Not your mate
Remus woke to a dark room, his heart hammering in his chest and the remnants of a bad dream lingering at the edges of his consciousness. He felt for his mother’s knitted blanket but his fingers only brushed over cold sheets and a soft duvet. It took him a moment to remember he wasn’t at home, but in his new four-poster bed at Hogwarts.
He took a deep breath.
The pounding in his chest slowed, but there was still an itching in his fingers he couldn’t quite shake. Deciding going back to sleep was useless, he sat up and pulled back one of the curtains—only to be greeted by an offending brightness.
He blinked, his eyes struggling to adjust to the sudden light.
The shadows were still forming into people when a loud noise pierced his ears.
‘Remus!’
Remus rubbed his eyes but bit back a groan. ‘Come on, Sprinkle, greet the day with a smile and it might smile back at you. Uh, no, it’s raining again,’ he could almost hear his mother’s voice, could almost feel her pushing a hand through his hair and telling him to get up before his father had eaten all the eggs (his dad always left some for him).
This, of course, was all only in his head. His mother was hundreds of miles away. And shrieking wasn’t quite her style, anyhow.
It was Peter who had called his name, standing before the bathroom door and grinning at him, his hair tousled and still damp. He had already dressed in his black Hogwarts robes. James, however, was standing before Sirius’ bed, the hangings of which were still sealed shut. He rubbed his palms.
‘One down—or up,’ he said with a grin. ‘One to go… Pettigrew? Lupin?’
‘No, no thanks,’ said Peter, but James didn’t wait for Peter to finish his sentence. He yanked back the curtains of Sirius’ bed, yelling, ‘Rise and shine!’
Something—Sirius—stirred in the bed, and Peter, who had been watching James’ endeavour, shuffled to Remus’ bed. ‘I was just about to wake you up.’
A low groan, muffled by a lot of fabric, from the other side of the room tugged at Remus’ attention. Between his sleep-hazed brain, the still-lingering dream—what had it been about?—and the noises now coming from Sirius’ bed, it was hard to form a coherent thought.
He yawned.
‘Piss off, Potter!’
‘Afraid I can’t do that, mate. You need to get your arse out of bed,’ said James, and flopped down beside Sirius. ‘Breakfast time.’
The impact of him sinking into the mattress earned him another groan from Sirius. James laughed and Sirius rolled onto his stomach. His black hair was almost as messy as James’, which was saying something.
‘You need to get your arse out of my bed.’
‘Don’t you want to get some breakfast before classes?’ Peter asked Remus, his voice three notches lower.
‘Sure,’ said Remus through another yawn. He hadn’t slept badly, the dream notwithstanding. But in the week of the full moon he usually slept like the dead—if his mum was to be believed.
For some reason, Peter kept lingering beside his bed, still watching him.
‘What are you doing?’ Remus asked, confused.
‘I—I thought we could walk down together,’ said Peter.
‘Oh.’ Well, the lingering made sense then.
‘I—I mean, if you don’t want to—’ Peter hurried on, but then trailed off and left the sentence hanging, not meeting Remus’ eyes.
‘No, I want to get breakfast,’ said Remus, making a mental note to remember this in case he was up before Peter. Hang back to have breakfast with your dorm mates. ‘I need to eat, don’t I?’
When he got out of the bathroom, dressed in his new set of plain black robes, Sirius was still tangled in his sheets.
‘Salaz—Merlin, who gave you the idea first thing I wanted to see was your face?’
‘My mum says my face is lovely,’ said James, smiling as if he were having the best time of his life.
‘Well, she’s lying to you.’
Remus had to stifle a laugh—not because of the insult—but he could relate to the moodiness it had come from. He wished he could go back to sleep.
For a moment, James looked as though he might defend his mother’s honour, but then his grin only stretched. ‘Good thing, then, I’ve now got you to tell me the truth,’ he said. ‘Now get a move on, I’m starving.’
