Literacy

Sirius has no love for literature, not before school. It is rather hard to think he would, what with aunt Elladora punctually presenting him every birthday and Christmas with volume after volume of the annotated Wizarding edition of Dickens’ complete works, and his mother insisting that he read the ancient dusty tomes littering the library, the ones that chronicle the rise and permanence of the Black family, formerly Nigellus. A heavy, tangible testament of the weight he will one day inherit, she tells him repeatedly.

He makes a couple of perfunctory attempts at the former but never reads past the thick introductory notes, a dissertation by some frustrated Squib on how David Copperfield is a fantastic depiction of Muggles at their most savage and atavistic. The latter books, however, he is not as lucky with, and many are the afternoons spent matching first name to illustrious deed. If there is one thing he learns from all those (in his opinion, wasted) hours, it is that the Black family has always had an unwritten canon of names, all of them astronomical, from which it rarely ever strays; centuries of tradition staring at him in the spidery handwriting of a multitude of commentators, and doesn’t his family have anything better to do than spread itself glimmering brightly all over the night sky, anyhow? Names are reused, carefully kept and passed down between generations (Sirius himself, he discovers one autumn evening, is named after a great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather whose crowning achievement was defeating Halcyone Malfoy II in a duel with only two spells), weight and significance woven into them sometimes merely by the passage of time.

Sirius, it must be said, does not care one wit about great-grandfather Procyon or mad great-great-grandmother Mimosa. But at least he knows the names of more stars than any other first year in Hogwarts, when the time to go to school comes, and he has no real trouble memorizing constellations; when he actually needs to study he amuses himself by thinking of Regulus and long-dead aunt Denebola keeping company with grandmother Algieba, whom he’s always hated.

-

Only a month into his first year at Hogwarts, and Sirius is already wondering how much longer he’s going to manage to tolerate his dorm mates, and not only because they’re Gryffindors. For the past two hours the three of them have been studying frantically for tomorrow’s Astronomy examination, taking turns naming stars in the twelve zodiac constellations and it’s driving him crazy, James’ arrogance, Peter’s constant mistakes and Remus’ never-ending need to placate everyone with softly-spoken words.

“Aldebaran,” James asks for the third time in the evening.

“Taurus,” supplies Remus with ease. “Alpha Taurus.”

“Regulus.”

“Alpha... alpha something, isn’t it?” Peter asks nervously. Sirius smirks and thinks that tomorrow, Pettigrew is definitely going to fail. He himself has plans of doing spectacularly well, not that it was much trouble, memorizing any of the constellations.

“Alpha Leo.”

“I don’t know how I’m ever going to remember all of this,” Peter nearly wails, and Sirius smirks subtly and fights the urge to casually say “Oh, you’re not,” mostly because Potter will hex him if he does, and he can’t be bothered thinking of a good curse to hurl at him.

“Well,” Remus muses thoughtfully, “... if you think of Leo, which is the lion and the king of the jungle, and then you think that Regulus means king, you could at least remember this one...”

“Or you could think of my brother,” Sirius says out loud, half without meaning to.

“Your brother?” Peter asks, eager for anything that will help with tomorrow’s debacle – even this crumb of information from a should-have-been Slytherin.

“He’s called Regulus,” offers Sirius without looking up from his own reading.

James glares at him and goes back to questioning. “Pollux.”

“Beta Gemini,” says Remus, just as Sirius tells no one in particular “Grandfather.”

“You have a brother named Regulus and a grandfather Pollux, Black? What, do you also have an uncle Procyon?”

“Great-grandfather,” Sirius replies with an arrogant smirk. “I’ll wager you twenty chocolate frogs I can name a relative for every star you can think of, Potter.”

“We’ll see,” James drawls, flipping through the textbook to the index of star names. “How do we know you’re not making it up, anyhow? I could say that my favourite aunt is called Elizabeth and you’d never know I don’t even have an Aunt Elizabeth.”

“You don’t know,” answers Sirius. “But you can write it all down and look it up some other time, if you want. I’m sure there’s a book on the Blacks somewhere in the library. We’re important like that,” he finishes with a disdainful look.

