Chapter One

His head was throbbing, painfully similar to one of his many migraine episodes. It was always the left side of his head, as if somebody found it amusing to poke his brain with a million incredibly sharp needles. It was only a matter of time before it spread to his eyes, ears; every possible organ really. To be completely honest, he wasn’t fucking having it.

Usually he would’ve hauled out of bed to close the blinds, maybe grab a handful of the pills kept in the bathroom cabinet if his mum wasn’t around to fuss about it. She always worried far too much for her own good, but after a while you grow tired of explaining that Ibuprofen isn’t actually addictive. If it were up to him he’d settle for a spliff, if it weren’t for his mother’s bloodhound sense of smell. Either way his usual routine wasn’t even up for debate, because this was clearly not his bed. His bed was a lousy piece of wooden frame that he’d had since his eleventh birthday, it had a lumpy mattress (which he was actually quite fond of) and stacks upon stacks of books piling at the foot of it. One might argue that a sixteen year old ought to have a proper bed, especially if that sixteen year old was well over 180cm tall, but sometimes you simply have to prioritise food over a fancy bed. He was confused, to say the least. He wasn’t sure if it was the cloud soft pillows, maybe the sun shining bright through the windows (over his dead body), or perhaps the insufferable chattering around him. 

Trying his hardest not to throw the pillow underneath his head in the direction of the voices, he started to eavesdrop. “Are you sure? He doesn’t really seem like one of them…” To his surprise the person, somewhere close to him, was speaking perfect RP. Normally he would have laughed at the posh language, but right now it felt like home.

Someone with a voice like honey gave out a low hum, giving him goosebumps. “Definitely not Apollos… Look at that frown!” Just that was enough to make him want to retaliate, make fun of the even more posh accent. Jesus Christ, where had he been kidnapped? Buckingham Palace? But what followed closely after made him blush to the extent that he had to turn his head away from the stranger voices. “He’s got the looks for it though, don’t you reckon? Quite the looker.”

The other boy, he had decided there were two of them, gave a hearty laugh. He hated to admit it, but if he were to hear that laugh every day his migraines might not have been as big of a problem. “Oh you harlot!” 

The two friends continued to joke around, no longer on his expense and soon he drifted back to a dreamless slumber. It was pleasant, not having any anxiety ridden thoughts through the night (or day) for the first time in many, many years. He knew he ought to be worried about his whereabouts, but to be honest he hadn’t felt this safe in his entire life. One can’t resist an opportunity that grants unbothered sleep. Unbothered until the room filled with the sound of hooves, that is. You’ve got to be bloody joking? A horse? He thought. A horse, of course, why not. After waking up in a strange bed and being suspected of being the son of a Greek myth he just assumed this was just a figment of his dream. That was it, a really strange dream. That was until he heard it speak.

“Mr Black, Mr Potter, how is our patient doing?” The clop-eti-clop of the hooves just moved closer and closer to his bed, he did not move an inch.

“Sleeping like a baby, professor! I healed his wounds, they were rather gruesome if I’m being honest. Now I’m just waiting for him to wake up.” The one with the laugh answered with pride. It was clear he took the job as his own personal nurse very seriously. 

The horse gave out a thoughtful ‘hm’ before speaking again. “And you, Mr Black, have made yourself useful I hope?”

Mr Black, or Mr Honey, answered with glee in his voice. He could’ve sworn he felt that smile through the closed eyelids. “Of course Minnie! I have kept James spirits up through all of this, can’t you see how devastated he is?” 

She gave Black a very dignified response, starting with a sigh. “Mr Black, I must ask you to refrain from giving me one of your preposterous nicknames. I hope you haven’t been in the infirmary based on the sole purpose that he might be one of… well.”

“Of course not! Why would I want to know if this young man might be a child of the Big Three? Absolutely ridiculous.” A short pause silenced the room, which a slap broke shortly after. Either it was Black himself who’d slapped his hand over his face, or this school had some very conservative ways of punishing their students for cheek. “Shite, I wasn’t supposed to know that, was I?”

The horse-professor-lady let out yet another sigh. “No, Mr Black, you were not.”