‘You really need me to hold your hand to walk you down to breakfast?’ Cut your sausage, feed it to you?
James yawned exaggeratedly. ‘Move, idiot.’ He kicked against Sirius’ duvet-covered foot, shin, thigh—whatever was in reach. ‘You can insult me the whole way down to breakfast.’
‘You’re a nuisance.’
‘Lame,’ James declared, and leapt from the bed. He grinned. ‘Heard better ones from Mum.’
Sirius snorted, watching him. Then, very slowly, he stretched, and hauled himself to his feet.
Remus remembered at once that he’d forgotten something. He quickly grabbed the parchment he’d left on his nightstand the night before.
‘Peter, do you know how to post this?’
‘Oh, yes, there’s an Owlery,’ Peter said quickly. ‘I’m sure we can find it—maybe we could ask one of the prefects to show us. Or one of the Head Students. I don’t know who they are, though. Or—Or Professor McGonagall,’ he added, though he looked as if seriously hoping it wouldn’t come to that. ‘She’d know too.’
Remus blinked. Between James and Peter, he had a feeling he’d need to get used to this kind of early morning cheer. He was usually a man—alright, not a man, a person then—someone—of fewer words.
‘Alright. Thank you, Peter.’
‘You wrote a letter home already?’ said James.
‘Yes,’ said Remus, noticing Peter had pulled in his bottom lip and was chewing on it. ‘They asked me to.’
‘And you do everything your parents say?’
At that moment, the bathroom door opened again and Sirius Black strolled into the room, scowling once more, but dragging James’ attention away from Remus. Remus turned to Peter.
‘Let’s go, shall we, Peter?’
<><>
Even though he wasn’t climbing up a thousand staircases this time, it took Remus and Peter considerably longer to reach the Entrance Hall than it had taken Remus to reach the common room the evening before.
The moving staircases didn’t help—walking downstairs wasn’t enough to be sure you were going the right way. One of them—a narrow one they only stumbled upon after being forced to change direction—kept talking to them in fragments of sentences that were so confusing that Peter stumbled down a few steps, bumping into a suit of armor.
They got lost at least three times before running into Melinda Clarkson, the prefect they’d met the night before. Careful to keep a few steps behind her, they followed until they reached the Entrance Hall, where Lily Evans and her black-haired Slytherin friend were standing near the Great Hall, having an argument.
‘I don’t get why it’s an issue, Sev,’ said Lily. She was looking up at her friend with big, pleading eyes, though her arms were crossed in front of her chest.
Sev—Severus, Remus thought—looked out of place in his too-large robes. He didn’t meet her eyes when he said, ‘I—It’s simply not something people do, Lily.’
‘But why?’
‘I—I don’t know,’ said Severus, but his voice said otherwise. Some complicated emotion had a tight hold on his face. It looked almost as if he were in pain—or suffering from constipation—and his beetle-black eyes darted from the Great Hall back to Lily.
‘Look, we can—we can sit together in class. I think, sometimes, they move classes together.’
‘But you don’t know that,’ said Lily. It wasn’t a question.
‘No,’ Severus admitted reluctantly. ‘Still, you can’t—and I—I can’t sit with you at… Gryffindor table.’
Lily stuck up her chin—a movement that sent her mane of dark red hair swaying over her back.
‘What you mean is, you don’t want to.’ She looked him up and down, drawing her brows together. ‘You’re embarrassed by me.’
The pained expression on Severus’ face shifted to shock. ‘No, Lily, that’s not what I—’
‘Already mourning your sorting, Snivelly?’ James Potter’s voice rang from behind Remus and Peter.
They turned around, and there he was, strutting towards them with Sirius Black trailing only half a step behind.
Peter scrunched up his nose. Remus was relieved to see it—he didn’t get it either. How had James and Sirius managed to get downstairs that quickly? When he and Peter had left, they had been nowhere near ready.
