch with the last snake between them.

“Interesting choice of clothing there, Lupin,” the younger Black observed, his eyes slowly
tracing across the older boy in a way that made Remus’s skin burn dangerously.

“Dora and Meadows put it together,” the Gryffindor explained, not tearing his eyes away
from the other. “Do you like it?”

“It’s very muggle,” Regulus said slowly, his words measured neatly in a not answer.

“That’s not an answer,” the older boy pressed, his voice teasing in nature, something Remus
never thought that he would be with one of his best mate’s little brother.

When Regulus looked at the older boy sitting so closely to him that their knees knocked
together, he thought that he might finally understand the beauty that all of the muggle poets
seemed to endlessly find in destruction. And, Merlin , did he want to see more.

The older boy’s scars were more prominent then than they ever had been before, even during
the summer holiday. Every piercing looked like something out of a painting that he didn’t
know the name of just yet, but he knew that his mother would have it destroyed.

The thought made Regulus only stare more.

In the back of the boy's mind, the Slytherin wondered how much prodding it would take to
have the other try black nail polish. He didn’t think that it would be all that much if Pandora
was involved as well.

Did he like it? That was the question right?

“Yes,” the Slytherin boy said bluntly, his voice thick with something that he didn’t know but
the other did as the younger boy looked at the one beside him. To Regulus it almost looked as
if the lion was finally beginning to give into something that he’d spent forever repressing.

Fuck yes.

And when Remus smiled, it was that primal - feral - thing that the younger boy had only seen
once before.

It felt a bit like lightning.

—-

The party carried on the same as all of the other ones always tended to, with the boys -
Slytherin or not - making absolute fools of themselves as the girls just barely acted any better.
Remus would never not wonder why the lot of them decided to wait so long to hold duels as
they did, but it was never not entertaining to watch drunk snakes fall over themselves as they
failed miserably to curse one another.

Pressed nicely against Regulus and Firewhiskey pleasantly warming his veins, Remus hadn’t
expected to get his knuckles bloodied that night, but Mulciber had other plans for the night.

The wolf could smell the foul scented teen long before he drew close to them. The only
consultation seemed to be that Snape, who had seemed to linger around the taller boy like a
permanent shadow, was nowhere in sight for once.

“You're inviting all of the trash to the party, Baby Black?” The towering teen asked with a
nasty grin to match his less than pleasant personality. The boy’s words were directed to
Regulus, but his sneer was given to Pandora; a fact that made the wolf want to growl.
“You’ve even got Gryffindor’s Loony Lupin here.”

And just like that, the Gryffindor was on his feet with a look in his eyes so dark, so hungry ,
that anyone who saw it would know that there was a predator before them.

Smoke blew slowly from the wolf’s lips as a new cigarette burned between the lion’s fingers.
“Duel, right now,” the boy demanded as the odd group of friends leaned forwards with
sudden interest. “Unless you’re scared to lose to Loony Lupin ,” the teen taunted in true
Gryffindor fashion, putting the same emphasis on the name as the other boy had.

“Deal, Mudblood ,” the other teen spat.

Remus didn’t suppress his growl this time.

The sixth years moved quickly into the dueling lane as the rest of Slytherin house drew in
close to watch, almost all of them remembering the show that they’d been given the last time
that the lion had fought. Off to the side, Remus could see Dora looking disapprovingly at the
sight - never one to have liked violence much - but the three Slytherin boys had varying
looks of interest; Regulus looking at him with a raised brow as if asking what the lion
planned to do now.

Fight .

“Wands at the ready!” One of the seventh year Slytherin prefects yelled from the right of the
pair. “And… duel !”

The metallic scent of magic swelled deeply in the air, taking on a bitter twinge to it as spells
fired from both the boy’s wands in an endless succession that didn’t fully require words as
emotions field it all.

The wood snarled inside of the boy as animalistic instinct took over the teen, guiding the
lion’s movements, pushing the teen closer and closer to the other. His spells growing stronger
and stronger until the Expelliarmus went straight through the other’s Protego , the Slytherin’s
wand flying across the room with enough force that the Gryffindor heard it hit the far wall.

But Remus didn’t stop there.

Fuming with a feral rage, the wolf jumped at the heavier boy, bringing them both to the
ground as the lion beat the snake long after his knuckles began to bleed, only stopping once a
cool hand pulled him back.

The Gryffindor let Regulus pull him into what looked to be a stairwell that led to the
Slytherin dorms similar to the Gryffindor ones, not stopping until the pair were halfway up
the flight.

“Did I take it too far?” The older boy asked as he watched the blood slowly spill down his
hands, dripping to the ground. The wolf’s heart was still beating fast, adrenaline begging the
lion to fight more. Remus felt a bit like a monster, but he didn’t know if that was entirely a
bad thing anymore.

Remus knew that any of the Gryffindors back in the Tower would say yes in a heartbeat after
seeing the mess that the teen had made of the other boy, but Regulus wasn’t like any of them
and Remus didn’t want him to be.

The younger boy shook his head no as the snake loosely held the others hands within his
own, the younger boy’s cool skin soothing against the dull ache cascading in the older boy’s
hands.

“Not at all,” Regulus whispered the words as if they were something sacred. “You protected
your own.”
Gray eyes met brown and once more Remus found himself wondering what it would be like
to just light the match.

How it would feel to burn.

—-

The Marauders slowly dragged themselves to breakfast the next morning, Remus being the
first to rise even as he was the last to go to sleep the night before. The moon was drawing
nearer and the teen could already feel its effects even days away.

“Looks like someone did Mulciber in real well last night,” Sirius remarked with a happy tone
to the teen’s voice as he pointed at the black and blue snake walking to the Slytherin table.

Remus felt the edges of his lips quirk up into a smirk at the sight, one that only deepened as
the boy met the eyes of about four snakes across the Great Hall whose faces mirrored his
own.

“Looks like it doesn't it?”

“Remus,” a somewhat airy voice called from the boy’s Sadie as its owner drew closer to the
four, taking the open seat on the boy’s other side - Peter was on the left.

“Dora,” the Gryffindor greeted quietly, knowing that the Ravenclaw girl would have a much
worse hangover than his own.

The witch wasn’t having any of it.

“Hands,” she firmly commanded while removing a vile of something clear from one of her
pockets as the other Marauders watched shamelessly, Sirius glaring for a reason that Remus
didn’t know.

“ Dora -”

“ Remus .”

Remus pulled his hands out from lap and placed them a top of the table.

Using one of the clean cloths at table, the Ravenclaw girl poured some of the clear liquid
upon it before applying it to the angry wounds on the scarred boy’s knuckles.

“Muggle rubbing alcohol?” The boy asked as he recognized the scent immediately from
almost every night after the full moon before coming to Hogwarts.

Pandora only shrugged in response as she applied more. “One of my dorm mates is a
muggleborn,” she explained. “I figured that you wouldn’t want Madam Pomfrey to see this,
 so this will have to do.”

Remus nodded, knowing that the younger was right. Madam Pomfrey would ask far too
many questions when it looked like a fight was involved instead of just magic.

Peter looked wildly between the teen next to him and the one across the hall as Lestrange
wrapped Moony’s knuckles in long bandages. “ You’re the one that did that to Mulciber,” the
rat realized aloud, a thick sound of amazement coloring the boy’s voice.

Sirius and James looked at Wormy as if the boy had finally gone mad, but then the
information settled in their minds as well.

“He had it coming,” Remus growled in a way that the other three boys had never heard him
do so before.

Dora swatted at the older boy’s shoulder.

“Next time just hex the bastard unconscious and be done with it, Rem,” the girl said softly as
she stood, giving the boy’s shoulder a small squeeze as she left to Remus’s quiet thank you.

James and Peter looked as if they wanted to ask more about the fight, but Sirius spoke first.

“The Lestrange girl your girlfriend now, Moony?” Sirius asked in a voice that was supposed
to sound jesting, but had a curious edge to it that could almost be misconstrued as jealousy by
another.

But Remus only laughed, an earnest thing that shook the thin teen’s frame like a leaf in the
wind.

“ No ,” the boy breathed. “Merlin no, Dora isn’t exactly my type, Pads.”

And Sirius was so placated and the other two so completely bewildered that the other three
missed how Remus’s eyes flickered across the Great Hall to catch that of another’s.

Chapter End Notes

[1] I know that she’s a Gryffindor in canon, but Dorcas is almost always a Slytherin in
fanon, and who am I to break tradition?
 Chapter 5
Chapter Summary

Pranks, patronus, and experiments

Chapter Notes

Merry Christmas, happy holidays whatever. Sorry for the late update, we had family in
town

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The heat of summer died as September draws to a close, October fast on its heels with the
promise of Halloween enticingly close by. It was a holiday that didn’t truly mean as much
within the magical as it did the muggle, but was a good enough excuse to have a feast and
hold a party afterwards, smuggled liquor from Aberforth filling the teens as much as any
food. It really shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone that chaos of some sort was bound to
ensue in the time between the end of September and the beginning of October, and yet no one
was on guard as they left the Great Hall from breakfast to go to class.

They really should have been on some type of guard.

Remus walked with the other three Marauders, instinctively tuning out Prongs’ unending
rants about a certain red headed girl, the boy almost wished that she would accept his
affections so at least the rest of them would no longer have to hear about it. In the back of his
mind though, he almost wondered if her doing so would only make it worse in the end as he
would know even more about her than before.

The four, and almost everyone else leaving the Great Hall, stopped as a strange metallic
sound was heard coming closer. The Gryffindor boy smiled as everyone glanced around at
one another and the halls around them until a third year Hufflepuff boy pointed to the stairs.

“Are those… slinkies ?” Remus asked, as three of the metal coils raced down the stairs, each
of them a different color from the other two.

No one seemed to notice how the fifth year Slytherins had drawn closer, a Ravenclaw and
sixth year Slytherin girl quickly in toe as well. No one noticed the looks shared between the
six, or how Regulus pressed closer to the older boy as Remus shared a sly glance with the
other two fifth year snakes.
It wasn’t their business anyways.

“Looks like someone tried and failed at a prank,” Sirius remarked, his laugh barking through
the hall as everyone began to stir.

The metal coils met one of the lands between the sets of moving stairs and stopped as all of
the Marauders, save one, laughed at what appeared to be a botched attempt, others soon
joining in. Remus smiled sharply at Barty and Evan as he saw that golden coil had gotten the
farthest out of the three, and reached behind Regulus’s back to collect the two golden coins
from the younger boys, his fingers brushing the younger Black’s hips in a rather like touch
that made them both shiver.

The laughter died on each of the students’ lips as a deep rumbling noise was heard from
within the castle from the direction that original three slinkies had come from. The stairs
stopped their movements for a moment and suddenly hundreds upon thousands of the metal
coils in shades of green, gold, and silver were pouring downing the stairs like a relentless
wave, one after the other. There were timed duplication charms set on an easy half of them
that coasted even more to be created as they colored with the others that had piled up at the
bottom of one of the flights of stairs, causing the pile to grow enough that it spilled over onto
the next set of stairs again and again until there was enough that the metal could spilled from
the sides.

Remus laughed as the magic worked well enough that the coils had soon made their way
down to the last set of stairs and were beginning to roll at students' feet. Regulus only rolled
his eyes, but the pressure at the older boy’s side deepend, so Remus knew that the Slytherin
boy could be too annoyed by it all.

“You were saying Pads?” James asked cheekily as the bespectacled teen elbowed the other,
now scowling, boy.

“Still doesn't beat anything that our Moony has come up with,” Sirius protested petulantly,
his arms crossed like a child as the pair stole a glance at the boy in question, not noticing how
the younger Black brother had slipped away from the wolf’s side.

Remus only smiled in a way that could almost be construed as sweet, as he let the words that
might have blush to his cheeks only a few months before roll off of him. He knew that the
real fun hadn’t begun just yet.

“You four couldn't even go a month without causing some sort of mass chaos?” A new but
familiar voice chided.

The Gryffindor boys turned to see the teachers pushing their way to the front of the gathered
crowd of students, annoyed smile carved into some of their faces as something softly amused
danced across others.

“It wasn’t us this time,” Peter squeaked in a weak defense as he looked at Professor
McGonagall with big eyes. The witch only raised a prim brow. “Honest!”
Remus would never know what made the witch decide to believe the other boy, or if she ever
did at all, because the next thing that he knew, the Gryffindor head of house had sighed and
moved to the now growing pile colored coils.

The students watched as the Transfiguration professor withdrew her wand smoothly and
waved it with a delicacy that most of them had yet to learn. They had all expected the
somewhat interesting sight to disappear at once as so many of the Marauders’ pranks had
time and time again, but that wasn’t what happened at all.

Screams spilled from the younger years as the slinkies gathered in the ever growing pile of
metal suddenly shivered and changed .

The silver coils convulsed as wings sprouted from them in what could only be described now
as their backs. The metal coils took the air and began to fly high and swoop down like birds
of prey. Barty smirked proudly as one of the Gryffindors foolishly attempted to bat one away
and was met with three more springing from it; a modified Gemini Curse.

Someone shrieked as the silver coil sprouted legs like lizards and began to climb the walls
like the very same creature. Evan laughed quietly as some of the younger years began to run
away and bump into the others as the lizard - like coils jumped from the walls and onto them.

Remus smiled sharply as the golden coils fell limply to the floor like fabric before they began
to slink and slither, hissing like snakes. The Gryffindor could see the delicate scales shining
in the torch light. The snakes slithered around the hall with the same reckless abandon as the
other coils and could feel the wolf stir in his chest as if it wanted to hunt.

The other three Marauders were not spared from the thick of it all as they scurried and
dodged the animated metal coils. Remus could have sworn that he saw Peter’s nose twitch
like a rat’s just before Filch started to run at the three with demands of them righting it all and
complaints about not being allowed to string the three from their ankles and wrist anymore.

And in the extraordinary chaos of it all, Regulus grabbed the older boy’s hand and their
strange little group weaved and dashed through the crowd to the Slytherin common room,
and then the boy’s dorm.

—-

Classes were canceled for the day after that, the slinkies had escaped the confines of the hall
and had begun to run amok around the caste. The three conspirators grinned at one another as
the five of them lazed around the fifth year Slytherin boy’s dorm room, the echoes of
frightened screams following them down even to there. The metal coils would vanish within
the day, but no one else outside of their little bubble needed to know that.

The five of them were laid out between two of the beds, Barty laid out on his own as Evan
leaned against it from the floor. Regulus and Remus were arranged comfortably on the
younger boy’s bed, their backs pressed nicely against the cool stone, as Dora leaned against
the bed in a similar manner to Rosier.

“ Merlin ,” Regulus cursed, his head thrown to the side in a way that caused his curls to
cascade prettily across his face and Remus’s breath to catch harshly in his throat, “where do
you gits even find those spells?” The boy asked, the laugh that followed resonating quietly
through the room like a forbidden melody.

“It was all Lupin over there,” Evan remarked, his voice the lightest that the Gryffindor had
ever heard it before, bouncing buoyantly through the air with the light feeling of success.

The younger Black turned to look at the eldest boy expectantly, their faces close enough
together that the lion could see the faintest of freckles on the snake’s cheeks. Remus only
shrugged and fought down the heat rising in his cheeks.

“I only modified some spells and curses, and combined some others,” the oldest boy said
quietly, not meeting any of the others’ eyes. “Really it wasn’t much.”

And to the older boy it truly wasn’t. The Marauders had been doing things like this since
their first year, modifying spells to suit their needs and incorporating anything that they
needed to into it.

“Only, sure,” Barty scoffed petulantly.

Pandora turned on the floor and patted the older boy’s knee lightly, aware of just how unused
the Gryffindor is to any sort of casual touch that didn’t hurt, more than once she realized that
it was a marvel that the lion let her and Regulus be so liberal with their affections for him, but
that was a topic for another day.

The touch was a message in of its own, a silent whisper that told the other that he was
allowed to accept praise. Ravenclaw only knows that she had done the same thing more times
than she could count with the boy pressed so freely against the other; then again, maybe that
was a part of the reason why Remus tolerated them both so easily.

“Tell us what you're learning in those older classes of yours,” the witch said airily, her voice
visibly calming the older boy.

“Sure,” the lion said, rolling his eyes as he settled once more. “We’re studying the Patronus
Charm in Charms right now and should be attempting to cast it later in the year.”

