About Nothing

About Nothing

"Hey Remus, you coming?" James’ voice startled him and the photo fell from his hand and softly to the floor. Remus looked at James’ head of messy black hair sticking through the door, frowning slightly and a concerned look upon his face.

"I’ll be there in a moment," Remus gave a smile and James’ head disappeared. So many times had he given fake smiles and said the words "I’m fine" and never meant a word of it. All he could think about lately was when this nightmare called life would end or when things would go back to the simplicity he used to know. Maybe never. It seemed that lately he was only going through the motions. He was not really living anymore, but merely existing. He had long ago felt himself slipping into nothingness, and had finally succumbed to it.

Remus looked into the mirror before him. He had changed, though not as his father had predicted. He was now tall with plain brown-blonde hair and amber eyes. He looked pale, fragile, and sick and had tattered robes that had clearly been in disrepair for a while now. The torn robes came from his so-called ‘beautiful changes’. Each month he went through the same changes, or transformations. When he had been younger, a werewolf had bitten him, and that was the reason that he looked like a street child all the time. The transformation each month tore his robes and he had long ago stopped buying new ones for lack of money, but had taken to patching the holes and rips. They never looked brilliant, but he could now get through it without pricking his fingers badly. He let out a deep sigh and looked straight into his own amber eyes through the glass of the mirror. "Not going to get much better than this, huh?" he said to himself gently before tearing his gaze away from the mirror image and heading down to meet his friends.

"What took you so long?" Sirius, a tall boy with black eyes and hair to match that elegantly fell about his face and swiftly into his eyes, asked.

"You’re looking a bit peaky. Is the full moon near?" Peter was a short chum with brown mousy hair and light brown eyes. Unlike James and Sirius, his face was more round than angular.

"Yes, only a week of full-moon free nights left," he replied with a sorrowful air and James and Sirius smiled knowingly at each other. Remus narrowed his eyes in suspicion, but decided not to even try to ask.

"Come along, then," James ordered and he began to walk out of the common room and down one of the many staircases of Hogwarts, school for witchcraft and wizardry. This had been yet another change for Remus. He had received his letter to Hogwarts a few days after the photograph of his dad and him had been taken.

"You don’t even try to comb your hair anymore, do you?" Sirius asked in an amused sort of voice and James smiled and put a hand through his already messy hair, ruffling it even more. His jet black hair was never straight but instead stuck out at every angle making him look as if he had just rolled out of bed after a long night of tossing and turning.

"No, I don’t," James admitted mournfully, but his twinkling hazel eyes told the other three boys that he truly didn’t care, "Besides, I think it looks better this way, don’t you?" Remus, Peter, and Sirius looked at each other and then back at James as if he was crazy.

"Er…yeah…it…um…certainly looks…interesting?" Sirius stifled his laughter as Remus tried to compliment James who went on messing up his hair.

Life had been pretty much like this since he had received his letter to Hogwarts. His parents, of course, had been ecstatic that Dumbledore had fought so hard in particular to let him come to Hogwarts even knowing about his "condition". Even though Remus was very grateful towards Dumbledore, his mind still questioned why. Why had Dumbledore fought so hard for a small eleven-year-old boy who he hadn’t even known yet?

"Are you coming, Remus?" James, Peter, and Sirius had walked on and then noticing that Remus was too deep in his thoughts to follow stopped to snap him back to reality. Remus shook his head to try to unfog his mind.

"Yes, I’m coming…just thinking a bit," he hoped that he sounded nonchalant.

"You’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking lately, you know," said James as they resumed walking. They passed many portraits and paintings on their way. Those had always been something that greatly interested Remus when he first came to this school. He only had half blood and his mother didn’t like magic for daily things. She had always said it’d make them all lazy to do everything by magic, so she forced his wizard father to keep the magic to a minimum, which meant that he had never been able to having moving photographs or paintings. After coming to Hogwarts and being exposed to them, he thought it completely amazing. To be captured in one moment of your life and preserved there for all of eternity, it had just intrigued him and still did so even today in his 5th year at Hogwarts. It seemed that each painting was about something, as if each person or thing in those paintings was about something instead of nothing; they had been painted or photographed for a reason. Remus longed to be like them in that way. He wanted to be something.

"You’re going to love this, Remus," said Sirius, smiling one of his charming smiles.

"Where are you taking me?" Remus asked playing along on their mystery, but Sirius only made a zipping motion over his lips. Remus laughed silently as he kept up with his three friends.