“Maybe I will, Black,” James threatens, but doesn’t reach for quill or parchment. “Anyhow. Bellatrix.”

“Easy, Potter. Cousin. And third year Slytherin.”

“Albali?”

“Epsilon Aquarius,” Sirius supplies lazily. “And aunt.”

“Algieba?”

“Gamma Leo; great-grandmother.”

James’ brow creases in concentration. He’s searching his textbook for the most ridiculous sounding name he can find, Sirius reckons, because the thought of losing twenty chocolate frogs to someone like him probably does not please him. Ah, well. He’s all about the chocolate himself, and also putting Potter back in his place, although today that one comes later.

“Sadalachbia.”

“Beta Aquarius, Potter, and great-grandmother on my father’s side.”

“Antares.”

“Alpha Scorpio, family owl and my mother’s brother-who-died. One more, Potter. I’ve a Potions assignment to do.”

James flips through the book desperately, a final attempt at sparing his cache of sweets from Sirius’ greedy hands. “Alphard,” he finally decides on. “You can’t know anyone called Alphard. It sounds like French for ‘old fart,’ for Merlin’s sake!”

Sirius grins triumphantly. Victory, this time, is not only sweet – it is also chocolate flavoured. “Uncle. My mother loathes him, too.”

James glowers. Peter whines, half green with envy: “How do you know all these names, anyhow? I don’t even remember half my cousins!”

“My mum makes me read these stupid books about the family. But they’re so boring that all I do is memorize the family trees, so at least I know what she’s on about, when she natters me. Reading is boring, anyhow,” Sirius answers with finality.

“You think?” Remus asks, too casually for it to just be an off-handed question.

“I’ve never read a single good book in my life. Now, Potter – my frogs, please?”

-

Aunt Elladora goes (too) mad shortly before Sirius’ first year in Hogwarts; funny thing that, because she doesn’t have the née Black excuse to blame it all on, as her rather more earthly name evidences. The burden of the semi-annual book giving therefore defaults to uncle Alphard, and he embraces it with as much disinterest as humanly possible, mostly because at this point in life he has little left but disdain for his sister, Sirius’ mother, and few to no hopes for her two sons. But it’s through him that Sirius, going home for Christmas in his first year and suffering the constant insolent remarks of Bellatrix, Narcissa and Regulus, all of whom take immense pleasure on his being a Gryffindor, finally discovers a Muggle author other than Dickens – not that he knows about either writer’s non-magical heritage.

The Jungle Book waits underneath the brightly lit tree on Christmas morning, wrapped in austere paper from Flourish and Blotts. Unfortunately the edition is part of the same collection, Muggle Writing for Pureblooded Wizards, as all the Dickens tomes have been over the years, and even if it hadn’t been, there are fifty pages of dull biography standing between the text itself and the front cover, far too many for Sirius’ attention span.

Mowgli and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi join Oliver Twist and other personages of ill repute and worse fate in the much-neglected bookshelves that line one of Sirius’ bedroom walls without so much as a second thought.

-

“Here,” Remus says one night shortly after Christmas, shyly, and Sirius notices that he looks very pale and jittery in the moonlight flooding the dormitory. He wonders if it’s simply speaking to him that’s making Remus act like this, or if it’s the way his family members just keep on dying and getting ill. Maybe his family is cursed, Sirius thinks, but then again he’s never heard of the Lupins, so it stands to reason that they can’t be important enough to warrant a curse like the one they’re experiencing. “You should read this,” and he offers a thin book to Sirius.

“Frankenstein,” Sirius reads out-loud. “What’s this?”

“’s a book.” Remus offers, prompting Sirius to raise an eyebrow because obviously it’s a book, that’s not what he’s wondering about. “I thought I’d lost my copy of it, so I got another one for Christmas, but it turns out it’d been here all the time and so now I have two copies. And then I remembered how you told James you hadn’t ever read a single good book, and, uh,” he stammers, running out of things to say. “You’ll like it, I think.”

“All right then,” says Sirius warily, accepting the book with some hesitation. “Thanks,” he adds stiffly, mostly because Remus is still standing in front of his bed, looking slightly bereft and out of place and Sirius would rather he go away.