“Why are you having to wait so long to actually cast it?” The younger Black brother asked
curiously, but Remus only shrugged.

“Not everyone can cast one at all,” the older boy explained easily enough. “We’re just
waiting until after the holidays when spirits are highest. James has already said that he wants
to be the first in our year to cast it.”

The strange group smirked in a way that could almost be seen as cruel as a distant shriek
floated down the dungeon halls, the magic behind the Slinkies still going strong.
“Spirits are pretty high right now,” Evan said with that knowing look of his, Barty’s soon
following suit. Remus shook his head and wondered how they could have all taken so long to
come to this point.

“Okay,” the oldest of their strange group conceded, peeling off of the bed with the younger
Black brother soon following suit. “Everyone grab their wands.”

Little time was spared for the theory that they had been learning in class, though Remus
understood it better than most, he also knew that some magic that was so inexplicably tied
with emotion as this was didn’t require much theory to it at all.

“You think of the happiest memory that you possess and let it fill you till, then speak the
incantation,” Remus instructed as the dive spread out across the room more than they had
been before, wands held loosely in each of their hands, but none of them looking at one
another.

The lion closed his eyes and thought of summer days spent with someone that he had deemed
untouchable only a few years before, and gentle touches that both set his skin on fire and
caring in a way that he had almost never experienced before. It was Madam Pomfrey’s gentle
embrace the morning after the full moon when she refused to let him die, and seeing the
Marauders turn for the first time. It was sneaking out to meet two of the boys within the room
and the feeling of a delicate hand grasping his own as they ran with laughter tearing at their
throats.

It was being alive and finally learning how to live.

“ Expecto Patronum! ”

Spools of silver light spilled from the tip of the Gryffindor’s wand as a warmth like none that
he had ever known before pooled in the boy’s chest, consuming him like a flame. And then
suddenly the light gathered into something recognizable as a silver fox trotted through the air,
its tail bouncing as the creature ran around the eldest boy.

A laughter so light and free spilled from the teen’s lips that the other four turned to look at
the oldest member of their group and marveled at the creature that ran so mischievously
around the scarred boy, bringing him to life as it shined brighter than it had only a moment
before.

None of the others could have known the fear that had gripped the lion’s heart at the idea that
the spectral image of a wolf would be where the fox was now. None of them could have
known how free he felt when it didn’t. So Remus laughed and smiled with a fierceness that
most would shy from as the silver creature ran around him, casting distant hues across his
summer tanned skin.

“ Expecto Patronum !”

A small silver cat leapt from the tip of the younger Black brother’s wand, running with a
feline grace for the fox trotting through the air. Remus briefly wondered if Patronuses could
touch one another, the inquiry went unanswered as the two spectral protectors ran with one
another through the room, wispy trendles trailing in their wake.

The owners of the creatures looked across the small room at one another and smiled in a soft
way that seemed to make each of their beasts shine a little brighter than before.

Remus didn’t think that he’d ever seen a more beautiful sight before.

Before long there is a bat flying above the other two creatures, watching over them in the
way that only a sister could do. It swept low and rose high above both of the running
creatures to the falcon and blackbird that flew with it, as the creators all huddled closely
together to watch the lazy circles that the vestiges were making about the room.

Remus didn’t know if your patronus was always the same as your animagus form, it was one
of the fears that had stopped the teen from attempting the transformation with the other three.
He was already stuck as a wolf one night each month, he didn’t want to become one
voluntarily as well. But if the patronus form was the same as the animagus, then the
Gryffindor found that he wasn’t so opposed to it all.

—-

Remus rolls over in his bed and gives an annoyed groan at the noise filling the room around
him as the other three occupants moved about in the impossibly loud process of getting ready.
And then suddenly the curtains to the boy’s bed are being pulled back and light is pouting
into Remus’s eyes in a way that makes the boy want to reach for his wand.

“Wormtail, what the actual fuck?” The boy cursed groggily as he pushed himself up on the
bed and looked at the other teen, a slight growl in his voice.

The plump boy had gone pale as he began to stammer out an answer, but was gracelessly
saved by James.

“It’s a Hogsmead day, mate,” the smiling boy explained, but Remus could see the caution in
the other boy’s eyes, as if James thought that he was looking at a wounded animal rather than
a boy. “If you don’t get up now you’ll be late.”

“Doesn't matter,” Remus huffed, falling back into the bed with an annoyed sigh. “Can’t go
anyways, got my permission revoked, didn’t I?”

“How in Merlin’s name did that happen?” Sirius asked, his head appearing in the curtain slip.

Remus sighed and made a dismissive gesture with his hand before flopping it back onto the
bed in a rare show of childishness. “They don’t want to risk it.”

He didn’t have to explain who or what, the other three already knew it as well as he did.
Dumbledore was a strange man, someone that kept all of his chard’s close to his chest and
never made his manipulations too obvious. Remus didn’t much appreciate being a card that
the man was locking away after the attacks that had occurred during the summer as more and
more werewolfs flocked to the other side.

“That’s too bad, mate,” James said softly, his hand twitching at his side as if he had thought
about reaching out but had decided against doing so at the last moment.

“We’ll bring you back some sweets, Moony,” Peter offered kindly, knowing just the way to
the other boy’s heart.

The two of them peeled away and then it was only Sirius left. The other boy looked as if he
wanted to stay something, as if he wanted to say quite a few things that Remus would never
have the opportunity to know become the teen only shook his head and smiled instead. “Have
a nice lie in, Moony.”

As he watched Sirius turn away and the curtains fall back into place, Remus couldn’t help but
wonder if the others would ever stop walking on eggshells around him. He wondered if it
even mattered anymore at all if they did.

—-

Remus pulled himself out of his bed sometime later, his bones creaking angrily at the
movement as he did.

Gryffindor Tower was quiet as he left it, only a low mummer of voices could be heard
anywhere within it as most of the students were either in the village or somewhere else on the
castle grounds.

The Gryffindor walked slowly, taking in the cool breeze as October continued on. He didn’t
have any books with him, or really anything at all which was an oddity in of itself. The leaves
had begun to die, Remus noticed, a vivid world of color appearing with the unmistakable
signs of dearth. Stars were the same, he knew, burning so brightly during their final years that
their death was a stunning sight to see as the star shedded its layers. So beautiful in fact that
most forgot that it was death that they were seeing. He wondered if people were the same as
they changed from one version of themselves to another, if they burned brightly too before
they became someone new.

He thought that they might.

Two familiar sources of warmth pressed in on either side of the lion, one snaking her arm
through Remus’s while the other pressed closely to the Gryffindor’s side until all three of
them were walking in step with one another.

“Morning,” the eldest of the group grumbled, his voice gravelly from disuse. “You two didn’t
want to go to the village?” He asked curiously, looking between the two fifth year prefects.
Dora shook her head no, blonde waves of loose curls gently falling around her. “I felt that
something good would happen if I decided to stay,” the younger girl said airily, her words
holding that vague sense of certainty that always made the Gryffindor wonder if her family
hadn’t been touched by something mystical in a way that the rest of them hadn’t been.

“I just didn’t want to have to see my idiotic brother,” Regulus said in that flat voice of his that
always made the older boy want to curse the snakes that had taken a child and punished him
for emotion until a shell of it was all that could be seen in public.

Remus hummed. “My dorm room is free if we want to go there, the others shouldn’t be back
for hours,” he offered.

The eldest of the three knew of the other boy’s aversion to the Gryffindor common room, but
thought that he would still offer anyways. Remus and Regulus couldn’t get into the girl’s
dorm room for Ravenclaw tower because of the sliding stairs spell that they all seemed to
have, and the Slytherin dorms weren’t really the safest place for a half - blood outside of
house parties and times when all five of them were strew together.

It wasn’t truly all that much of a surprise when the other two agreed to come along.

—-

There was something almost drunk in the way that the three of them walked up the stairs to
the sixth year Gryffindor boy’s dormitory, ideas and theories falling from each of their lips as
Dora pulled out the condensed version of the notices that they had all been taking for months
now.

Looking back on it, Remus still had no idea how the three of them came to the conclusion of
duplicating his knock of Doc Martens, maybe it had been because they had the most surface
area for the runes that they wanted to word with to be sewn on. Or maybe it was because they
were all in the lion’s room and Regulus had seen them as the two sat closer to one another
than was necessary on the older boy’s bed.

Either way, the next thing that the Gryffindors knew, he was holding a pair of shoes that
looked exactly like his own, and was slowly drawing the rune combinations on one as Dora
did the same with the other, and Regulus slowly muttered and wove the spells that they had
chosen above them both.

The silver runes gave a brilliant flash as Pandora and Remus finished off and tied the last one
at the same time, Regulus’s spell following right after. The three grin as the light fades and
they see that the runes aren’t there at all, or at least they don’t appear to be. It was a part of
the spell that had been particularly tricky to add and weave into everything else, but seeing
the modified disillusionment charm hiding the runes from sight and even touch sent a wave
of excitement and pleasure through the Gryffindor.
 Remus kicks off his old shoes and slides on the modified ones as Dora pulls herself up onto
the older boy’s bed with a stack parchment and a pencil poised delicately in her hand.
Regulus stands next to the other boy, his arm held out for the other top take as Remus lifts
each foot one at a time to quietly cast the activation charm on each.

The older boy holds on tightly to the younger as he takes the first step, the air turning solid
beneath him, and slowly Remus began to walk through the air as if there were a set of stairs
that no one could see, something entirely for the Gryffindor alone.

Higher and higher Remus climbed until the moment that he had to let go of the younger boy’s
arm, fingers brushing against one another like lightning as the older boy straightened and
looked to Pandora who gave a silent nod. Pointing his toes, Remus felt the air give way
below him as he tore through it as gravity found meaning once more. Remus tried to flex his
feet once more to stop the fall, but the runes gave a weak flare and the descent only slowed
for a moment.

Hitting the ground was a resounding thunk, Remus laughed as he looked at the other boy who
had jumped back to avoid becoming a casualty of the fall. Regulus glared at the older boy as
he helped Remus to his feet, the pair moving easily with one another.

“Well the first test was a failure,” Dora remarked bluntly, though her voice held none of the
disappointment that it ought to, instead there was only the thick sound of excitement at the
promise of more. The girl slid off of the bed and walked closer to the two boys, her eyes
glued to the shoes on the taller one’s feet as if they were a puzzle that she wanted nothing
more than to solve. “Onto to the next combination!”

And if the other three Marauders came back to the dorm hours later to find their dorm mate
lightly bruised from falling, and happier than they had seen him in weeks with an unfamiliar
mix of scents and the heat of magic lingering in the air, then no one said a thing.

Chapter End Notes

Fox (Remus): Often more reserved and a natural trickster, cunning

Cat (Regulus): Intelligent, quick thinking, and often more reserved. Drawn to two
opposing things at once.

Bat (Pandora): Connection to the unseen, seeker of truth, provides guidance, and is often
found in the Ravenclaw house

Falcon (Barty): troubled soul trying to change for the better

Blackbird (Evan): someone who tried to help themselves, keeps their secrets and
protects other’s as well. Intuitive, perceptive and independent
 Chapter 6
Chapter Summary

Halloween and uncomfortable talks.

Chapter Notes

Early chapter

See the end of the chapter for more notes

I’m an alligator

I’m a mama - papa comin’ for you

I’m the space invader

The music floated through the air as Remus sorted through the notes on different variations of
levitation charms piled messily on his bed, attempting - futility it seemed - to put them in
some sense of order before meeting with the others. Truly they should have just gotten some
blank notebooks and given each of the books a topic to stick with, but doing so now would be
detrimental as they were in the stages of writing through the small problems, the bigger ones
that this level of organization would have helped greatly with was already dealt with.

I’ll be a rock ‘n’ rollin’ bitch for you

Keep your mouth shut

You’re squawking like a pink monkey bird

And I’m bustin’ up my brains for the words

The door to the boy’s dorm opens with a huff and Remus stops singing along to see who the
newcomer was. Today was another Hogsmead weekend, so everyone else should be out in
the village, yet the countenance of Sirius Black was staring the other lion back in the face,
gray eyes solemn in a way that Remus often found that Regulus’s were. Today was
Halloween, and later the Marauders were throwing a party with enough alcohol smuggled in
from the Hog’s Head to make even the Slytherins jealous, Remus knew that the Gryffindor
had no business looking such a way.
Sirius walked in despondently and layed down on his bed without so much as an uttered
word. A small, pathetic sigh escaped the other boy’s lips.

“I can turn it off if you want,” Remus offered, hand already reaching for the dial.

“No,” the other lion said quickly. “Leave it.”

“Okay,” the wolf said with a voice much softer than he had used with the other teen in a long
time, the awkwardness of the situation and the other boy’s mood dulling his usually short
tone.

Remus drew his hand away and went back to sorting through his papers, making a stack of
what he would take with him and what he was fairly certain could be left behind, as an
uncomfortable silence hung in the air between the pair, filled only by the ever present music.

Keep your ‘lectric eye on me, babe

Put your ray gun to my head

Press your space face close to mine, love

Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah!

After not hearing the other boy move or make any noise at all for a long moment, Remus
glanced up at the other bed and found Sirius’s eyes already on him. The gray just a slightly
wrong color for what the Gryffindor wanted to see. The dark hair lacking the curls that
Remus sometimes thought of as he fell asleep.

“I ended things with Mary,” Sirius said suddenly, and Remis couldn’t truly find it in himself
to be that surprised. A relationship could only last so long when one half of it was having to
ask James to remind him of his own dates, and then both of the boys got so wrapped up in a
new scheme that they each forgot anyways.

“Oh,” Remus says dumbly as he stands, unsure of what to do and finding himself desperately
wishing for James to come barging into their room with that perfect Potter timing that he
always seems to have when it comes to Sirius.

He doesn’t.

Don’t fake it baby, lay the real thing on me

The church of man, love

Is such a holy place to be

Make me baby, make me know you really care

Make me jump into the air

Sirius stands as well and begins to draw closer to the other Gryffindor, something wild in the
shorter boy’s eyes that has Remus taking an instinctive step back now, when he knew deep
down that he would have been moving as close as he could this time last year. The realization
doesn’t hurt as much as used to.

Keep your ‘lectric eye on me, babe

Put your ray gun to my head

Press your space face close to mine, love

Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah!

The darker haired boy opens his mouth to say something, something utterly damning most
likely if Remus were to venture a guess, but is stopped as a silver wisps floods into the room
in a buoyant stream, morphing into the slim figure of a cat as the wolf smiles. Sirius stares
dumbly as the full bodied patronus runs around the other boy, Remus so taken with it that he
seemed to have forgotten that the eldest Black brother was there at all as sleek animal settles
at Remus’s feet, curling up there before it disappeared as if it hadn’t existed at all.

Keep your ‘lectric eye on me, babe

Put your ray gun to my head

Press your space face close to mine, love

Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah!

Remus’s smile is brighter than Sirius had ever seen it before, and it hurts the elder Black to
have not been the one to put such a look there.

The wolf snaps out of his quickly as excitement thrums in the boy’s chest. Every clandestine
meeting always did feel like flying without the inevitable fall. Though Remus was sure that it
would one day come.

It always did.

“I have to go,” Remus said uselessly as he began to gather his things, shoving them
hazardously into his bag, the soft smile never leaving the boy’s lips, not even with Sirius’s
sour gaze staying stubbornly on him. “I’m meeting a friend.”

Keep your ‘lectric eye on me, babe

Put your ray gun to my head

Press your space face close to mine, love

Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah!

“Of course,” the older Black says brightly, forcing himself out of whatever strange swell of
emotion had momentarily taken over him as the other boy slides on the combat boots that
Sirius had secretly loved since Remus came stomping onto the train in them in their fourth
year.

“I’ll see you at the feast,” Remus assures, his voice still stubbornly softer than it had been
before, some part of him still trying to be a good friend to the boy that had been his before
the disastrous end to their previous year.

“Of course,” Sirius says once more, and if Remus notices how much duller it sounded than
the previous, then he didn’t say anything.

Freak out, far out, in out

The door closed excitedly as Remus left in a hurry, and Sirius couldn’t decide then if the
other boy hating him, or acting as he just did - as if Sirius was nothing special - was worse.