Friends…before James, Sirius, and Peter he had never had any friends. Even now after almost five years of being their friend, it still felt strange and surreal. While he trusted them with secrets and loved them as brothers, he still felt separated from them. Almost as if he weren’t cautious with what he said and did, he might lose them like everyone else in his life. It seemed to him that when they first met, things were just too easy. They had been so accepting right from the beginning.

He had ended up turning around to see the tall figures of Sirius and James. That had been the beginning of their friendship. It had been that simple.

A while after he had met James and Sirius, the three of them met Peter, who was, if possible, even more of an introvert than Remus had been. Together, they became known as the Marauders. James and Sirius were always thinking up crazy and eccentric schemes and pranks, and Remus and Peter would figure out how to put them into action. Then the four of them would carry it through. It was fun. They spent countless nights sneaking out of their dormitories and down to the dungeons where the caretaker almost never checked. After the other three had found out about his "condition", Remus showed them the passage to the shrieking shack which they had dubbed as headquarters as soon as seeing the place. It was there that they had made a special map…the Marauders’ map, which showed the whole of Hogwarts School and anyone in it. In Remus’ opinion, that had been their greatest invention yet.

Remus looked around himself; he’d drifted off into his thoughts again. He hadn’t been watching where they had been heading but now saw that it was towards the Great Hall. But when they reached it, James instead turned toward the oak doors that led outside.

"We’re going outside?" Remus asked Peter who shook his head excitedly and James winked before taking the Marauders map from his pocket to make sure that the coast was clear.

"Mischief managed," he said tapping the map softly with his wand tip, "ok, come on." James and Sirius opened the doors and led the other two outside. They then sauntered up to the whomping willow tree that had been planted for everyone’s safety, and found the long stick that Madam Pomfrey used when escorting Remus to the shack on the full moon nights. James prodded the knot of the trunk of the tree and it instantly froze. The four boys ran to the trunk and dove into the underground passageway. They began the long way through the tunnel until they finally saw the familiar sight of the shrieking shack that they called headquarters. When they got in James and Sirius plopped down on one of the scratched, bitten, and abused sofas.

"Ok, so what is it? What’s the big surprise?" Remus asked. James and Sirius cast each other a knowing glance before standing up and getting into a line with Peter. Remus had a peculiar feeling of a song and dance coming on, but it never happened. Instead, Remus watched as his friend’s began to grow furrier and shorter. Their noses elongated and tails came into view in front of his very eyes. Remus rubbed his eyes, expecting the sight in front of him to be different after reopening them. Yet standing where his friends once were, was a rat, stag, and large, black dog. Remus couldn’t seem to control his face. It wanted to smile, laugh, frown, and scold all at the same time. The three changed back and beamed at him.

"Well? What do you think?" James asked falling back down onto the sofa he had previously occupied.

"You’re…you’re animagus? When? How? Why?" Remus asked

"For you, Moony," Sirius smiled.

"Moony?" Remus asked.

"Yeah…it fits your transformation well, don’t you think?" Sirius explained.

"Don’t you see, Remus? Now we can all transform when the full moon comes round to play. You won’t be alone anymore," James ignored Sirius and his new nickname for Remus.

"That was extremely dangerous! Becoming animagus can go wrong very easily and what if-"

"But it didn’t, Moony," James smiled at the nickname. He had to admit after all, it was catchy.

"It’s ok, we had no problem with it…except for Wormtail here," Sirius poked Peter’s arm playfully.

"Wormtail?" Peter asked disgustedly.

"Yes…when you transform you have a Wormtail…" Sirius explained patiently.

"Fine then…erm…Padfoot," Peter had clearly thought Sirius would hate the name so he smiled triumphantly.

"Hmm…Padfoot? I like it…it’s nice," said Sirius and Peter’s triumphant face fell. James laughed and both boys looked toward him. "What about James?" Sirius asked Peter.

"No. No, that’s fine. I don’t want a nickname, thank you very much," James said quickly waving his arms in front of him.

"Prongs, then?" Peter asked Sirius who agreed at once. James sighed. Remus smiled beside himself. He knew perfectly well that his friends could’ve been harmed while doing this, but they had done it for him so that he wouldn’t be alone during the full moons anymore. Those had always been the loneliest times of his life. He would never forget the feeling of going into the shack alone at dusk, knowing and awaiting the painful transformation and the dreading feeling of knowing he’d wake up the next morning only to begin counting down the days until his next lonely and painful transformation. But was this worth it? Was it worth having chanced one of his friends for himself? He was being very selfish and he knew it. Even though the action could not be undone, he still felt as if he was to blame.

