Brilliance

Years, even decades, later I would always remember that day. It was one of *those* days, you know; the kind that start out like any other and you'd never guess that they could in any way be special but they are just the same. There were no heralding angels coming down from up high or flocks of Fwoopers doing some kind of crazy mating dance on your breakfast table. It was indeed so normal that you could almost say it was boring. Almost. Luckily, life at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is anything but that. Tuesday morning it was, I recall it clearly, we were just having brekkie at the Gryffindor table. Well, trying anyway. None of us had slept well the night before. Peter kept staring straight ahead, lost in his own little world. James stared at me and I stared at my porridge. Suddenly I had that crazy, I mean, really crazy and hilarious thought. It's just popped into my head and I burst out laughing. They always do that, popping into my head, that is. At the most inappropriate times, too. Like, on the funeral of my great-aunt Hillary. When the priest said something about ash, it just overcame me. My great-aunt had been a heavy smoker, you know, and I had that ridiculous picture of her dressed up as a giant cigarette in my mind.

I've never seen my Dad so angry and upset, before or afterwards.

Anyhow, I didn't tell James why I laughed. He might not have understood it at that point. Years later I told him and he was laughing his head off then but I didn't tell him about my Mum's little speech on that day. First, he didn't have a sister, secondly, it wasn't an 'appropriate' time (I learned that lesson well), and thirdly my sister was nearby. But while my sister is quite a ridiculous creature the whole thing wasn't about her alone.

Summer holidays before I went to Hoggywarts, my mother was talking to my sister Nelle about that monthly thing girls where going through. I was bored at that time so I listened, as well. My sister wasn't too happy, but I didn't care and Mum's got that thing about boys and girls being equal and she's also quite easy going when it comes to some of *that* stuff, you know. Anyroad, so she said to Nelle she shouldn't worry that she and her dorm-mates all had their menstruation at the same time - my sister's two years older than me and she's one of these girls who blossomed later than others, or so my Dad once tried to soothe her when she came home after her second year, crying 'cause one of that year's Slytherins, Narcissa Something, made fun of her because of her flat chest. That cow looked like she was carrying around Bongos when I saw her the first time on the train to school. She was bloody proud of it, too. So, they had *that* talk when my sister was already fourteen.

Er, yeah, as I was saying, Mum was talking to Nelle and she started to ramble - she says she doesn't but she does, she's always getting carried away when the conversation turns to things that can be remotely described as feministic stuff. You should have seen Nelle's face as Mum babbled on about how the women of African tribes all get their "monthly harass" at the same time, the full moon and that it was because of all that stress and environmental problems that modern civilisation brings with it that the women of the sophisticated world get it at different times. Those were roughly her words, anyway.

So, that was the reason why I snorted into my porridge that morning. Well almost. It was actually the parallel I drew. The three of us, James and Peter and me, we were sharing a dorm with another boy. His name's Remus, kinda shy character, but a wicked sense of humour. I think he would have understood why I was laughing but he wasn't there that morning. On the other hand he's always touchy about certain things, has been at that point anyway, I think he still is, 'though he pretends he isn't.

Anyway, the thing he's so sensitive about has also been the cause of my porridge accident and the reason that he wasn't there that morning and that we were all looking so tired. Remus is a werewolf, you see, simple as that. He's been in that plight - actually a stupid way to refer to it but the other alternative, the word that he told us Madam Pomfrey always used, is even sillier. I don't mean 'indisposition' - McGonagall always said that "Mr. Lupin's indisposed." - but 'condition'. He thinks it makes it sound like he was pregnant, and it does. So, - I like the word 'so', somehow, at least I use it all the time, anyway - Remus had been bitten when he was still really young. Five or six, I think. He and his family had been able to keep it secret for quite some time. We had only found out three months before; he didn't tell us anything or hinted or something, we found out on our own, through hard work, attention to detail and a little luck - which equals long ours in the library, a listing of his supposed ill and dead relatives (he supposedly had three dead Grandmothers! Peter jokingly wondered when his excuse would include a fatally wounded son.), and actually doing Astronomy homework (drawing a lunar chart).

