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I Thought I Was Your Muffin?


Remus left the detention in the Muggle Studies classroom with a funny feeling about himself. Although he recalled sitting and doing homework the entire time he’d been there, he had gotten no further along in his work for his Potions paper than he’d been before he had gone. And he had this funny, heavy sort of feeling, like he was immensely tired and he couldn’t figure out why. He blamed it on the moon, and went right to bed after getting back from the detention with Professor Gaunt.

Sirius sat beside him, “Are you sure you’re alright? Do you need me to rub your back? Are your muscles sore? Are you ill? Do you need to go to Pomfrey?”

“No, I’m alright, I’m just tired,” Remus replied.

Sirius stroked his hair ‘til he fell asleep on top of him and lay there humming to himself after that, staring out the window…

Although the tiredness faded off, Remus still felt as though there was something wrong about the memory he had of the detention and he started looking into Memory Charms and if there were side effects that he might look for to help him figure out what really happened. “I don’t know why, I just feel like something happened,” he said when Sirius bugged him one night to stop reading his Charms books and to play a game of wizard chess with him by the fire in the common room. “James, have you talked with McKenna? Has she said there’s anything odd about the Detention?”

James looked up from the play he was drawing up for the next Quidditch practice and he shook his head. “I haven’t spoken to her.”

“Since the detention?” Remus asked, “It’s been days!”

James said, “Yeah… well.”

“Have you even broken up with the poor damsel?” Sirius asked, discreetly taking Remus’s Charms book with a wingardium leviosa and tucking it neatly under the bed.

“No, not yet. Not exactly.”

“Might wanna get on that,” Peter said wisely.

“Yes,” Sirius said, “The longer you put it off, the more weepy they get.”

“How would you know?” Remus demanded, “You’ve never broken up with anybody before.”

“Yes I have! I broke up with Marlene McKinnon for your sorry arse! In fourth year!” Sirius said defensively. “Should’ve stayed with Marlene.”

“Please,” Remus replied, and he waved his wand, “Accio Charms book. Marlene McKinnon would put up with you for about eleven seconds before she slapped you silly for being a dirty pervert.”

Sirius grinned.

“Besides, she can’t bugger you like I can,” Remus added, and he opened his textbook back up.

Sirius grabbed for the book and missed, flipping right off the bed, his feet flailing so much that he kicked the pillow Peter was reading his crystals for Divination on and sending them flying off the bed. “CAREFUL!” Peter cried, “FORTUNE TELLING IS GOING ON HERE! Bloody hell.”




On the first day of December, the Yule Ball was announced, along with the dates for the next Hogsmeade’s weekend. James posted the schedule for a final Quidditch practice before the holidays so everyone could make their plans around it. He was still avoiding McKenna, who seemed to have figured out what was going on because she didn’t even try to sit by him at the lunch table, she simply went to the far end with the other girls, where Meg was sitting.

“You should probably be worried, Prongs,” Sirius said, nodding down the length of the Gryffindor breakfast table. “They’re forming an alliance against you. Look at that. Ready to tear each other’s hair out last week, they’re whispering and giggling now. You’re fucked if they decide to hex you. I don’t envy you.”

“Should’ve told her you were breaking up with her sooner,” Peter said, “Before she figured it out on her own. I reckon that made her pretty angry.”

James flushed bright red. “It was just too soon.”

“Too soon?” asked Peter.

“Her telling me she loved me,” James said, “She barely knew me.”

Sirius cleared his throat, “Perhaps she should’ve gotten up on the Gryffindor table and announced it to the entire school like you did to Evans once?”

James stared at his food. “That was different.”

“Was it?” Sirius asked.

James said, “Sure. It was Evans and… I dunno. It was different.” He took a couple more bites of his breakfast, then said, “I gotta go get my books…” and he got up and left the table.

Remus looked at Sirius, “Why do you have to keep teasing him about Lily Evans? Do you really think that’s fair? Just let him get over her.”

Sirius said, “Ah my Moony, the things you don’t know,” and he pet Remus’s hair before turning back to scoop up his pudding.




