Hogwarts Express
Remus Lupin stood on platform 9 ¾, with his trunk in one hand and his wand in the other, battered-up shoes on his feet. He was utterly alone and trying to pretend he wasn’t, looking for his friends with a frown on his face. It did nothing to reveal the turmoil within, the excitement of wanting to see them all again, after a long summer alone at his own house.
He caught their smell before he heard them, and long before he actually saw them; James’ characteristic forest smell, which enveloped him even in the middle of any city’s fumes. Peter’s smell of food, somehow always a faint smell of cheese somewhere in there. Sirius’ leathery smell, a mere suggestion of blood and teeth beneath the surface, always intertwined with whatever cologne he’d most recently bought and grown fond of…
James’ roaring laughter shook him out of his daze. Sirius’ quieter, but sharper laugh, followed James’, with Peter’s snide comment under his breath next, making the other two boys burst out laughing again. He turned towards the sound, eager for it, for them. He knew he was greedy for needing them as bad as he did, but James was like the sun, always willing to provide warmth; Sirius was the stars, ever present, always shining; and Peter, his quieter support, the pillar they all always leaned on.
Needless to say, it had been a rough summer break, it was close to the full moon, and both his soul and his bones were weary and aching. His heart, too, but he did his best to ignore that one.
Sirius was the first one to spot him, and he flashed a grin at him that made his stomach squirm and flip around his abdomen. He ignored it dutifully and answered his smile with one of his own. It was small, private, the one he only reserved for Sirius. Of course, the other boy didn’t even notice.
“Oi Moony!” He shouted, running towards him and pausing for a few seconds, looking for his permission. When Remus nodded slightly, he smiled and enveloped him in a tight hug; he wasn’t usually this gentle, normally all but trying to tackle him to the ground in his rush to get to him, but after four years of friendship he’d grown used to knowing when a full moon was near, growing almost attuned to his aches. They all had.
“Hey Pads,” Remus answered, separating from Sirius as James put a hand around his shoulder and Peter patted him briefly on the back. James used his hand to spin him around and he obliged, turning face to face with the spectacled boy who, in lieu of his characteristic smile, was offering him a pout.
“How come you keep getting taller and taller, Moony, sweetie? That’s not fair,” he complained, to which Remus could only give back a bemused smile. He had become completely unfazed to James’ use of endearing nicknames by now, after four years of knowing him, but it still made a part of him soft, the way James was always so adoring of his friends.
Remus was definitely the taller of the lot, but James himself wasn’t so far behind, leaving Sirius and Peter as the shortest ones; Sirius was taller than Peter, though only for a few inches. Remus and James had promised one another to never let him live that down.
“Not my fault you lot are built like leprechauns,” he answered, starting to move towards the train while they tagged along with him. Almost as a reflex, Sirius snatched his hand out and grabbed Remus’ trunk. He let him. He was too tired to argue and, besides, his hip had been giving him trouble for the past few days, so he was thankful for the help, even if he'd never admit as much aloud.
“Oi!” It was Peter who complained this time, and Remus couldn’t help but mess Peter’s hair up with his knuckles, causing the other boy to squeak and move out of his reach, both James and Sirius laughing and immediately trying to do the same, the other students around them giving them dirty looks.
Oh, how Remus had missed them.
They found an empty compartment, near the middle of the train, and claimed it for themselves. Remus sat down, grateful, as the boys slid their trunks on the overhead compartment, and he tried to pay no mind to the way Sirius’ muscles bunched up in his arms while putting not one, but two, on there.
“So, how were things at your house this summer?” Remus asked, once they’d all settled, James and Sirius on one bench, he and Peter on the other. He tried to keep contact during the break, he truly did, but by now his friends knew he was simply whack with owl mail, and he refused to trouble the Potters by going over as often as the other two did. He barely made it there twice, both quite early during the break, and far from the full moon. He’d been happy to spend most of his time baking with his mum, or nose deep in a book, back home; even if he missed the boys, he knew he was probably just intruding in their peaceful summer.
“Um… I spent most of it at the Potter’s, actually” Sirius answered carefully, expression growing distant, eyes unfocused all of a sudden.
“He got into an argument with his mum not three weeks after break began. Nasty business, I reckon, even if he wouldn’t share details. He didn’t go back all summer.” Peter provided in a hushed voice, Remus nodding slightly to show he’d listened.
“Mum was happy to have him, of course. She wouldn’t stop asking about you, Moony, and when you’d come by again.” James supplied quickly, throwing him a warning look that Walburga was not to be discussed as of yet.
Well, a little warning would’ve been nice, at least. There’d been nothing about this in the few letters they’d traded back and forth, in which Sirius spoke about music, about the Potters’ house, Peter’s latest obsession, which turned out to be cheese, everything but the important stuff. Remus understood avoiding your problems better than most, but he couldn’t help but feel a bit left out. Yes, he knew it was his own doing, but still. James and Peter usually wrote less to him, used to his more prolonged silences, but Sirius could get away with writing almost as much as he wanted. Remus always did his very best to answer him.
He was pathetic, but he’d known that for years.
