The Subtlety of Schoolboys (And Other Myths)

That Time of the Month

Over the other side of the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, Black and Pettigrew were making such a commotion that Potter could chatter at quite a reasonable level to Remus as they duelled and not be noticed by Professor Wagner.

Remus wasn't quite quick enough in throwing up a Shielding spell, and Potter's hex caught him square in the chest, knocking him flat to the mat on the floor. Grinning amiably, but completely unapologetically, Potter held out his hand and heaved him back to his feet.

"Isn't this a little advanced for second year Defence lessons?" Remus asked, rubbing at the tender skin, which would surely be one bruise on top of another by tonight, while Black exploded into another rant at a cringing Pettigrew.

"Wagner seems to know what he's doing," Potter said vaguely, glancing over at his two friends. "Come on, try and get me this time."

Invitingly, the black-haired boy lowered his wand to the floor. Remus would have been irked by how unwittingly patronising the gesture was, if he didn't know from past attempts that Potter would still manage to deflect Remus' hex.

"Your reflexes are too good," Remus said, levelling his wand reluctantly at Potter.

"Don't you have good reflexes, Lupin?" Potter's voice was light, but there was an odd intensity in his eyes. Remus wondered distractedly if he was scoping out any rivals for Quidditch trials at the end of the month. If he could think of a less gauche way to phrase it, he'd assure Potter that he had no wish to fly around madly tens of feet above the earth, chucking balls about.

He shrugged.

"Not as good as yours," he said.

"I'm not letting a Muggleborn throw curses at me!" Black shouted at Professor Wagner, who was finally intervening. "I don't care if he's my friend; if he fires anything at me, I'll fire one hell of a hex back!"

"Just deflect it, or shield yourself from it," Professor Wagner insisted. "They're mild hexes we're using. They won't hurt much."

"It's not the pain that bothers me. It's the principle."

"Oh come on, Sirius," Pettigrew begged. "Please!"

"He's such a snob. He'd only practise with me last practice session," Potter commented, watching with the rest of the class as Black threw a tantrum and Pettigrew sulked.

Remus turned to Potter in surprise.

"What practice session?"

"We had one in the dorm last month." He paused, then added, "You were ill at the time."

"Mr Black, don't make me start taking points," said Professor Wagner, obviously at the end of his tether.

"Oi! Sirius!" Potter yelled. "Don't be so bloody difficult and take it like a man!"

Black glared at him, but sighed and threw his wand down.

"Fine, go on then, Peter," he ordered, folding his arms across his chest and flicking his dark hair out of his eyes in a gesture that seemed so easily graceful that Remus wondered whether he practised it to achieve full potential.

With a grateful smile at Potter, Pettigrew readied himself, rolling his shoulders like a marksman taking aim, and pointed his wand at Black, who scowled at him.

"Leviosculari!" Pettigrew cried shrilly.

A phantom pair of lips shot from the end of his wand, whizzed through the air and planted a smacking kiss on a stunned Black's forehead. There was silence for a moment then Black rolled his eyes at Pettigrew, who was trying very hard not to laugh.

"Oh, very funny!" he grumbled, his lips curving into an unwilling smile as the class broke into laughter around him.

"You should come to our next practice session," Potter said, turning back to Remus as Professor Wagner chivvied the class back to work. "They're a good laugh. We're going to have the next one next week, on the 18^th. Fancy it?"

It was the closest thing to an offer of friendship that Remus had received from the boys with whom he shared a dormitory. In the first year, Potter and Black had been so busy building the foundations of their own quick-blooming friendship, and Pettigrew had still been so awestruck by both of them, that they'd paid little attention to the quiet, unassuming fourth boy.

And now, in the second year, aside from casually finding seats around Remus in lessons and mealtimes, they'd paid him not much more.

Having watched the easy camaraderie between them with silent longing, and now having the door held open for him by James Potter himself, Remus badly wanted to say yes.

But he couldn't.

The 18^th was the night of the Full Moon. And though the boys were intending to practise their Defence Against the Dark Arts, he felt that turning up as a snarling, ravening werewolf might indeed be too advanced for them.

"Um, I think I've something planned already," Remus said, watching the tightening of muscles in Potter's throat, and the friends he would have had in another life flicker and vanish before his eyes. "Sorry. Maybe we could do it a different night?"

"Yeah, maybe," Potter said, turning away to watch Black and Pettigrew's enthusiastic duel, shooting feathers and ping-pong balls at each other with wild abandon.

Professor Wagner was already rushing back over to stop them.

Cross my Palm with Silver

The cigarette lighter skittered across the floorboards of the dormitory to settle at Remus' feet.

"Pick that up, would you, Lupin," Black said carelessly, from where he was lounging on his narrow school bed as if it were the throne of some despotic tyrant.

