Chapter 9
One Friday night in May, Sirius, James, and Peter sat in the common room with most of Gryffindor Tower huddled around dying fires and cluttered desks. Everyone was up studying. Excluding fifth and seventh years who were most likely studying in the library since they had their OWLs and NEWTs coming up. Even James had taken to studying sometimes, as exams loomed closer. Sirius had his books out, but couldn’t stop reading the same sentence over and over again without registering any of it or something everyday like a scratch on the table catching his attention.
“Does anyone know where Remus is?” Peter asked, absentmindedly.
“Ooh that’s an interesting topic, let’s talk about that,” Sirius clung to it, hating the silence covering the three of them as they revised.
Neither of them said anything, so Sirius continued,
“I, for one, think we should look into this more closely. Treat these disappearances seriously,”
“What do you mean? He just goes off to visit his mum once in a while,” Peter said, lowering his book to glance at Sirius.
“Alright, maybe I’m not the expert, but that often?” Sirius shrugged.
“She’s ill, Sirius!” Peter reprimanded. Sirius put his hands up in surrender.
“I dunno, just-,what if she’s not?” he said.
“So you’re saying Remus is lying?” Peter accused.
“I mean, it is becoming suspicious, don’t you think?” James offered, hesitantly.
“James!” Peter exclaimed, “He’s probably just at the library.”
Sirius needed the out from studying, so he stood up.
“Where are you going?” asked Peter, warily.
“Library,” Sirius answered. James dug around in his bag and said, under his breath,
“Take the cloak,”
“Thanks, mate,” Sirius discreetly grabbed the cloak and stuffed it under his robes. On the way out the portrait hole, he heard Peter saying,
“I expected this of him, but you?”
“Sorry, mate.”
When Sirius reached the library, there were students running back and forth from bookshelves and tables frantically, many looking like they hadn’t slept in days, which they may not have. Some were also muttering and pacing. One of them was even sobbing into their friend’s shoulder, carrying a shockingly large pile of notes.
Sirius searched the tables and the many bookshelves, determined to scour every inch and prove to Peter that Remus wasn’t there.
The deeper he looked in the library the less people were around. He finally paused outside the doors to the restricted section, planning to peek in to make sure Remus wasn’t lurking in there, and heard something thump against the wall beside the first set of bookshelves. Sirius jumped back, hiding behind the other side of the same wall. It sounded as if people were making out against the books in the restricted section. Sirius was hurrying to go the other way, leaving them to it, when one of them spoke,
“Ouch,” Bellatrix’s voice was slightly muffled, “Turn around, this book about…Wandlore is jutting into my back. Ooh, I don’t think I’ve read this one yet.”
Sirius, thinking it was his cousin and her soon-to-be husband, carried on until a second later he heard the other voice that made him stop in his tracks,
“Hey, eyes back up here.”
It was the almost unmistakable voice of Rita Skeeter. As the year had gone on Sirius had heard much more about and from Skeeter than he had ever before. The main one being the paper she managed to print every week, most of the time with secrets and gossip in extreme detail that drove the school crazy. Sirius, nor anyone else, knew how she managed to gather all of this information and print it every single week. And nobody was able to keep their hands off of it, even Sirius in that moment up in Gryffindor Tower had his Astronomy textbook bookmarked with the issue from two weeks ago. Only Rita would talk to Bellatrix like that. Sirius waited for an incantation or blow up from Bellatrix but it never came. Surely it couldn’t be what it seemed… Surely they weren’t– He must have heard wrong. They weren’t.
“I need a cigarette,” Bellatrix said, after a silence.
“That’s what you’re thinking of while we’re kissing?” said Rita, and Sirius had to slap his hand over his mouth to stop himself from gasping out loud. This could not be real.
“Shut up, keep your voice down! Someone could walk in!” Bellatrix said, in a hushed hiss.
“Isn’t that part of the fun of doing this here?” Rita murmured, “That someone could walk in?”
There was another silence, full of shuffling, during which Sirius really did not want to know what was happening. He then was snapped out of the state of shock he was in, realising he had the invisibility cloak on. Though he did and did not want to prove his suspicions right, he slowly peeked around the corner. Sure enough the two voices had been Bellatrix and Rita Skeeter. And they were indeed kissing, rather fiercely. Merlin, that image would be burned on the inside of his eyelids for the rest of his life. Though the soft thump his head made on the wall from how quickly he recoiled back, caught Bellatrix’s attention.