“Anyways, I cannot wait to see who the hell Dumbledore decided to put as prefects this year,” Peter announced, clearly trying to change the subject. He was usually the one most attuned to finding outs to their uncomfortable silences.
“About that…” Remus began, only to be interrupted by James’ much louder voice.
“Of course it’s Evans, Pete. That’s not hard to figure out, you know?” He had his dreamy voice on, which meant that there was no turning back; the full Lovey Dovey James was out, as Remus called this state of James’ in his mind, and now he’d go on and on about her for almost the entire ride to the school.
Sirius groaned and sat back, running a hand through his hair. Was it longer than before? Remus felt that it was. Before break, it had been barely touching his ears, and now it cascaded past them, the ends framing his face in a lovely way, down to his neck. His arms were also decidedly bigger, the way his shirt hugged his new figure truly criminal. Had he been working out more than usual? If so, what on Merlin’s Beard was he doing besides Quidditch? What had Mrs. Potter fed him all summer? It should be a crime, looking like he did, a cross between a model and a Greek statue.
“… right Remus?” Remus was yanked out of his daydreaming by Sirius’ voice, whose grey eyes were intently looking at him.
“Sorry, what?” Sirius looked decidedly offended at that, so he quickly added “Sorry, it’s just that I zoned out the second he mentioned Evans. I do not need to hear that speech from James again.”
Sirius laughed wholeheartedly at that, followed by Peter. It was James’ turn to look offended. Crisis averted, Remus thought, now pointedly looking at James to avoid getting lost in his head again.
“Well, you just proved my point, Moony. I was complaining that all I heard about this summer was ‘Evans this, Evans that’ and that not even you needed to listen to James talk about her again.”
“I’m not that lovesick, you know,” James said quietly, to which they all shared glances.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, mate,” Peter quipped. Remus suppressed a snort and Sirius fully laughed at that, leaving James to look at them even more offended than before.
“Sometimes I don’t know why I put up with you lot,” he said. Sirius put his hand around his shoulders.
“Because you love us, Prongsie,” he said, and finally James smiled again.
“Well, I guess you’re right, boo.” James retorted, only half-jokingly.
“Glad we’re on the same page about that. Now, Moony, you were saying?” Remus turned to face Sirius, who has asked the question, his arm still looped through James’ shoulders, sprawled out on the seat, a small smile on his lips.
This year’s gonna be the death of me, he decided. “What?” He asked dumbly.
“Before Potter’s head here sidetracked us from the Prefect question, you were going to say something. Weren’t you?” It was usually Sirius who noticed whenever he’d been about to say something, only to be sidetracked by any of the others. He always made sure they circled back to Remus’ point, by the end of it. The others did it often, too, accustomed to him always starting his points quieter than the rest of them, sometimes getting talked over. But it was Sirius who noticed it the most.
Remus tried to not let it get to his head. It was what friends did, wasn’t it? “Ah, yes. That.” He grimaced. They weren’t going to like it. “Well, turns out the Prefect this year’s actually…”
“Remus!” Their compartment door opened, and a head full of red hair and freckles poked through it. “We have to go now if we don’t want to be late for the meetings.”
“Coming” he muttered, stretching his back and beginning to stand up.
“Hello, Lily,” James said, a lopsided grin plastered on his face, his eyes dreamy. Remus rolled his eyes.
“Potter” she answered. Not entirely unkind, that wasn’t Lily’s style, just… clipped. Could James truly not see how uncomfortable he made her?
“Wait, does that mean… oh, Moony, you’re a traitor.” It was Peter who said it, who first joined the dots. He wasn’t given much credit, most of the time, but he was also smart in his own way.
It was Sirius who realized it next. “You? You’re the Prefect? Oh, this has got to be some sort of joke. You’re the mastermind behind most of our pranks!”
“Me?” Remus asked, putting his hand on his chest, and doing his best to not limp towards Lily. “But I’m such a good student.”
This, finally, broke through James’ haze. “Oh, they got that one so wrong. I can’t believe they’ve been this fooled by you.”
The others continued arguing between them, as Remus got out of the cart and stared at Lily, properly, for the first time. She was looking up at him, doing her best to seem unfazed, but he could see it. Her green eyes were red-rimmed and a little puffy, her cheeks more blushed than usual, her usually meticulously kept waves now a wild mess.
Yeah, she had been crying.
“Petunia again?” He asked simply, as they started walking towards the back of the train, to meet with the rest of the Prefects. She sighed and looped her arm through his.
“Yeah, she’s being… hard on me again. I don’t like the influence of her new boyfriend either.”
Remus nodded. He didn’t exactly understand all that was going on at Lily’s house, but it seemed to help her, talking about it. And so, he listened.
He’d been listening since the beginning of last year, their fourth, when his friends had gotten awfully secretive and excluded him from many a meeting they seemed to have. This had weighed on Remus intensely, terrified that they had finally gotten tired of him, that they were going to move on from him, cast him out. He’d started spending a lot of evenings in the Common Room, avoiding the chitchat of the others, and that’s where he’d found Lily. She was also avoiding her room, for reasons she wouldn’t disclose to him, and what had started as merely sharing a space had bloomed into an actual close friendship that had continued even after things had settled down with the other Marauders.