“Not at all!” replies Remus, his smile somewhat tired.

Sirius may not like reading as a general rule, but enough years of not being able to run amok until he’d ploughed through thick tomes have taught him how to skim texts. This particular time, he reads not so much the entire book as only the dialogue-rich parts, skimming over everything else and backtracking only when things really don’t make any sense at all. It’s really not the best way to do things, but it works for him, and in a week he offers the book back to Remus, one morning over breakfast.

“You finished it, then?” asks an abnormally pale and peaky Remus, sounding pleasantly surprised.

“Yeah,” Sirius replies, trying not to appear too enthusiastic. “It was good, I suppose. I liked it.”

“Told you you would. Do you want to borrow another one?”

“Uh...” Sirius mutters into his food, like he can’t make up his mind. “Yeah, sure.”

“I’ll give it to you in the dormitory, then, after classes?”

“But it can’t be boring,” warns Sirius menacingly. “This one was good because it wasn’t too boring.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Remus waves his hand dismissively, maybe even begins to smile in a friendly way. Sirius shoves the new copy, spine barely marked, of Mary Shelley’s book in his direction between mouthfuls of toast, but Remus waves his hand again. “Oh, keep it. I’ve another copy, I told you.”

Sirius grunts non-commitally, and Remus, proud that he’s managed to convince at least one of his dormitory mates to crack a book for purposes other than last-minute essay writing, looks abnormally pleased with himself, at least until he catches sight of the time. “We’re going to be late for class unless we hurry,” he tells Sirius after gulping the last of his pumpkin juice down. “Are you coming?”

Sirius shrugs, but pushes his plate away and, picking up his things, returns Shelley to his rucksack.

-

In the summer Sirius returns home with a handful of book titles recommended to him by Remus, who’s determined to have at least one friend who knows what the words ‘leisure reading’ mean (James and Peter, despite having long ago accepted that Sirius is not about to sell them to Slytherin House for a handsome reward, are above, or perhaps beneath, recommending books – in fact, it could be said that they are simply above, or perhaps beneath, reading as a whole); he searches his father’s library as surreptitiously as possible for them only to walk away empty handed, because the day the Blacks are caught sheltering rabble along the likes of Dahl or Verne in their shelves is still far in coming.

One weekend, when the family is gathered together and Regulus is off somewhere, conspiring with Bellatrix and Narcissa instead of pestering him, Sirius is pulled aside by his uncle Alphard, who’s probably trying to gauge just how many of his nearly endless Galleons he should be spending on his nephews.

“Did you like that book your aunt and I gave you for Christmas, then?” he asks offhandedly.

“Uh,” Sirius lies. “Yeah.”

“You did, really? What story was your favourite?”

“Uh,” repeats Sirius, who in all honesty can’t even remember the title or the author of the book, much less any other detail that will allow him to think up a convincing favourite story. He doesn’t even know there’s more than one story in the book. “Eh,” he says, stalling for time. “The one about the, uh, mad Muggle?” There’s always mad Muggles involved, Sirius thinks. You can’t go wrong with mad Muggles.

Uncle Alphard raises an eyebrow subtly, knowingly. “Ah. Yes. The mad Muggle. I see. Very good one, wasn’t it?”

“Uh-huh,” Sirius nods, already congratulating himself on having yet again talked his away out of trouble.

“Tell me, boy,” his uncle asks wryly and suddenly. “Do you even know how to read?”

Taken aback, Sirius nearly snarls. “Yes,” he answers, rather offended. “Of course I do.”

As a reply, his uncle merely arches an eyebrow again, and Sirius bristles, like a wild little thing. “I borrow books from my friends. In school,” he huffs self-importantly, as if daring his uncle to question his presence in Gryffindor house, away from the traditional green of Slytherin.

“Really?” asks Alphard, whose expression is now more amused than anything else. “Which ones?”

“Muggle books,” Sirius replies, and then, to make it sound even more offensive, “There’s some wicked stories in them, sometimes.”