Okay, about that parallel, get this: there's this boy and he has a problem that occurs once a month - he's also quite snappy around that time and, of course, really tired -, this always occurs around the full moon, and just as the boys in his dorm show the first sign of puberty, they get tired and snappy at that time, too - naturally, puberty isn't the reason for it but still, I thought it was kinda funny. Not that any of us look or behave like a girl, we're *guys*, you know, but anyway, it was a hilarious thought.

Well, like I said we were really tired, 'cause we'd been up all night in sympathy with Remus. Okay, mostly because we were worried. James had "organised" a book from the restricted section of the Hogwarts library which had practically every little titbit of information on werewolf transformation that exists. It also had pictures. Looked pretty gruesome, too. We didn't show it to Remus or Peter. The former for obvious reasons and Peter had always had sort of a weak stomach. Though, I have to state that we weren't idle during this night, or before, either. We'd been looking through countless books for a way to help our friend. Only, as Remus constantly remarked, there wasn't anything we could do. It left us pretty depressed. And on this morning, the third of its kind we weren't any closer to finding something and we didn't feel any better, either.

So, as I've mentioned before, we were sitting at brekkie (Remus had strictly forbidden us to go to the hospital wing to visit him.), looking all tired and almost sleeping in our porridge, or in Peter's case, spoon-feeding it to his left ear, when suddenly - BANG! - Dots, the labrador of our DADA teacher, bounds through the hall, heading straight to Snape (the greasy git), and knocking him from his seat. From where we sat we couldn't see what he did to the grease ball but there was a lot of growling and barking and girlish screaming. While we really were having a blast it also was kinda strange. Dots' usually the most harmless and philanthropic (well, guess! I know big words!) dog you could find, and everyone started wondering what had happened to make him suddenly attack a pupil - he didn't really hurt Snape, just scared him - which is actually a pity, if you think about it. Well, we were wondering, as well, swapping ideas. That's when Peter made that absolutely brilliant remark: Snape wasn't *human*! Alright, you might say, he certainly looks more like a vampire than a human being and thus a lot of people probably already had that notion before, but the thing that was making that statement so brilliant was the timing. Dots would never attack a *human* but he's got no problem with biting *animals*. *Werewolves* always attack *humans* but they've got no problem with *animals*! As I had that realisation I could have kissed that boy - Peter, not Snape - but I'm a guy so I didn't. Instead I called him a genius and dragged him and James away from the Great Hall and into a deserted classroom.

James was complaining the whole way 'cause he hadn't had time to grab his books and we were surely going to be late for Transfiguration and Peter just looked kinda bewildered - no one had ever called him a genius, which, I thought at that point, was actual quite a tragedy. He wasn't really stupid. I hadn't always felt like that; at first I didn't really like him. Incidentally we - that's James and me - thought he looked like someone who'd rat on you, so when we had something planned we didn't tell him. We didn't tell Remus, either, yet. He had this goody-two-shoes aura which only saints or extremely cunning devils had about them but since we couldn't tell what he was we didn't include him, - and, as I remarked at some point, he didn't always tell us where he went, either. Actually he never shared much about himself or his family, except when one of them was going to snuff it and he had to leave. So, as I was saying, I couldn't stand Peter. Not only did he look like the telltale type but he often didn't seem to comprehend what was going on. Let me give you an example.

Thursday after school was the time when the Gryffindor Quidditch team held their weekly practise. Me and James were Quidditch maniacs, I mean, we were totally loony about the sport. Each Saturday, for example, we sprawled on my bed, the curtains drawn, a sound proof charm around the bed, listening to WBC Sports on James' (illegal) radio for hours on end. No one knew what we were doing and there were some nasty rumours flying around in the upper years, and sometimes they even alluded to some of it in front of us. James didn't get it (at first) and I pretended I didn't either, which had them in stitches for some reason. Later, when we were older we'd let Remus and Peter listen, too, when they wanted, and when James and Lily got together most of the rumours stopped - and others arose.

