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The Fallout


Over the next week, Sirius served the two detentions he’d already been given - one for Professor Veigler along with James, and one for Madam Hooch, alone. He also earned himself no less than two more, hexing snickering Slytherins in the corridors when they saw the four Marauders walking along shoulder-to-shoulder. “Mr. Black, that better not be your wand I see you waving about,” Professor McGonagall said, eyeing Sirius as she passed by him on the staircase.

If Sirius was having a rough go of the fallback caused by the rumors being spread about, it was nothing compared to what Remus was going through. At least Sirius was loud and quick-witted and not afraid to draw his wand to defend himself. Remus was far more soft-spoken and wanted nothing more than to go unnoticed. So instead, when he found himself being elbowed in the hall and hearing whispered slurs as he walked along the corridors, he simply turned scarlet red and sought the fastest way to escape.

If being picked on rather relentlessly was not enough, Remus was also feeling as lonely had he had yet felt since coming to Hogwarts. Sirius, in his attempts to fend off the attacks, had stopped taking all of the care he’d had with Remus previously, often staying several paces ahead of him, goofing off with James. Remus tripped on the stairs twice that week. He spent the nights curled under his blankets, his eyes squeezed shut, trying to sleep through the pains that wrecked his body as the full moon of December slowly approached.

Mostly, Remus just kept his head down, flinching away any time somebody came too close, afraid he was about to be picked on.

“Watch it, Pillow-Biter,” muttered Evan Rosier, shoving past Remus roughly as he stepped into the Potions classroom.

Peter caught Remus from behind and pushed him upright so he wouldn’t fall. Peter wasn’t exactly having it easy, either. He’d been pushed out by both Remus and Sirius for the most part as they both blamed him for the origination of the rumors. After all, none of it would have happened if Peter had taken a bit more care in thinking through the things he was saying.

The only one relatively unscathed - and not caring a lick about what any of the Slytherins did attempt to say to him - was James. “Sirius got you both in his pockets, Potter?” teased a Ravenclaw on the way across the grounds to Care for Magical Creatures.

James had only laughed and shoved his glasses up his nose, “Jealous of my boytoy, Turin?” he asked, grinning and grabbing Sirius’s hand - only to have Sirius throw his hand away.

“Stop that, will you, we’re trying to set them right, not cause more rumors!” Sirius said hotly.




“What’re you doing out here?” Lily asked, sitting beside Remus on the stairs outside of the Gryffindor common room. It was after dark and technically he was breaking the rules of being in the corridor after hours. Lily had noticed he was missing as the other three Gryffindor boys had laughed by the fire.

Remus had a stack of books beside him and one spread across his lap. “It’s just easier out here is all,” he replied. Granted, most of the Gryffindors were sticking up for Remus and Sirius with as much passion as Sirius was. Frank Longbottom had even been given a detention one day for fighting in one of his glasses when Grant Crabbe had made a remark. But sometimes the support was just as hard to take as the hatred and Remus just wanted to get away from it all.

Lily leaned back against the stairs, looking up at the window high above in the top of Gryffindor tower. The stars twinkled against the black backdrop of the sky. She listened in silence as Remus turned a page or two, the paper of his book rustling, and his breathing steady and solid. She rolled to her side, propping her head up with her palm then, watching him.

He glanced over at her, his gentle face sad and the scar by his mouth twitching slightly. “What?” he asked.

Lily sat up. “It would be okay, you know.”

Remus blinked at her in confusion, “What?”

Lily hesitated, “Well, if it were true.”

“It’s not,” Remus replied.

Lily said, “Okay. But if it were, Rey, it would be alright. Your true friends wouldn’t care if - if you were gay.” She shrugged, “I wouldn’t care if you were gay.”

“I’m not gay,” Remus said thickly. His eyes burned, “I’m not. Last year, you and I --”

“Laughed our way through a very awkward snogging session that led to our romantic demise,” Lily supplied. “One which neither of us enjoyed.”

“Does that make you gay, too, then?” Remus demanded.

Lily bit her lip, abashed.

“Isn’t it enough I’m a werewolf?” Remus asked, “Doesn’t that make me broken enough?”

Lily asked, “Why does being a werewolf mean you’re broken?”

“Normal people don’t go turning into wolves once a month.” Remus paused, then looked up at her, his eyes were wet. “Normal people also don’t feel things for their best friends.”

“Okay.” Lily thought for a moment. “Well, just so you know… I’m here for you no matter what, Rey. And… if there was something you wanted to tell me about all this in the future… Let’s just say I won’t judge you a single bit.” She leaned against him, pressing her cheek to his shoulder and looked over the book laying across his lap. “Defense,” she said.

