The Final Task
Remus had a long night. It had been rough, very fucking rough.
It was the night before the last full moon of the school year, and he was not ready to leave Madame Pomfrey so soon, it wasn't even the full moon yet and he was already hurting, he could feel it in his bones that this was going to be a bad one. His head wouldn't stop pounding and his muscles felt tense since he woke up.
Worse part is they still had to attend classes, he was a day away from transforming, too. The other schools' students also have to attend classes. If Remus and the lads were older, he guessed they would've probably been mingling with the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang boys. But they were all much older and very uninterested in whatever these twelve-year-old kids had to socially offer. It was almost relieving, if not for the constant pain Remus was in, to be able to not socialize.
James and Peter were smart, but they had the bad habit of trusting people's word. They had noticed he was in a shit mood since early, more pointedly when he growled at Flitwick for assigning a reading on levitation charms. But they let it go once he told them it was a growing migraine, that he'd go to Madame Pomfrey later and didn't want to have to catch up later and that was it for them. Sirius on the other hand, was an observant person, much to Remus' annoyance. He didn't say anything about it, Sirius just kept on looking at him with those blue eyes of him.
To some of his comfort, unexpectedly, he would be back up again from the transformation in time for the third and final task. He had never before been excited for anything resembling a sport, but the triwizard tournament had him on the edge of his seat just like the rest of the schools.
It wasn't until potions that Remus decided to book it. He had been paired up with Mary since they came back from winter break, and it was... painfully loud, to work with her. Remus wasn't fond of it. Mary was alright, funny even, she was the only one who could keep up when Sirius started babbling about people and name-dropping at dinner. But being paired up with her was not fun, not funny, not mildly amusing at all. It was hard enough to draw what Slughorn had said from memory without Mary commenting on everyone around them. Remus felt twitchy.
Snivellus was paired with Mulciber, and was suffering from trying to keep himself from hurling insults to the gorilla of a boy that was trying to be helpful and achieving nothing of the sort. A fistful from him would throw off the whole potion Snivellus was being so picky about. Nothing soothed Remus quite like that annoyed look in Snivellus' face.
Lily and Alexander were ahead of Remus and Mary. Halfway through with the instructions already.
Sirius and James weren't quite ahead of himself and Mary, by a long shot. Sirius waltzed himself towards Remus. "You can't copy off a potion." He told the Black boy.
"This was merely a social visit Remus, what are you on about?" Remus rolled his eyes.
"What do you want then?"
"You won't get my notes either, Black." Lily covered the notes she was preparing from with her arms.
"Everyone here thinks I'm just an opportunistic bastard?" Sirius feigned offense, trying to peek at Remus' non-existant notes.
"Just an opportunistic boy." Mary replied. "The other table's the ones that think bastard." She gestured to Snivellus who was rubbing his temple with a pair of strained fingers looking at Mulciber not knowing how to properly use scales.
"My dearest Alexander," The slytherin boy's eyes drifted slowly from his current novel to Sirius' own.
"So quick to sleep with the enemy?" Alexander deadpanned.
Sirius draped himself on his shoulders, "oh but, you're so smart I can't fathom to imagine you couldn't help." He sighed.
He wouldn't be acting so cocky if they knew he accidentally hexed himself in the morning. His legs are both coloured violet. Alexander snort laughed.
Remus felt his cheeks burning up.
"So you'll help?" Sirius grinned at Alexander.
"Lily's the one running this show." He answered.
Remus stood up and marched himself to professor Slughorn. He felt dizzy, he was trying to no think about it. About that. No. Couldn't.
"I'm feeling sick." Remus told the professor. "I should go to Madame Pomfrey."
"Oh, you do look like you're running some sort of fever." Slughorn looked at him like he was an ingredient in a jar and he wasn't sure what the content was. "Mr..." Slughorn looked around the classroom, "Mrs. Evans." He called. The four people arguing over not helping Sirius drew their attention to the professor. "Walk Mr. Lupin to the infirmary. You seem to be doing well, I'm sure Mr. Wilde will be able to manage by himself while you're out."
As she walked towards the door with Remus, he caught Sirius copying her notes. Alexander looked at them all their way out.
...
Remus woke up.
Pomfrey had told him already that his transformations would get more and more painful as puberty started. And she was right. Remus could barely move. All his bones felt like they didn't get back to the right place, as he tried to move he felt some pops and cracks. He could move, though, that was a silver lining. He felt dizzy while doing so, but he moved. A few new scars, but nothing to big, nothing too noticeable.