—-

Remus found the owner of the familiar patronus a few halls away from Gryffindor tower. The
younger teen was sitting on the floor in a way that would surely make his mother scream
about the inappropriateness for someone of his station if she were to ever see the younger
Black brother sitting cross legged as he was with a book perched in his hand and back curved
beautifully. Remus sat down next to the other boy and rested his arm on the teen’s thigh as if
it was something normal to do.

For them it was.

Regulus leaned back and placed some of his weight on the older boy’s side without a word
passed between them, and fire danced across the lion’s skin at every point of contact.

Remus couldn’t pinpoint when souch casual touches between him and Regulus became
something normal, something that he found himself craving when the other wasn’t near and
seeking out when he was, and always returning when the other gave it first. Regulus hummed
as he became more comfortable against the Gryffindor and Remus knew that he didn’t want
to live to the day that this was something that he lost to the truth of the older boy’s condition.

“No Dora?” Remus asked, his voice quiet enough that the other boy could pretend that he
hadn’t heard it at all if he so wished to, he never did. Not when it was Remus asking.

“She had to go into the village for some books that the Hogwarts library doesn’t have,”
Regulus said just as quietly, closing his book to give the other boy his full attention, but left
his finger between the pages.

Remus hummed, something small and content as he shifted into a more comfortable position
against the other boy and the wall. “You didn’t want to go with her?” He asks, but they can
both hear the true question lying just beneath it:

You chose to be with me instead?

Regulus shrugged as he turned his head up to look at the other teen fully, and Remus found
that the gaze felt right as the shade of gray that the other possessed was finally looking back
at him, those eyes that got lighter as they went towards the pupil, hues of blue sneaking in. It
was Remus’s new favorite color.

“She didn’t really need my help.”

Of course I chose you.

Neither of them were used to being another’s first choice. Neither of them ever had been
before.

Now they were.

“What are you reading?” Remus asked as he stooped to look at the back cover of the thin
book that had an unmistakably muggle look to it. Hands gently cascaded over his shoulders
as he moved and Remus found himself leaning into the soft touch, aching for it as he had to
pull away once more and it was lost.

“It’s one of the muggle books that you told me to read a few weeks ago,” Regulus said
calmly, truing the book in question over in his hands so that the other could see. Lightning
danced across the code as a shadowed figure stood proudly within the forest.

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

“Thought that you would read the first work of science fiction on Halloween?” Remus asked,
running his scarred fingers along the pages. The scars were still on prominent display, even
two months after the party. Remus still couldn’t Stanford to look at them in the mirror, but he
didn’t want to hide them behind weak beauty spells either.

There was a strange freedom in his damnation.

Regulus runs his fingers over one of the longer scars on Remus’s hand and the older teen
bites back a sigh. “The story isn’t as interesting as I thought that it would be,” the Slytherin
admits sullenly.

“Hoping for a take of mad doctors and fights to the death?” The older boy jests because that
had been exactly what had drawn him into the story and had left him so dissatisfied with the
ending of it.

Regulus gets this prim look on his face and for a moment Remus thinks that he won’t answer
at all, but then his visage shifts once more into genuine disappointment. “Yes,” the other boy
admits as if it was somehow shameful to have wanted something out of the book that he held.
To want something for himself.
Remus knew then that he wasn’t the only Ken holding them back from their eventual
conclusion.

“I only finished it because it was one of the modern classics,” Remus admits. “Truthfully I
had wanted more action.”

“Then why did you tell me to read it?” The snake asks, turning to look at the lion, the
annoyance almost tangible in the other’s voice as he spoke. Remus found that he loved every
genuine emotion that he could draw out of the younger teen and into the open. He loved even
more that he was one of the few that ever got to hear it.

“I thought that you might like the parallels between Frankensten and Prometheus, given your
love for myths, and the similar parallels between the doctor’s creation and Egyptian
gollums,” the Gryffindor replied honestly, heat blooming in his chest at the honest look of
warmth in the other boy’s eyes.

“I did,” he admits, the younger boy’s voice was so soft that if any other noise were to have
occurred at the same time, anyone with normal hearing wouldn’t have been able to perceive it
at all.

“I’m glad.”

The pair stayed there on the ground and talked about the differences between the imagined
science and the magic that they each knew to be real, from gollums to inferni, until legs grew
numb and their backs began to ache from doing so. Remus was just relieved that he had
remembered to grab the map the night before.

—-

Hours later Remus’s senses were assaulted with the loud music of Gryffindor tower as the
party came into full swing. Streamers and floating Jack - o - lanterns decorated the common
room as the Gryffindors milled about, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs slipping in too in a steady
stream.

Bodies flitted through the room, the intoxicating scent of magic coming with each and every
one of them, and sometimes Remus felt as if he could reach out and grasp it all for himself.
Sometimes he could just imagine how it would sing on skin if he were to do so. He thought
that it would feel a lot like flying without the curse of falling, like the high of fighting.

But the magic stayed trapped under everyone’s skin as they all took the chance to get wasted.

It was the same scene that he had been in countless times before, and yet Remus wasn’t able
to settle within it. He felt trapped in his skin like in the days leading up to a full moon, but the
once for October had already passed and November wasn’t due for a good while. His body
felt ready for a fight; to feel the magic pour from him and the skin on his knuckles tear.
But this was Gryffindor - not Slytherin and not the home either where fighting while drinking
was practically a given- so Remus settled for moving into the crowd of bodies and danced to
the songs that had the other Marauders sending him strange looks because this sort of music
wasn’t supposed to be his genre, and dancing wasn’t something that Remus truly did.

I’m dirty, mean, I’m mighty unclean

I’m a wanted man

Public enemy number one

Understand?

The wolf missed the violence and Remus found himself agreeing.

Dancing and drinking soon wore thin, it always did when it meant nothing, and Remus drew
away from it all to one of the couches by the fireplace, sitting down in it with a glass of
something strong enough to actually make his blood buzz. If he closed his eyes, Remus could
almost pretend that the music was something similar to the wizarding kind that would be
playing in the Slytherin common room right now, and the couch was a posh black.

“Well, there’s Mr. Life of the Party.”

“Yeah, when did you get to be so fun, Moony?”

Remus opened his eyes to see the other three Marauders drawing close, each of the boy’s skin
appropriately flushed for the amount of alcohol that the common room now reeked of.

“I’ve always been fun,” the sitting teen protested weakly as the other three took seats of their
own around him, “you sorry lot normally just steal the spotlight enough that you don’t see it.”

It was a half lie, not that the other three would know. Remus spent so much of his time at
Hogwarts these past six years attempting to be the perfect student and get all the best marks,
so that he could have even a sliver of a chance of being something after school - of being
more than a werewolf who will never be able to hold down a job - that he pushed down
anything that didn’t fit with that image. He’s always repressed a part of himself, nights like
these just reminded Remus of how much.

“Oh, is that how it is, Moony?” James asked, his voice light as he smiled mischievously as
always.

“Yeah, it is, Prongs,” Remus replied just the same, finally beginning to feel a little more at
ease within the party as the familiar banter rolled off of his tongue.

“Well,” the other boy smirked as the other two Marauders watched the pair go back and forth
fondly, “show us something else that we don’t already know then.”

“Alright.”
Remus pushed himself to his feet, the spirits warming his blood enough that he could almost
ignore the way that his body instantly resisted the sudden movement. There was a deck of
muggle playing cards that he had swiped from Barty stashed behind one of the paintings in
the common room just for an occasion like this.

Taking one side of the table, Remus motioned for the other three to take the remaining sides
of the low table as he shuffled the cards, a sly smirk on the lion’s face as the other
Marauders’s eyes went wide with an impressed gleam at some of the fancy shuffling tricks
that he had learned from the youngest Crouch.

“Now,” Remus started as he began to deal the cards, “have any of you gits ever played Poker
before?”

As the party began to wind down for the night and the boys went to bed, Remus’s smirk
didn’t fade as he climbed the stairs to the sixth year boy’s dorm, three drunk - and
considerably poorer - Marauders trailing at the tallest boy’s heels.

“I am never playing muggle card games with you again,” Peter grumbled as the four walked a
little hazardously into the room, Remus’s pockets jingling lightly with each movement.

“But that was only one of the games that I know,” Remus protested coely as he kicked off his
shoes. “We still have at least three more to try.”

James groaned as he fell face first onto his bed, his feet still hanging off of it as his face just
missed the pillow.

“Where did you learn how to play that damnable game?” Sirius asked, a brow raised primly
in a manner that reminded the wolf too much of another boy for the amount of alcohol in his
body.

“A friend,” Remus said with a hard undertone that should have let the other boy know not to
push any further. If Sirius heard it, he didn’t listen.

“The same one that sent for you with that cat patronus earlier?”

James’s head popped off of the bed with a suddenness that made the teen drunkenly groan
from the movement, but his eyes were alight nonetheless. “Cat patronus?” He asked. “Like a
full bodied patronus?”

Sirius nodded at the other boy before both sets of eyes turned to the only one of them that
was still standing, as Peter was already groggily snoring from his own bed, day clothes still
firmly on.

“Yeah,” Remus said with more than he felt, “I know a bloke that can cast one, but he’s not in
our year.” The wolf held up his hand as Sirius opened his mouth to speak, already knowing
the question that the other was bound to ask. “And no, he’s not the one that taught me cards
either.”
“Didn’t know you were so popular,” James giggled blearily, but an effect that he might have
attempted to have was runnier by the way that he drunkenly wiggled his brows.

“I’m not popular,” Remus protested, absolutely detesting the idea of being so for anything
other than what he already was. “I just meet a good deal of people through the study groups
that I host every now and again, you lot would too if anyone in this room bothered to study,
or not wait until the absolute last minute to do so.”

The words had their intended effect as both of the other boys groaned and huffed at the
badgering, spent with the conversation as they both conjured the energy to change into night
clothes, Remus doing much the same in the bathroom.

Sometimes Remus wondered just who he was turning into. With the money that he owed
Regulus hidden comfortably away in his bag, the lion found that he didn’t much care.

—-

The November moon comes and goes like all of the others since the Marauders became
animagi, the woods unfolding like a home that he never had the right to keep. Sometimes
Remus thinks that the Forbidden Forest feels different to the wolf than it does to the others,
like the magic of the woods was trying to reach out to him, but the wolf was too stubborn at
the moment to take it. Remus figured that it must be different for the others, because he knew
that they would each leap at the chance to tempt the fates in such a way.

The four were eating dinner with an irate Lily Evans close enough to talk to - and to ignore a
relentless James Potter - but far enough away that Mary didn’t have to be close to her ex as
the girls were all together, something that Remus didn’t really understand since both Mary
and Sirius had been dating new people since that Halloween night.

“Evening everyone,” Pandora said politely as she drew near, a soft look on her face that she
reserved for the public and paled in comparison to any genuine expression that she would
normally divulge when their group was alone.

Remus grinned at the younger girl as she stopped in front of him and the other lions,
something held delicately within her hands. “Evening, Dora. What'cha got there?”

The Ravenclaw smiled like a simple girl - something that she so clearly was not - as she held
out a folded piece of paper that was spelled a familiar shade of blue. “What do you think?”
Dora asked as Remus grabbed it to examine the piece, the others at the table staring at the
interjection as if the pair were animals at the zoo. The friends didn’t mind and pretended that
the other lions weren’t there at all.

“A bat,” Remus observed, his fingers ghosting over the creation as if it was something to
chairished. That was all Pandora needed to know how the other felt about what she had made.
“How fitting.”
“I thought so,” the younger witch agreed.

“Where did you learn to make it?” A new voice asked and both of the friends turned to see
Lily leaning forwards on the table, interest bringing her green eyes to light.

“There’s actually a book on it in the library,” the blonde said excitedly, leaning against the
table at Remus’s side so that she could talk with the red head, which, for whatever reason,
caused Sirius to scoff into his goblet. Remus and James both sent the other boy a pointed
look, silently telling the other Gryffindor to behave. “There’s a section on it in a book on
different types of animations for paper,” the Ravenclaw explained, her soft voice becoming
more animated by the moment. “A bunch of low level animation charms that do similar
things to the moving portraits, but with much more limited capabilities.”

“Fascinating,” Lily said enthusiastically. “Did you spell this one?”

Dora nodded before turning back to the wolf. “Just tap the right wing.”

Remus did as asked and smiled proudly as the bat’s wings began to move and the paper
creature flew from his hands and made a lazy circle around the boy before landing back in
them and going still once more.

“Beautiful magic,” Marlene complimented, joining the conversation as well. “Maybe you
could show us how you did it later, and bring that Meadows girl with you. She was here and
gone last time and none of us got to properly meet Remus’s new friend.”

Dora smiled in a knowing way as she nodded and walked away, leaving almost everyone else
confused.

Sirius was in a poor mood for the rest of dinner, but Remus didn’t the boy much attention as
he fiddled with the paper creature that was no bigger than the Gryffindor’s hand, eyes
flickering to a certain snake across the Great Hall and found him looking back just as much.

—-

Remus waited until the other boys had begun to settle down to unfold the paper creature,
knowing that - no matter how nice the girl was - Dora would never voluntarily subject herself
to the Gryffindors just to show him something that could have waited until the next time that
they saw one another.

Remus grinned as he saw the familiar scrawl at the heart of the no longer folded paper and
quickly slipped out of the bed, sliding on his non - spelled shoes on the way out of the room.

The night air was chilled as Remus snuck out into it, but the wolf naturally ran warm and
Remus found himself relaxing into it instead. Everything looked so small from the top of the
Astronomy tower and everything paled in comparison to the boy waiting at its railing.
Remus sat down next to the other boy without a word needing to be passed between the pair,
fitting himself at the younger boy’s side and letting the other take in the warmth that he could
give. He let the silence stand until the other boy knew what he needed to say, a soft patience
that few had ever given either of them before.

“Do you know the story of Orion?” The other boy asked softly, his fingers raised as if to try
and trace it, though Remus noted that they never grazed the Bellatrix star. He quietly shook
his head, but he knew that it was probably one of the first ones that the Black brothers
learned with their father being named after it. “Well it all started after the first titan war…”

Remus listened intently to the story of the Hunter constellation. How the giant had been born
to fight Artemis but had joined her hunt instead. How he had fallen for the maiden goddess
and her twin, Apollo, had slain him for it, not wanting the goddess to risk breaking her vows.
Orion had been made a part of the stars after his death.

Next was Perseus and the head of Medusa, and the myth that came with the gorgan. The tale
of a priestess turned into a monster by the very same goddess that she had worshiped. The
younger teen told all three versions of the myth that he knew and Remus found that he liked
the one where the snakes were a gift given by Athena to her priestess so that she may never
be harmed by man again the best. It sat the easiest against this scarred skin.

“Lupus, the wolf constellation,” Regulus says just as softly, pointing to it in the sky, but
Remus has gone so incredibly still that one would think that he was a statue himself. “There’s
no myth behind it, not like the others.”

And then those gray eyes are on the older boy, looking at him completely for the first time all
night. Looking at him as if the younger boy could see everything that the lion had ever tried
so desperately to hide. And Remus can hear his heart hammering in his chest. He wonders if
Regulus can too.

“I know.” The words are soft, but they hit the older boy like a bullet, draining him of all of
his life.

And Remus is running before he even remembers how to breathe, ducking into one of the
secret tunnels that had found all those years ago. He curses himself for thinking that he might
have had more time.

—-

Remus doesn't leave the dorm at all that Saturday, pushing away the offers of food that the
other three give and blatantly ignoring what the other boys bring anyways, leaving it on his
nightstand as if it didn’t exist at all. The Marauders share worried looks between one another
when no amount of poking, prodding, or planning can get the sullen boy to move. Even more
so when offers to go and find the Lestrange girl are met with a firm shake of the fourth boy’s
head and the curtains being promptly closed.
It looked like it was going to be the same story Sunday as well when nothing that any of them
did could even get the boy to leave the bed while they were still in the room, that is until
there is a guest at the tower.

Regulus glares at the portrait of the Fat Lady, arms crossed as the singer glares back and
stubbornly attempts to break the glass in her hand.

She can’t.

The Slytherin is saved from another agonizing minute of it screeching when the door is
opened by a familiar face.

“Evans,” the younger prefect says quickly as the girl blanches, not having expected to find
someone so close to the door, let alone a Slytherin.

“Sirius?” Evans asks, knowing that the younger teen was there to speak to someone, and that
this person was obviously not her.

“Remus,” and the way that the younger boy says the name, as if it was little more than a
desperate prayer on his lips, has the girl immediately knowing all that she needed to.