‘I can’t even blame you,’ said James. ‘Would probably have Avada-ed myself by now... Nah, I wouldn’t. But Dark Magic is your sort of thing, isn’t it?’
Behind James, Sirius tensed, his eyes hard as they rested on Severus.
Severus answered with a small but cold smile. ‘That’s pretty bold, considering I heard a tripping jinx is already pushing it for you, Potter. Not that it's much of a surprise—we all know the big-headed ones go to Gryffindor—’
‘Yeah?’ said James. ‘How about—’
‘Nobody asked you for your opinion, Potter,’ snapped Lily.
James shrugged. ‘Suit yourself, Evans,’ he said. ‘Just thought you ought to know his house has a reputation for hating Muggle-borns. Ask him why he doesn’t want you to sit at their table.’ Muttering something under his breath, he shook his head and stumped past her.
‘And what are you two still doing here?’ Lily all but yelled at Remus and Peter. ‘Mind your own business.’
‘Sorry,’ Remus mumbled. He hadn’t even realised he had stopped in his tracks.
He entered the Great Hall—and ran into a wall of noise.
The four tables were already crowded with students and lined with various dishes, goblets, jars and plates. Clattering metal mixed with the buzzing of hundreds of voices.
Remus didn’t realise he had stopped again until Peter was suddenly walking ahead of him, leading the way to a few empty seats near James, Sirius and some of the other first-year Gryffindors—four girls and two more boys.
One of them was named Rebecca, of that Remus was pretty sure. The rest? A mystery, greater even than the disappearance of his brown slipper last year. Contrary to his father’s insistence, he was sure no sheep but his dad himself had been involved—and his mum had definitely been mocking him when, two days later, she’d brought home a used copy of Sherlock Holmes.
Anyway, the slipper was gone (and remained gone), just like the names of Remus’ new classmates.
Remus helped himself to some eggs and grabbed a toast from the toast rack. He was just buttering it when Lily Evans passed them to sit on the other side of the table beside one of the nameless girls. She huffed loudly and glared over at the Slytherin table. Remus followed her eyes to see her friend moving awkwardly along the aisle.
James’ eyes drifted from her to Sirius, shaking his head. ‘Why would you want to be friends with one of them? Insulting your house and all?’ he said, immediately after taking a bite of toast and sprinkling his plate with bits of half-chewed bread.
‘How’s that any different from Sirius insulting you?’
The words were out of Remus’ mouth before he could stop them. But wasn’t it a legitimate question? How was it any different from James insulting Slytherin?
‘It’s different because we’re different,’ said James, as if that were any kind of explanation.
Remus searched for Peter’s eyes, looking for a sign that Peter could make sense of that, but Peter was just staring at his plate.
‘Lupin.’
Remus’ gaze snapped to Sirius, surprised to be directly addressed by him. There was a sharpness to his tone, even in the two syllables that were Remus’ last name.
‘I’m not your mate.’
Remus frowned, finding himself growing slightly annoyed. Sirius kept staring at him—unblinking, gaze as hard as his voice. As if Remus needed to be taught a lesson. As if he had tried being Sirius’ mate and Sirius was drawing the line. It was—he wasn’t sure what it was, but it was definitely patronising.
‘Er—did I say you were?’
Sirius’ response was immediate. ‘You called me Sirius.’
‘Isn’t that your name?’
‘Yes, but—’ Sirius shook his head, rolled his eyes, and seemed to decide that Remus wasn’t worth the effort. ‘Whatever. You’re odd, Lupin.’
Realisation came in the shape of Remus’ stomach tying into knots, pushed along by Sirius’ punctuated ‘Lupin’. Remus was torn between embarrassment and frustration, because he didn’t—and shouldn’t—care what people like James or Sirius thought of him. He glanced at Peter, wondering whether he, too, found him odd, but Peter was smiling a feeble smile at him, and Remus felt a tiny bit better.
Odd was the last thing he needed to be labelled.
Maybe he wasn’t as good at assessing people as he had thought.