Remus nodded. “Yup.”




The hard snows finally came, blanketing the grounds, covering all of the grass. Care of Magical Creatures class was moved into the barns, where Professor Kettleburn shared the invisible thestrals with the class, much to Newt Scamander’s delight. “They are beautiful!” Scamander announced, seeming to stroke midair. “Shame they have such a stigma…” He handed the air a dead ferret and the students exclaimed in shock as the ferret seemed to disappear before their eyes.

A notice went up announcing that the second Hogsmeade weekend would be delayed. It had originally been scheduled for the second weekend in December, but it would now be on the third. “Wonder why they’ve changed it?” James questioned, staring up at the notice board in the common room.

“Dunno,” Sirius said.

“I’ll be able to go now, at least,” Remus pointed out.

“Why couldn’t you go before?” Sirius asked, turning around to look at Remus, flaring up, ready to hex whoever it was that had told Remus that he couldn’t go to Hogsmeade.

Remus looked hurt, “Well it was the day of the full moon before…”

Sirius’s eyes widened, “Was it? I forgot.”

Remus nodded, “Yeah. I’m sure that you did.”

Sirius sighed as he watched Remus slowly climb the steps up to their dormitory, but a quick glance around him to see they weren’t all alone kept him from running after him. He turned back to the board, “We’ll have a blast anyway.”

“Yeah, if we’re all getting along by then,” James murmured, and he turned away, too, leaving Sirius and Peter there by the board.

“I’m excited to go anyway,” Peter said supportively to Sirius.

Sirius shook his head, “Why don’t you go tell my brother how you feel?” he snapped and he turned away, headed for his usual chair by the fire.

Peter sighed.




The start of December brought the promise of the holidays coming ever closer. James was staying at Hogwarts for the first time, since Charlus and Dora were still being quarantined - though at home now for safety purposes - for the Dragon Pox virus. This meant that Sirius had decided to stay as well. It was quite the flip as Remus was going home for once, wanting to check on Lyall and Tizzy. But many students were forced to stay at the castle for the same reason as James was. The dragon pox had affected a good deal of the wizarding community. In fact, for the first time, there were more students staying than there were going home for the holidays.




Sirius fell asleep on the couch in front of the fire in the common room one afternoon the 8th of December, following a particularly filling lunch warm potato stew. He woke late in the afternoon as the sun was setting out the windows, stretching, watching as the sky darkened. He was about to fall back asleep when his eyes popped open.

The moon. It was the full moon.

Remus.

He jumped up off the couch and ran upstairs to the dormitory. No Remus. Peter was sitting on his bed, biting his tongue and trying to charm a jar of moths into something else. “Where’s Rey?” Sirius asked nervously.

Peter looked up from his jar, “Left for the Shrieking Shack hours ago, didn’t he?”

Sirius swore and pushed open his trunk, grabbing his leather jacket, and shrugging it on as he bolted out of the dorm, past James on the stairs, and out the portrait hole without pausing. He was huffing and puffing by the time he reached the whomping willow, and had horrible aim with the rock he was throwing at the knot in the wood, but he finally hit the bloody thing. He ran the length of the tunnel that led out to the shack, knowing there was no way that he would beat the full moon’s rays to Remus. He tore his jacket off when he reached the end, shed the button up shirt of his uniform and kicked off his shoes, laying his wand across the pile of them and hastily unlocked the trap door so it would be easier for Snuffles to push it in… and then he transformed.

His heart thundered as he pulled himself up through the door in his doggy form, unsure what to expect. It’d been a month after all - would he need to rewin the loyalty of Remus’s wolf form as alpha? He wondered. He inched through the dust and dark of the Shack, looking about.

Rey? he pushed the thought out there, hoping that Remus could hear him.

Sirius turned a corner and found the wolf laying in a pool of moonlight, biting his own leg feverishly, tearing up tufts of hair and ripping at the flesh along his paw. Sirius rushed forward, Stop that. No.

The wolf looked up - stopping the biting - and looked at Sirius with the saddest eyes that Sirius had ever seen. His leg was bleeding, so Sirius padded over and laid down with a sigh and, doing his job as alpha, licked clean the wound for his beta.




“Peter wake up blast you!” James threw a pillow harshly across Peter.

“What is it?” Peter demanded. “What is so important that ---” he stopped mid-sentence, spotting the Marauder’s Map open across James’s bed. A shiver of importance ran through him. This was his chance - his opportunity to earn back his friends. He looked up at James. “Veigler’s missing?”

James nodded, “Not only Veiger… but also Newt Scamander.”

Peter popped out of bed, grabbing his cloak, “Well what are you waiting for!” he demanded hovering by the door. “Get the map. Let’s go!”