“Come on then.”

The pair walk into the common room, steadfastly ignoring the looks that the younger boy was
attracting simply by being in there. Regulus was desperate enough that they didn’t matter and
Lily knew that she could always hex them later.

The climb up the stairs was a quiet affair that felt like a slow death to the snake as they drew
closer and closer still to the door. Evans knocks on it and immediately scowls when Potter is
the one to answer.

“I knew you couldn’t resist me forever, Ev-” the boy starts upon seeing the familiar red hair,
but stops as he spots the boy that Lily had brought with her.

Lily takes advantage of the eldest boy’s temporary silence and slips away, squeezing
Regulus’s shoulder as she goes in a way that could almost be seen as sisterly, or simply as
good luck.

“Who’s at the… door?”

The Black brothers look at one another properly for the first time since that day on the train
as Sirius freezes at the sight of the younger boy much like how James had only a moment
before.

“I’m not here for either of you,” the youngest boy says coldly, slipping inside of the room
before either could stop him.

There were four beds in the warmly lit room, but Regulus ignored all of the ones on the left
side of the room in favor of the one on the farthest right with the curtains drawn closed. The
Gryffindors watched in stark confusion as the Slytherin moved towards it and pulled back the
thick curtains all of the way without having to think about it at all.

Remus immediately pulled himself up, a curse on his lips until he saw the boy before him and
froze once more.

“You look like shit,” Regulus said bluntly, looking down at the older boy.

“You don’t look much better.”

And he didn’t, now that the others were looking. The youngest boy’s hair was messy and
bordering on the side of unkempt, the bags under his eyes more prominent than they should
be.

“Can we talk?” Regulus’s voice was softer than Sirius had heard it in years, his gaze more
vulnerable than both of the brothers knew that their mother would ever permit. “ Please .”

Remus’s eyes fitted to the two interlopers and knew that neither of them were going to leave
the pair alone where James and Sirius couldn’t see them to make sure that neither killed the
other, as if either would.

The wolf pulled his legs in closer and shifted on the bed so that the other could sit next to him
on it and the other two Marauders were surprised to see the Slytherin climb into it easily and
settle next to the older boy, their sides pressed flush against one another, as if they had done
this countless times before. As if touch wasn’t something that neither boy held onto greedily,
never giving it out freely.

Remus raised his wand and casted a silencing spell around the bed so that the other two boys
could see and not hear what was said.

“You never let me finish what I had to say the other night,” Regulus started, going straight to
the point of the matter.

“Does it matter?”

Regulus looks at him and Remus sighs. They both knew that the younger boy wouldn’t have
come to Gryffindor Tower if it didn’t matter.

The younger boy’s fingers trace lightly over the Gryffindor’s in a way that makes Remus
shiver and the interlopers raise a brow. “How did it happen?”

Remus sighed. “My father was pushing for more regulations on…”

“Werewolves,” Regulus supplied and Remus nodded.

“He made the wrong one mad, a man that goes by Fenir Greyback,” the older boy explained
and the other nodded but showed no signs of recognizing the name. Remus pushed on
anyways. “Greyback came on a full moon night when I was five. He has a penchant for
children and I was an easy enough target. My father offended himself with a gun after the
 first transformation and then my mother gave me to St Edmund’s. Matron’s husband was a
wizard, so she was the best equipped to handle me.”

If Remus closed his eyes he could just remember the light leaving the room as a beast tore
through the window, the scream that tore through his throat and the all consuming pain that
was worse thing that he had felt at the time until a month later, when the full moon became
his least favorite thing.

He could still remember the sound of the gun too.

Remus kept his eyes open.

James and Sirius watched as Regulus leaned further into the other boy in a show so intimate
that it felt wrong to see it. They hadn’t known that the boys were so close.

“You're still one of us,” Regulus said quietly, so much so that Remus might not have heard it
had he not had his condition.

Remus leaned more into the other’s touch, the closest to a thank you that he could manage
with there being a break in his voice.

Regulus smiled, something small but gentle and honest as he pushed himself off of the bed,
the silencing spell breaking as he left it.

“Later, Moony .”

And then the younger boy was gone and Remus was smiling so brightly that the sun would
pale in comparison if it were to see.

Chapter End Notes

Songs in order of appearance:

-Moonage Daydream, David Bowie
-T.N.T., AC/DC

I used the Percy Jackson version of the Orion myth because I thought that it would fit
better, the son of someone seemingly larger than life going against what he was made
for because of his love for another and the tragic ending that comes with it (this story
will not have a tragic ending, but it’s not going to be easy either)
 Chapter 7
Chapter Summary

What it means to have a family and Christmas at the castle.

Chapter Notes

So, I don’t know how many people have noticed the added tag (implied/ referenced self
harm) but that was added for this chapter and some stuff in the future that only slightly
counts as it (like cutting your hand for blood magic type thing) but though the chapter is
mostly pretty happy (you guys saw the summary) there are a few subtle things
throughout that could raise alarm if you look long enough. For example: digging your
nails into your palm until it bleeds, semi-suicidal thoughts, self hatred, purposefully
skipping meals, other things that I am probably forgetting. You get the idea.
So, that’s just why that it there.

Also, in case anyone forgot or hasn’t read ATYD, Remus has dyslexia in that fic. I
wasn’t going to include it, but the opportunity came to me, so I said why not.

December came, Remus wished that it hadn’t.

The Daily Prophet had reported a werewolf attacks after the last moon, finally giving a name
to the attacks that had been stuffed between the pages for almost a year now as they became
more frequent. It was harder to hide things once people started to make the connections
themselves, Remus supposed, so the Daily Prophet went ahead and said it so they wouldn’t
look as if they were hiding the truth. Remus found himself wishing that they had lied just a
little longer.

Silver flooded the castle, lining the hands, wrists, and necks of nearly everyone within it. The
wolf rattled against the Gryffindor’s chest, howling in pain with every subtle brush of the
delicate metal against the teen’s ruined skin. It begged to be released, to run, to do anything
but be in a place that so clearly wanted it gone. Instead Remus just sat down next to Marlene
in Care of Magical Creatures and smiled at the girl as if nothing was wrong, as if the jewelry
on her skin wasn’t making him sick.

But things had changed.

None of the Marauders let Remus walk the castle alone, at least one of them at the boy’s side
regardless of whatever stood between the two. And if it was a class where one of the other
three couldn't be there, then Remus was passed off to Lily, or even Regulus when the
situation allowed. Remus found himself too tired to care about the confining treatment, the
beast within him cowed and taking pieces of him with it that Remus hadn’t realized that he
would miss.

With the silver came the whispers among the halls. The cruel things that children say when
they don’t realize that it matters, but it did and left Remus going between violent states of
wanting to tear at his skin or everyone else’s. It left him with a sense of shame that he hadn’t
felt for his condition in long enough that he almost forgot the sting of it.

“Why do they let them roam free? They should be locked away for everyone else’s safety.”

“At least more restrictions. They’re monsters after all.”

“Tag them.”

Remus and the strange Slytherin group walked silently together amongst the voices of the
rest of the school, not joining in the murmured conversations as they walked to the library,
the other three Marauders at the pitch. Nails dug into the palms of Remus’s hands and it took
him a long time to realize that he was the one doing so, his face carefully blank as he listened
to the whispers in the halls and dug them in deeper, pain swelling in a way that consumed his
mind and quoted all else.

A gentle hand brushes against the Gryffindor’s almost as if by accident as the scent of blood
begins to fill the air. Regulus grabbed the older boy’s hand, lacing their fingers together
beneath the robes where it couldn’t be seen and began to drag the lion away, towards the
entrance of the school, the others following suit without question.

The Forbidden Forest welcomes them as if it was home, the woods as beautiful in the light of
day as they are beneath a full moon night. Remus walked them with familiarity that had the
others raising their brows in a silent question that none of them actually thought to speak.
Remus was a Marauder after all, no matter how much time he spent with the younger
students that wasn’t going to change.

Even if sometimes he wished that it would, because then maybe he wouldn’t have to see how
they looked at him as if he was turning into a stranger. He would truly be one.

Still, he wouldn’t give up the past few years for anything. They were his brothers and
families grow apart, they were still family though. He always wanted them to be.

“Okay, what’s up with Lupin?” Barty asks, but his voice isn’t judging, there was concern
hidden neatly beneath the masks that everyone within the grove always donned with
everyone outside of it.

Regulus glanced at the older boy, a look that told him that it was Remus’s choice as to what
he wasn’t to say. That it always would be. The younger boy would never know just how
much that meant to the Gryffindor, not when that choice had been stolen from him so many
times before.
Remus opened his mouth, the words that he could hardly ever speak to himself - but had
known how to spell since he was small before he knew how to read - but it felt as if his voice
had been stolen like in an old fairy tale. Except this time there was no kiss that could bring it
back.

“You’re a werewolf.”

The voice was soft and airy, delicate as the girl who spoke it, but nothing about it was a
question and never would be again.

Remus doesn't deny it, but he doesn't confirm it either. He didn’t need to. The eldest boy only
bows his head and waits for the verdict of the others, the decision of those that had
encouraged him to seep into this part of himself over the past few months without even
knowing that it was there.

Pandora stepped through the forest floor as if she had been meant to live among the trees, her
hand raising gently to the older boy’s face as she looked at him with those blue eyes that were
always impossible to read and excruciatingly open. Light touches brushed over the silver
scars, brushing over them as if they were something to be delicate within and not a source of
shame.

“You look the same to me,” she whispered, yet the Ravenclaws’s words carried in the quiet
clearing.

A tear slipped down the boy’s face, the first one in years. She brushed it away with the same
loving care that a sister might hold for their brother.

Dora stepped up to Remus’s left, Regulud still at the older boy’s right as Barty and Evan
glanced at one another, their sides pressed closely together in the same manner that the other
snake and lion often were.

And Evan smiles.

“I’ve never liked pure silver much anyways,” the boy says as the pair draw closer, a small
circle forming as if they were performing a ritual that only those present knew. “Too posh,
even for me.”

And if the Gryffindor laughed weakly at that, then that was only the business of those
gathered.

Barty spoke last, a playful smirk on his face that already had Remus rolling his eyes at
whatever the younger boy was going to say. “I should have seen it coming, Mr. Werewolf
McWerewolf,” the snake says in a falsely disappointed tone, pointing out that the older boy
was named after one of the sons of the she - wolf Lupa and the wolf constellation.

“I was born a few days before a total lunar eclipse,” the lion admits with a smirk of his own.

“ Merlin !” Barty laughed, and the sound runs through the clearing like a broken melody that
they all soon sung, surprising the Gryffindor with just how easy this was. How little the fear
gripped at him the way that it had in second year.

Remus looks at the last boy and sees that smile on Regulus’s face, the secret one that so few
ever got to know. The wolf smiles back, something just as small and fragile, but means
everything as fingers lace together as if they didn’t know what it meant to be apart.

Acceptance.

That was the only emotion that the others gave to the eldest boy. In the others’ eyes, Remus
found none of the hesitant fear that the other Gryffindors had held upon learning the truth,
none of the disgust that so many adults that had figured it out on their own without even
knowing him.

He thought that this was what a family was supposed to be like.

—-

The only time that Remus had ever received mail from St. Edmund’s during the school year
was the obligatory Christmas present that Matorn sent each year and perhaps something
small on his birthday as well if she remembered the boy at all. The letters never came in the
middle of December.

This one did.

The letter was short, simple, and impersonal, just like the woman that had sent it and the
place that it had come from. It was only three paragraphs long, eight sentences in total telling
the boy that since wizarding law considered him to be an adult at the age of seventeen, he
would not be allowed to return to St Edmund’s after his birthday in early March.

Remus thought that he should feel like screaming, like crying, or filled with some sort of
blinding panic at the news that he would never be able to go home again, that he wasn’t
wanted there, but he didn’t. A particular feeling of numbness gripped at the teen, holding him
down and drowning him within its depths.

St Edmund’s wasn’t home, it never had been one to the boy no matter how long he had spent
there. Hogwarts, Remus found, wasn’t quite one either, not with the tensions steadily rising
and the way that a fourth of the castle acted in public as if he didn’t have a right to exist
among them, to practice magic at all because of his blood status, but feared him within the
confines of the Slytherin common room as they were constantly reminded of just what his
magic - stronger, quicker, and more natural in its destruction since getting the new wand -
could do. And of what Remus could do with his fist alone.

That aside, Hogwarts could never truly be home again with the fact that all but a few wanted
those like him locked away. Caged like an animal. The fact that sometimes, when the wolf
tore at his skin and Remus wondered what would happen if it were to tear just a bit deeper as
his bones ached, Remus wondered if they might be right.

The numbness came mostly from a feeling of hopelessness as Remus knew that once the train
pulled into the station at King’s Cross, he would have nowhere to go after getting off of it.
Remus had always been dangerously independent, but the thought of being so completely on
his own made the teen want to shut down and pretend that the letter didn’t exist at all for as
long as he could.

A week later, the Gryffindor boy thought that he was doing well at just that. Clearly he
wasn’t hiding it as well as he had thought.

Pandora found him in the library one day, her hair was done up in an intricate braid with
small trinkets dangling from it at seemingly random spots, a look that garnered more than one
inquiring look, all of which went steadfastly ignored as the younger girl sat down at Remus’s
side without saying a thing or grabbing books of her own. She let the older boy finish the
thought that he was for his Transfiguration essay before gently pulling the quill from the
Gryffindor’s hand and setting it out of reach.

“You missed lunch,” the Ravenclaw said softly, but was only met with a hum. “And dinner,”
the younger of the pair added.

“Sorry,” the boy mumbled, but Dora didn’t think that he sounded very sorry at all.

“Come on, Moons. What is it?” Pandora smiled as the boy looked up with a confused face at
the use of the nickname that the Gryffindors had given him. “Got your attention,” the
Ravencalw added with a hint of mischief.

Remus sighed and leaned down towards his bag, flipping it open and grabbing the potions
book that he had stashed the letter in knowing just how likely the other boys in his dorm
would be to delve into anything from the subject during their free time. The Gryffindor
handed over the letter without saying anything on the matter and the Ravencalw took it just
the same.

Silence passed as Dora read it and Remus laid his head down, a new wave of helplessness
consuming the teen as he had no idea what he was going to do once summer came.

Dora brushed the scars on the older boy’s hand to get his attention, something that she had
been doing a lot recently for reasons that the Gryffindor couldn’t understand. But it never
wavered from the gentleness of the first time that she had done, her fingers still grazing
lightly as to reinforce the idea that they were a part of him that he couldn’t shun. That he
shouldn’t want to do away with. It felt a lot like the night that the girls had suggested that he
not cast the concealment spell.

“The Lestranges have this old cottage in Wales,” Pandora said slowly. “It’s beautiful there
during the summer months, but with my parents growing old, and brother marrying who he
did, no one has been there in over five years, and it was down even before that.” Remus looks
up at the girl as she explains and sees the softly pleading look in her blue eyes that were
currently the color of a summer storm. “It could use someone.”
And Remus thought about slamming his book closed and growling that he didn’t need
anyone’s charity, something that he had done to some extent since first year. But unlike all of
the times before when he could afford to turn down such a thing, this wasn’t one. He had
nowhere else to go, and he didn’t want to disappoint Dora either in the same way that he so
often did the other Marauders.

“Alright,” Remus says just as slowly, and Dora smiles as if he truly was the one doing her a
favor, not the other way around.

“We’ll all come over during the summer and help fix it up.”

Neither of them mention the likeliness that all of them wouldn’t include Regulus, that it
couldn’t after what the Blacks had done when Sirius had turned sixteen. That they would do
the same to Regulus, only he wouldn’t be able to escape. Neither of them mentioned the path
that the younger boy would be taking, the mark that could never be erased from his skin if the
boy’s parents had their way. They both knew, but sometimes it was easier to pretend.

—-

The winter holidays couldn’t come fast enough for anyone in the castle, though Remus found
them a lot less enticing this year than any other before.

“You’re coming to mine for the holidays, right Monny?” James asked at breakfast two days
before those that were leaving the castle were supposed to be departing.

Sirius and Peter raised their heads with interest at the question. None of them had heard
Moony say any hiring about holiday plans, and the two boys didn’t really think that it even
needed questioning at this point. James did, and he was right to.