Suddenly, a hundred owls streamed into the Great Hall, the flutter of their wings adding to the noise of countless of students.
Across from Remus, his new housemate—a blonde girl—squealed, and Lily Evans, who had been pushing eggs around her plate, looked up.
‘I—what’s happening?’ said the blonde girl.
‘Just the post, Mary,’ said Rebecca. And the blonde girl was Mary, apparently.
Struck by a sudden idea, Remus dropped his fork and pulled out a parchment while repeating ‘Mary—finds owls scary’ in his head like a mantra.
‘They do this every day?’ said Mary, who found owls scary, as the birds began circling the tables, spotting their owners and dropping letters and packages onto laps.
‘What’re you doing?’ Peter had leaned in and was glancing down at Remus’ lap. Remus hesitated a moment, but Peter was alright, so he wrote:
Mary – finds owls scary (blonde hair, blue eyes, freckles.)
Peter’s eyes widened. ‘Good idea,’ he mouthed, nodding quickly.
Remus’ ‘good idea’ attracted more attention than he would have liked. When he folded the parchment and looked up again, he found not only Mary and Rebecca but also James, Sirius and the two other Gryffindor boys staring at him.
‘I wouldn’t know about the Muggles, but we usually keep our clothes on, Lupin,’ said one of the boys—the one who had been rude the previous night. He had brown hair and a long nose, dusted with freckles. ‘No matter Pettigrew’s excitement.’
Remus hadn’t even wrapped his head around whatever the boy was implying when both James and Lily’s voices sliced through the air—Lily’s rising and hot, James’ firm and calm but with a very noticeable edge to it.
‘Why is it you can't help being a git?’
‘Don’t be like that, Jacob.’
The boy—Fawcett (Jacob) Why was it okay for James to use his first name, Remus wondered?—ignored Lily and tilted his head to smile at James. ‘Be like what, Potter?’
‘A tosser,’ said James at once.
Next to James, Sirius had straightened his back and was watching the exchange intently.
Everyone at the Gryffindor table within a five-yard radius fell silent, waiting for the fallout.
It never came. Fawcett scanned James’ face while James glared back at him, oozing such confidence he looked at least five inches taller.
At last, Fawcett broke eye contact and glanced at Sirius, his lips curling slightly.
‘Whatever you say, Potter.’
‘Remus was just scribbling a note,’ said the girl sitting next to Remus—a tall one with wild blonde curls and a pointy nose. ‘Remus, that’s your name, right?’
Fawcett’s lips curled more.
‘It doesn’t matter what he was doing,’ said James. His hands had stilled, halfway through cutting his sausage. He underlined it with a sideways glance at Fawcett that screamed he was looking to pick a fight.
‘It's Remus, yes,’ said Remus quietly, mostly to distract himself.
‘Oh good, I was just guessing,’ said the girl. ‘It’s hard to remember all these new names, isn’t it? Mine’s Alexandra, but I usually go by Al or Aly. Aly, actually, because Al was already taken. My cousin, you know. I’m from Treforest, by the way.’ She lowered her voice. ‘So it’s Aly from the valleys, if you will,’ she added with a glance at Remus’ parchment.
‘Thank you,’ said Remus, but Alexandra—Aly—had already turned to talk to Rebecca again before it had even sunk in that she had apparently read his list to be.
‘What’s our first class?’ she asked, just as Fawcett and the other boy got to their feet.
‘Traffiguation,’ James answered around a mouthful of toast he was chewing with his mouth open.
Peter made a strange sound—a mix between a shriek and a muffled sigh—which caused James to stop chewing. It was a funny sight—James, mouth agape, breakfast threatening to drop to his plate.
‘I’m going to suck at it,’ said Peter.
‘How do you know that?’ said Remus, feeling the knot in his stomach tighten.
‘He doesn’t,’ said Sirius, not even looking at them.