“You think?” Alphard asks, still amused, and Sirius haughtily nods in reply. “How’s this, then – I’ll get you a Muggle book before you go back to school – a good one. But you must read it”

“Sure,” Sirius says disinterestedly. “All right,” and, shaking his uncle’s hand from his shoulder, he heads back to his room in search of the candy Andromeda bought him at Honeydukes, last Hogsmeade trip of the school year.

-

“I read the best book this summer,” are the first words to leave Sirius’ mouth when the four boys come together at the Hogwarts Express, in September of their second year. Remus is so taken aback by this sudden, willing acknowledgement of literacy coming from Sirius that his own reading, an old copy of Around the World in Eighty Days (it’s travel literature, and there’s nothing better than that for train rides) slips from his grip.

“What was it?” Remus asks, bending down to retrieve the book, not quite sure if he should be dreading the answer.

“It’s a Muggle book my uncle gave me, and it’s about this crazy Muggle, Dr. Jekyll, who makes a potion and every time he drinks it he turns into this crazy thing, Mr. Hyde. He kills people and all, when he’s transformed, and in the end he goes crazy and can’t become human again, because Hyde is taking over him, so he writes a letter telling everyone what he’s done and then he hangs himself. ‘s great,” he finishes swiftly.

“Ah,” Remus says, subtly trying to pretend that he’s not hiding behind his Verne (so his dormitory mates can’t see the way he’s stiffened – but then again, even if they did, they’d probably think it a side effect of Sirius’ atrocious summary of the book, not that it would be a lie, as he can’t recall ever seeing another book butchered as swiftly and efficiently), waiting for the conversation to move onto safer topics. He’s not a big fan of Stevenson, himself, has never been too keen on the whole transforming into a remorseless beast thing, with potions or otherwise.

“Well,” quips James snidely. “Now I won’t have to read the book, you just ruined the whole thing.”

Sirius grins at James and flips two fingers in his direction, then turns to Remus again. “Whatcha reading?”

“Around the World in Eighty Days”

“Oh, my mum read me that one,” offers Peter. “It was good, I remember.”

Remus smiles thankfully at Peter, briefly, and Sirius once again comes to the conclusion that all his dormitory mates are rather peculiar, each in his own fashion. “So what’s it about, then?” he asks.

“Phileas Fogg – that’s the main character’s name – makes a bet with another Muggle that he can travel around the world in eighty days; they agree to meet up in London–”

“Why would you need eighty days?” Sirius interrupts. “I mean, you could just Apparate.”

“Muggles can’t Apparate,” Remus says with the tone of someone who’s explained this many times over – which he has.

“Huh,” Sirius huffs, not sounding too impressed. “I liked Jekyll and Hyde better.”

“Yeah, well, you would,” grins James. “Gruesome murders, isn’t that what your family specializes in?”

“We do a bit of everything, so long as it’s illegal somewhere.” Sirius replies. “D’you have any chocolate frogs? I’m not waiting for the trolley witch...”

-

James stops Sirius and Peter before dinner one day, lips stained blue with November weather and Quidditch practice. “Where’s Remus?” he asks them.

“He went home,” Peter answers. “His aunt died.”

James looks suspicious. “Again? How many aunts does he have, anyhow?”

“Not many, I reckon. At least not anymore.” Peter and James stare at Sirius, slightly appalled by this display of casual callousness. “What?” he huffs indignantly, “It’s true. I swear, one of them dies every month, he’s going to have no family left by the time we’re finished here...” he says waving his arm around to indicate the castle as a whole, as they enter the Great Hall, a few minutes before dinner.

Once they’re settled at the house table, Peter asks, “Have you done Transfiguration?”

“Depends,” smirks Sirius. “Have you done Astronomy?”

“Oh, balls!” winces Peter, dropping his fork and sending bits of mashed carrot flying in all directions. “I knew I’d forgotten something!”

James looks up to the enchanted ceiling, which is depicting a perfect cloudless night, as usual. “Well, unless you do it now,” he says, jerking his head upwards, “it’ll have to be from the charts, Peter, my friend. Can’t sneak up to the tower and do it there, ‘s a full moon night, won’t be seeing much. Besides, it’s probably too crowded anyhow.”

