Among the Stars

“It was going perfectly fine until I told him I was happy to see him!” Wisteria rants as she pases the room. Penelope is sat on her bed, looking over her homework and nodding along.

“Are you sure you didn’t say anything that might have upset him?”

“Why would me saying that I was happy to see him have upset him! Isn’t it typically a good thing when someone wants to see you!”

“You know that it’s a special case with Michael.”

Wisteria runs her hands through her hair and tugs on the ends of it. “I wish I could just ask Will about him!”

“Why can’t you? And stop pulling on your hair like that or you’ll go bald.”

“I can’t because he doesn’t talk to Will either, so he probably won’t know much more than me, and even if he did, I can’t crash his and Shay’s date. I would never forgive myself.”

“Speaking of, why aren’t you out with Fabian right now?”

“We have plans for lunch at 1.

“Its 12:50 Wist.”

Wisteria’s eyes widen. “It is?” She scrambles to the bathroom to glance at herself in the mirror and then looks back at Penelope.

“Thanks Pen. And sorry for making you listen to me rant.”

Penelope shrugs. “It’s nothing at all for my best friend. Besides, it doesn’t get annoying until week 2 of the same rant.”

Wisteria smiles at her. “You should see if you can’t hang out with Remus today. Maybe even go on a date.” Penelope looks horrified at the idea and Wisteria laughs at her. “Lily and I are studying after Fabian and I get back, so I wont be back until late.”

“It’s not like you usually stay in bed anyway, or sleep at all for that matter. Now go, you don’t want to be late for your date, do you?”

Flashing Penelope one last grin, Wisteria rushes out of the room and down to the tree by the Black Lake that she and Fabian had agreed to meet at.

Fabian has been standing under the tree for a few minutes now waiting for Wisteria and the irrational part of his brain has started to take over. She’s lost interest and doesn’t want to be with you anymore. You were too forward last weekend. She didn’t like how close you got while she was facing that boggart.

“Hey, sorry I’m running a little late, I wanted to get out my frustrations by ranting to Pen before meeting up with you so I wasn’t as snarky.” Wisteria’s voice snaps him out of his thoughts and he smiles at her.

“It’s no problem at all. What was bothering you?”

She waves her hand dismissively. “I ran into Michael is all.”

Fabian frowns. “Oh.”

“Fabs, it’s fine, really. I just tried to talk to him and he froze up and left.”

“I know, I just… Nevermind.”

Wisteria looks at him concerned. “Fabs, if there’s something bothering you, we need to talk about it. Otherwise we’ll never get anywhere.”

Fabian smiles at her and hesitantly takes her hand to begin leading hr into Hogsmeade, “Then it’s a good thing nothing is bothering me. Now come on, let’s just enjoy our date.”

She smiles softly at him and together they make their way to Hogsmeade hand in hand.

The date goes just as smoothly as all the others before it, but this time they were holding hands nearly the entire time and both of them seemed to be in a better mood because of it. When they are done they make their way back to the castle and to the Gryffindor common room so that Wisteria can meet up with Lily. Fabian lets her into the common room and kisses her cheek before heading up to his room and leaving Wisteria smiling dumbly in the Gryffindor common room.

After a few minutes of waiting, Wisteria finally sees Lily walking in through the Fat Lady.

“Wisty! Wonderful, you’re already here. Remus is helping a few first years in the Library right now, so we should have a while with the rest of the Marauders and once we’re done with them we can talk to Madame Pomfrey.”

“Sounds good. Let’s go.”

The twins make their way to the Marauders door and knock. The door opens rather quickly to reveal Peter. “Oh. Hello girls. Are you here to talk about the… Er... “

“Yeah. We’re here to talk about all of your…” Lily trails off and helpful voice from inside the room speaks up.

“I think we should call it our ‘furry little problem’!”

Wisteria rolls her eyes. “Wonderful James, that’s not at all conspicuous.”

“Well, it wont be if we all come up with a really good story behind it.”

“May we come in Peter?” Lily asks, ignoring James, as usual.

“Oh! Yeah, sorry.” The pudgy boy steps aside to let the girls into the room.

“So ladies, what can we do for you?” Sirius asks, lounging lazily on his bed.

“We just wanted to talk about the plan.” Wisteria says. “You guys have been just as talkative as usual so we assumed you haven’t done anything yet unless you were using sticking charms, but those can get tricky, so…”

“We had talked for a bit and decided we’d do it over the summer.” James says. “I live on a big enough property so that my parents will have no idea.”

“My parents are trusting me home alone all summer while they visit my aunt in America.” Peter says.

“And my parents leave me pretty much completely alone, so they should have no idea.” Sirius tells them.

The girls nod. “That’s what we figured, which brings us to our second topic of conversation.” Lily says. “Wisty and I know the most out of all five of us on how this works and we would feel much more comfortable if we were able to check in on the three of you periodically to help if necessary, so we need to figure out ways to do that over the summer.”

“You could use Floo Powder.” Peter suggests.

James beams at him. “Brilliant Pete! We’ll simply tell you where we live and you can just Floo there.”

The girls share a look. “We don’t have any Floo Powder…” Wisteria tells them.

James waves a dismissive hand. “No problem, you can steal some of mine until you get your own.” He reaches to the other side of his bed and grabs a piece of parchment. “Here, we’ll write our addresses on this parchment so that you guys have them for the summer.” He jots down his address and passes the parchment to Peter who does the same and passes it to Sirius who stares at the paper and hesitates.

“What’s the matter Siri?” James asks.

