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A Good Deal of Studying


Sirius’s new obsession, having conquered the animagus puzzle, was in learning everything he possibly could about werewolves. He went to the library and carried out a stack of books on werewolves, Madam Pince watching suspiciously from behind her desk as he went by, unused to seeing Sirius Black in the library.

“The old bat glared at me like I was committing a crime,” Sirius complained, stacking his books back in Gryffindor Tower.

“Perhaps she just hadn’t realized you could read,” James replied with a grin.

“You’re a real tosser, Potter, you know that?” Sirius answered with a laugh, beating James with a pillow in revenge.

Also unused to seeing him with a book was Lily Evans, who watched in disbelief as all four boys crammed onto one of the couches in the common room together, squashed tightly side-by-side, each with a different book in their hands and reading quietly. It was the most peaceful she’d ever seen them and it made her suspicious what they were up to that James Potter had refused to tell her about. Obviously there was some sort of questionable activity to have distracted Sirius and James from their usual loud-mouthed antics. But when the boys fell asleep on the couch all together one night, she was the one who laid a blanket across them and picked up Remus’s copy of Unfogging the Future from the carpet, flattening the dogear hitting the floor had made in the page.

“Thanks Evans,” James murmured sleepily, his glasses only just hanging onto his nose.

Lily took the spectacles off and folded the ear pieces, putting them on the table at his elbow. “Don’t mention it,” she answered. She was rather thankful he’d been so tired; he never did mention it. Clearly, she thought, he’d never remembered it at all or else he certainly would’ve brought it up the next chance he got.

During this time of intense Marauder study sessions, James and Peter were working hard to discover how to control the change into their animagus forms. Of course, James had a bit of an edge over Peter, seeing as he knew at least what his form would be. Peter had no idea, which made it quite a lot harder to discover that part of himself. They were taking it in turns to read the theory half of Releasing the Animagus Within, James would muddle through a chapter, then hand it off to Peter, and lay there, staring up at the ceiling, considering how it was that he might resemble the stag he knew he could become. Lily’s words about what a stag was like echoed about in his head - along with something else, something lingering about the way it had made him feel to hear that she held a stag in such high regard. Meanwhile, Peter just wished there was a way to simplify the whole process, or else that he wouldn’t be ostracized if he chose not to follow through. He was falling behind in their classes with all the work he was putting into the study of being an animagus. It was hard going enough for him and he was terrified that he was so awful that he could very well end up repeating his third year if he didn’t find a way to catch up somehow.

For Remus, the study time was about catching up on notes for the classes that he’d missed in the Shrieking Shack, and preparing for the viewing of the Orionid meteors the following week for Astronomy. He’d been given notes from the classes by Peter and Lily (whose was much more helpful than Peter’s), but it was still quite a lot of information, even if it was from only two days. He wanted his reports on the Orionids to be quite good, since his grade in Astronomy was easily his lowest each year thus far.

Meanwhile, Sirius was discovering very quickly that the behaviors of werewolves was largely unstudied, or else written about in a highly biased tone.

They were studying in the dormitory one night, a record spinning on Sirius’s player, when he suddenly let out a loud groan and, with a scowl, chucked the fifth book he’d looked at in a single hour to the floor. At the outburst, James looked up from Releasing the Animagus Within, his long horns sprouting out of his head (he claimed that they helped him study the theory of animagi). “They don’t even give werewolves a chance!” Sirius complained, throwing himself backward into his pillow.

“No kidding,” Remus said without looking up from Lily’s notes, biting a quill in his teeth.

“It’s bloody ridiculous!” Sirius said, frustrated. “It’s one day a month - they act like you lot are vicious twenty-four-seven! As though you walk down the street biting people for no purpose.”

Remus shrugged, “Well, Fenrir Greyback does.”

Sirius made a rude gesture, “That’s what I think of Greyback.”

Peter’s eyes widened.

Remus put the quill down and lowered Lily’s notes. “Why do you think it’s such a big secret that I’m here?” he asked, “I’d be tossed out in a hot minute if anyone but you lot found out.”

“So ridiculous…”

“Yeah,” Remus said, “Can thank the lot of people who signed the Restriction Act for that. Including my father, among others.”

“Idiots,” Sirius groaned. “When I get older, I’m going to join the bloody ministry just to fight for werewolf rights. It’s not fair. You can’t even find a book that describes you lot in a positive light. It’s all words like vicious and reports of horrible attacks and stuff. It’s as though they want people to be afraid of werewolves!”

James pushed his glasses up his nose. “I reckon they probably do, in a way. All those books are ministry for magic approved, aren’t they? And they aren’t newly published. They don’t want anyone thinking they’ve made a mistake on the laws, or else they were maybe used to back up the case for the Act to begin with. Blimey, some of the people who wrote the ruddy thing probably studied from them or even wrote them.” He shrugged. “No offense to your dad or anything, Rey,” he added.

“None taken,” Remus replied, thinking of his father’s nasty outburst at St. Mungo’s.

“Even Newt Scamander wasn’t very keen on werewolves,” Peter pointed out. “Called them ‘murderous beasts’ and gave’em a M.O.M. rating of quintuple X to the 16th power!”

“I just think it’s rotten I can’t even find any information about the psychology of the wolves,” Sirius complained, “Like how werewolves think.” He looked over at Remus, “You’re a headcase too complex for even the Hogwarts Library, mate.”

“I do what I can,” Remus murmured.

Peter spoke up, “Maybe what you need is a book on just regular wolves?” he suggested. “Can’t be much different can it?”

“Yes, that’s the idea; but good luck in finding that in the library,” Sirius said, frustrated. “All the animal books in there are magizoology, written about fantastic, magical beasts. There’s not a single one about non-magical animals.”