The week marched on and though Remus kept checking loads of Charms books about Memory Charms, he had yet to find one that seemed to match exactly what he felt like might be happening. He couldn’t quite place how he felt about the Detention. It was as though his mind was a blackboard and the real memory had been erased and a new one written in and he didn’t like the way it felt, an uncomfortable sort of wonky feeling, as though his thoughts didn’t fit in his own head or something. The fact that it had been around Professor Gaunt that this had happened made him quite uncomfortable, too, because there was just something about Gaunt that bothered him so very much and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

Sirius and James were forever antagonizing the Professor, and at first Remus had found their antics in Defense funny or at least looked away when they did them, but the longer the term went on, the less toleration seemed to be coming from Gaunt until the last class he had actually cracked the blackboard in his anger, shooting a stream of sparks at the heart of it when James had referred to He Who Must Not Be Named as Smelldamort, “the Lord of Dark Body Odors!”

“Something really weird is going on with him and I don’t think you lot ought to annoy him anymore than you’ve already done,” Remus said on the way back to the common room after the day Gaunt had broken the blackboard. “Professor Urquart will be back soon. Surely you lot can behave yourselves for at least a little while, yeah?”

Sirius looked ‘round at Remus. “Really?”

Remus asked, “I mean, can’t you?”

“You have an awful lot of faith in us, Moony,” James laughed.

Remus sighed.

“C’mon Moony. He’s just an old arsehole that’s all he is,” Sirius said.

“I don’t know if that is all he is, though,” Remus said. “Mandrakes,” he said to the Fat Lady, who was looking at them with interest in what they were talking about as they approached her portrait on the stair well. “And I still think he’s modified my memory somehow. I feel so funny and so unlike myself… I don’t like it, it makes me really upset, guys.”

“You ought to talk to Dorcas Meadowes!” Sirius suggested, “She’s coming to visit me tomorrow. Perhaps you should come and talk to her about what’s bothering you.” Sirius was honestly just sick of sharing Moony’s attention span with a textbook.

“Perhaps,” Remus agreed, “That’s not a terrible idea.”

“None of my ideas are terrible ideas,” Sirius said. “They’re all fucking brilliant.”

James raised an eyebrow, “Uhhh… mate… I hate to break it to you, but rather on the contrary…”

“Hush, Muffin,” Sirius said, petting James’s cheek.

“I thought I was your muffin?” Remus asked, faking hurt feelings as he climbed through the portrait hole.

Sirius flung his arms about their shoulders as James climbed in behind them, “You’re both my Muffins,” he announced. He turned to Remus. “You’re blueberry - my favorite Muffin.” Then he turned to James and he laid his head on James’s shoulder, “And you… You are a cinnamon muffin. Can you say cinnamon when you aren’t high, Potter?”

“Get off of me,” James said, shoving Sirius off and Sirius laughed and frolicked head of them to the stairs to the dormitory.




Elphinstone Urquart had come through the floo to Albus Dumbledore’s office to report the news earlier.

Now Dumbledore stood in his office window, staring out over the grounds, at the smoke rising from Hagrid’s cabin, twisting as it rose away into the sky… He stroked his beard, thinking, and the snow swirled and danced about over the little balcony. He sighed and turned back around to face Fawkes, who fluttered over to Dumbledore’s shoulder and lovingly nuzzled himself against Dumbledore’s face. Albus reached up and petted Fawkes gently and the bird flew back to his perch and belched a little puff of smoke of his own.

On the desk, beside a cold cup of tea and the knotted wand Albus used, lay a folded newspaper.

The story it was folded to was short. A small clipping among a hundred moving photographs and advertisements for giggle water and butterbeer. It was barely a footnote, really, and probably only because it concerned a Ministry Official and a staff member of Hogwarts so directly... A wizard had been killed in a small town called Faere Dhu, the clipping reported. Several aurors had responded to the scene to find the wizard’s wife and elder sister reported hearing a struggle in the hall, a shout, and a green flash of light… but the caster had escaped before he could be apprehended or even seen, besides a fleeing shadow on the far edge of the property.

Malcolm McGonagall would be well remembered for his kindness, the article said.

Dumbledore shook his head and paced.




“NO!” Sirius shouted, throwing the paper down on the breakfast table, “NO!”

Remus snatched the paper up, “What? What is --” he stopped, staring in disbelief at the paper.

James felt sick.

Peter started to cry.