Sirius grins: “Sorry, Pete. I’ll sit by your side and tell you about my family while you work, so you don’t suffer too much while copying from the charts. And you can have my Transfiguration essay as soon as you’re done -- just change more words this time; I swear McGonagall doesn’t want Gryffindor to win the house cup, she keeps on decking points because our essays are too similar...”

“God, no, anything but your family!” groans Peter. “I don’t even know them and I’m already scarred for life, thinking about you brother and your grandmother like that!”

“Yeah, well, you remembered the constellations when it mattered, didn’t you?”

“I’m not sure it was worth the trauma, though. I had nightmares about them afterwards, you know? For weeks! The less I hear about your family, the better.”

“Why, Peter, you wound me deeply,” Sirius declaims dramatically, straightening his back and speaking in a falsetto, which admittedly isn’t all too different from his twelve year-old voice. “The Black family is a prominent part of Wizarding history, m’boy. You should be grateful to be granted the privilege of living with me, we’re a dying race, us Pure-“

“Oh, shut it, Black,” says James, cutting him off between mouthfuls of potatoes.

“Sorry, mate.” Sirius apologizes while grinning roguishly, voice back to its normal pitch. “Christmas is near and I’ve been ignoring my heritage – wouldn’t want to embarrass the family when I go home, would I now?”

-

Remus comes back from his aunt’s funeral looking rather haggard and sleepless, and Sirius stares at him, wondering how he manages to care so much for his family, especially since they seem to keep on dying – you’d think he would have learned by now. Sirius himself, he has five aunts and he’s not sure he could manage to drudge up as much sorrow for all of them put together as Remus does on a monthly basis – he must have quite the family, Sirius figures.

“Here’s what you missed, then,” he says, cutting off his train of thought and handing Remus a heap of messy parchment, the notes the three boys have taken while Remus was away. “And here’s your book, too, the one you lent me the other week.”

Remus takes both objects, tired eyes staring warily at the mostly-useless notes, fingers absently caressing the book in search of any new creases in the spine or other telltale signs of abuse. “So, did you like this one, then? Told you it was good, didn’t I?”

“Yeah,” Sirius agrees, no longer unwilling to admit his enthusiasm, at least within the confines of the second year boys’ dormitory. “But you didn’t tell me it was all bollocks, though, that Muggle’s completely mad! You can’t breed basilisks like that, if you could my cousin Bellatrix would’ve got one ages ago.”

“Well, you know,” Remus offers placatingly, “it’s hard to be accurate about something you can’t see...”

“Yeah,” he smirks. “Muggles,” and he still hasn’t quite learned to work the disdain out of his tone.

Remus frowns at him a bit, but then again, no one ever said civilising Sirius Black would be an easy task, and he did take it upon himself willingly, so it’s not as if he has a right to complain.

-

Christmas, Sirius goes home only to find he’s yet again in trouble with his mother. His Astronomy marks are not up to standard (he’s not quite sure what standard it is that he’s failing to live up to), and while it would still be rather a drama for him to be failing Potions, earning anything other than a perfect score in Astronomy is, apparently, a personal attack on the family and yet another example of his incorrigible vindictiveness. So his mother says, at any rate.

After a good talking-to (Sirius counts seven instances of ‘shame,’ thirteen of ‘besmirching’ and eleven of ‘responsibility,’ amongst other of his mother’s choice words), she leaves him alone in his room to reflect on his most atrocious slights. Unfortunately for Sirius, last night he finally finished reading Remus’ copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, borrowed over the holidays under promise of returning it intact, or never borrowing a book again in his life.

He figures that he can wait most of his mother’s anger out simply by rereading (the bit where Dantès escapes the Château d’If and is picked up by the ship, for examples, he goes back to that a few times) but after a while his eyes wander to his bookshelf, where a lifetime of gifts from Aunt Elladora are steadily gathering dust. Uncurling from his bed he ambles over, but not precisely out of curiosity – he’s long ago given up on Aunt Elladora and her skill to choose presents, not that he ever had much faith to begin with. For the first time in years he closely stares at the spines of the books, and noticing that mostly all of them are by the same author, he picks up the one which isn’t, just to be spiteful.