“Did you hear that?” she asked. Rita sighed,
“No. Is this another one of your excuses to leave–?”
“No, no, I am serious,” she said, “Wait a moment.” Rita made a low noise of irritation, while Bellatrix’s head looked around the corner, her dark eyes piercing the exact spot where Sirius stood. Being under an invisibility cloak was a strange experience, especially when someone was looking at you but couldn’t see you. Sirius prayed that the cloak hadn’t suddenly lost its ability to be invisible in the last few minutes. It hadn’t.
Bellatrix pulled her head back and Rita said,
“See? There’s nobody there. You’re making shit up, Bella.”
Huh. Sirius remarked inwardly that he had never heard anybody but her sisters call her ‘Bella’.
“You know what? I may just leave.” Bellatrix threatened.
“Go back to meet up with Lestrange, will you?” There was a very discernible distaste and jealousy in Rita’s tone.
“I will. Just for you,” Bellatrix said, cruelly.
“You are engaged after all, right?” Rita said.
“Right.”
Sirius heard Rita clear her throat then say aggressively,
“Well, what will happen after this summer? You’ll be married to him but keep fucking me?”
“Fuck you.” Bellatrix snapped, like they’d had this conversation too many times.
“Why don’t you do that yourself?”
Sirius did not stick around to hear more, he was hurrying back through the library like his life depended on it. Because in his eyes, it did.
Over the next few weeks, Sirius made sure Peter knew Remus had not been in the library, though not daring to say a single word about what he’d overheard. He went back and forth in his mind, going from thinking about his irritation with Bellatrix and knowing this would be something that if he told their family, the chaos it would cause would make up for all the resentment he had against her. To thinking it was obviously something she wanted to keep a secret, for good reason, and if he told anyone he would certainly endure the very extent of the wrath he knew she was capable of. In the end he left it undecided. He would just go home for the summer and see how he felt. They also had exams, so Sirius couldn’t spend a large amount of time thinking about it. The castle seemed to buzz with anxiety the days leading up to the exams, but in Sirius’s opinion they were quite anti-climactic. He thought he did as well as he’d tried, which was not. And when it was over, he somehow felt the feeling of dread for the summer build.
When yet another evening rolled around with Remus leaving Gryffindor Tower mysteriously after dinner, barely even trying, mumbling something or other, Sirius and James had to almost drag Peter kicking and screaming from their dorm. Once the invisibility cloak covered all three of them and Remus was almost out of sight through the portrait hole; they were off.
“This feels wrong,” Peter muttered angrily, “This is wrong.”
“Peter,” Sirius hissed, “In case you haven’t noticed, these halls echo when they’re fairley empty like this. You’re going to blow our cover.”
“In case you lot haven’t noticed, Remus is the kindest wizard there is and would never do this to us. It’s his business,” Peter whispered.
“He’s a fellow Marauder. It’s our business as well,” James said cheerily.
Remus, and the others following behind, walked all the way to the first floor and stopped at the hospital wing. Walking all the way to the end of the wing, Remus knocked on Madam Pomfrey’s office door.
“Maybe he is feeling ill this time,” Sirius mused under his breath, but when Peter tried to turn around, he and James grabbed ahold of his robes to stop him. Except Remus and Madam Pomfrey did not stay in the hospital wing, they were already on their way out the door.
Sirius, James, and Peter, followed them down to the Entrance Hall and down the castle steps, onto the grounds. Once they were nearing the Whomping Willow, the tree Dumbledore had warned the students about on their first night, they were close enough to hear Madam Pomfrey start speaking,
“Nothing unusual about the moon tonight, your transition should be much simpler. Like usual, I will see you tomorrow morning, darling.” Moon? Transition? Tomorrow Morning? And as well, darling? They had never heard Madam Pomfrey speak so kindly to anyone.
Sirius felt James screech to a sudden halt beside him, so sudden that the cloak almost slipped off his head. When Sirius turned to see what was going on, James’s eyes were wide and his face pale.