Remus wanted to ask what Black's last house-elf had died of, but hearing what he had of the Blacks, he wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer. Besides, Remus didn't say things like that to people, especially not people with the kind of reputation that Sirius Black had.

Stifling his retort back to where he kept all the things that an outcast twelve-year old werewolf didn't dare say, (like Broomstick jokes are neither witty nor original, and Not doing your homework is a sign of laziness, not an expression of contempt for the hegemonic attempts of professors clinging to outdated mores and traditions at the cost of youthful originality,) Remus bent down and picked it up.

It was a small silver lighter, engraved with a complicatedly twisted serpent that shifted across the shining surface and watched Remus with two glittering emeralds. Even to Remus' inexperienced eye, it was expensive. And Black had just flung it across the room.

Forceful grey eyes fixed on him, Black held his hand out for it. Across the room, Potter had looked up from where was doodling a moustache on an irate photo of a pompous looking wizard in the Daily Prophet. Remus had to admit that it was at least an improvement from the eye-patches and tattoos that Potter had scrawled all over the pictures in Remus' History of Magic textbook - even though it meant that he hadn't seen a copy of the paper that didn't have graffiti and a completed crossword in three months.

"Here," Remus said, dropping the lighter in Black's hand.

But before he could move away, Black had caught his wrist in a surprisingly firm grip. The pureblood boy studied Remus' hand with the same unnerving intensity as he had the vial of Pox Potion he'd tipped down the collar of Severus Snape's robe yesterday afternoon.

He wanted to pull away, but didn't quite know how to deal with such awkwardly intimate situations like this.

The inbreeding was to blame. His father had explained that purebloods, real purebloods, were generally quite mad because their aunts were their sisters and their fathers were their cousins (Remus thought that was how it went,) and that if that Black boy tried anything, he was to tell the professors.

Remus wasn't sure what his father had thought Black might try, but he suspected it wasn't prolonged examination of his hand.

"Erm, what are you doing?" Remus asked finally.

"Sirius reads palms. Don't you, Sirius?" Potter explained with a grin, a look passing between him and Black.

Remus rather irritably felt like explaining that it was his bloody knuckles that apparently had Black enthralled, not his palms.

"What do you see then, Sirius?" Potter asked, coming closer and leaning over his best friend's shoulder.

Black glanced once more at Potter, before flipping Remus' hand over and running a fingertip over his palm.

"Smooth," he said, as if surprised. His eyes narrowed and he peered a bit closer still. "And a lifeline that's chopped to bloody pieces."

With that, Remus' hand was returned to him, and Black and Potter began a race to see who could set Pettigrew's homework on fire fastest, Potter with his wand or Black with his lighter.

Sandwiches Shouldn't Say Moo

That morning, Black had received a letter from his mother and so Potter and Pettigrew were playing a late-night game of Insult Bingo while Black read it to them, which was the preferred method for dealing with such missives.

Although Potter was scoring well with his chosen term - 'family shame,'- Pettigrew was doing much better with the surprisingly popular: 'horror of my loins'.

And Black was entertaining them all by doing such a squeaky voice for his mother that Remus was almost concerned for the state his throat would be in by the end of the rendition.

"'Does your perversity know no ends? Kreacher tells me that three of the Goblin-silver teaspoons are missing, along with your father's cigarette lighter and my garnet hatpin. That you would dare steal from us, while all the time professing contempt for the heritage that gave you such finery, proves you to be a wicked ingrate...'"

"Bagsy I 'wicked ingrate' next time," Pettigrew piped up, tallying up his score so far on the back of his sparse History of Magic notes.

"She hasn't noticed yet that your grandfather's gold pocket watch has gone missing then?" Potter asked.

"Apparently not," Black said, his voice hoarse. "And I pawned that for fifty-five Galleons. Next holiday, I'm going for some of the candlesticks."

"Won't she check your trunk?" Remus asked. He was laid on his bed, a little apart from them, copying out a table of Potions components and their expected effects in draughts. He glanced up to see the three of them looking back at him as if his presence had completely slipped their minds.

"Yeah," Black answered at last, "but my brother, Regulus, will be coming next time, and she'll never look in his trunk, toadying little brat that he is."

Looking back at his work, Remus was frustrated to see that he'd filled the damn chart in wrong. The effect of Deadly Nightshade was not pronounced kleptomaniac tendencies in the drinker. He didn't know where he'd got that from. Carefully, he removed the error and neatly inked in the correct answer.

It took Remus a moment to realise that the silence was stretching on too long.

He looked back up and saw the tail end of some furtive communication between the three of them. Black grinned at him faintly, while Pettigrew and Potter exchanged meaningful looks. Then Black resumed reading.