“I actually can’t,” Remus said solemnly before lowering his voice so that those around the
four couldn’t hear and would just think the Marauders scheming once more if they were to
pay any mind at all. “With the attacks Dumbledore has strongly… suggested that I remain
within the castle for my own safety.”

It hadn’t been a pleasant letter to receive and had left the Gryffindor pacing with an angry
energy for hours until the snakes had grabbed him and dragged him back out into the spot in
the woods. Some trees had suffered for it, being blown to pieces by some well placed hexes
and curses, but it was better than the teen letting the anger build until he snapped at someone
who could actually die from such a thing.

“Well that’s bollocks,” Sirius cursed, angry on the other boy’s behalf, but Remus wondered if
he really was. Things had been tense since the end of last year and any ear that they might
have found with one another was set back once more when Reg had shown up at Gryffindor
Tower the month before. Remus knew exactly how the other boy felt about his younger
brother, or at least how he insisted that he did.
“He can’t keep you locked up forever,” Peter said, eagerly joining the conversation once
more.

“No,” Remus agreed, more to himself than the others, “he can’t.”

But what they didn’t know was that the wolf didn’t think that the Headmaster planned on
doing so. What use was a pet wolf if you were just going to keep it chained during a war that
had them on the other side. It was more a matter of waiting for when Dumbledore wanted his
used, not if. Remus would be little more than a dirty secret until then, and the thought of it all
made him sick.

“So you’re coming to mine then?” James asked, the grin of his - wide and brilliant in ways
that Remus could never hope to be - making an appearance.

But Remus only shook his head no.

“I wouldn’t be allowed to even get on the train, and it’s not bothering your parents to fight it
when we all know Dumbledore won’t change his mind.”

I’m not worth it , the wolf thought, and for a second he wondered if the others could read it
on his face as well.

“I just don’t want you alone on Christmas,” James said sadly, seeing that for once he had
truly lost. Sometime when Remus was truly feeling bitter with the boy before him - the one
who had always had everything that he didn’t - he would wonder what such a look of defeat
would be like on the other’s face. Seeing it now, and for his sake no less, Remus decided that
he didn’t like it at all.

“I could stay.”

Three heads turn sharply to look at the fourth boy, and Sirius just shrugged as if it was
nothing. And it was because there was no way in hell that Remus was letting it happen.

“No,” the word was hard, leaving no room for question but the other boys.

Sirius seemed to find it still.

“Why not?” The other boy whined like the animal that he turned into.

But Remus didn’t know how to explain it. He didn’t know how to put words to the way that it
hurt to be alone in the same room as the other boy and remember how much he had cared for
him before and to feel that absence now as Remus looked at him as he might any of the other
Marauders. And he couldn’t voice how half the time when the other teen moved just right, or
when his hair was in messy tangles after a shower that almost looked like coils, when he
smiled in just the right way Remus didn’t see Sirius but someone just across the Great Hall.

“Just no.”

Remus stood and left the Great Hall, none of them noticed the dark haired boy that soon
followed after.
—-

Regulus found the Gryffindor in the Charms classroom, chalk in his hand as the older boy
began writing out what appeared to be a list of topics that they were going to be covering
during the study group that the lion normally held after lunch on Saturdays. He didn’t bother
announcing his presence, he knew that the other boy could hear him coming from a good
while away, and instead just stepped up behind the older boy and slipped the chalk out of
Remus’s fingers. Remus sighed at the familiarity of such a thing as the younger boy moved to
his side.

“You’re angry writing again,” the snake observed, erasing a sentence or two that had come
out just jumbled enough that he could still read what it was supposed to be and rewrote it
with the correct spelling.

Regulus didn’t ask why, he knew that Remus would tell him if he wanted to, about both the
reason for his anger and the effect that the change in concreation had on how the older boy
wrote.

“Dumbledore is making me stay at the castle over the holidays,” the lion explained tiredly,
and Regulus could see now that the anger was that of an animal trapped in its cage as all of
the others got to leave it.

“I could stay.”

It was the exact same words that the older Black had spoken not even half an hour before and
yet Remus felt how his reaction to them was completely different, though it always was
where the Black brothers were involved. Before, there had been anger and fear if he were to
be honest, now there was only concern and a selfish hope.

“Your parents would never let you,” Remus protested, though he worried that his eyes gave
away just how much he wanted this. Creatures like him never got what they wanted once
others knew that they did.

“I’ll tell them that I’m staying to study for my OWLs,” the younger boy decided, “even they
have to admit that the Hogwarts library is better equipped for the exams.”

“Sneaky snake,” Remus said, but there was affection there and Regulus fought back a smile
at the name, but the older boy could see a dimple there.

Times like this reminded him that lying wasn’t always a bad thing.

—-
Two days later Remus found himself standing outside the castle with the Marauders so he
could bid them goodbye before they left to board the train.

James smiled in a shaky way as he looked at the taller boy silhouetted against Hogwarts.
Remus was dressed as he usually did these days, all dark colors and hard angles, piercings
and clothes that made him look impossibly muggle. He had thought that this would wear off
by now and the other would go back to the Remus of last year, but the scars had been on
display for almost nearly as long and the bruises on the other boy’s knuckles never seemed to
fade. Sometimes it was hard to look at him and remember that this was the same boy from
before the incident.

But then he smiled.

“Have a Happy Christmas you lot,” the tallest boy said, his hands shoved deep into the
pockets of his jeans. And if the smile was a little more wolfish than it used to be, then it was
James’s problem if that made him uncomfortable.

Sirius was about to open his mouth to force out some pleasantries when four familiar figures
bounded over, invading their little group as if they had the right to. It made the animal in him
want to snarl.

The two boys, Barty and Rosier hung off of Remus’s shoulders, mischief in their eyes as they
laughed at the way that Moony growled at them each in turn but didn’t force away the touch.
Sirius wanted to growl too, but the two fifth years left, sure that their friends would follow.

Next came the blonde girl that was always close to Remus when the Marauders weren’t,
enough that the boy sometimes came back to the dorm room smelling of her and someone
else. Lestrange ghosted a featherlight touch over Remus’s hand and gave the boy a soft smile
that looked almost intimate in a way that Remus wasn’t with the Marauders. With them he
was never one for touch, it seemed to Sirius that with this lot he couldn’t get enough.
Lestrange glided away with the soft steps of a forest creature instead of a witch.

“You gonna do some kind of strange ritual goodbye too?” Sirius snarked as the last of the
group stepped forwards and stood close at Moony’s like the eldest Black might once have
had the timing been right.

“Don’t have to,” Regulus replied, speaking and shrugging in a manner that would have made
their mother scream bloody murder had she seen it.

Sirius almost felt proud until he remembered who he was talking to.

“And why in Merlin’s name is that?” The eldest Black brother asked crudely, earning himself
a glare from both James and Remus and causing Peter to shift uncomfortably at the scene.

“I’m staying at Hogwarts over the break,” the younger boy explained boredly.

Sirius balked at his brother, wondering why anyone would subject themselves to such a thing
as being alone the entire holiday. But then he remembered that Remus was staying as well
and felt something coiling in his chest.
“What, did Mother finally get tired of you biting at her heels begging for affection?” Sirius
said harshly, the beast beneath his skin bearing its teeth. Or maybe it was just the eldest Black
doing so.

Remus looked at James and Prongs seemed to understand exactly what was being asked of
him in that second and started leading the older Black brother away, not bothering to hide the
disappointment that he felt with the boy.

Walking away, Sirius had a vision of Remus and Regulus in the library all holiday with books
piled around the pair. He could not have been farther from the truth.

—-

All of the Gryffindors and Slytherins had gone home for the holiday except for Remus and
Regulus. It was as if they had the entire castle to themselves - they didn’t quite, there were
still two Ravenclaws roaming about somewhere.

Remus smiled as the pair walked back into the castle, sides pressed against one another like
some sort of promise that neither knew.

The castle was cold from the winter, the stones cool to the touch in a way that they only were
this time of year. It was worse still in the dungeons, where some days students’ breaths came
out in little white puffs that always reminded the lion of cigarette smoke, but it was always
gone before it could curl in the air. Remus led them to Gryffindor Tower instead and laughed
at the horrified expression that the other boy still held each time that he stepped inside of it.

“So this is where dignity comes to die,” the younger teen said, but there was no malice in his
voice.

Remus smirks. “You should see it when everyone is stumbling around drunk during the house
parties,” the older boy says, the smirk deepening. “There is absolutely no dignity then.”

And when Regulus laughs, Remus thinks that it might be his favorite sound.

The pair spent the rest of the day until it was time to go to dinner playing exploding snap and
every other loud wizarding game that would never be played in the Black household, but the
Potter home drowned in. And when they came back, the pair sat down on one of the couches,
leaning into the warmth of the fire and into each other, the silent thing between them always
more prominent when they were alone.

Regulus’s eyes shined like silver in the firelight, bright and dangerous- something that could
hurt, and Remus thought that he would let him do so. That any pain would be worth it.

The younger teen’s hand grasped the wolf’s cheek, fingers gliding over the scars there.
Where Dora was soft in her touches, Regulus was firm - a sculptor molding his clay. Remus’s
heart was breathing faster and faster with every purposeful touch, coming so completely
undone that he wouldn’t have been able to speak if he wanted as the other boy touched him
as if he was something to be admired, to be held reverently.

Remus reached for the other desperately, a scarred hand tugging at the back of a pale neck,
the owner of which was more beautiful to the wolf than words could say. Lips brushed
together feverishly as the moon and the star crashed together, two beings made out of the
same cosmic dust.

The world finally burned.

 Chapter 8
Chapter Summary

Christmas holidays

Chapter Notes

Sorry that it’s short, but I was going more quality over quantity. And we also have
people staying with us, so I didn’t have time to flush it out and add unnecessary
dialogue.

Also if you’ve read ATYD, then this is based off of the Christmas chapter where Remus
and Sirius are at the castle alone for the break (chapter 102-103). You’ll see that I take it
a very different direction.

Remus wakes to the foreign feeling of a weight on his chest, warm and slowly rising and
falling, heartbeats crashing into one another as if they were meant to always be this close.
The lion looked at the sight before him, the boy with the dark curls and slightly bruised lips,
the tan had long faded into only the whisper of a warm glow, and the spray of freckles that
one could only see from this close. If he’d had a camera he would have taken a picture.

Gray eyes soon opened to meet his one as the younger boy stirred, and Remus couldn’t help
but wonder if the other would slip away and pretend that nothing happened at all now that the
sun was shining once more. If the younger teen would only come to him at nights like some
sort of secret that he couldn’t bear to have others know, or not come at all and regret
everything with the clarity of day.

But then there’s a soft smile on the other’s lips, something a little mischievous as if the
Gryffindor common room was wearing off on the younger more than any snake would want
it to - though Remus supposed that it could easily just as well be Barty and Evan’s doing a
well. There’s a soft press of lips against his own, and a warm hand on the older boy’s hip,
pressing him down and thumb passing over the bite mark there as the shirt rode up from
sleep, as if to give it a new meaning. Remus almost thought that it worked.

The touch was there and gone before the Gryffindor could even do anything to return it, just
the brush of something - a promise that this wasn’t going away just because the stars were no
longer painting pictures upon the sky like stolen gems.
Regulus pushes himself off of the couch and onto the floor, looking down at the older boy
expectantly in a way that makes the lion want to pull the other close so that they might go
back to only a few moments before when each were pleasantly asleep and moving despite the
ache deep within his bones wasn’t something that he had to do.

“Come on,” Regulus says, his voice barely above a whisper because there was no need to be
loud, to demand more of one another in such a way, when others weren’t around and all else
was quiet anyways.

The younger boy holds out his hand to the Gryffindor and Remus takes it, cool hands meeting
warm ones as water and fire danced around one another in a way that could only prove fatal
if things continued on exactly as they were. Remus took the hand and let himself be pulled to
his feet by the younger. He didn’t let go even as they left the common room, guiding the
younger boy along as the moon pulls at the sea.

He wasn’t going to allow them to become a catastrophe.

—-

The pair walk down to breakfast together, the younger dressed in the nice clothes like armor
as the older dressed in the muggle ones that he wore just the same, their sides pressed so
tightly to one another that if the layers of fabric weren’t there one couldn’t tell where the
elder boy ended and the younger began.

The boys sat down a little ways from two Ravenclaws that had few too many differences in
their features with one another to quite be siblings or anything of the like and neither of them
needed the faint reddening of the girl’s from the studying glances to know what they were to
each other.

As the meal went on though, the two pairs found themselves talking to one another, each of
them savoring the idea of speaking with another that didn’t know the exact same things of the
past day as they did.

The conversations were interesting enough, as the Ravenclaws were both seventh years,
staying at the castle under the guise of studying for their NEWTs. Debates and theories came
quickly

Regulus’s knee bumps into Remus’s as they all speak and the lion savors the warmth of the
star with the heart of one, that the other stays long after most would have pulled away from
an accidental touch.

It wasn’t an accident at all.

“We were going to go skating if you lot want to come,” the Ravenclaw boy offers, sounding
only slightly reluctant in doing so as he glances at the younger Black brother.
The other two boys glance at one another, a silent question in each of their eyes that matched
the other’s. Regulus shrugged one shoulder with all of the elegance attached to his name, and
Remus gestured down to his feet, the point he made was clear.

“We can transfigure you a pair of skates,” the younger whispers softly.

“So you can laugh when I fall?” The elder asks with a teasing glint to his voice.

“Of course.”

Less than half an hour later, all four of the students were out at the lake, looking at the ice
that had frozen over it as they laced up their skates and took tentative steps out upon it.

Remus’s legs were wobbly on the new surface, but Regulus held onto his arms in the way
that friends were allowed to do when one was reaching the other how to skate, but both boys
found the heat to it to be more than that. Neither shied away from that fact, only pushing
more closely together until the lines between them began to blur once more in their heavy
winter clothes.

When the Gryffindor finally found his balance on the ice, he pulled away reluctantly and
moved around on his own, stealing glances at the snake as they parted.

The sight took the breadth straight from his lungs, the air curling in a white cloud that danced
around the lion.

Because Regulus is beautiful in a way that is so heartbreaking it hurts Remus to look at the
other as the boy spins so fluidly that one would think that the younger was only made to
move in such a way and no other. And the Gryffindor knows that his own actions are sloppy,
but the embarrassment of it is dulled by the heart wrenching way that Regulus smiles in the
way that the older boy had found was only reserved for him, the pain in the lion’s chest
growing more in a way that it was almost impossible to look at the other and know that he
could not touch him with the other two around.

He welcomed the pain still.

—-

The pair found themselves laid out on the couch once more, the fire burning brightly beside
them as the teen curled into one another, lips bruised one more from kissing one another, skin
stained a light purple on each of their necks from the very same.

Regulus traced the scars on Remus’s neck, the silver lines that the beast inside of the other
boy had marked him with forever. The lines, that while beautiful, only grew each month,
even if they only did so slowly this past year. He didn’t want them to have to grow at all, but
knew that there was no cure for the other teen’s affliction. Not that anyone could even get
close enough to attempt one while the full moon is out, as the wolf would attack any man
with a heartbeat.

“Do werewolves attack animals during the moon?” The younger of the two asks as the sun
begins to dip outside of the window, the room slowly darkening but neither bothers to cast
any spells to change that.

“No, only humans. It’s something about the scent, I think,” Remus answers and he can
already see where the conversation is going and knows that it must be a Black thing for both
to come to the same conclusion.

“What about animagus?” The younger asks almost innocently, as if it were only pure
curiosity and nothing more.

“Animagus are seen as animals when in their form,” the elder teen answers with a surety that
the other doesn't want to question in case of finding out something that he shouldn’t.

“And if I wanted to do some research on becoming one?”

“Then I know where you can find some already done for you.”

The pair smile at one another in a knowing way as they move from the couch and up the
stairs to the sixth year boy’s dorm, neither boy having to look anymore to know where they
are going.

Over the next hour or two, the pair divide among the room, looking beneath beds and the
bottom of drawers for the notes, as Remus knew that neither Sirius or James would risk
bringing them home and it becoming clear to Mr. and Mrs. Potter just how many laws they
were currently breaking.

And if they found what they needed for the process and then Regulus pushed and followed
the older teen onto the Gryffindor’s bed and the world burned as they touched, lips crashing
into one another with the adrenaline of what was to come rushing through their veins, then no
one else needed to know.