James swallowed with veritable effort. ‘Maybe he’s a seer.’ He gave a wiggle of his eyebrows that caused Sirius to look up and make a strange noise—not quite a snort, but not a laugh either.
Peter immediately brightened up. ‘Prophecies are cool, right? Imagine, knowing what will happen in the future.’
James looked at him as if he had implied he believed in Father Christmas. ‘The prophecy I care about has yet to be made.’ He waved his fork through the air and bits of egg flew off, landing on Mary’s plate.
‘Ew.’
Remus was silently processing the information that such things as prophecies existed, when Sirius said, ‘No idea why they still bother to teach it.’
‘There are famous prophecies that turned out to be true,’ said Rebecca. She shifted in her seat, lowering her piece of toast.
‘That’s why they’re famous,’ said Sirius. ‘If I make a million predictions, some are bound to be true—even the most outrageous. It’s just a matter of chance.’
‘People believe in it—’
‘Exactly,’ said Sirius. ‘People believe in it and start changing their behaviour to fit the prophecy. And then they’re amazed by destiny, even though it was them pushing it. They’re self-fulfilling, that’s all.’
‘Wow, you're fun to be around,’ said Rebecca.
‘Doesn’t it make things real if people believe in them?’ said Mary.
‘Not if Sirius Black says otherwise,’ said Rebecca, with an odd emphasis on Sirius’ last name. Sirius, who had already opened his mouth again, clamped it shut and clenched his jaw, looking away from them.
‘I—I think it would be nice to know what’s waiting for us in the future,’ said Peter, seeming unsure, and even more so when James, yet again, looked as though Peter had just declared he had never heard of Quidditch.
‘Nah. The surprise is half the fun,’ said James.
Remus had to bite down on his lip not to make a sound. To his experience, uncertainty only very rarely meant fun.
Peter nodded hesitantly, contemplating James’ words.
‘It doesn’t matter, does it,’ Sirius muttered. ‘They only offer Divination from third year on anyway.’
Peter shrank a little into himself, even though Sirius wasn’t even looking at him.
‘Isn’t there a mystery you’d like to unravel?’ said James in a dramatic sing-song, nudging Sirius. It was hard to believe they had only met the previous day on the train ride, as James claimed.
‘I wouldn’t mind knowing if I live to see the end of the week,’ said Sirius, voice flat.
James dropped his tone at once. ‘What do you mean?’
Sirius shrugged. ‘Breaking with family tradition,’ he said. ‘Don’t think they’ll send gifts.’
‘But it’s Gryffindor,’ said James, a look of absolute scandal on his face.
Sirius raised his eyebrows at him, and even without understanding the finer details of the conversation Remus understood this look. Exactly.
‘Don’t tell them?’ James rubbed the back of his neck, unconsciously messing up his hair.
‘They’ll know,’ said Sirius. ‘If they don’t already. My cousin’s in Slytherin. And a prefect.’ He clenched his jaw, his eyes drifting over to the Slytherin table.
‘We should head to class if we don’t want to be late,’ said Aly from the valleys, cutting off James’ response.
The reminder of their first ever Transfiguration class seemed to drive Peter back to the edge.
‘Transfiguration is really difficult, isn’t it?’ He turned to Remus as if Remus knew anything about Transfiguration. Or anything. ‘And Professor McGonagall seems to be very strict.’
‘Oh, toughen up, Pettigrew,’ said Sirius, picking at his scrambled eggs and making no move to stand up.
This time, James thankfully swallowed his mouthful of toast before he spoke. ‘We’re Gryffindors, Pettigrew,’ he said as if that settled the matter. ‘Act like it.’
Peter still looked a little insecure but seemed to light up a little at James’ use of ‘we’. Remus thought he was reading too much into it.
‘I don’t know, Peter,’ said Remus. ‘But I’m sure it will be fine.’ It was the first lesson, after all. How much could happen in the first lesson? He got to his feet. ‘Meet you there? I need the loo.’