Draw the Veil

XIV. The Marauders' Worst Prank

All Alone

During the summer between our fifth and sixth years, Mrs Black finally made good on her promise to disown her son. Sirius had moved in with James and his family, giving them even more opportunities to act up. He seemed to be happy, but I often wondered how he really felt. Every morning, when the owls came with letters, he would watch them fly past, watch the letters drop from the air into eager hands, and he always seemed disappointed that no owl came for him. I suppose a Howler is better than no mail at all.

Apart from some taunting from other students, our relationship was trouble-free. That is, until June 1976.

It was the night of a full moon, my last transformation of the school year. I had gone out to the Shrieking Shack and settled into an armchair to await my friends and my change.

Minutes passed, and I became increasingly worried. Where are they? They should be here by now! I heard faint voices outside, raised voices. And then the pain of transformation took over my senses.

The next morning, I woke up on the hard floor, the blood from my cuts staining the wood. 'Sirius?' I muttered, lifting my head. But no one was there. I thought back to the previous night. Where are they? Why didn't they come? I was confused and hurting. Sirius would never leave me here like this.

I got dressed and staggered back to the castle. It was the first time in my life I had ever been completely alone after a change.

I looked down at myself as I walked and found I was bleeding through my clothes. What if a student sees me? What will they think? I wished I had the Marauders' Map with me. I needed to find a way to get to the hospital wing without being spotted.

But it turned out I did not need the map. I ran into Sirius and James as I approached the castle.

'Remus! We were just coming out to get you!' James said. He looked me over and whistled. 'We'd better get you to the hospital wing, pronto.' The two boys put their arms around me and helped me inside.

'Madam Pomfrey!' James called out as we burst through the hospital doors. 'Madam Pomfrey!'

The kindly old nurse raced over as soon as she saw me. 'What happened? Merlin, look at you!' She directed James and Sirius to lay me down on a bed towards the back of the room and began rummaging around in a drawer full of bizarre-looking wizard medical supplies.

Then she looked up at my friends. 'What are you still standing here for? Go on. Go to breakfast. Mr Lupin needs treating.'

'But...' said Sirius.

'No "buts,"' she replied. 'Both of you. Get going.' She shooed my friends out the door, ignoring their protests.

In the Hospital

I awakened a few hours later, aching and hungry.

'Morning, mate,' came a voice. I turned my head to the right and saw James and Sirius sitting next to my bed. They were both shifting uncomfortably on the hard chairs.

'Where the bollocks were you guys last night?' I asked.

'Moony, I'm sorry!' James said. 'It was too late by the time we got there. You were changed. You couldn't let us in. We tried to unlock the door, but then Peter thought that even if we unlocked it, you might try and escape when we opened it, so we weren't sure what to do.'

I sat up, wincing with pain. 'But why were you late? Where were you?'

'It's complicated...' James began. He glared at Sirius out of the corner of his eye.

Sirius suddenly put a hand on my arm, his eyes pleading. 'I'm sorry, mate. Everything went wrong last night. It was such a huge mess. And now you're here, and...' He cleared his throat and looked down. 'I'm a bloody git, aren't I?' I saw James nod.

'But what happened?' I asked.

'I'll tell you what happened, Lupin,' said a voice. It was Severus Snape.

'Get out of here, Snivellus,' growled James. He stood up and pulled out his wand, and Sirius did the same.

'Not until I've had a chance to talk to the werewolf,' Snape spat. Did he just say 'werewolf'? 'Funny joke last night. Hilarious,' he continued. His voice was ice-cold.

'What joke?' I asked. What on earth was going on?

'He doesn't know?' Snape asked Sirius and James. He chuckled and looked at me. 'If I were you, I'd get new friends. Friends who don't try to use me as a murder weapon.'

'Shut up, Snivellus,' said Sirius.

At that moment, Madam Pomfrey appeared from the back room. Her eyes widened as she spotted the boys' wands. 'What are you doing?' she cried. 'This is a hospital! Get out of here, both of you!' Sirius and James lowered their wands but made no further movement.

'Madam Pomfrey, please let Sirius and James stay,' I said.

'You're hurt, Mr Lupin,' she said. 'You need your rest. You can talk to them later.'

'But I feel fine!' I said. I tried to get out of bed but fell back down, shaking.

Madam Pomfrey looked at me. 'You're clearly not fine, Remus,' she said, and she pushed Severus, James, and Sirius bodily out the door. I was left alone, more confused than ever.

What Sirius Did

I pushed open the dorm room door and found Sirius lying on his bed, smoking a muggle cigarette. He had picked up the habit only a few months before, but he had never done it in our room before; he had always gone outside. James and Peter were sitting on Peter's bed, talking.

'Well, I'm back,' I said unnecessarily. I felt awkward standing there.

'Are you OK?' James asked.

I nodded. 'Pomfrey patched me up. Only a couple scars to show for it.' I patted my stomach, which was still sore.

Sirius took a drag off his cigarette and looked at me. 'I'm sorry, mate.'

'Sorry about what?' I asked. 'What happened? Severus said...well, I didn't understand what Snape was on about. What was he talking about?'

Sirius looked out the window. 'Remus, I almost got him killed. I told him to go down to the shack.' I blanched. 'I was just messing about,' he said. He dropped his cigarette into an empty butterbeer bottle and lit another.

'Must you keep smoking those things in here?' asked Peter, waving away the smoke.

I felt my chest tighten. 'Why the hell would you do something like that?' I asked Sirius.

'Because I'm a git, Remus. Because I wasn't thinking. Because I wanted to give him a well-deserved scare,' Sirius replied, blowing smoke in Peter's direction.

I stared at him. 'Sirius, he could have been killed!'