"You guys shouldn’t have done this. I’m not worth one of you getting hurt," he said finally, not sure what else he could say.

"Not worth it? Moony, why do you always do that?" Sirius’ eyebrows suddenly furrowed as if concentrating very hard.

"Do what?"

"Down-talk yourself. You act as if you’re nothing."

"No I don’t."

"You do," Remus scoffed at Sirius’ persistence, "You have such a low opinion of yourself and I don’t see why," Sirius’ tone was soft now, one that Remus rarely heard. It was the tone of Sirius being serious.

"I don’t have a low opinion of myself."

"Well, you don’t have a particularly high one either," James added in. Remus only stared at the two, not believing that the conversation had turned onto him so swiftly.

"You do, you know," said Peter softly looking at the ground rather than Remus’ face.

"Honestly," Remus shook his head unbelievingly as he sat on a tattered chair and put his head into his hands, "I’m not going to talk about this right now. The fact is that you guys did something really dangerous," he tried to skillfully turn the subject away from himself.

"Remus…I know what you’re doing,"

"And it’s not going to work. We’re going to talk about this," James said stubbornly crossing his arms over his chest, giving him a look of extreme smugness. When Remus didn’t make any move to talk Sirius decided to try to cheer him up a bit.

"Remus, come on, it’s your birthday! Be happy and forget everything else in your life for once. Come on," he said imploringly, but Remus only shook his head. It was his birthday. 16 years old today. So little time, yet in such short time, so many things had seemed to go wrong.

"Damn it, Remus, stop accepting everything in life that’s thrown at you! Fight back once in a while," James shouted angrily. At this sudden outburst, Remus lifted his head from his hands and looked at the boy not sure what to say or to feel. This had happened so many times in his life, becoming speechless. Just after he had been bitten, he had fainted and was taken to St. Mungos. When he awoke his father and mother had told him he was a werewolf. He hadn’t known what to say then either, so he had settled with weeping, for it was all he knew to do.

"I’m not going to sit back and let you do this to yourself," Do what? Remus thought, but in his mind he knew exactly what James knew; what James saw every time he looked at him. Remus had long ago built up a wall around himself so as not to be hurt by humankind. When he had met James, Sirius, and Peter that wall had come down a bit, but never had it come down fully. He was always on guard, always anticipating suffering and grief, for that was all he had known this far into his life. So many times had he thought that he’d be better off dead, but James and Sirius had always been there to pull him out of those dim thoughts of death. And now they were attempting to tear down his wall.

"Remus, you’re worth what we did, and we won’t let you forget that," Sirius smirked playfully. Remus didn’t want to talk about any of this for it brought back too many things that he had spent a lifetime trying to forget. He wanted out of the conversation now.

"Ok, I see your point. Show me your transformations again?" he put on another fake, but convincing, smile and looked at each of them intently, waiting for them to take the bait. James and Sirius cast each other a curious glance,

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I want to see them. I didn’t get to see properly the first time," and with that, his friends did as he wished. Remus spent some time with them in their headquarters, playing and laughing at Sirius, and admiring James' transformation and humoring Peter’s.

"It’ll all be fine, now, Remus. Just wait, we’ll each be looking forward to every full moon from now on. Think of it, we can go run around in the Forbidden Forest and raid Hogsmeade!" James said excitedly, watching Sirius chase his tail.

Somehow, his friends managed to cheer him up. It was, after all, his birthday and he should be happy for that. James and the others were right, too. He wouldn’t be lonely on full moons. And for once, everything seemed to click inside his head. James, Sirius, and Peter knew what he was and weren’t afraid of him, even if they’d be with him while he was a werewolf they weren’t afraid. They had truly accepted him for what he was, what he would always be. They were his true friends, and would always be his true friends. And by just being his friends, they made him into something.

Remus smiled for the first time in years; truly smiled. Outside, dawn was breaking and the first rays of sunlight crawled across the small Hogsmeade village and poured into the shrieking shack’s windows. Remus welcomed the warm rays onto his face. He finally knew that all those years of friendless days and grieving for what could’ve been was all about nothing. Why try to change his life, when he didn’t know what it’d be changed to?

"Come on. We should head back before they know we’ve gone, Moony," Sirius winked at Remus and smiled before turning his back and stepping into the long tunnel back to Hogwarts. Remus wept, but the tears were of exultation. For most of his life he had been about nothing, now he was finally something. He had a name for himself. Moony…It is catchy. Remus quickly wiped away the stray tears and followed Sirius’ retreating back.