A Punch for an Insult
- But this was different... James was one of the few friends Remus had because of what he was and to lose one of your few friends... it was enough to make anyone this upset. -
Dinner was a very quiet affair that night. James had secluded himself at the end of the table, not talking to Remus, Sirius or Rachael. Although he did occasionally walk over to ask Peter something, as he held no grudge against him. Sirius was so angry with James he was gorging himself with food out of pure spite and kept shooting James nasty glances. Rachael was just as angry as Sirius but her anger seemed to prevent her from eating. But neither of them could have been more upset than Remus.
Remus was sitting quietly at his spot at the table. He was not touching his food, his head resting on his folded hands and staring straight at the wall, not even blinking. Every now and then he took a glance down the table, but he only found himself seething with anger and returned his attention towards the wall. Sirius, Rachael and Peter didn’t dare try and talk to Remus about what happened; they all knew perfectly well.
But what had gotten James that mad? He had asked for Lily’s opinion about him and Remus answered him with the truth. But that just seemed to drive James up a wall. That still didn’t give him an excuse to call Remus a freak of a wolf.
“What are we going to do about this?” Sirius muttered to Rachael out of the corner of his mouth. She shrugged; truthfully she hadn’t the faintest idea about how to make James come around. He was as angry as she had ever seen him, and that included all the times they had run-ins with Snape. “Well they can’t stay mad at each other forever.”
“I know that,” Rachael muttered.
“Well you know James isn’t mad at Peter,” said Sirius, looking pointedly at Peter, whose fork stopped in midair upon hearing Sirius.
“No, Sirius,” said Peter firmly. “I don’t want to get involved in this.”
“Oh come on, Pete!” begged Sirius.
“You don’t want to see them fighting do you?” said Rachael, looking at him imploringly.
But Peter wasn’t going to give in to begging looks. “Why can’t one of you talk to him?” he said stubbornly.
Sirius gave a frustrated sigh. “Because he’s mad at us too!”
Peter wouldn’t give in to begging but… Sirius and Rachael looked at each other, smiling at the idea, and turned back to Peter with the most pathetic puppy dogfaces he had ever seen. “Okay fine! I’ll talk to him!”
Sirius and Rachael quickly dropped the faces and smiled. “Thank you!” they said together.
Reluctantly, Peter got up from his place and went over to join James. Sirius and Rachael turned their attention to Remus, who was still staring fixedly at the wall behind his friends.
“Remus?” said Rachael timidly. His eyes darted towards her. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he murmured sarcastically. “Just great!”
Rachael didn’t like the way he put an emphasis on the word ‘great’ that was never a good sign. “Don’t be mad about it, it’s not your fault.”
“Nope not mine… I just couldn’t keep my big mouth shut.”
“James should have kept his mouth shut,” said Sirius angrily. “He asked and you answered. It’s not your fault he blew up at you.”
Remus just shook his head and left the hall without another word. Rachael and Sirius watched him go and then turned their attention to see how Peter was making out with James. From the looks of it, it looked as though it would’ve been much more successful if they had talked with James instead.
Peter was giving him pleading looks, words of complete begging, trying to explain to him that Remus wasn’t trying to hurt his feelings. He even pulled off a puppy face that made Sirius and Rachael’s look pitiful. But James would not see the errors of his ways. Rachael shook her head; this wasn’t going to be easy.
“Welcome Gryffindors to second year Defence Against the Dark Arts.”
It was the second day of school and if the boys and Rachael had thought the first day was bad, it was only beginning. There was a situation in Potions where a few mixed ingredients caused a Ravenclaw’s potion to melt through the cauldron and burn a hole right through the dungeon floor. Herbology had been a mess as no one seemed to be able to find their earmuffs when potting some more Mandrakes and the entire class and Professor Sprout were knocked out for the whole class.
But that was only classes. The worst of it was that Peter talking to James had no effect whatsoever. He was just as mad as he had been the day before. Remus was equally, if not madder, than James. The both of them seemed to have a highly different way of expressing their anger. James would walk about the castle muttering under his breath, occasionally swearing.
Remus on the other hand didn’t say anything about the fight at all. In fact, he didn’t say anything. All during class he would sit and do his work, speaking only when spoken too and even then not saying more than one or two words. Rachael, Sirius and Peter were trying their best to reconcile the two, but it seemed that neither of them was going to forgive and forget.