“I… er… My uh… My parents are a little stingy about… er… unwanted guests… They're not the kindest people in the world to… well…”

“Muggleborns.” Wisteria finishes. He glances up at her, a pained look in his grey eyes.

“Yeah. But, there is a coffee shop that I love that’s run by a Squib nearby and it has a fireplace. I’ll write a letter to her and ask if we can use it. It shouldn’t be a problem so long as we don’t use up her Floo Powder, she and I are good friends.”

“Okay. Tells us when you get a reply and for now just write that address down on the parchment.” Lily tells him.

Sirius nods and writes the address down before handing it to the girls.

Suddenly the door opens behind them and the entire room turns to stare wide eyed at Remus who freezes at the number of eyes on him.

“Ummm… What’s going on?” He asks carefully.

Everyone in the room seems to freeze, not knowing what to say and looking panicked, but Sirius recovers quickly. “Hey Rem. The girls just came in to chat a bit. Actually they were just leaving I think, right girls?”

“Er… right…” Lily says nervously. “Yeah, we were just leaving… Come on Wisty…” She grabs her sister’s arm and begins to pull her out of the room, but Wisteria pulls her arm stubbornly out of Lily’s grip.

“No. He deserves to know, I see no reason why this should be kept secret from him.”

The entire room has now turned to stare at her, but she gives Sirius a pointed look before turning to face Remus directly.

“Wisty…” Sirius says in a deliberately warning tone of voice, playing along with Wisteria’s plan.

“Why shouldn’t he know? We’ve already established it changes nothing.”

“Wisty! You can’t just-”

“He should know!” Wisteria cuts off James. “He should know that we know.”

James and Lily finally catch onto her plan and give identical defeated sighs.

“Fine.” Lily says. “Then tell him.”

Wisteria faces Remus again, but before she can say anything he’s sunken down on his bed. “You figured it out.” He says in a small voice.

The twins sit on either side of him on his bed and wrap their arms around him. “Remus…” Wisteria says. “This doesn’t change anything. You are still you, and will always be you. It doesn’t matter that you have another side to you, everyone has other, ugly sides.”

“It doesn’t matter that you’re a werewolf Rem, because you will always be so much more than just a werewolf and anyone who cares about you will be able to see that. You are first and foremost our friend and that will never change.” Lily promises him.

Remus squeezes his eyes shut and bites down hard on his lip and Wisteria puts her hand gently on the side of his face, moving his head to face hers until their foreheads were resting up against one another and he was looking her in the eye. “You are Remus John Lupin, a Wizard, a student at the best Wizarding school in the world, a member of the brave house of Gryffindor, and most importantly a member of the Marauders. You are not a monster, and the term werewolf does not and never will define you. Everyone in this room loves you Remus, and that will never change.” Wisteria sits up, away from Remus and stands.

Lily gives him one last squeeze and stands up as well. “In all seriousness though, we really do have to leave.”

“Thank you.” Remus whispers to them.

The girls smile at him and turn to leave only to have Sirius beat them to the door. “I’ll walk you girls out, I have a date tonight that I simply cannot miss.”

Remus gives him a skeptical look. “A date? This late at night?”

“Oh my dear Rem, I do indeed have a date. And she’s waiting for me in the Room of Requirements so that she can fulfill my requirements.” Sirius sends a wink to Remus and the whole room makes disgusted noises.

“None of us needed to know that Sirius!” Peter complained.

Sirius laughs. “Well then next time, don’t doubt me. Now then girls shall we be on our way?”

The three make their way out of the room and down to the Fat Lady, once they are all outside Gryffindor Tower, Sirius pulls them both into a hug. “Thank you girls, for everything you are doing for Remus. It means the world to all of us, especially him.”

The girls smile and hug him back. “It’s nothing really. Now go on to your date. And don’t forget to write that letter to the Squib lady!”

“Of course. See you girls later.”

After watching him saunter off down the hall the girls make go to the infirmary to talk to Madame Pomfrey. Upon entering, the healer gives the girls a strange look.

“Evans? Today isn’t one of our sessions, what is it?”

“We felt it was time to come clean about why we were asking for sessions to begin with.” Lily confesses.

“Oh really? And why is that?”

“Because we know that our friend Remus is a Werewolf and want to be able to help him when he gets injured during the full moons.” Wisteria says bluntly.

Madame Pomfrey sits in stunned silence for a moment, staring at the girls. Then finally she says, “I appreciate your concern for Mr. Lupin, but I assure you both that I can handle his injuries myself.”

“We know that you are a very capable woman Madame, but we feel that perhaps Remus would feel better about the situation if he could be surrounded by friends for as much of it as possible and since, of course, we can’t be with him while he’s transformed we thought the next best thing would be for us to be there helping him heal when he wakes up.” Lily explains.

Madame Pomfrey studies the girls for some time before saying, “I will need to up your lessons to three times a week, on top of regular volunteer hours helping me with any patients I may have at the time and I expect you both to read up on any materials I give you is that understood?”

“Yes Madame.” Both girls respond without hesitation.

“I also hope you understand that I will be with you the entire time, at no moment am I going to leave you alone with Mr. Lupin until I deem you both capable. It will be no easy task, you will both essentially be taking on an entire course.”

“We understand. Thank you.” The twins respond.

After another few seconds of silence Madame Pomfrey simply nods. “Very well then. Your lessons start tomorrow, they will be every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday at the normal times and if any of those dont work then we will work something out. I will tell you which books you are to read over summer holiday and I expect them all to be read by your return in September where we will resume your lessons based around whichever classes you are both taking next year. You may leave.”