—-

The closest that Remus had ever had to a proper Christmas were the ones that he had spent
hidden away at the Potter's house, but with those he always felt more like a guest than
anything else as he couldn’t bring himself to be as open or as soft as everyone else was. He
spent most of the time envious of things that he could never have and hating himself for it
because he could never bring himself to be as happy as the others.

But this year was different.

There were gifts beneath the tree in the Gryffindor common room as Remus walked down the
dormitory stairs to the main room alone, Regulus having spent the night in his own common
room so that he could receive his own presents from the tree there. The wolf had never seen
so many presents under the tree before meant just for him.

There was a black sweater made of a nice material that the Gryffindor knew before he even
slide it on that it would be kind on his scars unlike some of his other one that dragged at them
and irradiated the boy to the point that he would thrown them away if he had any clothes to
truly spare. Remus didn’t have to read the tag to know that it was from Regulus, and he
smiled at the thought of wearing it down to breakfast as seeing the other look at him in it.

Next was a small fox stuffed animal from Barty and a golden slinky from Evan that had the
older teen smiling at the memory of it all. The chaos that the three of them had caused that
day and the way that the patronus had run around the room, free in a way that only youth
could ever hope to obtain. He knew that he would put each of the items on his nightstand and
wait to see if the others said anything at all of it.

The last one was from Dora, and it was the strangest of them all, with there being black nail
polish and eyeliner in the little golden bag.

When Regulus came up to the tower with Remus after breakfast, the older boy allowed
himself to become pliant under the younger’s touch as the other teen took the two items with
a practiced ease and applied them to the elder. Neither of them said anything about the way
that Regulus sat in his lap to do the eyeliner when he clearly didn’t need to, holding the lion's
face still when the other hadn’t moved at all.

Neither said anything about how they both liked the intimacy of it and wished for it back
when the snake moved away to do the nail polish after. Regulus would scowl a few days later
once he saw that the polish that he had so carefully applied was already chipped by the older
boy, but neither would miss the way that the younger’s ears turned a delicate shade of red
from how it went with the look that the lion had cultivated over the past few months.

—-

Remus has always known that the castle was filled with secret passageways and knocks and
crannies that students could go their entire seven years in the castle with ever even finding
one, but he never expected to be walking the seventh floor with Regulus and finding a room
that came and went like the tide, changing depending on what one was thinking before the
door appeared before them.

The boys looked at one another before walking onside, their breadths catching as if another
had stolen them as a familiar sight sprawled out before them.

The room had taken on the shape of an old, abandoned park. Some of the equipment was
falling apart and quite a few of the ionic tables looked like they had seen better days as weeds
grew up the sides of them. The grass was tall everywhere and the air was warm with the heat
of summer and the boys knew that the room looked exactly like the place that they had found
during the summer holidays near St. Edmund’s.

And Remus knew that he wouldn’t be adding this to the Marauder’s Map.

The pair moved farther into the park, casting spells to repair the swings before sitting upon
them like the school children that neither of them had ever gotten to be before, and for the
last few days of the holidays, they fell back into the habits of their summer selves only the
touches were no longer stolen or chaste as Remus laid his head in the other boy’s lap as they
sat in the grass.
 Chapter 9
Chapter Summary

Talks in a conjured park.

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Remus walked next to Regulus, close as ever, as they wandered the quiet halls of Hogwarts,
savoring the small world that they had drowned themselves in the past two weeks and
mounted it now that the others were all coming back. But for all the peace that they would
miss, it still felt like finally breathing once more when the rest of their strange group crashed
into the pair, sly smiles and quick touches on wrist, silent assurances that they were all still in
one piece.

“We have something to show you,” the younger Black whispered as the five of them walked
into the castle, neatly avoiding the wandering looks of three ditch year Gryffindors searching
for a fourth.

“And what would that be?” Evan asks, ever the impatient one.

“You’re just going to have to wait,” the other snake replied, a smirk on his face that none of
them found any malice in.

“Not even a hint?” Dora asked from Remus’s right as the younger Barack stayed to his left.
There was a soft look on the girl’s face that they knew better than to believe as her curiosity
won out.

“You’re the Ravencalw,” Barty reminded the girl. “Shouldn’t you be able to figure it out?”
The rest of their group ignored the way that the boy’s voice rasped as if he hadn’t spoken
since the train ride back home for the holidays. They ignored the probability that this was
exactly the case, knowing that there was nothing that any of them could do. Not right now at
the least.

Remus still hit the younger boy on the back of the head though for the remark, a slight pop
that sounded much worse than the slight sting that the teen would have felt in reality, and
Barty scowled even as he was thankful for the normalcy of it.

The Gryffindor and Slytherin pair led the others up the stairs to the seventh floor, blatantly
ignoring the way that the o other teens protested under their breaths at the long climb from
the ground floor. Regulus stood back as Remus moved the stalk in front of the wall, the snake
knew that the lion was better at replicating the room than he was, as if the magic in it all
spoke to the older boy in a way that it didn’t do so with the others.
He knew why it did so, they all did, but the lion didn’t tap into the power that laid inside of
him. Regulus thought that he might never do so.

Looking back one day, he would see that he was wrong.

The park was just as they had left it the last time that the pair was there, the breaking
equipment and the thick grass. Remus walked over to one of the picnic tables and sat on top
of it, watching as the younger teens took it in, their little hidden world within Hogwarts. The
Gryffindor was surprised when Regulus sat himself down next to the lion, the younger teen
atop the table as well.

“Not very proper of you,” the older boy remarked as they sat flush against one another,
connected fully from their knees to their sides.

“I could move…” the younger said slowly, leaning away from the lion, and Remus hooks
their fingers together to make the other stay.

Regulus leans back against the older boy, connecting them more fully than the pair had been
before as he lays his head on the other’s shoulder without thinking anything of it. They were
around family after all.

Remus moved his arm hesitantly, circling it behind the younger teen’s waist with movements
that were much more hesitant than the younger Black’s had been. He knew that in the muggle
world - and wizarding too from the way that some people talked - that even the way that the
Slytherin was laying on him would get them both beat to a pulp. He didn’t think that any of
the others would do that, but the fear was always there, lingering like a disease.

But Dora only nodded with a soft smile as she sat down on the bench, and Barty and Evan
only pressed closer to one another as they sat down in the warm grass, Evan’s leg on top of
Barty’s with Barty’s hands resting on the blond’s knee.

“I can tell what you blokes have been doing over the holiday,” Barty said with a suggestive
tone as he eyed the barley visible mark on the older boy’s neck, though the way that he was
lacing his fingers through Evan’s said that there wasn’t any harm in it.

“We’ve been doing research actually, Crouch” the Gryffindor replied easily.

“Over what then?” The dark haired boy asks, a brow raised at the idea of what could have
been important enough to cause both of the other teens to voluntarily open school books
during the break for something other than homework.

“Animagus,” Regulus says simply as if they weren’t speaking of attempting something highly
illegal for their age.

But the others were two Slytherins and the Ravenclaw that hung around them, and none of
them even faltered at the idea. Not one of the other three questioned it either, alreadying
knowing just why the younger Black and the lion would have been doing such a thing. The
Slytherin cunning and Ravenclaw wit kept them from asking why Remus was sure that this
was a safe solution to the problem that he was plagued with. Then there was the
unquestioning loyalty that they held for one another - the bonds that none of them had ever
had with those that they shared blood with - that had each of them agreeing without the idea
even fully needing to be spoken aloud.

They had three new people helping in the research after that day.

—-

It was February before the strange trio that they had created were able to gather in earnest to
test their project once more.

Remus was up in Gryffindor Tower with the rest of the Marauders, smiling at their particular
brand of chaos, when slight gasps had spread throughout the room as the spectral figure of a
bat flew into the common room, swooping down in front of the teen as if to touch him. Sirius
raised a brow at the sight, this being the second corporeal patronus to come to the taller boy,
from a different person at that. James and Peter only stared in slight awe, never having seen
one so close before.

“Well, that's my cue to leave,” the scarred boy says as he stands, sliding the book that he had
been absentmindedly reading for the past half hour into the bag that he otherwise hadn’t
touched before then, Sirius was curious to know just what was inside of it.

“Who are you meeting, Moony?” James asks, his brows wiggling in a mocking way.

“It’s only Dora, you prick,” Remus says with a roll of his eyes, but the older Black brother
can hear just how much lighter the other boy’s voice is when speaking of the Lestrange girl.
Light in a way that he so rarely heard it this year.

“Lady killer!” Peter called as Remus walked away, middle fingers held high for all to see in a
way that wasn’t exactly proper for a prefect to act, but the teen smoked enough that it was a
minor offense.

Sirius scowled as the other two lions laughed, and when James noticed, confusion rumbled
through him.

“Why do you look like Moony just killed your dog?” The bespectacled boy asked with a
tactlessness that only a Potter could use and it still be something akin to endearing, though
Sirius found the teen gaze to be unsettling as he did so, calculating and attuned in the way
that only the deer part of his really tended to be.

“I just don’t trust Lestrange is all,” the boy argued weakly, not wanting to admit just how
childish it must look like he’s being. Well, he’s never cared about that before.

“Moony does though,” James said as if that proved something. And maybe to the other boy it
did, but Sirius knew the Remus that sold cigarettes behind their backs and broke into shops
during the summer. He seemed to be the only one that remembered that Remus seemed to
trust Crouch and Rosier as well - he wasn’t even going to think about Regulus.

He trusted me, too , his traitorous mind reminds him. Look how that turned out.

“I still don’t like it.”

“We could follow him.”

Sirius and James turned to where Peter was sitting in his chair, innocently holding up a bit of
parchment that they all knew was much more than that.

Better people might have stopped at the obvious invasion of privacy, but they were
Marauders, and Marauders thrived on chaos.

—-

The Pitch was still cold in the February chill as the three Marauders walked out to it,
following the small footsteps of Remus all the way there, confused looks on each of their
faces once they saw the other boy stop in the middle of field and at the fact that he hated
flying. They weren’t prepared for the sight before them once they finally reached it.

Regulus was standing atop his broom high in air, tall and proud with all of the grace of a
seeker, as Remus stood beside him, their hands held tightly together as the Gryffindor
wobbled.

If they were to have glanced into the Ravenclaw stands the three of them would have seen
Pandora sitting there with parchment and a quill in her hands, poised and ready to take notes.
But instead they watched as the boys let go of one another and Remus tilted back, falling
from the broom like an angel that had lost its wings, like Icarus as his had burned. Regulus
dived down beside the other like a shooting star, ready to catch the older boy should the need
arise, but suddenly one of the lion’s feet separated from the other and the wolf was running
through the air. The Gryffindor laughed, strong and loud enough to be heard even from
outside of the pitch as he ran through the sky as if he was always meant to be a part of it, the
moon and a star.

Remus had always hated flying, ever since their first lesson at elven, but this was nothing like
that. Running freely through the sky, the teen felt a lot like the constellation that his last name
came from. It was the kind of freedom that he had never thought that someone like him
would be allowed to have, but he was grasping onto it like it was all that he had.

Sirius stormed onto the pitch as obscenities that would have made a sailor blush fell from his
lips, spurred on by the recklessness of the boy that was supposed to be the most sensible of
them all.

“ Lupin ! What the fuck were you thinking?!”

Remus sighed as he and the Slytherin landed on the ground. He had known that the others
were coming, their scent was a familiar one after all of these years. But he hadn’t expected to
elicit such a response with his stunt, and a part of him knew that he hadn’t, that this wasn’t
about his reckless actions at all but who he had chosen to complete them with.

Remus shakes his head subtly as Dora moves to come closer to the spontaneous inquisition
before looking to the younger Black and nodding at him, a silent plea for the other to go, to
trust him to handle this. The wolf knew that Padfoot’s head was never on straight when his
family was involved. Regulus left with a cold glare in the direction of each of the
Gryffindors, Remus included, but he brushed their hands together as he left nonetheless.

“What were you doing with him, Moony?” James asked, his head cocked to the side.

“We were working on a project together,” the boy in question explains as he leans down to
change his boots out for the non - spelled ones.

“Just the two of you?” Peter asked, a slight tone of surprise in the smallest Marauders’ voice.

“Dora too,” Remus explains bitterly at the fact that he has to at all, that the others didn’t seem
to trust him enough for this. A glimpse at the cracked skin on his knuckles was enough to
make the boy wonder if they were right not to.

“Right, Lestrange ,” Sirius snarls, rolling his eyes as he looks everywhere but at the tallest
boy in their group.

“Yes, Dora,” Remus replies with a similar tone. “Without her Regulus and I would be at each
others’ throats the entire time,” the wolf says, knowing that it wasn’t technically a lie at all.

None of them liked it, not even Peter who had some friends in Slytherin as well - though his
dislike, the wolf assumed, was mostly caused by wanting to fit in with the other two boys -
but the three knew that there was nothing that they could do about it, not when it was Remus
that they were against.

Things were cold between the four of them in the tower of a while after that.

—-

The next time that the pair were able to sneak off to the Room of Requirement it was
Valentines Day. James was busy chasing after Lily in Hogsmeade, Sirius had a date with
whichever girl he was with this week, Peter was with Desdemona, and no one was looking
for the fourth Marauder.

Lips crashed together in the stolen moment that they had been able to steal, not truly having
been alone with one another since the holidays and missing the contact like lung.
 When Regulus left sometime later, there was a small cuff on his left ear in the shape of a
golden snake that matched the one that Remus always wears on his right. No one but their
small group ever noticed, but it didn’t matter. After all, it wasn’t for them.

Chapter End Notes

Sorry, I know it’s not very long, but I’ve been really into this other fic I’m writing. I’ll
try and do better in the next chapter, but there will probably be a lot more small time
skips in the future until we get to the war (because that’s the part I’m excited for).
 Chapter 10
Chapter Summary

Patronus, birthdays, duels, exhibitions and schemes. Need I say more? (Probably but
that’s besides the point)

Chapter Notes

I was not lying about those time skips. Also this was a lot more angsty then I thought it
would be.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

“Today we are going to be practicing the Patronus Charm!”

Remus stood with the rest of the Marauders as the small Professor went over the incantation
one last time before allowing students to try it. James was smiling like some sort of maniac as
he held his wand, eager to be the first in their year to get the charm to work and the wolf
couldn’t help but smile at the sight, at the innocence of it and the fact that another had already
beat the chaser to it.

“So we know that I’m going to get it first,” James started, his voice filled with the boyish
cockiness that time never did seem to drain from him, not yet at the least, “but what about
second?”

“Wormtail probably,” Sirius said with a grin similar enough to James’s that one truly could
mistake the pair for brothers if they wished to. The rat almost seemed to be blushing at the
small sign of approval until the eldest Black began to speak once more. “Merlin knows
Wormy has had the second easiest life out of the four of us.”

“Oi!”

As the three bickered Remus wanted to tell them that it wasn't about how easy your life had
been, that half of the time it wasn’t even about the pleasant memories that everyone always
seemed to be so focused on, but a feeling of warmth. That feeling that makes one human. But
the wolf kept his mouth shut as his name wasn’t even brought up within the discussion, it
hardly was these days and the teen knew that it was his own fault because he had been with
the fifth years - with Regulus - and Sirius couldn’t stand the supposed slight that this was.
“Wands at the ready,” Professor Flitwick instructed from atop his stack of books. Remus
raised his own with an intention that he hadn’t come into the lesson carrying, but was there
now and refused to die as easily as a muggle flame. “Now cast!”

The wolf closed his eyes and thought of summer days in a park, the sun kissing his bare skin
as fingers glided across it as if he wasn’t something horrid. Lips pressed against his own, and
Dora’s laugh as their small group ran through the empty castle on a Hogsmead weekend to
enact one of her newest spells. Pranks that Remus, Barty and Evan got away with, and sly
smiles over breakfast. Dancing in the air with shoes spelled to dull the pain that each step so
often brought him these days, Regulus flying alongside him. The taste of a Mandrake leaf in
his mouth and their strange groups laughter at its horrid taste.

“ Expecto Patronum !” The wolf cried with a surety that none of the others within the room
could claim.

Silver pooled from the boy’s wand, as bright as a full moon as it swelled and gathered into a
familiar shape that ran around the scarred teen as if searching for another boy to be there.

The Marauders watched as a silver fox, quick and sly, darted around the classroom as the
charms Professor exclaimed in a pleased surprise. Three of the Gryffindor boys were
surprised by the shape that it had taken, having expected a very different creature to appear, if
one at all. But Remus thought that it was still as perfect as the first time that he had seen it.