He was allowed to go out of the infirmary after dinner, having spent all day on pain and sleeping draughts the magical nurse had prepared him.
James, Peter and Sirius were already down for the night, thankfully.
Or so Remus thought.
"You're alright?" Sirius was a light sleeper, something Remus should have in mind now.
"Mhmm," Remus said, staring out the window, Sirius drifted over to the windowsill between their beds.
"The year's almost over," Sirius said, "I'm not looking forward to that."
"There's the last task left, at least."
"I really hope Cissy looses. I couldn't possibly survive a summer of her rubbing it off everywhere." Sirius scoffed.
"It's just a few months." Remus said, and you'd still have magic.
...
The sun grew hotter every day as summer started to grow closer. Remus sweaters were buried in his trunks, Sirius and James took to loosening their ties too much and opening the first three button on their shirt like a pair of proper pricks they were. Peter attempted it once, before seeing what an awful look it was when you lacked the confidence and non-chalance of Sirius and James.
McGonagall's classroom was the worse this close to the summer, the big windows that sat behind her desk had one of the best views in the castle--according to James--because it had a perfect view of the quidditch pitch and the flying grounds. This meant that McGonagall refused to open them if there was anyone practising. The Durmstrang boys had drills early in the morning, and the Beauxbatons quidditch players enjoyed taking to their brooms any free time they had, which coincided with the first year's Griffindor's transfiguration lessons. Remus kept flapping his shirt like a makeshift fan during the exam, refusing to go practically half-naked like Sirius and James.
To top it off, McGonagall decided half their grade depended on the theory exam in front of him. Remus was good at transfiguration, not as good as Lily, but theory hadn't been his strong point every. He wasn't sure if he was sweating from nerves or if the heat was just getting to him. Lily was going off in the exam, he could see her run out of ink. Even James seemed to be having a hard time keeping up the pace with her, and he was the best of the four in transfiguration. Remus just didn't get how you could go off that long about the differences of transfigurating living and non-living things.
Thankfully the practical part of the exam was easier, he was quick on his feet like that. He turned the beetle into a pepper shaker in his second try. Sirius tried to show off with a pepper engraved with beetles, but he had to do it twice because the first one kept shaking on its own. Pete's had wings, but McGonagall saw it in her heart to give him a passing note.
Potions was an odd sight, Alexander went at the exact same pace as Lily, they must have been sync'ed up from working together all year long. Still, Snivellus was the first to finish brewing his wart removal vial first.
Remus was happy with himself, he got the wart removal vial done before Sirius and James, who talented as they were, kept goofing off all the year because it didn't come to them as naturally as every other class did.
...
Exams were done, the sun was up, the year was drawing to an end, but there was one big day left: the the final challenge.
Trumpets blasted and banner flew around the field for the last task of the triwizard tournament: The Enchanted Gauntlet, a field designed to try the three competitors in every way. Every student sat in bleached next to their chosen banners--Sirius sported the Beauxbaton colours in his face and managed to get Remus to use a Beauxbaton sweater, he didn't ask where he got it.
The three headmasters stood in a podium above the champions, currently being interviews by Daisy Pips, the woman with the squeakiest voice on earth.
"Can't believe it's the last challenge!" James had been screaming since they woke up, actually, he'd been the reason they woke up, him and his screaming.
Dumbledore cut them all short, "Silence!" His voice rung through the fields, everyone's eyes fell on them, a silent tension waiting to break out as soon as the competition started. The reporter took a step back and the champions looked at the french headmistress stepping forward.
"Champions!" Headmistress Girault said in a thick french accent, "It is time for your final task." She looked down at them, three paths extended forward before them. "This last challenge will test you in every possible way, your skill, your strength and your smarts. Only the mightiest of all champions may get to the triwizard cup first. Remember now, Champions, anyone who wishes to be rescued from the gauntlet may shot a red flare into the sky." She said that with such contempt, Remus would've rather died than asked her for help. "Without anything else to add. Let the final task..." she swished her wand forward, a veil crystallized before the entrance of each of the challengers, "... begin!"
Victoire was the first one to go, she was the victor of the second task, she picked the entrance in front of her, the veil Girault crystallized was a complicated wave of barriers and protections spells, that's what Lily said behind Remus, that it was one of the things that made Girault such a great witch, her ability to weave spells together like it was nothing. The french champion seemed somewhat familiar with it, she started dismantling them with precision, slowly but surely.