Well, that, and it’s the least dusty one.

With a hasty look at the cover – elaborate golden lettering on a plain background, forming the words The Jungle Book – he opens the book and remorselessly flips past the small-print introduction, until finding something that looks like dialogue.

From the top of the page he begins, skimming the handful of poetry in favour of the prose, rather surprised to find that the writing is actually quite tolerable. This he does not expect, in the least.

-

Back in school, Sirius carefully leafs through his borrowed copy of The Count of Monte Cristo making sure there are no dog-eared pages left in it, because then he’ll have to beg pitifully until Remus ever lets him borrow another book again, and that’s ‘not suitable for a Black,’ and more succinctly, simply not on. His examination satisfactorily concluded, he leaves the book atop Remus’ bed and gets his broom to go join James on the pitch for a quick spot of flying and tossing the Quaffle about.

“You finished it, then?” asks Remus sometime after dinner, when they’re all back in the room, James and Sirius no longer reeking of sweat and wild animal.

“Uh-huh, it was great,” says Sirius without looking up from the Potions essay he should have written over the holiday. “But then I read a better book.”

“Which one,”

“The Jungle Book – have you read it?”

“No.”

“Why not? Do you know it – I can lend it to you.”

“I know it,” answers Remus. “Just don’t like it.” Which is very much the truth. Just like Remus does not like Stevenson, his childhood fondness for Kipling and his wolf-boys, as read to him by his father, vanished at age seven when he became one of them himself.

“You don’t? How can you not?”

“I don’t like Kipling,” repeats Remus curtly. Sirius stares at him flabbergasted, because up to this point Remus has shown nothing but stellar taste in books, or at least in those he’s recommended to Sirius – it seems shocking he wouldn’t approve of Kipling as well, whom Sirius is so suddenly and profoundly enamoured with.

“But he’s brilliant. Brilliant, Remus, brilliant. With the wolves and all, he’s great, you should read him.”

“I’ve already tried. Didn’t like it much, is all.”

“Well, how much did you read? My copy has this very long introduction, you should definitely skip that – and, uh, skip the poetry bits too. Those are boring,” he says, unsuccessfully trying to force the book into Remus’ hands.

-

“Wish I was a wolf,” Sirius says to no-one, just thinking out-loud while doing his homework. “It’d be great, think! I could run around the forest and hunt things and I wouldn’t have to go home with my family.

“Or maybe I could be a dog,” he keeps on musing, quill no longer scratching the parchment but instead held limply between two fingers. Remus, attention helplessly drawn by Sirius’ original comment watches as droplets of ink splatter down into his friend’s assignment, not to mention his bed clothes. “But not one of those pansy ones like my aunt has, a big, furry slobbery one. Then I’d never be cold. And I could chase our house-elves, and bite my mother. Although she’d probably taste foul.”

“Don’t tell me,” says James. “You’ve been reading that jungle book again.”

“The Jungle Book, James,” corrects Sirius none too gently. “The Jungle Book.”

“Don’t see what can be so great about a bloody book. This one, for example,” and he pokes his thick Herbology text with disdain, “is quite dull.”

“Not all books are, though” offers Remus, his old conciliatory tendencies showing again.

“Kipling’s a fantastic Muggle – don’t know what you’re on about, James. And really, it’s got to be great, being a wolf, or just living with them – wouldn’t have to do this Charms essay, to begin,” he says, jabbing his quill at the offending assignment and splattering it with ink as well.

“It’s supper time,” Remus says somewhat tightly after glancing at his wrist-watch. “So either way, you don’t have to do it now, if it’s any consolation.”

“‘Aurgh,’” says Sirius in response, somehow managing to leap into a standing position from his bed without knocking anything over. “‘It is time to hunt again!’”

-

They notice it again in February. “Where’s Remus?” asks Sirius, wanting to return Murder on the Orient Express, somewhat disenchanted with Christie by the surprising ending and his failure at divining it.

“Went home again,” says James. “Said his little cousin died.”

“Christ,” Peter muses thoughtfully from his comfortable perch atop one of the sofas in the common room. “First the aunts, now the cousins...”