So, one Thursday in November, I went down to the Quidditch field, alone this time 'cause James was in detention for calling Snape a bastard (in front of McGonagall - we hadn't noticed she was standing right behind us). Anyroad, I was slowly shuffling down the hall - practise wouldn't start for another ten minutes or so, and I didn't want to leave the warmth (well it was warmer than outside) of Hogwarts castle before it commenced - when Peter almost ran into me. Peter was always in a hurry - well, maybe not really in a hurry but he was quite hyper and every time he went anywhere he scurried. We kept joking that he'd have a asystole or something one of these days - James' dad was a doctor and, like father, like son, he kept sprouting off those really weird Greek and Latin words for all those diseases which I never quite can remember.

"S-Sirius," the boy in question squeaked, "where are you g-going?" I could have asked him the same but his destination was as obvious as mine. "Outside. Severus Snape jumped out of the dungeon window three minutes ago and I'm hurrying to catch him." He blinked. "Oh." I wasn't really sure if he was stupid enough to believe what I had said or if he was hurt at my response. I can be pretty mean and sarcastic, even towards my friends, and he was still sort of a stranger at that point. I couldn't really be bothered to care about his feelings, however, and wordlessly continued down the hall.

Peter's actually not stupid. He's just no genius with languages. He's not really British, actually. Three or four years before he came to Hogwarts his mother and he moved from France to good ol' England. Back at home his father had got killed and his mother couldn't bear to stay in the house or even in the country any longer. So she and Peter moved in with Mrs. Pettigrew's brother who lived in Manchester. They home-schooled Peter for a while, to teach him enough English to get around, and then sent him to a Muggle primary school. Naturally the kids there started picking on him because of his strange accent. And he, being the shy guy that he was, of course, didn't say 'Back off, you bloody morons' but instead developed a stutter. Or so he once told us. If you ask me, he got that stutter from when his dad died, since he doesn't have an accent now, so it couldn't have been *that* bad.

All right, so we were standing in this deserted classroom, and the guys just kept looking at me as if I'd totally snapped or something. So, I explained it to them. It was really quite simple, I said, I could have banged my head against the wall for not seeing it earlier! I almost did, too, but then they'd really have thought I'd gone crackers. It took them quite some time to understand what I was talking about and when they finally got it... their reaction was exactly what I had expected. James had *that* gleam in his eyes, you know, the one he's always got when we're about to pull a fabulous prank or something, and Peter was grinning like a Cheshire Cat. Boy, we couldn't wait to tell Remus.

His reaction, though, was nothing like I had expected. When he came back from the hospital wing, totally dead on his feet, and dropped onto his bed like a stone we told him. I mean, he really could use some good news. I had the honour of being the bearer of these and announced them without beating about the bush. With baited breath we waited - and waited. He just stared at us with those big blue eyes of his for what seemed like eternity. Then he shook his head violently. "You can't be serious!"

If you think I did that stupid pun on my name to lighten the mood or something at that point, then think again. This was no laughing matter. I was as earnest as hell about it and I told him so.

In the end, I think, it was good that we had that argument when Remus was so tired and thus easily persuaded. After about two hours of debating he just gave up ('Do what you want, it's your bloody health!'). We got an oath on his honour from him, too, so that he wouldn't back out afterwards. It was a bit Slytherin - okay, it was quite Slytherin, but it was for his own good, and anyway, I reckon he wouldn't have agreed quite so easily if it wasn't for the fact that he most probably had thought we couldn't pull it off. 'Quite so easily'... that's a bit of an understatement, I mean, we did argue for *two* whole bloody hours but then, Remus's quite stubborn and if he had really wanted to he'd have continued till we were all well over a hundred and fifty.

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VM