Narcissa was next, she took the entrance in front of Wolfgang and started dismantling the spells like Victoire without a second thought, though admittedly, she was better at making spells than unmaking them.
Last was Wolfgang, who took the remaining entrance into the field, unlike the witches before him, he decided to blast the barrier with a bombarda charm, a large crack formed in the glassy light of the barrier. The crowd gasped. Remus saw, Headmistress Kitzler shook her head discreetly, as if she were expecting that to happen and the other teachers hadn't believed her.
Another spell hit his barrier, the crack deepened, expanded like a broken window. One more bombarda and it was down.
Wolfgang rushed headfirst inside on the field, a hallway covered in thousands of spiderwebs.
Victoire was next inside, and hesitantly stepped among the webs inside the hallway.
Narcissa was last, not too long after Victoire, she held her wand straight up and forward. Ready for danger.
"Now we just wait?" Remus asked. They couldn't see the through the spiderwebs inside the fields.
"Maybe try to picture it in your mind," Sirius teased him. "They're supposed to be facing a giant acromantula, and then they said the cup is down in a hydra nest."
"There's no way all of this is legal," Lily sounded exasperated behind them, "you shouldn't be able to get a hydra in a school competition. It's one of the most dangerous subspecies of dragon. Surely someone will get harmed."
"That's part of the fun Evans!" James said, ecstatic, "imagine facing a hydra! The thrill! The glory!"
"Thank Merlin you weren't chosen." Sirius laughed, "you would've been hydra chow if you ever managed to get through the spiders."
"I could've faced off the spiders!" James seemed profusely offended about the doubts in his skills, something no one back at his home ever did, surely, Remus thought.
"You can't even kill a normal spider, mate." Sirius said.
"Neither can you," James countered.
"Pete's the only one who kills spiders in our room." Remus whispered in Lily's ear and she chuckled a little.
Minutes started passing and people started to get nervous, edging their seats waiting for the champions while the sound of spells echoed from the entrances to the field. Remus saw Serena climb down to where the entrances were. Bellatrix was waiting down for Narcissa as well, and a pair of girls from Beauxbatons Remus didn't know were surely waiting for Victoire down there as well.
The spells stopped. It was a quick silence that took over the entire space.
"Who do you think won?" Whispered Peter for anyone to answer. Remus wasn't paying him much mind, he could only see how eyes widened from the center seats where the friends and family of the champions waited.
"The winner of the triwizard tournament is..." Professor Dumbledore announced as the slow steps grew closer, a dragging nose and heavy panting revealed "...Wolfgang Wagner!"
He came out of the field, the trophy and his wand on one hand, while the other dragged the scorched head of a hydra behind himself. He was battered and bruised, and stood with his head up high.
Bellatrix groaned in disgust and turned her eyes around as the boys from Durmstrang chanted in victory. A military march that engulfed the entire space.
Serena's shoulders let go, she didn't run to him or anything, but her shoulders weren't tense anymore.
Narcissa and Victoire were both out a moment later, covered in spiderwebs and dust.
Headmistress Kitzler stood by his side and raised the cup with him, a snap of Daisy Pip's camera man, and the tournament was over with the slow dying of the cheer.
...
"I still can't believe he won." James said, "he wasn't..." James closed the trunk, their last day felt like it came out of nowhere.
"I can't believe he took that long to get the lead," Sirius said, sitting on top of his bed, hoping his trunk would order itself in the next ten minutes before they had to rush through the train, "if he single-handedly cut off the head of a hydra... I'd say Peter's right to be scared of Serena Wagner." Peter went fully pale.
"The other tests took skill and smarts," Remus said, not realizing how back-handed that sounded until the other boys started snickering.
"What I can't believe," Sirius imitated James--he's not good at imitations, "is that I won't be seeing you all for two months."
"Don't go and start getting emotional on us," James said, "there's a few minutes left, and we've got the train ride as well!"
"Not to mention the next six years of school." Remus said.
"Hopefully after that too," Peter said.
"Pete's right, we're going to be Marauders forever, lads!" James climbed on top of Sirius, messing up his hair. Peter joined them, in their faux wrestling match, the three started laughing. Remus sighed from afar before Sirius fished his arm and pulled him into the match.
The room was filled with laughter. Remus couldn't believe he heard his own laugh in the mix, he was hoping they were right. He hoped the Marauders would live on forever.