“They’ve got to be cursed,” says Sirius adamantly. “Can’t explain it any other way.”

“Well, do you know any once-a-month curses?” James asks. “Because I don’t...”

Sirius searches his memory, trying to remember anything from the many afternoons he used to spend in the dusty library in Number 12. He’s sure that if there’s something about regular, time-delayed curses his family is bound to have made use of it at some point or another, meaning he's bound to have read about it at some point or another, but he draws a blank. “Uh... no. I’m sure there’s books on ‘em in the Restricted Section, though.”

“We could try sneaking in...” concedes James, looking up from his Potions essay. “It’d be fun. More fun than this, for sure,” he says with a pained look at the research materials spread before him.

“Take the cloak,” suggests Peter.

“Take the cloak,” confirms James, letting his roll of parchment curl back upon itself noisily, a grin beginning to creep into his face.

It’s only when they’re walking down the corridor, huddled together under James’ cloak (one of his most prized possessions, second only to the piece of scented letter paper Lily Evans had dropped in the Common Room two weeks ago) that the moonlight streaming through the far window makes Sirius stop.

“Oh, shite. Once a month?”

“Yes,” James answers, and then, following Sirius’ eyes, “Oh.”

“What?” asks Peter.

“The moon,” says James, and when Peter doesn’t make any sounds of sudden understanding, he further clarifies, “It’s full. Like the other time.”

“Oh,” echoes Peter, enlightenment finally dawning. “You don’t think...”

“Well, it’d make sense, wouldn’t it?”

“Dumbledore wouldn’t let... wouldn’t let a werewolf into the castle, would he?” Peter says waterily, uncomfortable.

“Maybe he doesn’t know?” chances James.

“You think? But Dumbledore knows everything,” Peter replies, while in the background Sirius says that damn straight he does, otherwise there’s just no way of explaining how come he catches them every time they prank Snape. “Well, about the school, anyhow,” he further clarifies.

“Not this,” James says adamantly. “And that’s why Remus goes home every month.”

“So why doesn’t he get in trouble with the professors, then?”

“He said he doesn’t like Kipling,” interrupts Sirius suddenly, as if it is the most damning piece of evidence they have.

-

“Where do you reckon he goes?” asks Sirius one day, shortly after Remus tells them he’s going away for the weekend because one of his aunts has just died and the funeral is tomorrow and he’ll be back on Tuesday, so could they please take notes for him and hand in his assignments?

“Home, I guess...”

“I read in a book somewhere that werewolves are usually turned out by their families,” Peter remembers soberly.

“Yeah,” Sirius says absently. “I’ve read that too. But then again, I read it at home, so you never know.”

“Well, I don’t think they did him, did they? I mean, his parents write him and all, and they send him birthday presents, so it can’t be that bad for him.”

“We should follow him,” says Sirius suddenly.

“Are you crazy?” explodes James. “We don’t know where he goes! What if he sees us? What if we get caught? What if someone sees us? We don’t know if the professors know, we could get him expelled! And besides, we don’t even know if he’s a werewolf or not. Maybe his family’s just unlucky.”

“Yeah, bloody great two years they’ve been having, huh,” murmurs Sirius venomously. “I don’t see what else it could be.”

“What do you suggest, then?” Peter, ever the voice of reason, asks James over Sirius’ grumbling.

“We could ask him.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s bril!” snaps Sirius, attention once again on the conversation. “‘Here’s your book, Remus, mate, and by the by, are you a sodding werewolf? Not that we don’t like you or something, just wondering is all.’”

-

“Shouldn’t we study for Astronomy?” Peter asks, nervously. His assignment is actually complete for once, this is just for show, as per the plan him and James came up with last week and grudgingly managed to convince Sirius to play along with.

“Maybe,” Remus agrees half-heartedly, the shadows and weariness of the last funeral long gone from his face.

“We could sneak up to the tower, look at the stars from there,” James suggests, with a knowing glare towards Sirius. “It’d be easier that staring at textbooks.”

“Can’t see much tonight – moon’s full,” says Sirius before anyone else has a chance to say anything. It’s amazing how even in those circumstances he still manages to sound disinterested.

