The Werewolf Prank

Sirius felt like his best friend had just stabbed him in the back. He continued to stand quite still, staring at the door, the scowl on his face growing darker and darker with each minute that ticked by. Finally, he picked up a lamp and threw it at the door as hard as he could. It hit the door frame, causing a deafening shatter that gave him some small measure of satisfaction.

Turning, Sirius found Peter staring wide-eyed at him. He stared back mulishly, daring him to repair the lamp, but unfortunately Peter was not stupid enough to bite. Sirius took off pacing around the room.

He had never been so angry at James. The filthy hypocrite -- who the hell did he think he was, telling Sirius off for messing with Snape? After all he'd done? He was the reason Snape hated them. He was the reason Snape wanted to get them all kicked out of school. How dare he start pretending to be all noble all of a sudden? Running off to play the hero, making Sirius out to be the bad guy ... like Snape was more important to him than his own best friend....

Fine, Sirius thought furiously, let him. If he wanted to risk his neck saving Snivelly, he deserved what he got. They could both get torn limb from limb by a rampaging werewolf for all Sirius cared. In fact, he hoped they would, and took a vicious pleasure in picturing the tangle of fur and teeth and claws and blood.

Kicking over a pile of books, Sirius earned himself a stabbing pain in his big toe. This was too much. The room suddenly seemed too small to hold him, and he stormed out, leaving a much relieved Wormtail in his wake.

The common room was full of people. Sirius marched through it, taking no notice of their puzzled glances. He found an empty classroom and resisted the urge to kick over the nearest desk.

He was furious at James. Furious! He did not care if James was putting himself in danger. He did not care if it was over something he started. He did not care that at that very moment --

"Sirius Black, what have you done?" said a voice from the doorway. Sirius whirled around. It was Evans. She must have followed him from the common room.

"None of your business," he snarled. "Get out."

She raised an eyebrow at him, then walked in and sat down on one of the desks.

"I said get out!" he shouted.

"And leave you running around loose in a temper?" she said sweetly. "That would be so irresponsible of me."

Sirius was not in the mood. He turned his back on her, cursing the fact that she was a girl and hexing her would have been wrong. For a few minutes, neither of them spoke.

"Why don't you tell me what's wrong?" Evans asked, finally breaking the silence. "Maybe I can help?"

Sirius laughed bitterly. Even if he'd had the slightest inclination to tell someone what was wrong -- which he most certainly did not -- Evans was about the last person he'd've picked.... She had known about Moony's furry little problem ever since she became a prefect last year ... and there was no real question whose side she would come down on....

The two of them lapsed back into silence. Sirius, feeling too restless to stand still, started pacing back and forth again. A sharp, acidic anxiety had finally begun to burn through the fog of his anger. He needed to think. Unfortunately, Evans continued to sit on the desk, watching him with mild curiosity, and this was very distracting. He tried to ignore her, hoping she would take the hint and leave. She didn't.

"Is it Potter?" she asked after a while. "Did you two have a fight?"

Sirius decided not to answer that.

"It's just that I saw him leaving the common room earlier, and he didn't look -- um ..." she hesitated.

"-- at you," Sirius said smugly, unable to help himself. He turned to watch her reaction.

"-- too happy," she finished quickly, going slightly pink.

Sirius smirked at her and Evans threw him a dirty look, which he found rather amusing. He tried to picture the look on James's face when he recounted this incident later.

"That's why you followed me then, is it?" he said, wondering if he could annoy her into leaving. "You were hoping to find out what James was up to. Maybe you fancied a little moonlight stroll about the grounds, or --"

"So you did have a fight," Evans interrupted calmly.

Sirius hated her. "I don't see how it's any of your business."

"It isn't," she shrugged. "I'm not asking you to tell me what you fought about. But why are you getting so upset over it? Just talk to him ... whatever happened, I'm sure you two can work it out...."

Sirius didn't say anything. He sat down on a desk, then stood up again. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than for this conversation to end. He was starting to feel a little sick, and he really, really wished Evans would just leave him alone.

He strolled over to a window and stared down at the frozen grounds below. The snow had a pinkish sort of hue to it now....