“It’s beautiful,” Lily complimented softly as she and Marlene and Mary walked over, wands
held loosely in their hands and soft looks on their faces as they watched the spectacle
creature.

“It suits you,” Marlene decided as she stared at it for a moment longer.

“Yeah, Mr. Marauder,” Mary chimed, a mischievous grin on the girl's pleasant features.

The other three boys didn’t say anything as their eyes followed the fox until Remus broke the
spell and put his wand away, so the wolf didn’t say anything either when the other three
eventually managed to produce spectral protectors of their own.

He knew that there was a barrier growing between them, something that could be fixed if
only someone were to reach out a hand, but at the same time Remus was tired of trying to be
someone that he was not. Of trying to pretend that he was as good as the others were, that he
wasn’t a monster hiding in the body of a man.

He was tired of pretending now that he knew what it meant to smile with all the sharpness of
a wolf and the grace of a fox, as he ran with a black cat through the night as birds flew high
above; all of them finally free of the chains that tried to shape them into someone they were
not and never would be again.

He was tired of pretending to be good when he knew that he wasn’t and now had people that
didn’t ask him to be.
—-

Time passed as it always does: much too fast, and all too slow. By the time that March rolled
around the rest of the lions had eased around the scarred boy, finally accepting what they
should have always known, which was that Remus wasn’t one to abandon those that he calls
friends - that he calls family if he were to be honest with himself - and that the Marauders
would need to adjust.

The wolf wasn’t sure if they could, but was woken up on March tenth with three lions
jumping on his bed with bright smiles and a chorus of Happy Birthday spilling from each of
their lips nonetheless.

“To youuuu!” The three all but screeched with voices not made for singing.

“Asshats,” Remus cursed, but he was smiling despite himself.

“Our best spell caster is now seventeen,” James started conspiratorially as the three peeled
themselves off of the bed, dragging the tallest of their lot with them.

“Just imagine all of the chaos we can now create, Prongsy,” Sirius said in that joking voice of
his that made teachers immediately hide anything that they wouldn’t want used in a prank,
something Slughorn had taken much too long to realize.

“Indubitably so, Mr. Padfoot,” James agreed with a dramatic bow.

And Remus laughed as he always did at the pair’s antics despite himself as Peter grinned at
him, because he loved them even as he knew that they loved a softer version of him.

The four laughed as they walked down to breakfast, all Gryffindor warmth and bravery as
they spoke of the party that would be held later, as was almost every year when one of the
Marauders birthdays came around. But the smiles of three of them soon shrunk as they
approached the Great Hall, while the fourth’s only grew.

“We just want to steal Kit over here for a moment,” Evan said before the older teens could
speak, his hands held up in a mock surrender. “Then you lot can have him for the rest of the
day.”

Remus raised a brow at the others, but Dora only pointed to where Meadows was standing off
to the side, a muggle camera held in the girl’s hands, a Polaroid.

“I’ll be in there in a minute,” the wolf said, already sliding past the rest of the lions to venture
towards the snakes. The Marauders watched him go, and knew that this was something that
they would have to be okay with now if they wanted to keep the fourth lion.

Dorcas stood in front of the five students that had no right to be around one another as they
were if the rest of the world had any say in the matter, and held the camera up to her eye as
the five gathered together; Remus in the middle with his arm around Regulus’s waist and the
other across Pandora’s shoulders as Barty and Evan crouched before the three. Five pictures
were taken, one for each of them that the snakes, lion, and egal all put into books to be kept
safe from prying eyes.

Remus and Regulus watched as the others left, the pair staying behind in the hall off to the
side of the entrance. Their hands were laced together and the Gryffindor knew that this was a
feeling that he would never get tired of.

“Close your eyes,” the snake said softly, lifting Remus’s hand as the older teen did so.
Something cold was pressed into the lion’s hand, metal he realized. ‘Open them.”

When Remus looked down there was a black ring decorated in gold and false silver in his
palm, the piece placed on a long chain that could easily be touched beneath a shirt without
being seen. He ran his fingers over the chilled metal for a moment before looking up at the
other.

“Is a promise ring,” the Slytherin explained, his face was set in an unbothered mask, but
Remus could see the red on the tops of the other boy’s ears. “It’s a pureblood tradition. You
don’t-” but Regulus stopped speaking as he watched the older wizard slide the chain around
his neck, tucking the ring beneath his clothes as if it was something to be handled with care.

“It’s perfect,” Remus said with a surety that he hardly ever held outside of their strange group
before leaning down to kiss the other. It was chaste but spoke of an eternity of time for more.

Regulus pulls out a ring that matches the one around the lion’s neck and Remus slides it onto
the teen’s pale finger.

Unbeknownst to the Slytherin, Remus knew then that he would do anything to see all five of
them through the war in one piece.

Neither of them could have known that meeting in the library that day would create such a
change to what could have been. What was almost prophesied to be.

—-

When Remus was called to Headmaster’s office that night and paperwork was laid out on the
man’s desk - forms that he had been dreading since the moment that the wolf had heard of the
registry - the teen refused to sign them, staring at the older man with a defiant gaze. Months
spent with the Slytherins was how he knew that though Dumbledore acted displeased by this
turn of events, he was the farthest thing from it. Months spent with the snakes was how the
teen knew that the old man was playing a game that no one else knew, and that the wolf was
one of his chess pieces.

Months spent with the Slytherins was how the wolf knew to pretend that he didn’t.
—-

The party that night was as loud and lively as any other house party that the Marauders had
thrown when one of their birthdays came around, music playing too loud and alcohol flowing
too freely, but like so many times before that year Remus couldn’t seem to fall into it all the
way that he used to. But for the first time, someone else noticed.

“What?” Sirius asked with a teasing smile as he left some Hufflepuff girl to come and talk to
the only lion that looked almost bored in the room. “Are the Ravenclaw parties really more
exciting than ours?”

It wasn’t a question that the drunken boy meant to be answered, but a way to goad the other
into loosening up. Remus did both.

“No,” the wolf admitted with a too sly grin for someone of their house, “but the Slytherin
are.”

Remus walked away from the other Marauder before he could see the stuffed look on the
teen’s face, and faded into the crowd, dancing with those that came up to him and not
remembering any of their faces as he knew that he was promised to another.

—-

It was two weeks before that came around to bite the wolf in the ass.

The Gryffindor common room was quiet for once as almost everyone was outside soaking in
the warm air before a frenzy settled upon the castle as exams began to loom over the students
like some sort of curse, those taking OWLs and NEWTs becoming particularly difficult to be
around. Remus could still remember hearing about how Bellatrix had cast a curse to remove
all of the tongues from the younger years in the Slytherin common room in the Marauders’
first year. Now that he was older he didn’t think that it was such an overreaction as he had
back then.

He should have known that the quiet wouldn’t have been able to last.

The rest of the Marauders bounced into the common room with mischief in their eyes, the
three boys heading straight for their fourth with that manic step that they only ever had when
one had an absolutely terrible idea and the rest were going along with it as if it wasn’t. It
always worked out in the end either way, that or they cursed one another in detention.

“We want to go to a Slytherin party!” James exclaimed as Remus closed his book and the
three crowded before him.
“Why?” Remus asked slowly as he looked up at the three from the couch, confusion clear in
the teen’s face.

“C’mon Moony,” Sirius whined, “you’re the one that said that they were better than ours,”
the boy reminded him, though Remus thought that there was likely something else to all of
this.

In the end Remus agreed to take them, knowing that they wouldn’t stop asking or would find
a way in on their own if he didn’t.

“Alright, your funeral.”

—-

The presence of the extra Gryffindors wasn’t met with open arms, though Rmeus had known
that it would be this way. This was the one house that didn’t truly like the Marauders.

The Black brothers didn’t look at one another as the two groups came together and the wolf
figured that this was for the best, the pair often tended to be very explosive when around one
another and he didn’t want the brothers to duel, he didn’t think that he would handle it very
well seeing the younger Black hurt by the elder.

“Lions among the snakes,” Evan scoffed as he looked at the three, ignoring the fact that he’d
had one around him for the past year now. “What a rare sight.”

“Wonder how long they’ll last,” Barty whispered just loud enough for their five to hear.

“Manners, boys,” Dora chided with a swat of her hand on each of their shoulders.

“Don’t mind them,” Remus said, waving the boys off, used to and unbothered by their antics,
“they're a bit eccentric.”

“Right,” Peter said slowly, but even he didn’t look convinced.

When the duels come around, Remus doesn't hold back - the wolf doesn't hold back.

Curses spill from the boy’s tongue, ones that they all knew and some that the lion had picked
up during his time in the dungeons, each more devastating than the last as he taps into
something inside of him that sings with pleasure at it all. The snake crazy enough to
challenge the Gryffindor soon loses his wand with a strangled cry, but Remus doesn’t stop
there - he never does, nor does anyone ever try to make the wolf lest they be next - and runs
at the wizard, fist flying and knuckles bruising skin as they split open.

The teen only stops when the other cries out in defeat, and the Slytherins and Ravencalw that
the Gryffindor claims as his come running forward with bright smiles, uncaring of the
destruction that the older boy had just caused only a moment before. The rest of the
Marauders were slower to approach, hesitance in their every step.

“You’re changing,” Sirius says so quietly that no one other than the wolf could hear the boy.

“Sorry,” Remus replies in a way that showed that he clearly wasn’t. “I didn’t know that I had
to stay the same.”

Some brows were raised at the words but it was eventually ignored as Dora dragged the boy
away to wrap his hands with the bandages that she always brought. The Marauders watched
her go and thought that they were watching a stranger walk beside the younger girl.

A monster in human skin.

—-

Exams came and went and soon June was here and with it came the end of the year
Ravenclaw exhibition, not the Gryffindor house knew about it.

When Remus left the dorm well past curfew without a word of explanation and with a bag
laden with documents, James and Sirius exchanged a worried, but curious glance and
followed the boy under the invisibility cloak and on the map, surprised to see him heading for
Ravenclaw tower of all places.

(Remus knew that they were there, he could smell them from over half way down the hall,
but he let the pair follow nonetheless, letting them see what they wished to.)

The riddle was impossibly easy - always was on exhibition days to give pity to those not
born with the cleverness that the eagles so easily possessed in waves - and Remus slipped
inside without a problem, taking his time to leave the door open for the other two boys to
grab as they unknowingly were allowed to follow.

The visible lion smiled as he let himself be lost in the gathered crowd of blue, yellow and
green, leaving the other pair clueless as to where he was.

He never did intend to make it easy on them.

“Welcome to the Ravenclaw exhibition,” the seventh year Ravenclaw prefect announced with
an eager voice. “You all know the categories and how this works, and if you don’t then just
sit back and enjoy the show. We’re going to start with inventions today,” he decided.
“Lestrange, if you will.”

The two hidden lions watched as the blond girl that was so often around Moony these days
walked up to a table - the only one within the room - that was left completely bare of papers
or books before pulling out parchment to cover it. They were only a little surprised when
Remus and Regulus soon appeared at either of her sides.
The lion emptied his own bag, his back to the other two boys where they couldn’t see what he
was showing everyone else, but could see the way that the eldest of the trio reached behind
the Ravenclaw and stole one of the papers from the younger Black with a familiarity that
neither of the Marauders had known that the two teens had and made Sirius clench his teeth,
grounding them with some emotion that he didn’t know. But James didn’t see that as he
watched the younger Black brother glare at the Gryffindor only to be met with a cheeky smile
that they hardly ever saw from the teen when it was the four of them.

And then Remus was stepping away from the table, sliding onto the boots that he was
wearing and putting on another that looked just like them but flashed with green light as the
lion touched his wand to them.

Hermes’s Sandals , the three called them and the hidden pair knew why when Remus ran
forwards as if his bones didn’t creak and then leapt into the air, stepping onto it as if it were a
solid thing. The lions were reminded of the scene that they had witnessed the last time that it
was just the strange trio and knew that this must have been what that project was.

Sirius watched with hooded eyes as Remus danced through the air to some melody that he
didn’t know but looked stunning while doing so, the wolf going higher and higher toward the
tall common ceiling until all the scarred boy would have to do to touch it would be to simply
raise his hand and brush his fingers against the painted ceiling there, touching the stars in the
way that only the moon could. They watched as he leaned back, arms stretched out wide as if
to welcome what was to come, and then the boy was falling.

Even falling the wolf still looked impossibly free.

Just like last time, Remus stopped just before any damage could come to him; a reckless
show that had more than one audience member cursing the teen as the boy laughed and
glided to the ground like some sort of angel.

Lestrange and Regulus rush to the Gryffindor with bright smiles on their faces and the hidden
pair watch as Remus hugs the Ravenclaw girl before throwing an arm around the snake as if
that was something natural for him to do. Watching the three, the lions start to understand
that whatever exists between them is something untouchable; that in some ways it’s a lot like
the bond between Sirius and James themselves. The lions, Sirius especially, tries not to be too
jealous because of that as he watches his brother laugh in a way that he never had before and
the boys look at the Lestrange girl as if she were their sister.

When the pair leave, they don’t even know exactly what their mourning the loss of, only that
they are.

—-

When the five of them meet by the Black Lake the day before they are meant to leave
Hogwarts for the summer holidays, the air is a lot more grim than it ever had been between
 them, as the future hung over the lot of them.

“My parents are going to make me take the mark over the summer,” Regulus says from his
spot between Remus and Dora, finally voicing the thing hanging so heavy between them all.

Remus doesn't miss the way that the rest of the snakes steal glances at him, waiting to see just
how he would react. They didn’t know that he had been thinking about this a lot since the day
that he first hung the ring around his neck.

The wolf turns and looks the younger Black in the eyes and knows what he must do once he
sees the fear in them. Remus grabs the other boy’s hand, the ring that rests there - the promise
that it represents - and speaks before he can talk himself out of it.

“Do it,” he says with a firm voice, surprising the others. “I was there when Sirius came to the
Potters last year when they wanted him to take it,” Remus informs them, something that none
of the others had known before. “I know that you won’t make it out of that house otherwise,
so do it.

“Do it, but don’t join him.”

“That makes no sense and you know it, Lupin,” Regulus says with a shake of his head, but
Dora’s eyes light up with recognition.

“You want him to become a spy,” the Ravenclaw realizes, intelligent eyes locked onto his.

“For Dumbledore?” Barty asks with a scoff that everyone in the group agreed with.

Remus shakes his head. “Dumbledore doesn't give a damn about any of us outside of how he
can use us,” the wolf said with enough scorn to cut like a blade. “No,” he decides, “we create
our own side.”

“Me with the Death Eaters,” Regulus says slowly.

“And me with Dumbledore,” Remus finishes before looking at the others, hope so painfully
clear in his eyes. “You guys in or what? ”

They all looked between one another, determination setting in the snakes and eagle’s eyes. It
was answer enough.

“Merlin, we’re all suicidal,” Evan says with a shake of his head, but the Slytherin was
grinning sharply. They all were.

The world saw them as monsters, they would prove them right.

Chapter End Notes

Kit is a name for a baby fox

 Chapter 11
Chapter Summary

Summer 1997

Chapter Notes

It’s short, I’m sorry. I was going to add more, but stopped at summer. Also light smut at
the end, nothing too specific at all though.

The cottage that Pandora had given Remus the coordinates to was small, or at least appeared
so on the outside the Gryffindor soon realized as he walked inside.

There were a total of three floors that made up the ‘cottage’, two above and a basement down
below that the wizard had already mentally set aside for Dora to use for her experiments. The
front door immediately led one into a well light, but rundown and tarnished kitchen that was
only thinly divided from the large living room by the flooring left open so that one could
freely walk between the two and the door to a rather large office that was off to the left, the
stairs - going both up and down - to the right.

The upstairs had three rooms, each much too large for there not to be an extension charm
somewhere in play. The rooms were rather dark looking, worn down and dirtied by so many
endless years without use, but Remus knew that it would all change soon enough.

For the time being he only cast a few cleaning and repairing charms and slept in the bed in
the room farthest from the stairs, but with the largest windows, his Hogwarts things at the end
of the bed, all that he had to his name. The starlight kept him company at night as the
sunlight woke him with the morning.