“Write home and ask your parents for one,” Peter said, getting tired of Sirius’s negativity.

Sirius laughed, snorting loudly, “My parents? Peter, haven’t you been paying any attention at all for the past three years? My parents are insane purists that hate my blood-traitor guts. The day they’d send me a book on wolves so I can figure out the psychology behind my werewolf mate would be the same day Lord Voldemort’s seen weaving a daisy chain at a peace rally.”

“He’d look marvelous with a daisy chain ‘round his head,” murmured James in a flat voice, “The flowers would really go with his skin tone.” Remus, Peter, and Sirius cracked up at the mental image that gave them. James grinned, then said, “Mate, if you want a book on wolves, I’ll write my dad. He’ll send one, no questions asked.”

“Would you?” Sirius asked, eyes excited. “Perhaps he could send along one about stags, too, for you.”

“Good idea.” James waved his wand, making his antlers disappear, then jumped up and ran over to his desk for a quill and parchment, tossing Releasing the Animagus Within to Peter on the floor, who hastily turned the pages to the chapter he was on. “Can’t believe we didn’t think of this before.”

“Me either,” Sirius agreed, jumping up to look over James’s shoulders as he wrote, his quill scratching across the page.

When he’d finished, they waved to Remus and Peter and hurried out the door and across the school grounds to the Owlery. James called for Bubo, who had been snoozing in the stained rafters the birds were sitting upon. Bubo fluttered down to land on his shoulder. “Alright, you,” James told the bird, tying the parchment to her leg, “You give this to Dad and make sure to haul back here with the books the second he gets them!”

The bird hooted and took off into the sky.

James and Sirius stood in the Owlery window, watching the dot that was Bubo disappear over the Forbidden Forest as the sun was setting.

James looked out over the grounds and spotted Hagrid far below, pushing a very large pumpkin across the grass toward the castle, which would probably be for the Halloween feast that weekend. It was crazy, how quickly their third year was already going. Soon, quidditch would start and the holidays would be upon them… It seemed like the term had just started.

The moon was coming up and the grounds dark enough now that Hagrid had been swallowed up by shadows. “Well,” James said, “Guess there’s nothing left to do but wait on a reply.” He turned away from the window, “C’mon, before Filch and Mrs. Norris are on the hunt.”

When they returned to the dormitory, Sirius and James resumed their studying, although now it was less of an educational nature... “Oi, Potter, take a look at this one,” Sirius said, laying a marker across a page in A Joker’s Spellbook.

James caught the book as Sirius tossed it over the gap between their beds and flipped it open to see the marker Sirius had laid. “Anaticula,” James read, “Causes the victim’s wand to produce --” A grin broke across his face as he started laughing, “ -- to produce DUCKS whenever a spell is cast! That’s rich.”

Remus looked up from his Divination notes. “Ducks?”

Sirius nodded, “Show him the illustration.”

James held the book up for them to see. It featured an angry looking wizard, practically steaming in annoyance, as a cluster of ducks waddled about his feet.

“How could that ever be useful?” Peter asked.

“Dunno about useful but - blimey, it’d be amusing at least! Imagine fighting Moldy Voldy and he goes to avada you and instead --” James flapped his arms and made quacking sounds. Sirius laughed so hard there were tears in his eyes and he tipped backward over his mattress, kicking his legs in amusement at the thought of it. “Blimey, I can’t wait to use that one day.”




Next morning, they were headed to Defense Against the Dark Arts from having just finished breakfast in the Great Hall when Regulus Black approached them, looking rather sour. Sirius’s eyebrows knit together. “What do you want, Reg?” he demanded, stepping between the other three and his brother protectively, as though by blocking them from sight he could stop Regulus from saying anything terrible to them about the secrets he knew from the letters.

Regulus stared at his brother with a rather bored expression, “Hmm.. that’s an awfully sharply worded greeting for someone who has a great load of secrets on the line.” He glanced at Barty Crouch Jr., who stood at Remus’s elbow, a smirk on his wild-looking face.

Sirius frowned, took a deep breath, and said, a tad more gently, “Sorry. I meant… What’s up, little brother?”

“Still a bit more sarcastic than I’d like, but I suppose it’ll do,” Regulus smirked at this humiliation of his brother, then reached into his robes pockets and retrieved a handful of envelopes from within. He held two of them out - one addressed to Remus, the other to James. “Seems Slughorn’s having some sort of party or something, he asked me to see to it you got these.”

Remus looked less than pleased to have gotten the letter, “Great, thanks.”

“And if you could pass this one along to Lily Evans,” Regulus added, thrusting a second envelope at James, “That’d be brilliant.” He turned to Barty, “C’mon, let’s go.” Regulus smirked at his brother, then turned and walked away without a single other word.

James turned the envelope over to find a wax seal, pressed with an H.S. monogram. “Do you suppose the old Slug has anything better to do than plan and throw these stupid little parties?” he asked Remus, who’d tossed the envelope into his bookbag without even glancing at it much.

“Doubt it,” Remus answered.

They headed up to the Defense Against the Dark Arts room to find that once again Professor Veigler had cleared the entire center of the room out and was sitting in the center on a large trunk, his legs crossed and his wand up over his ear as he waved them in excitedly. Lily was already inside, staring wide-eyed at the trunk. Veigler grinned about at them as he waved his wand and closed the door behind the boys. “I’ve got a brilliant lesson in store for you lot today!” he announced, jumping up from the trunk, which instantly began to rattle and shake across the floor before their very eyes the moment his weight was off of it. “Today we’ll be learning about boggarts.”