"'While your father continues to hope that this is merely juvenile rebellion, I see you taking the same worthless path as your uncle Al-'"

"I'm hungry," Pettigrew announced. "Who else is hungry? Anyone else hungry? Anyone else want food? Nice food?"

Remus was fairly sure that it wasn't his imagination that Potter kicked Pettigrew in the shin, but Black was effusively agreeing that, yes, he too was suddenly hungry, and that was an eye-catching performance all by itself.

"Well, count me in," Potter said.

Three faces turned expectantly to Remus. Who had never felt more out of place in Gryffindor - nor less wolfish - than under the weight of their almost predatory gazes.

"You want food, Lupin? Mmm?" Black asked.

"Erm, yes, that would be nice, thank you," he agreed.

Black beamed at him and Potter leant over the end of his bed, fishing around in his trunk and flinging the silvery sweep of his Invisibility Cloak at Pettigrew, who was tugging back on his shoes.

In Pettigrew's absence, Remus tried to return to his homework. But he was all too conscious of the fact that Potter and Black were still watching him. They were also - and no, Remus definitely wasn't just being paranoid - they were also passing notes between them.

It had to be a prank.

Remus sighed. He was miserable enough that they couldn't be his friends. Did they really have to make him fill in for when the hated Slytherins weren't around? Couldn't they just leave him alone? He was quiet, he kept out of their way, he didn't blab to professors when he overheard their schemes.

Couldn't they just leave him alone?

Pettigrew's return was announced by a scuffle of feet and the smell of cooked meat and hot chips. The cloak slipped to the floor to reveal the short boy with an armful of heaped plates. Rubbing his hands together gleefully, Black leapt over and immediately removed the platter of chips, which he carried back to his bed, apparently without a thought of sharing.

"You got all this from the kitchen?" Remus asked.

Obviously proud of himself, Pettigrew nodded as he awkwardly shifted the plates of steak sandwiches into an easier position.

"The house-elves just give it away," Potter explained. "We'll show you sometime."

That was the prank. Pretend to show Lupin the kitchen but actually... lock him in somewhere. Or something. Rather unimaginative as pranks went he supposed, but then Remus hadn't given pranks the same amount of thought that Potter and Black had. They were sure to have come up with something more creative.

Pettigrew hesitated, studying the fours plates with a furrowed brow. At last, he held one out to Remus.

"This one's yours."

He handed the other ones over and the three boys settled into voracious eating and good-natured arguing over the chips, which resulted in the whole plateful being emptied over Black's bed and the floor.

Despite the prickle of insecurity, Remus felt almost included. Like he belonged.

Black glanced at him and smiled again, that charming, insincere smile that made Remus instinctively nervous.

"Eat up, Lupin," he urged. "While it's still hot."

The food did smell good and, considering the handful of chips Potter threw at him in the cheerful way he hoped it was meant, Remus bit into his sandwich. And almost choked.

The meat was squishy and wet.

He paused and chewed slowly. The meat was not so much cooked as very scared.

Which meant that there was a piece of dead cow in Remus' mouth, and he was expected to eat it. He was half-surprised the horrid thing didn't twitch between his teeth.

"It's... er... it's rather rare-done, isn't it?" Remus mumbled.

"Good?" Potter asked.

Remus wanted to be friends with them, he really really really did. But not at the cost of food poisoning from eating raw meat. Surely there was some other way to make friends besides spending the rest of the night vomiting down the loo.

But Potter was watching him eat, and so were Black and Pettigrew. They'd abandoned their own food just to watch Remus eat. Did that mean they liked him?

Probably not.

But still... Maybe.

"Mmm, good," Remus agreed weakly.

The Hamlet Approach

There was most definitely a prank coming Remus' way. The whispered conferences that broke off whenever he entered the room, the way Black's eyes lingered on him a moment too long, the sudden concern Potter was showing for his mother's health, the worried smiles that Pettigrew kept sending him.

And the piles of old books stolen (or liberated, as Black insisted) from the library that were always hurried out of sight before Remus could see the titles.

He rolled over in his bed, tucking the woollen blankets up under his chin. None of the other boys were asleep. He could tell from their light breathing.

"Alright there, Peter?" Potter asked suddenly.

"Yeah, everything okay?" Black added.

Remus tensed. Was this it?

"Erm... actually I'm having trouble sleeping," Pettigrew's wavered through the darkness.

"That's terrible!" Black exclaimed. "You need your sleep, we've got a test in Potions tomorrow."

"How do you know that?" Remus asked in spite of himself.

"Saw it marked in Professor Maldoir's diary when I was retrieving my Fizzing Whizzbees from his desk."

"Well, if Lupin doesn't mind, we'll light the candles and tell you a story," Potter suggested.

Without waiting for Remus to answer, there was a rustle of blankets as he sat up in bed and started lighting candles. As light flickered through the room, Remus caught sight of Black and Potter's faces; neither of them appeared in the slightest sleepy.