They were now sitting in Professor Lupin’s Defence Against the Dark Arts class, listening as he did role call. When he concluded he started class by talking to them all about the coming year and what they should expect.
Basically it was the same thing as last year, learning about the magical creatures and such, but this year they would also be learning about certain hexes. They started learning about the hex known as Rictesempra ten minutes before the bell signaled. They hadn’t gotten very far, no one even managed to perfect the wand movements. So they would continue with that the next class.
“What’s after this?” Sirius asked as he packed his Defence Against the Dark Arts book away in his school bag.
Rachael checked her schedule. “Transfiguration,” she muttered as she put her books away. She put her quill in her bag, slung it over her shoulder and started towards the door with Lily, Sirius and Remus when Professor Lupin spoke up, stopping them.
“Remus, could you come here for a moment please?” he asked, looking at his son concernedly.
Remus nodded and abandoned his friends to go talk with his dad. Rachael, Lily and Sirius hesitated at the door for a moment but continued down to Transfiguration, knowing that Remus would probably tell them what his dad wanted to talk to him about anyway.
“Sit,” said Professor Lupin as he cleared his lesson plan off his desk. Remus reluctantly took the seat across from his father. He knew what his father was going to ask and he didn’t want to answer.
“So,” Professor Lupin said, placing his briefcase on the floor next to his desk. “I just wanted to ask you if everything’s alright. You look upset.” Remus shook his head, avoiding looking at his dad. “You sure there isn’t anything you want to tell me?”
“James is mad at me,” Remus muttered incoherently, somehow though his father understood.
“Why? What’d you do?”
“I didn’t do anything! He asked me a question, he wanted the truth and I gave it to him.”
Professor Lupin leaned back in his chair. “What’d James want to know?”
“Why Lily hates him so much, she says he’s conceited and spoiled and a brat, that’s what James wanted to know so I told him.” Remus couldn’t understand why James would get so upset. But, right about now, he didn’t care about James, he agreed with Lily. “If he didn’t want the truth he shouldn’t have asked.”
“Yes, well, sometimes people do stupid things. Look, don’t let this bother you so much, James will come around, or you’ll talk to him. I’m sure Sirius or Rachael will talk to him for you.” Remus looked up at his father. “They did that already?”
Remus shook his head. “He’s mad at them too for sticking up for me.”
Professor Lupin nodded. “You know, I don’t think that’s all that’s bothering you, is there anything else?”
“Well yeah… James called me a freak of a wolf.”
Professor Lupin’s eyelids contracted. For a moment he looked as though he might begin yelling. But he didn’t. “Remus,” he said in a strained voice. “James is your friend and he doesn’t really mean it. You know you’re not a freak, don’t let it bother you.” He looked down at his watch. “I think you’d better head to class.”
“Right, bye Dad.”
“James? Can I talk to you for a minute?”
It was now after dinnertime and yet again Sirius and Rachael had forced Peter into talking some sense into James. But James wouldn’t listen to a word Peter had to say. Peter had given up and was letting Rachael and Sirius deal with it, and they weren’t having any more progress than Peter was.
Rachael was now in the common room, scouting out James and spotted him sitting behind a group of giggling third year girls. He was reading through his copy of Quidditch through the Ages and obviously restraining himself from telling the girls to stop laughing.
James looked up when he heard Rachael speak to him. “What?” he muttered.
“Look, you guys can’t stay mad at each other forever,” said Rachael.
“Maybe we can.”
“James, don’t be so stupid. Remus is miserable because of this and so are you and you know it.”
“I am not miserable. And if Remus is that’s his problem. I want nothing to do with a freak of a wolf.”
Rachael didn’t say anything; all she did was hit James, hard, across the face and stomped off in the direction of the girls’ dormitory. She pushed the door open and slammed it shut, marched over to her bed and flung herself down upon it. What was James’s problem? Why didn’t he realise he was wrong and that he should just apologise already? But no! Instead he had to carry on like none of this was his fault.