—-

Two days later there was one loud crack outside of his house, the scent of wild magic
belonging to an elf coloring the air as Remus walked out to meet the newcomers, the Fidelius
Charm thick in the air around the cottage as he could see them, but only Dora could see the
lion.
Remus could tell the moment that this changed as Evan and Barty’s eyes went wide, almost
comically so, and the Gryffindor could tell that the secret had been shared.

“The cleaning crew is here to help!” Dora called brightly as the three drew close, wands in
their hands as the elf - Evan’s house elf - popped away to return later once the boy called for
it.

Remus would never know how the wizarding world could look down on such creatures, but
the wizarding world seemed to look down on anything and anyone that they deemed other, he
knew that about as well as anyone.

No one mentioned the third snake that they were missing, the one whose rings matched
Remus’s own that he wore on stark display for all to see now that summer was here. They
didn’t have to, they all felt the absence like some sort of serverince charm.

“Then I suppose we should get to it.”

And they did.

The four started with the study, the least damaged place within the former Ravenclaw home
as it was spelled with protective charms. The boys set about moving all of the books and
furniture from the room as Pandora casted repairing charms on the walls and the bookshelves
that sprouted from them like limbs from trees. Muggle music played through the air as the
four painted the room a soft gray, a miniature version of the sky bewitched on the ceiling as it
was at Hogwarts.

Remus felt the itch to flip through the books, magics of all kinds staring back at him from the
spines of each of them, but he only shelved them with the others to be looked at later.

Next were the bedrooms. Dora took the one nearest to the stairs, painting it a deep blue, while
Evan and Barty took the middle room turning it the same shade of green as the Black Lake
during the day. The Gryffindor let the trio do whatever they wished with the rooms as he
painted and repaired his own - the walls were a warm gold with silver linings - it was theirs
after all.

As the four met in the hall on the way to go down the stairs, a feeling of tightness fell over
the group, the wall opposite to the rooms staring back at them as if they had offended it. The
magic worked was hesitant, but soon a balcony that overlooked the living room was where
the wall had been, one that opened the space and allowed those upstairs to see any that dared
come through the door with the advantage of height.

Remus never thought he would be making changes to his house based on offensive
capabilities. He never thought that someone like him - a wolf, an orphan in everything but the
legalities, a care home kid - would have a home to change. He never thought a lot of things
actually.

The four of them paint the living room and kitchen white, a dull color that shines with the
warm glow of the sun. With the water on for tea and his friends gathered at the table
discussing which flavor they should make, Remus could almost forget that there had been a
time before it was always like this, and that they weren’t heading head first towards a war
that none of them are likely to get out of unscathed.

Reality was a cruel thing , Remus knew, thinking of the mark undoubtedly marking
Regulus’s pale skin now, marring it. The same mark that was sure be borne on the other two
Slytherins as well before the war comes to a close, one way or another.

No one is owed anything in life.

Remus had known this since he was five, but for now he would bask in the sounds of his
friends’ laughter, in the home that was entirely theirs.

—-

Remus wanders into the study one night when the moon is too close to sleep and the time too
late to go into town and do anything productive that he had been putting off for some time
now. The books there stunk of dark magic, gray and light, wild and none at all. Remus
grabbed book after book, making small piles of them on the floor with some parchment
beside him as he set about the ambitious project of reading through as many as he could,
writing down anything that he thought would prove helpful in the times to come.

There were books on healing magic and prophecy, wild magic and rituals, soul magic and
necromancy. On nights like these he read of creatures that they would never teach of at
school and of spells so sickening that he took to keeping a trash can in the study and the
windows open as he smoked everything else away.

There were old books on werewolves that he was hesitant to even touch, knowing already of
what each of the ones within the Hogwarts Library told.

Sometimes on restless nights like these he took to pretending that there was another on the
floor beside him, scowling as muggle music filled the cottage.

There never was, but Remus held the ring that laid against his chest with the silent hope that
there might one day be.

—-

The crack of apperation fills the air one night when Remus is in the study reading a
particularly dark book with spells on healing within them, the full moon was soon and
Madam Pomfrey wouldn’t be there to help as she had so many years before.
Remus grabbed his wand, holding it tightly within his hand as he walked to the window,
prepared to fight should he need to, but lowered it and left the cottage almost immediately,
feeling almost like a child again.

Regulus didn’t bat an eye when Remus appeared out of thin air before him, only returned the
tight embrace. The past few weeks had been the longest that they had been apart from one
another before then, and it showed.

They each knew that it would only get harder.

“Why are you here? How are you here, love?” Remus asks, worry in both his gaze and tone.
They had all known going into the summer holidays that the Blacks would have a tight grip
on their youngest son, one that wouldn’t allow any of them to truly see the boy even without
Voldermort and his schemes.

“My parents are at a meeting, something about financials,” the Slytherin answered before
kissing the other as if he were air and Regulus had been holding his breath.

Love , it wasn’t a name that he ever thought he would be called by someone that he would
want to hear it from.

Hands roamed thin frames, and the younger teen let out a soft moan when the other’s lips fell
to his neck, kissing it as the wolf growled with restraint, not leaving a mark. Regulus almost
wished that he would, it would be better than any other one he had.

Remus led the other over the line of the Fidelius charm, a special tweak to the spell that Dora
had made that allowed the lion to bring others inside so long as they were touching, even if
their memory of the location of the home would still be blurry once leaving. They knew that
Regulus wasn’t nearly good enough at mental magics to fend off Voldermort should he come
prying.

Regulus wanted to stoop and look at the carefully redone cottage, but he knew that they were
on borrowed time, meetings could only last so long, and Remus was looking at the other with
a hunger in his gaze as the wolf rumbled in his chest.

The bed was soft beneath the snake as Remus sat atop him, lips hot on his skin as the other
kissed his way down it, buttons coming undone as he did. There were scars from a wand on
his chest that Regulus could never bring himself to look at in the mirror, but Remus only
touched as if they were the mark of a survivor.

The Dark Mark on his arm wasn’t, and shame and disgust coiled in Regulus’s stomach each
time that he saw it glaring up at him, no matter the fact that he knew what the alternative
would have been.

Remus only kisses it as if it were any other scar before looking at Regulus with enough
adoration that the Slytherin found it hard to breathe.

“I love you,” Remus said as if the words were some sort of oath, one that he knew to be true.
One that he would never give to another. It was the sort of love that one risked everything for,
fighting with your life on the line just for the chance to make it back to the one that you held
it for.

Regulus sat up some, pulling off the other’s thin shirt as if it had done something to offend
him.

“I love you too,” Regulus breathed, kissing his way down the other’s scars, the tarnished
body that he adored. The broken boy that he loved more than he ever thought he could.

Regulus has never believed in soulmates, or if they existed he never thought that he would
have one of his own, but as their bodies moved as one, he thought that maybe they were
made from the same cosmic dust, connected by a red string, whatever the story was.

He knew that there wasn’t anyone else out there for him.

—-

Regulus stole one last glance at the sleeping teen, a boy whose body was now covered with
marks and bites that matched his own, one set of clothes strewn across the floor. One day he
promised that he would come to this room - good and silver and so clearly meant for them
both - and he wouldn’t have to ever leave.

But that wasn’t tonight, he knew as he left the teen, the ring on his finger heavy as he
disappeared with a crack once more.

—-

When the moon came, it wasn’t a dog, deer, and a rat that the wolf ran with, but two birds
and a bat that soared high above him all through the night. He gained a few scars as he
always did, the wolf missing his previous pack, but it was enough.
 Chapter 12
Chapter Summary

September 1st, 1997

Chapter Notes

Another short chapter, I’m sorry. I know we just started seventh year, but it should be
wrapping up in the next chapter or two so we can get into the war, which is what I have
been waiting for. Chapter length and quality should improve then.

Remus sighs as he walks through the Hogwarts Express, going to school for the last time.
There were less people here than all of the years before, less first years and hardly any
muggleborns at all. The Gryffindor wasn’t surprised, not with the way that the war had been
progressing, the danger that lurked just from existing. He wasn’t surprised at all to see that all
of the Gryffindor seventh years had returned, blood status be damned. They were lions after
all, reckless and brave.

Sometimes Remus found himself wondering if he was still one of them at all.

Remus walked into the prefect's carriage and grinned at Dora as she smiled up at him, her
eyes bright. Nodding at Regulus as he did so back, stretching like a cat.

The three didn’t say anything to one another, only that small gesture as Remus sat down on
Pandora’s other side. They knew that this year was going to be different from the last, people
were going to care now what the three did, what the son of two purebloods and the supposed
puppet of Dumbledore were going to do. Their group’s friendship always raised brows
before, but now they couldn’t afford for them to do so.

The trio watched as James and Lily walked into the carriage, the pair close in a way that
made most of its occupants breath a sigh of relief that they had finally gotten together and
would no longer have to watch the pair pine over one another from afar. Head Boy and Head
Girl, together at last.

This fact didn’t stop James from looking at Remus strangely every few minutes, as if
expecting the wolf to suddenly move to another seat while he was not watching. Remus only
rolled his eyes, running out the same speech that he had been listening to for years now as he
thought of how to adjust the runes and enchantments that the trio had used last year with the
shoes to give a muggle motorbike the same properties.
“ Lupin .”

Remus looked up as his name was called and a hand roughly shook his shoulder, the voice
using a harsher tone than it had in years. Using his last name as well.

“We’re discussing schedules, dear,” Dora said airily as she shifted to cover up Regulus’s
retreating arm, but the damage was already done.

Silence filled the room as everyone had seen the mark peeking out from beneath the youngest
Black brother’s school robes. Remus pretended to be just as surprised as the rest of them, not
that James seemed to buy it much.

“Patrol schedules, right?” Remus asked after the silence had dragged on long enough, after
the sight had been ingrained in the other’s minds enough for the whole school to know by the
end of the feast just how the youngest Black had spent his summer.

Remus and the rest of their group had engineered it this way, to see the school’s reactions out
and in the open, and for Regulus to know those most likely to join the other side as well.

It was a test, as plain and simple as they come.

“Patrol schedules,” Lily agreed, but there was fear in the girl’s voice. Fear that Remus had
intentionally caused. He knew that he should feel bad about doing so, but he also knew that
this was for the family that he had chosen, the one that didn’t fear the darker parts of himself.

He could live with whatever the costs.

—-

The dorm was quiet when the four boys walked inside of it, Wirius the only outlier as he
bounded around the room with a manic grin and grand ideas for pranks spilling from his lips.
This was their last year of being children, their last year before joining Dumbledore and the
war. He didn’t want to waste it.

He couldn’t understand why the other boys didn’t seem to agree.

“ Sirius ,” James said softly, too softly for this to be a normal conversation and Sirius felt his
heart stop because the other boy only ever used that voice where one group of people were
concerned, each of them sharing the same last name. “Please sit down for a moment.”

James almost felt his heart break as he watched his brother do so like some sort of lifeless
doll.

“What happened?”

“He took the mark.”

The three boys in the dorm closed their eyes as the fourth fell apart before them, the anger in
Sirius’s eyes palpable as the teen himself started to curse and swear at his mother and his
father, and at Regulus himself. Magic stuffed in the room, but the teens within it had learned
too much control over the past six years for it to do much more than that. James held his
brother anyways until Sirius suddenly became quiet, mourning a boy that wasn’t even yet
dead.

And Remus will always remember that this was the moment that he wanted to tell them all
the schemes that he and the others had been creating for the past few months. And he will
always be grateful that he hadn’t because of the rat in the room.

James looked at the other two boys in the room as Sirius finally began to calm down and
found Peter looking worriedly back at him as Remus looked stubbornly away, a distance in
his gaze that had been there since the end of their fifth year. James felt foolish for hoping that
it would be gone by now, and angered when he realized why it had appeared now.

The Head Boy slid away from his brother and grabbed Remus harshly by the elbow. He knew
that the taller teen could easily pull out of his grip if he wanted to, but went along willingly as
James pulled him into the hall.

“You knew, didn’t you?” James asks as he pushes the other boy against the stone wall, one
hand still firmly holding the other even though he knew that Remus could always leave.

Remus looked down at the older boy with a wolfish gaze and all of the slyness of a fox. “I
did,” he admits easily, his voice empty of any emotion at all.

James startled, but recovers quickly enough after the other’s confession, one that he had
hoped the teen would deny. “ Remus -!”

“I was the one that told him to do it.”

James feels his face go as empty as Remus’s tone as the other teen’s confession settles inside
of the Head Boy’s mind once more. “What?”

Remus rolls his eyes, annoyed at having to explain something that seemed so clear to
himself. At playing checkers instead of chess. “Do you honestly believe that he would have
survived the summer otherwise?” Remus asks, scorn making its way into his voice as he
knew the answer clear as day, as he knew that he would have had to bury a corpse this
summer had Regulus not agreed.

James only shakes his head though. “We could have gotten him out, Remus!” The boy
explains with a tone that says that he actually believed what he was saying to be true, a
Gryffindor foolishness. “If you had said anything then we could have-”

“Nothing,” Remus says coldly as he interrupts his friend. “We could have done nothing .
They already lost Sirius, and there was no way in hell that those bastards were going to let
Reg go too,” the teen explained, a venom in his tone. “Besides,” Remus adds with a scoff,
“the only chance for him to leave paused when Sirius did, when Dumbledore left him there to
rot .”
It was a gamble, Remus knew, to reveal his grievance with the Headmaster as easily as he
had, but a part of him hoped that one day the other three would realize that the old wizard
wasn’t the saint that he portrayed himself as. The rest of him knew that they likely wouldn’t.

Remus saw the defiance in the other boy’s eyes and walked back inside the dorm.

—-

Remus sighs as he and Regulus patrol the halls, his hip making every step that much slower
and more painful than the last. The moons had always been hard, but it seemed that the
effects last longer now than they never had before. He was only seventeen, the wolf didn’t
want to think about how the damage would feel should he live to thirty.

Sometimes, in the quiet of the night, he could almost admit to himself that he didn’t want to
live long enough to find out.

A warm hand grabbed his own, the familiar bite of cool metal grazing his skin. Remus looks
down at the younger teen, finding nothing but understanding in his eyes. An understanding
that no one else ever seemed to have, but Remus had seen the scars on the other’s body. He
was grateful that no one else could understand as easily as they could one another.

He didn’t want to share anyways.

Remus allowed himself to be pulled into an abandoned classroom, left over from when the
schools used to be larger and NEWTs classes need much more space than they do now. A
warm hand rubs circles against his hip and Remus leans down and captures the other’s lips in
his own.

It was a hurried embrace, it always seemed to be these days, these stolen moments that they
managed to take, but when they were connected like this, the outside world didn’t seem to
matter. There wasn’t a war closing in on them, or marks on their skin that neither of them
could ever hope to erase. It was only them, two parts of a soul.

These little brakes in their patrol become one of Remus’s favorite things.

—-

The Great Hall was quieter than it had been in previous years as less bodies were there to fill
it, something that no had truly become used to just yet as the term was only one week in, but
one was still there that most people within the school could have done without.
Remus stopped by the entrance to the Great Hall and watched as Snape strutted towards him,
a sneer firmly on his face as he did so. The fox had hoped that after the year of peace that he
had been given all through sixth year that the other would leave him alone through this one as
well.

It seemed that once more Remus had wished for too much.

“Loony Lupin, all alone,” the Slytherin goaded as he drew closer, “looks like Regulus is
finally done with his little charity case after all.”

Snape was smiling something ugly as Remus felt a growl build in his throat, he didn’t even
notice the other two that had joined them.

“He’s ours now, you know?” The snake asked rhetorically, moving his left arm as if to draw
attention to it and the mark that was undoubtedly hiding beneath it. “You tried to corrupt him,
but I guess he finally realized that you were only a filthy wolf .”

Remus growled as he tried to lunge forwards, but found himself restrained by two sets of
hands. Snape raised a brow as he watched Barty and Evan hold Lupin back.

“Slytherins take care of their own,” Barty said by way of explanation, just enough to fool the
other, though Remus knew that the words were meant for him.

“And we don’t fight in public either,” Evan reminded the seventh years coldly, but Remus
could smell the fear coming from the other seventh year at even the idea of a fair one - on -
one fight. He knew that the other had seen the duels that Remus had participated in during
Slytherin parties, and Snape knew what he was. He knew that the seventh year Slytherin
would never duel him at all.

Somehow that only made the wold want to tear him apart more.

The other three Marauders watched the scene unfold and wondered what game the other was
playing.
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