'You didn't hear what he said to me, what he said about you!'

'And I don't care,' I replied.

'You weren't there. You don't know,' he muttered.

'No, I was not there,' I said, almost spitting out the words. 'I was in the shack, all alone. I was sitting in there all by myself waiting for my so-called friends to come help me.' Sirius flinched.

'We tried to come down, Remus! But it was too late!' James protested.

'Sirius, what were you thinking? I could have killed him! I could have been sent to fucking Azkaban or worse over a joke!' I envisioned what would have happened had Snape made it into the Shrieking Shack, and I shuddered.

'I didn't think he'd actually go down there!' Sirius exclaimed. 'Anyway, you wouldn't have really killed him, Moony. Lose the melodrama.'

'I'm a werewolf, Sirius.' Was he really so thick as all that?

Sirius just stared at me. 'It's not that big a deal! We were there,' he said, gesturing to the other boys. 'A quick change, and everything would be OK.'

I laughed, a bitter and ironic laugh. 'What do you think attacked me, Sirius? A rabid dog?'

'Hey, watch it...' he muttered.

I ignored him. 'I was attacked by a werewolf, genius. A werewolf that would have killed me if my father hadn't saved me at the last second! A vicious, inhuman...' I felt nauseous. 'Oh, hell with it,' I muttered, and stormed out of the room, slamming the door shut behind me.

Snogging in the Common Room

I refused to speak to my friends over dinner that evening, and that night, I curled up on the sofa in the common room instead of returning to the dorm. I tried to sleep, but sleep did not come.

I heard soft footsteps approaching, and I pretended to be asleep. I was in no mood to talk to anyone.

'Moony?' It was Sirius. 'Moony, wake up.' I heard him sit down on the edge of the sofa. 'I know you're not really asleep. So maybe you can listen to me for a minute?' He sighed. 'I just...it was just a remark. I didn't mean anything, really. You know how he is. He was calling us names, saying I'd betrayed my family, saying we were sick, saying he'd catch us pulling a prank sooner or later and rat us out.'

I sat up. 'So you told him to go down to the shack?' I asked, horrified. 'Whatever happened to just telling him to go shag the giant squid?'

He shrugged and lit a cigarette. 'I don't know. He was calling you a weak little girl, a woman...'

I blinked. 'Why would he say that?'

He laughed. 'Because of the...the way we are. You know.'

'Oh.'

'So I just...reacted. I told him to go out to the Whomping Willow after dinner if he really wanted a reason to rat us out.' He smiled weakly. 'I envisioned him going down there and seeing you, maybe running out screaming like a girl. It was a funny image. But I didn't think anything of it. I didn't think he'd go.'

'But he did,' I pointed out.

'How was I supposed to know he was that thick? Anyway, I mentioned the whole thing to James and Peter while we were getting ready to go out there, and James just lost it. He called me an idiot and ran off. Peter and I didn't understand why he was making a big deal out of it. It was just a joke. I mess with Snivellus all the time.'

I rolled my eyes. 'Prongs knew it was dangerous, that's why.'

'Well yes, I see that. Anyway, Peter and I went out to the shack after him. Snape had gone out there, the cretin, and he was trying to get past the branches when James came out and stopped him.'

'He saved his bloody life,' I said.

'Well, I suppose,' Sirius said, taking a drag off his cigarette.

'There's no "suppose" about it! If Snape had gone down the tunnel, I would have killed him! Simple as that.'

'But we were going out there, too!' he protested. 'We would have stopped it.'

'You don't get it, do you? It's not that simple. When I'm transformed, I want to kill people. It's all I can think of.' I paused. 'If you can call what I do during it thinking, anyway. But my point is, I'm not going to just playfully chase Snape around a bit until he gets a good scare! It's not a game!'

Sirius sighed. 'OK, OK. I get it.'

'Do you really? Merlin, I'd kill you if you were in human form. Without a second thought. Without even a first thought.'

He glanced at me and frowned. 'How touching.'

'It's not really me,' I pointed out.

'I know,' he muttered. 'Anyway, I feel like a total ass about the whole thing.'

'As well you should,' I said. We were both quiet for a minute. Then a thought struck me. 'Snape's going to tell everyone I'm a werewolf!'

Sirius shrugged. 'I don't think so,' he said. 'Wouldn't he have done it already?'

'Maybe he's planning something.' I pondered it. 'Damnit, it was supposed to be a secret. I've been terrified of people finding out ever since I started at Hogwarts! And one glib remark to Snape, and it's all over. Merlin, Sirius!'

'Remus, I'm sorry,' he said, throwing his arms around me. 'I love you.'

It was the first time he had ever said those words, and I did not know what to feel. I had envisioned a romantic evening, maybe a nice dinner, maybe a moonlit--well, a stroll, anyway. I certainly had not expected to hear those words in a situation like that.

I suddenly felt very tired. 'I need to sleep, Sirius.'

'You're not coming back to the dorm room?' he asked.

'I'd really rather not. Not tonight,' I said.

'Then I'd like to stay with you,' he mumbled. 'Although I understand if you don't want me to.' He looked at me with puppy dog eyes.

I sighed. 'Don't look at me like that. You're making me feel bad.'

He stroked my hair. 'I'll go to bed, but I just want you to know that I have never felt so bad in my entire life. Ever. I want so badly to make it up to you, to make things right between us again. I'll do anything you ask of me.'

'I know,' I whispered.

Sirius leaned in and kissed me softly on the lips. 'I love you, Remus.' He kissed me again.

'Sirius,' I breathed.

'Remus,' he said, stroking my chest.

I do not know what came over us; perhaps it was just the confused jumble of emotions we both felt.

But somehow, Sirius ended up under the blanket with me that night.