It wasn’t Remus’s fault. It wasn’t his fault that Lily thought of James like that. Right about now, Rachael agreed wholeheartedly with her best friend. James was acting like a brat. Rachael was worried about Remus. He just wasn’t being himself these days. This wasn’t like him at all. Even if he was in a fight in the old days at their Muggle school, he never let it affect him like this. But this was different… James was one of the few friends Remus had because of what he was and to lose one of your few friends… it was enough to make anyone this upset.
That wasn’t the only thing bothering Rachael. She had risked sending a letter to her mother about what was wrong with Remus and the reply she got wasn’t what she expected. She had thought her mother might listen to her if it was about Remus. But even then it didn’t seem to help. The letter read as thus:
My so called daughter,
Is this a sorry and pathetic excuse for me to pay attention to you? To make me forgive you for what your stupid mind has done to my son? Is it? If it is a sorry plot to make me somehow forgive you then you are seriously wasting your time. I will not say this nicely: STOP TRYING TO CONTACT ME YOU STUPID GIRL!
When Rachael read the letter she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. So she was a liar now, was she? She would never lie about Remus being upset! Why did her mother hate her so much? Why didn’t she believe her? She tore the letter into fifty pieces and threw them viciously into the wastepaper basket below her. Out of anger, she kicked it and watched it fall over, spilling the trash onto the floor, but she didn’t stop to clean it up.
She crossed over to the dormitory window and flung it open. Leaning on the windowsill she stared up at the half moon in the sky… someday…someday she was going to do it. She didn’t know when, but someday she was going to.
Herbology was canceled the following day due to massive amounts of rain, thunder, lightening, mud and the fact that the winds were so quick that it was near impossible to open the doors to the grounds, let alone walk across them. So the Gryffindors spent their free period in their common room, as it was the only warm place in the entire castle. The sky was so dark the torches were lit early and the corridors were ice cold, making it terribly unpleasant to walk about them.
Rachael sat with Lily on one of the couches listening to Sirius ramble on about how boring History of Magic was and if he was teaching it, it would be much more interesting. He hadn’t noticed that Remus, whom he was using this story to entertain, wasn’t paying the least bit attention to him and had actually gotten up several times to go up to the dormitory. When he came back down it was only to discover Sirius was still going on as though Remus had never left.
Sirius was now saying how he would act out the goblin battles and using stunning visual effects when Remus said very loudly, “Sirius shut up already!”
Sirius looked highly offended, but he couldn’t help but smile slightly.
“Fine, be that way! My talents are never appreciated!” And he picked up his books and stalked out of the common room and stomped on the bottom step on the staircase for about a minute. Then he came ambling back down and dropped at the foot of the table. “But too bad for those who don’t like it!” He shoved his friend playfully in the shoulder and went on a rant again, this time about the giant squid in the lake. Remus couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of what his friend was saying. Sirius was going on about how one day all the Gryffindors should hitch a ride on the back of the squid and dive-bomb the Slytherins with it.
Rachael rolled her eyes at Lily, who was listening to the conversation with a cross between a smile and frown on her face. Rachael could tell what her friend was fretting over: The thought of humiliating the Slytherins was something every Gryffindor loved no matter what. And yet she just couldn’t seem to keep out of her mind the fact that it wasn’t a smart thing to do.
Rachael on the other hand thought it was hilarious. She could just picture it: There were all the slimy Slytherins, Snape at the head of the gang of course. And all of the Gryffindors emerged out of the lake with a giant tidal wave of water. They were holding a lasso on the neck of the squid and dived headlong into the Slytherins and they got knocked over like bowling pins.
“You know that might actually make me feel sorry for the Slytherins,” said Remus in a small voice full of mock concern.
“It would?” gasped Sirius. “Remus Lupin, what has gotten into you?” Right then the loud screeching bell sounded. “Well we’ll worm it out of you after class, off to Transfiguration!” And with that Sirius suddenly halted at attention and marched soldier like out of the common room portrait hole.
Remus looked over at his sister. “What’s gotten into him today?”
Rachael lay on her four-poster bed in the dormitory, the curtains pull around. Staring up at the ceiling, she couldn’t help but think about that letter her mother had sent her. She felt a surge of pure hatred every time she thought about it and yet she couldn’t help but do just that. What had made her mother so blind that day four years ago? She just couldn’t understand it. She and her mother used to get along so well… despite the fact that Remus had always been her mother’s favourite. But that never made her act so horrible to her.