Snape had gone in the tunnel ... James had gone after him.... Maybe it was just his imagination playing tricks on him, but Sirius thought he heard a werewolf howl in the distance....

It all seemed so unreal, like something out of a bad dream. He rested his forehead on the cool pane of glass and closed his eyes. It wasn't really happening....

"Are you alright?" said Evans quietly, sounding, for the first time, genuinely concerned.

How long had they been gone? Sirius had no idea, he seemed to have lost his sense of time. It was either seconds or an eternity. Either way, he knew they would have made it to the shack by now.

He could hear Evans standing up and walking over to him.

"Really," she insisted, "you don't look so good."

Sirius opened his eyes and looked sideways at her without lifting his head from the glass. "I'm fine," he muttered, closing them again. "Just go."

But he was not fine; his heart was racing; he felt like his mind was falling through a dark tunnel....

The tunnel ... James could not transform in the tunnel ...

"Maybe you should go to the hospital wing...."

But it wasn't happening, it couldn't have been. If it was, that would mean Remus might already have killed James. That James might have just died trying to undo Sirius's joke, while Sirius was standing around in empty classrooms being angry at him.

Sirius considered the absurdity of this idea with an odd sense of detachment. The idea that James was gone, really gone -- that he would never see his best friend again....

Suddenly, he couldn't breathe. What had he done?

Sirius was hardly aware of racing out of the classroom -- or of being followed by a confused and alarmed Evans.... He didn't notice that he was jumping down the stairs six at a time.... He knew only that he had to get down there before it was too late....

He fought back visions of what he might find, of James's lifeless body ... of Remus hearing about everything in the morning ... of James's parents learning that their only son had been killed, and that it was Sirius's fault....

Don't let it be too late, he thought desperately. Please don't let it be too late....

He hit the first floor landing and saw something that made him stop dead in his tracks. A shock of black hair -- very untidy black hair -- slowly making its way up the stairs....

Sirius stared for a few moments, then almost laughed with relief. James was alive -- at that moment, nothing else in the world mattered to him. Then Evans caught up.

"What happened?" she squealed when she saw what Sirius was looking at.

Only then did Sirius notice that his friend was covered in dirt and blood, and followed closely by a limping, equally dirty and bloody Snape. He frowned as they each rounded the top step onto the first floor landing, breathing hard.

"You!" Snape spat venomously, before anyone else could say anything. He stumbled backward and gripped the banister, staring at Sirius with a burning anger in his eyes like Sirius had never seen there before. "How disappointing this must be for you, Black," he said in a low and deadly voice. "Your little plan seems to have failed."

"Huh?" said Sirius, nonplussed. In his panic about James, he had almost forgotten that Snivellus was a part of this.

"You knew there was werewolf," Snape went on, raising his voice slightly. "You were trying to kill me!"

Before Sirius could think of anything to say to this, the matter was taken out of his hands. Several things seemed to happen at once: Peeves, whom none of them had noticed bobbing overhead and eavesdropping on their conversation, began to shriek "MURDER!" and "WEREWOLF!" in a voice that rang throughout the entrance hall; Evans, who had just made sense of what Snivelly was saying, gasped and stared at Sirius in shocked disbelief; Sirius, once again overwhelmed by the feeling that this could not possibly be happening, looked to James for support; and James, who was bent double, catching his breath, simply stared at the floor with an unusually stony look on his face.

Professor McGonagall's office door burst open, and Sirius heard her shouting at Peeves. When she had finally managed to dispatch the poltergeist, she walked up to the four of them, looking much paler than usual, and said, "Explain."

Snape was quick to oblige. "Professor, Black was trying to kill me."

"What?" yelped Sirius. "I was not!"

"He sent me after Lupin," Snape continued, talking over him.

"I didn't send him anywhere!" Sirius protested.

"When he knew all along that Lupin was a --"

"Shut it, Snivellus," said James and Sirius together.

"-- WEREWOLF!" shouted Snape.

"Quiet!" barked McGonagall. They all felt silent as she looked them over one by one, eyes flashing dangerously. "Potter, Snape, hospital wing -- Miss Evans, go get the headmaster -- Black, my office, now!"

"But I didn't --"

"NOW!"