Yes, James had tried to use it to his advantage. Remus had refused to do that to her.
“Anyways, I don’t actually feel like talking about it, or I’ll cry, again. So, how was your summer?” she smiled teasingly at him.
He pretended not to notice. “It was fine. Spent most of it back at mine, you know how it is. With my mum.”
“Yes, I know that. That’s literally all you’d say through your mail, which is concerning on so many levels I can’t even begin to describe. ‘Yeah, just me and my mum here, Lils’,” she unhooked her arm from his to properly do air quotations with her fingers, projecting her voice an octave lower to make a truly hideous impression of his. “‘Yeah Lils, we’ve been cooking, and doing the dishes, and I’ve read so many books I might literally become one.’”
“Careful there, Evans” he said drily, but she just chuckled and looked at him fondly.
“Yeah, okay whatever. But I mean it, Remus, how were things with-”
“Lily.” A voice came from behind them there and, for just one second, he was thankful for Severus Snapes’ existence.
It was just a second, though. Seeing Lily’s smile fade from her face brought the revulsion back at once.
“Oh, so now we’re speaking again? After you ignoring me all summer long, Sev? Don’t think so.” She continued walking, not even turning to see him, but Remus did. He would see Severus’ stricken expression for a mere second, quickly wiped clean. He dedicated Remus a mocking glare, and then turned right on his heels, and left.
They managed to get to their meeting on time, and Lily never got around to asking her question.
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When he met the rest of the Marauders, after doing rounds around the train with an older Hufflepuff girl he’d never spoken to in his life (honestly, who decided to pair them randomly for ‘inter-house unity’? That was never to work, anyway), they had already gotten off the train and carried his luggage onto one of the carriages. They had, miraculously, gotten one carriage just for themselves. They were joking around a bag of Bertie Botts’ beans, Sirius grinning like a maniac and James laughing innocently as Peter gagged and chugged water from a paper cup that seemed to have appeared from nowhere.
“Everyone, if you will please stand up for our new Prefect!” James announced the second he entered the carriage, right as it started moving. In spite of that, they all stood up in unison, and James went as far as making a mock vow at him.
“I knew you’d make a big deal out of it” he sighed, crossing his arms and looking as they all followed James’ lead and vowed at him too. Sirius’ hair framed his face beautifully while doing so, vowing so gracefully compared to the other too, one hand in his chest and the other one out by his side.
“Of course we’re making a big deal out of it, Moony. You’re now our man on the inside! Oh, you’re so getting us out of trouble now” Sirius grinned, straightening, the smile on his face truly criminal. Remus wanted to bite it.
Instead, he rolled his eyes and sat down. “Like hell I am, Pads. I don’t want McGonagall to be more vigilant on us than usual, and that means playing a double game-” he said, snatching the bag of sweets from Peter’s hands, his hand going into it to take one and pop it in his mouth when a hand snatched them away from him. “Oi!”
Sirius chucked and dangled the bag in front of Remus’ eyes. “You didn’t even ask for permission, Moons. These are Peter’s, you know?” Remus did his best to focus on the words Sirius was saying, trying to find the meaning behind them. He’d said all of it so intently, something he barely did; Sirius was the kind of person to talk first, think second.
And then it clicked, and Remus smiled.
“Ah, my bad, you’re so right. All yours, Wormy.” In any other circumstance, Peter would’ve probably noticed how the other three seemed to be barely holding in their laughter, and deciphered there was something wrong with the beans. However, he was clearly hungry, and a hungry Peter had always meant a barely-thinking-about-anything-but-food Peter.
So, he simply snatched back the bag of beans and put another one in his mouth, chewing once or twice before spitting it out, coughing and sitting down again. “I don’t know what’s wrong with that godforsaken bag, but all the flavors are fucking terrible!”
James and Sirius, who had still been standing, collapsed into each other’s arms, laughing, while Peter seemed to figure them out and started lecturing them both.
Sirius turned to look at Remus for a second, and he took his chance. “Had a nice summer, Pads?” he asked, trying to sound neutral, even though he was worried about the other boy.
Sirius just smiled and passed a hand around his shoulders. “Yes, Moony, the best,” he said, and if his smile was a little forced and didn’t quite reach his eyes, Remus ignored it. Or did his best to. “My uncle actually sent over some muggle records, maybe we could go through them together?” It didn’t escape his notice how Sirius shifted the conversation away from what he’d wanted to know, instead focusing on a topic that wasn’t as rocky as the one before.
“Yeah, Pads, sure,” he said, and he was rewarded with a smile from Sirius that was much more authentic.
It feels so good to be back home, Remus thought. Yes, he loved his mum, and his dad was a pleasant person to be around (whenever he was actually home and not working himself to death in the Ministry), but she kept getting sicker and sicker (something no one in Hogwarts knew -he refused to burden any of them with it) and there was nothing he could do about it, so being back at his place felt like he was suffocating. The Marauders, though? They were a breath of fresh air in the middle of it all.
So yeah, he was home. And if he was more than happy to see a certain raven-haired boy who made his heart beat faster, well, could anyone truly blame him?