She remembered when she was four years old and she had fallen off of the tree she and her brother had been climbing on. She broke her small arm and was crying so hard. Her mother had rushed to come and help her, telling her it would be all right and not to cry. Her thoughts were disrupted, however, by Sirius calling her name from the common room.
“Rachael!” he called. “Get down here!”
Wondering what on earth Sirius could want, Rachael hopped off her bed and dashed down the steps to find a group of Gryffindors crowded at the foot of the stairs, watching two people shouting at each other. Sirius was at the foot of the stairs and snatched her arm and dragged her through the crowd to the very centre. At the centre of the circle, standing opposite of each other, were James and Remus.
James was standing closest to the stairs. His face was ruby red, his hands balled into fists, he was bent over slightly and yelling at the top of his voice. Remus was closest to the portrait hole, half listening to James, half shouting. His face wasn’t red, it was paler than it had ever been… and there wasn’t even a full moon approaching. Rachael couldn’t make heads or tails of what they were saying, but by the sound of it, it seemed James was winning this arguement.
“Hey!” Sirius shouted at the both of them. “Shut up the both of you!” But they weren’t about to listen to Sirius, on it went.
“I don’t care what you’ve got to say!” James hollered past Sirius and at Remus.
“James, just listen to me!” Remus yelled back desperately.
“I’m not listening to you! I hate you!” James broke through the crowd and stormed up the dormitory. Sirius followed after him and muttered to Rachael that he was going to try and talk to James. But Rachael couldn’t see the point. James had made it quite clear he wanted nothing to do with Remus. She nodded anyway and broke up the crowd that had assembled around her brother and James and told them to mind their own business.
Remus retreated to the couch and dropped himself into it. Arms folded across his chest, Remus looked absolutely miserable. Rachael waited until the last of the curious Gryffindors had resumed their business before going over to him. Once the last straggler in the crowd had returned to her game of Gobstones, Rachael sat down next to her brother.
“What just happened?” she asked quietly. Remus shook his head, clearly not wanting to discuss it. Rachael bit her lip. “What’d James say?” Again her brother shook his head. “Come on, Remus.”
“Lily was around and James was talking really loudly saying that I was an idiot and that Lily could never think any of those things about him and Lily heard and defended me and James just blew up!” Remus said in one rushed breath, so quick that his sister barely understood him.
“Then what?”
“Then Lily started yelling at him but James told her not to get involved so he just started yelling at me while I was trying to talk and he just said he hates me and that’s all I need to know!”
“James, what is your problem!” Sirius boomed as he burst through the dormitory only to find James sitting on his bed, polishing his newly acquired broomstick, a birthday present from his folks. James looked up at Sirius, said nothing, and returned to polishing his broom. “James!”
“I have no problem,” James muttered.
Sirius scoffed at him.
“Oh come on, James!” he yelled. “Why’re you being such a… such an- (he said a word which I will not repeat).”
James looked up at his former friend incredulously. “So I’m that, am I?” he huffed. He jumped off his bed, swung his broom over his shoulder (almost hitting Sirius with it in the process) “Who cares? I don’t care what he’s got to say or what you’ve got to say!” With that he was out the door leaving Sirius in a cloud of anger.
After dinner had concluded, Rachael and Lily pulled on their cloaks and headed out towards the Quidditch Pitch. It was the day of tryouts for the Gryffindor team. They were looking for a new Beater, Chaser and Seeker. Sirius was already out on the pitch with one of the school brooms. He was surveying the cloudless sky with squinted eyes. Sirius couldn’t wait for when it was his turn to tryout, he wanted to be a Beater for the team. Rachael knew he could do it. Sirius was exceptionally skilled with knocking things at a target… particularly dungbombs at Snape.
If Sirius hadn’t been trying out they wouldn’t have even bothered coming. Actually Lily didn’t want to go at all but Rachael had persuaded her to come. James was at the opposite end of the pitch; he too was surveying the sky. First to try out was James for Chaser. Sirius was going after Sammy Grinkov, a stout fourth year.