“No it’s not – moon’s not full for another seven days,” says Remus, almost instantly. Sirius, Peter and James briefly stare at one another meaningfully.

“Huh,” Sirius muses. “Isn’t it the seventeenth?”

“It’s the tenth, you daft cow,” answers James, not straying from the script.

“Must’ve looked at the wrong week, then.”

“So, are we going?” Peter asks impatiently. “I really need to finish this...” and he waves his parchment around.

“If we must,” sighs Sirius. “I hate Astronomy, ‘s not worth the trouble. I already know all the stars.”

“Not all of us are lucky to be as inbred as you, Black,” quips James. Sirius’ ancestry is too much fun to mock to simply stop just because they’re friends.

“It’s so insufferable, the way they name you after dead people and then tell you ‘oh, you’re not worthy of this name, you’re a shame to the family.’ You know, I didn’t ask to be born, so it can hardly be my fault!”

Grinning, Peter collects his material and, shoving it into his rucksack, says, “That’s one way to look at it.”

-

Up by the tower it’s cold and windy, as befits blustery March, not to mention empty. Thankfully the sky is clear, and Remus does not find his dorm mates’ actions instantly suspicious, which is really somewhat disappointing, because after almost two years of living with Sirius and James he probably ought to know better than to trust them, especially when they allege completely legit and innocent motives.

Sirius immediately drops down to the ground, staring at the sky and naming stars and constellations, which Peter haphazardly struggles to copy onto his parchment while James and Remus watch with some interest, pacing to keep the cold at bay. At the speed at which Sirius goes, it takes very little time (and little help from Remus and James) for Peter to finish, and the night-time chill has not even reached their bones before Peter’s done with his fake assignment.

“Don’t see why you made us all come,” Remus tells Peter. “Sirius could have recited his family tree equally well in the common room.”

Peter swallows nervously, raising and slapping all the dust from his clothing. “Well, uh, we...”

“We wanted to talk to you,” says James awkwardly.

“Yeah,” confirms Sirius. “Ask you something.”

“And you couldn’t do it downstairs? Where it’s warm?” asks Remus, hands retreating inside the sleeves of his worn jumper.

“We, eh, would rather ask you alone,” Peter says hurriedly. Which is true, because they’re not completely sure if Remus is a werewolf, and even if he is, they’ve got enough presence of mind to realize that he probably doesn’t want the whole school finding out, which is the only possible outcome of having this same conversation in the common room.

“So, uh, Remus, mate,” says James carefully – it falls to him to ask, they drew sticks in the dormitory last night and he came out with the long one. “Are you a werewolf?”

Remus stiffens brusquely upon hearing the question, his bearing an answer in itself. “What, did you bring me up here so you could push me off the tower if I said yes?”

Sirius is utterly appalled by this: “Christ, no! Are you crazy, Lupin?” The Muggle exclamation is his new favourite, he’s stolen it from some of the Muggle-born students in their year and the novelty has yet to wear off for him, if not for everyone else.

“So why, then?” Remus asks guardedly, shoulders and back still very much stiff, keeping a clear distance from the three boys.

“We didn’t want anyone to overhear,” Peter explains feebly. “We figured if you were one, you wouldn’t want everyone to know.”

“So,” Sirius half-nags. “Are you or are you not, then?”

Faced with his three friends, Remus has no choice. “Yes,” he sighs finally, and the defiance in his shoulders is replaced by weariness.

The other three boys are rendered silent at the confession; months of speculation suddenly come to an end. Remus lets himself sag listlessly against the wall while Sirius, James and Remus approach him nervously, staring at him – searching, he imagines, for some telltale sign.

“So,” Remus asks resignedly after enduring their scrutiny for a while, “how did you know?”

“Er,” volunteers Peter, “Fifteen family members have died since we met you? And fourteen of them were aunts? And they always die on the full moon?”

Remus laughs weakly at this, with a slight tinge of desperation.

“Besides,” Sirius says with aplomb and half a grin, “you said you didn’t like Kipling.”

And that’s when Remus figures things may not be as dismal as they look.