At this point in time he had decided that enough was enough, there was a limit to how strange a dream could be; and this was it. He didn’t make a secret out of it, none of the low mumbling or tossing in his bed to signal he was waking up. No, today he shot right up from bed and asked: “What the actual fuck is going on?”

*

All of them had turned their heads toward him at once. To his absolute horror, the horse was not a horse. No, it was a stern looking woman from the waist up and the rest… well, horse. Just as he had thought, there were two boys in the room with him. Really there were more people in the room, but by his bed. The taller one, still a good head shorter than himself, had tan skin and a round pair of glasses resting on the bridge of his nose. He had thick, black hair that was in need of a brushing and acne scars evenly spread across his cheeks. Was he the one with the Honey voice or the belly laugh? After further inspection he noticed the medical bag on his shoulder and concluded that this was Mr Potter. Then the second one had to be… oh. 

The second boy, Black, was not something that he had been prepared for even in a dream. He had Black hair that fell just above his shoulders in loose waves, skin so fair it almost seemed translucent and donned an incredibly cool leather jacket. It wasn’t fair that the boy looked like that and sounded like a bloody porn star. All of a sudden the boy smiled at him, crooked with the teeth of a Hollywood star and held out his hand. He could’ve sworn he forgot to breathe for a split second. 

“Hey mate! Sirius Black, pleasure to talk to you while you’re awake.” Sirius’s hand was ridiculously soft, as if he hadn’t worked a day in his life, and sent a shiver through his entire body. If it was caused by the young man himself or the coolness of his skin, he wasn’t entirely sure of.

Before answering he swallowed and cleared his throat. It would be embarrassing to have his voice crack right about now, wouldn’t it? “Remus. Thanks, I suppose…” Remus wanted to give himself a pat on the shoulder for the introduction he so bravely delivered, though he could’ve been less of a fucking idiot while doing it. 

Thankfully Sirius didn’t seem to notice and eagerly shook his hand. “Brilliant, this here is my best friend, soulmate and lover James Potter!” Oh well, Remus thought, might as well get over him about right now. 

James gave a light chuckle from somewhere on the floor, where he had started to rummage through the medical bag, and answered Sirius’s previous statement. “Oh don’t listen to him, we’re not lovers. That would be like… incest or something.” Remus didn’t answer, trying to think of something to say to that, but he didn’t have the time to before James quickly started to explain. “Wait, not actual incest! We’re just close, like brother’s. I promise you-”

Before James had any more time to continue his nervous tangent, which Remus suspected could last for a good while, he made the decision to simply cut him off. Rather rude if you think about it, but Remus had questions that had to be answered. “Right’o Jamie, got it, you’re not shagging your brother. Lovely, splendid, absolutely fabulous.” To his delight the answer had coaxed a laugh out of Sirius, something Remus now was strangely proud of. Before he let his mind wander again he resumed talking, which he was absurdly unbothered by with the up and coming migraine in mind. “First of all, what are you?” His mum had taught him it was rude to point, but it was impossible to not point at the half-horse, half-woman in front of him.

She gave him a small smile, barely noticeable, and stepped a bit closer. Remus made sure to not show how freaked out he actually was, he had read somewhere that horses could smell fear and he did not feel like being kicked in his face today. She didn’t seem to notice the concentration stiffing up his facial expressions and started to talk to him in a calm tone, as if he was a half-horse. “Mr Lupin,” Great, he thought to himself, she knows my name “my name is Minerva McGonagall, or perhaps I should present myself as Professor McGonagall as you are now my student… Semantics. I am, as you can see, a Centaur.” The three of them gave Remus a long, excruciating look while waiting for his answer.

“A Centaur? Are you taking the piss?” Remus was being about as serious as he could be, but the boys he had just gotten to know were having a hard time containing their laughs behind hands. He wouldn’t have it, no matter how posh and proper they were. “And what are you two knobs laughing at? You mean to tell me this is normal? There’s a bloody Centaur in front of me!”

To his demise, Remus’s outburst only made the two friends laugh even harder. James was the first one to collect himself enough to catch his breath. “Oh believe us, we do know a Centaur is in front of you! Christ, I’ve never witnessed anyone cussing at McGonagall without being cursed right back.” 