They watched mildly as James mounted his broom and took off into the air with the two other Chasers and Keeper. The two Chasers and James tossed the Quaffle back and forth until they were right in front of the Keeper, Kirk Gamballi. Rachael had to admit that James could handle a Quaffle quite well and was a terrific flyer. He moved stealthily through the air towards Kirk, faking him to the right, shooting to the left, and scoring, smiling broadly as he listened to the cheers of the Gryffindor team.
“When’s Sirius up?” came Remus’s voice from somewhere below them.
Rachael and Lily snapped their heads to see Remus coming up the steps to the bleachers. They were extremely surprised to see him there. After the fight with James earlier that day he resigned himself to his dormitory.
“Uh, there’s like five more people before him,” Rachael answered, squinting to see the lineup across the field, but to no avail. She could hardly see the large bold print.
“You seriously need glasses,” Lily laughed as she looked at the lineup and read off the names for Remus.
Rachael glared at her friend. “Excuse me, Miss twenty-twenty vision,” she mocked.
Remus took the vacated seat on the other side of Lily and watched with an unreadable expression as James scored another goal before being called off the field.
They sat and watched lazily as the next person fumbled his way through Chaser tryouts, dropping the Quaffle more times than they could count. As far as Lily was concerned, she didn’t have enough fingers and toes to count. The next person was slightly better, she only dropped the Quaffle for the amount of fingers they had.
“Finally, Sirius is up!” Rachael said in relief, waving down to Sirius who had just waved at the three of them. They leaned forward one the wall and watched as Sirius mounted his broom. “Good thing the rain cleared up,” Rachael commented, looking up at the dull sky. Sirius was hovering in the air, slapping his Beater’s bat into his hand while he waited for the Bludgers to be released.
Finally the Bludgers were released and he chased after them swiftly as they made their way to the two Chasers. Sirius was quite good. He only missed the Bludger once and that was only because he had sneezed at that very moment. He felt bad for the Chaser who got knocked in the face with it and had to be taken to the Hospital Wing.
“Sirius, you were great, how could you say you were terrible?” Remus asked disbelievingly as he, Sirius, Rachael and Lily walked back up to the castle once the new positions had been filled. Unfortunately, that one missed Bludger was enough to cost Sirius being a Beater. Jeff Baldwin got the position instead. James, however, had become a Chaser. But Sirius had been very good even though he didn’t get the spot.
“’Cause I didn’t get on the team?” Sirius answered in a despondent voice.
Remus shook his head. “But you were still good,” he countered.
They walked slowly up to the seventh floor. They didn’t want to get to the common room because there was certainly going to be a celebration going on for the new Gryffindor Quidditch Team members - James, Willard Jacobson who earned the spot of Seeker and Jeff Baldwin who was the Beater. For Sirius’s sake, they took a detour through the fourth floor, which brought them up to a different end of the seventh floor far away from the common room, and they allowed themselves to be distracted by the portrait of Sir Cadogan.
But eventually they had to go back, and when they did a rush of tremendous noise greeted them. There was a crowd of students around the Gryffindor team, all of them decked out in scarlet and gold robes.
“Jeez, they make it seem like it’s such a big deal,” Lily mumbled as she fought her way through the crowd of students to get to her dormitory. Rachael knew that if James hadn’t been down there she’d be celebrating.
“I’m gonna head up to the dormitory too,” Sirius muttered, making a beeline towards the stairs. Rachael and Remus bid him goodnight and watched as James came clambering over to them.
“Look who got made Chaser?” he said smugly.
“You?” Rachael answered smartly.
“Yeah, guess they like normal people on the team.”
What happened after that was something Rachael thought she’d never see in her life. Remus’s fist had come out of nowhere and connected with the side of James’s face with such a force that he fell sideways.
“YOU KNOW WHAT?” Remus yelled, attracting the attention of everyone who was in the common room and the dormitories. “I’M SICK AND TIRED OF YOUR CRAP! YOU THINK YOU’RE THE COOLEST THING IN THE WORLD! BUT GUESS WHAT? LILY WAS RIGHT! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A CONCIETED LITTLE BRAT!” With that, Remus was gone.
James looked up at Rachael, who was watching her brother with complete and utter disbelief. Was that just my brother?
She looked down at James.
“You know you deserved that.”