This was definitely trouble.

"A story would be nice," Pettigrew agreed.

Potter slid his glasses on, and Black left his own bed and crawled onto Potter's next to him.

"What would be a good story then? Any ideas, James?" Black asked, biting his lip and looking puzzled.

Potter tapped his chin thoughtfully, then smiled.

"How about 'Little Red Riding Hood'?"

"Oh good choice!" Black cheered, and Pettigrew, wriggled deep into his blankets, nodded at them over his knees.

The bottom of Remus' stomach fell out. His blankets, which had been warm and comforting, suddenly felt as constricting as a straitjacket. Swallowing hard, he willed himself to stay calm.

"Once upon a time," said Potter, "there was a little girl who had a beautiful red cape. She wore her cape so often, that she was known as Little Red Riding Hood. Now, one day, Little Red Riding Hood decided to go and visit her sick grandmother, who lived beyond the forest."

Candlelight flickered over Potter's handsome face as he spoke, and Black and Pettigrew were listening, enrapt. But for the suspiciously bizarre choice of tale, Remus could almost imagine that it was simply three boys telling stories after dark. However, limited as his exposure was to sleepovers and camping trips, he was fairly sure that ghost stories were more traditional fare than fairy tales.

He hardly dared look at them.

"Little Red Riding Hood's mother gave her a basket of food to take to her grandmother, and told her to stay on the path. Little Red Riding Hood- "

"Shorten it to Little Red, would you? We're none of us going to be confused who you're talking about," Black interjected.

"Fair enough. Anyway, Little Red left the village and had barely entered the forest, when she met the Wolf..."

"Arooo!" Black howled, enthusiastically flinging his head back.

Remus ceased his intense examination of the tattered cuff of his pyjama shirt and glanced up, his heart thumping in his chest so hard he could barely breathe.

They all three were looking at him. None of them looked as stunningly sure of themselves as they did in lessons or in the common room. Aside from their expectant expressions, they all looked a little lost.

"The wolf?" Potter queried hesitantly.

"Arooo?" Black added.

Hands were grabbing him and pulling him back even as Remus tumbled to his feet and raced for the door. Black pressed his back to the door, looking both apprehensive and exhilarated. Potter laid a hand carefully on Remus' shoulder, turning him around.

Only Pettigrew stayed in his bed, mouth hanging open.

"Better 'fess up now, you know, Lupin," Potter said. "Sirius' next line of enquiry is putting Wolfsbane in your pumpkin juice tomorrow morning."

"Not enough to kill you," Black protested, seeing Remus' horrified look. "Just enough to see. I researched it. A trace dose of Wolfsbane can be shrugged off by a human, but the same amount will provoke nausea and vomiting in a... a werewolf."

It was out. Let loose at last.

Yet somehow, it didn't seem quite as threatening coming from a twelve-year old's lips as it did when Madam Pomfrey sighed over it, or his parents grieved over it. Or when the first Healer had said it, when Remus was still very small.

"Aconite, even in minute doses, can be fatal," Remus said. If they were willing to have a conversation about it rather than scream and run, he could deal with that.

"I researched it," Black insisted petulantly, as if that made experimental poisoning alright.

Remus wasn't convinced that it did make it alright.

"We didn't know what else to try if this didn't work," Potter said. "Nothing seemed to prove it. You were away or ill at Full moons, but silver didn't burn you, and your hands aren't hairy. And your reflexes are lousy."

"But you did eat the raw meat," Pettigrew broke in. He frowned and shook his head. "The house-elves thought I'd gone mad asking for a raw meat sandwich."

"They'll get over it," Black said dismissively. He drew closer to Remus, peering over his shoulder to meet Potter's eye. "So, Lupin, want to tell us about it?"

Lone Wolf

Lone Wolf lurks in the shadows and prowls through the undergrowth. Silent as smoke. Wolf's eyes are sharp, and Wolf's nose is keen.

Wolf smells Girl. Sweet and succulent. Tasty.

Wolf can see Girl. Girl is alone on the path. Wolf is moving closer to girl. Girl doesn't know. Girl keeps going. Wolf is almost there.

And stupid Dog starts barking. Loud barking which frightens Girl and makes her run away. Wolf wants to go after her but stupid Stag gets in the way, antlers caught in branches and stupid Rat is under Wolf's feet.

Stupid Dog is still barking.

Shut up, Dog, Wolf says.

Stupid Dog runs away and Wolf has to go after stupid Dog. Stupid Dog keeps running and Wolf has to chase.

Keep up, Rat, Wolf says. Mind the trees, Stag.

Girl is back there, but stupid Dog is up in front somewhere, and stupid Stag and stupid Rat are close by. And Lone Wolf goes with them.

END