Oh for fucks sake, Remus couldn’t take even more of this tomfoolery before he had his morning cigarette. And it wasn’t even morning. “A curse? She gon’ turn me into a toad?”

This time it was Sirius' turn to absolutely bark with laughter. Remus nearly couldn’t make out the words he was practically screaming across the infirmary. “Oh Christ! Watch your mouth mate or she bloody might!”

At this point it wasn’t even a possibility in Remus’s calculations that this was an honest situation, it had to be some type of social experiment, right? Something in the likes of;

KIDNAPPING YOUNG LAD IN NEW YORK CITY

BELIEVES HIS PROFESSOR IS A CENTAUR 

ONLY £3.99!!!

“He looked at us as if we were crazy! Christ, you should’ve seen his face, priceless. James even fooled him into thinking we were incestual lovers, absolutely brilliant!” - Sirius Black, Amateur Actor

“I felt bad at first, but then he started cussing McGonagall out and I couldn't help but break character. It was hilarious really, honest to God I have never seen anything funnier in my life.” - James Potter, Acting Student at NYU

No, he was not going to let that happen. He could only imagine how the lads at school would mock him when he came back, as if it weren’t enough that he was a brooding British teenager in New York already. “This shit isn’t funny? I’m seriously about to go ballistic on all of you, I’m having a migraine and now some old lady with horse prosthetics is trying to convince me she’s a Centaur!”

That seemed to put James out of his comedic misery, the boy instantly sobered up and went right back down to the floor to continue the search in the mysterious medical bag. “Actually, mate…”

“Not your mate.” 

James looked up at him with a disappointment in his eyes that made Remus almost, just almost, regret his words. “Right, Remus then?” He gave James a court nod, trying to telepathically apologise for being a dick (without any success). “Remus, you don’t actually have a migraine.”

Remus arched one of his eyebrows and gave James a pointed look. “Oh right, because you’re an actual nurse who would know?” He bit his tongue, actually regretting the harsh wording this time around. 

Sirius had turned quiet during his and James’s short conversation and was not very happy about Remus’s attitude, something he cleared up for him soon enough. “Hey Lupin! Who do you think you are talking to my mate like that?”

Oh, Remus thought again, shut the fuck up. The ever lingering charm of Sirius Black wasn’t so charming anymore, after deciding this whole day was some big prank, Remus had also come to the conclusion that Sirius Black's accent was one of the most frustrating ones he had ever been bestowed upon. “Up yours, Lizzie.” 

Remus had thought this was an absolutely smashing comeback, hilarious really. If someone had told him the same he might have even laughed, but it was clear that he and Sirius Black were not the same. He turned his head in a way that reminded Remus of a rabid bunny, a thought that almost made him burst out in laughter, and started spitting his words right out. “WHAT THE FU-”

He didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence before McGonagall finished it up for him; “MISTER BLACK! Calm yourself, must I remind you how you first behaved when you arrived?” She certainly had the tone of a teacher, strict and clear but somehow not spiteful. She did not tell Remus to calm down nor did she laugh like the two teenagers before him, what she showcased was honest compassion and understanding. She knew he did not want to be here, and somehow Remus knew that if it were up to her he wouldn’t be. 

“But Professor!”

“No. I understand you are upset about how Remus has been speaking to James, he shall apologise for it later. You have my word. However it is of utmost importance that we make the transition for Mr Lupin as smooth as possible.” Sirius just gave her a short nod, clearly still upset. Remus let a smile creep upon his lips, enjoying his first ever time being the teachers preference. That illusion only lasted for about two seconds before Professor McGonagall turned to him with the same stern look on her face. “Mr Lupin, I understand that this must all be very confusing, will you let me explain it to you? Properly this time.” 

Remus took a look around the room, expecting a camera crew bursting through at any given moment, but nothing happened. The only thing in his line of view were hospital beds neatly lined up by the walls, kids with broken bones or open wounds sound asleep all around him. None of the boys seemed amused now, but looked at him with rather regretful expressions, or at least James did. Perhaps it did seem absolutely insane to have an actual, real life Centaur standing in front of him; but in retrospect it was not the oddest of things he had ever had the pleasure of experiencing. So, he was willing to give McGonagall an honest chance to explain it all to him. 

“Please do, Professor.”