“What?” Sirius asked, urgently, glancing around them to make sure they hadn’t been caught. They hadn’t. But James just kept his eyes locked on Remus up ahead. Sirius felt fear ripple through him. That was the same face Regulus made when he was getting scolded by their mother or watching Sirius take the blame, and it scared the senses out of him.
“Werewolf,” James murmured, “He’s a werewolf.”
Sirius let out a laugh, half disbelief, half relief, and Peter said,
“That’s– That’s ridiculous, mate.”
“No, think about it,” James gripped both of their arms as if that would make them see.
Sirius thought about it. As much as it seemed like an absurd suggestion, he thought about it. Remus often looked ill, and nobody close to him thought that it deserved to be brushed off like he brushed it off. He had suspicious scars, which Sirius had just believed he had gotten the same way he had recieved his own. There were, of course, the disappearances which did seem to each be about a month apart. Then there were the words Madam Pomfrey had just said. But in no world would Sirius ever have a werewolf for a friend, that would be way too cool for his life.
“Oh, Merlin’s pants,” Peter’s hands were in his hair and he leaned over as if he was about to be sick. Sirius looked over at James.
“This is wicked!” James exclaimed, mirroring Sirius’s exact feelings.
“This is not real. This is not real. This is not real.” Peter chanted under his breath as Sirius poured his breakfast cereal the next morning.
“Peter…” James warned. Peter had been slightly disturbed by the information they had found out the night before.
“What if we’re wrong?” Peter asked, continually stirring his cereal.
“There is no possible way we could be wrong about this,” Sirius insisted, just as James nudged him hard enough to get him to stop talking. Remus had entered the Great Hall, looking as disheveled as he usually did when he came back. When he reached them, he sat down and piled toast on his plate, without saying a word. Sirius, James, and Peter looked at each other, each hoping the other would say something first.
“Uh…” Peter got off to a shakey start, “Where’ve you been?”
Remus took a moment, then slapped his hand to his forehead as if remembering he had forgotten something,
“Sorry, I– I didn’t tell you. I was feeling ill so; hospital wing,” he said.
“Right,”
Sirius shot a knowing glance across the table at Peter, then he blurted out abruptly,
“Did you see the moon, at least? It was stunning last night.”
Peter looked at him, his eyes wide. Remus visibly gulped, and said,
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“It was full–” Sirius tried to prod further but James elbowed him hard in the side then, before Sirius could protest, dragged him down the table and out of the Great Hall.
“What are you doing?” said Sirius, affronted, once they reached the Entrance Hall.
“What are you doing?” James asked, tone low, “We have to do this delicately. If we ambush him he’ll feel threatened. My parents have worked with werewolves before, werewolf friends, this summer I’ll ask my mum what we should do.”
“Are you sure we can trust her, not to–to turn him in or something?” Sirius worried.
“Sirius, she’s my mum,” James said, like that was supposed to mean something, “Anyway, I know you can’t come for the summer because of Bellatrix Black’s wedding and everything, and I know you don’t want to talk about this, but do you think you’re able to visit?”
Sirius eyed James warily, he would miss him so much during the summer, and he looked so pleading,
“I’ll try,” Sirius answered, knowing there was no shot he would be able to visit the Potters that summer.
Luckily, James did not seem to take it to heart.
The last days of the school year flew by much faster than Sirius would have preferred. Before he knew it, they were on the Hogwarts Express back to London. Sirius was in a bad mood, which meant James was in a bad mood, which meant Peter was in a bad mood. All sulky, except Remus, who was not really one to mirror other people’s moods.
Sirius had his head in James’s lap, finding himself wanting more physical touch as returning to Grimmauld Place drew nearer. When they pulled into the station, he covered his face, took a deep breath, and stood up to pull his trunk down and shuffle into the corridor with everyone else. Not unlike Christmas, James’s parents were waiting for him on the platform, Euphemia’s smiling face lighting up when she saw him. Beside them, a stout blonde witch looking much like Peter seemed to be in the middle of a conversation with Fleamont.
Sirius was not in the mood to be coaxed to visit during the summer (after all, he was not the one who needed coaxing) and he felt being hugged by Euphemia again may just somehow make saying goodbye to James harder. So as they stepped onto the platform, Sirius turned and waved to his friends before darting over to where Kreacher stood waiting.