Chapter Fourteen: Cursing the Moon
"Are you listening, Mr. Black?"
James laughed openly as he looked at Sirius, as their teacher spoke to him. The boy, merely, nodded his head every once in a while until he was set loose on the castle. Sirius walked towards his friends away from the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. He ran his hand through his hair in frustration, which in turn only made his hair fall in his eyes. He shook his head slightly to make it go back in place.
"So what did he say?" James inquired.
Sirius let out a low bark-like sound and swiftly changed his voice to a low cheery sound with a slight edge. "This is an important subject and you need to learn how to pay attention. You will need to know how to protect yourself someday and what will you do then if you never paid any attention in class," Sirius enthusiastically cleared his voice and continued with his imitated rant. "Now, I'll let today's little incident slide with a simple detention but I expect you to act your age from now on!"
Sirius laughed and looked at each of his friends in turn before they started down the hallway in the direction of the Great Hall for lunch. "I'm only eleven! How else am I supposed to act? Honestly, you'd think a werewolf was lurking behind us every waking moment of the day."
Remus stopped walking for only a few seconds and looked intently at the back of Sirius' head for a moment. It was only a coincidence that he had chosen that as an example. Surely they couldn't know. They would have gotten rid of him, told him to shove off like other so-called friends had done long before them.
He sighed as he passed the window just down from the suits of armor, he stopped for a moment, just in front of it, and instantly regretted doing so. The moon was barely visible in the sunlight as it stood in its position above the forbidden forest. The affect it had on him was swift and efficient. Remus felt his entire body tense up and his stomach lurch as if wanting nothing more than to release its bodily fluids. He gripped the windowsill, putting his head down so it faced the floor, his face screwed up in pain as he waited for the pain to subside but knowing in his heart that it wouldn't. He quickly lifted his hand up from the windowsill and held it to his stomach tightly, praying for it to do what it wanted to in hopes that he might feel better if it did.
"Remus!" He looked up from the floor with his hand still clenching his stomach to see James running back over to him. James's face was set in worry as he looked down at his friend. "What's wrong?" he knew it was a stupid question as soon as it had left his mouth.
Remus just tried his best to stand upright, pushing the pain out of his mind, willing it with every ounce of his body to go away as he met James' eyes. He opened his mouth to give an explanation, a lie, but found that the words had a harder time coming out now then they had originally. He quickly removed his gaze from James and shifted to the barely visible moon hanging in the brightly lit sky. He cursed it silently and then he muttered, "My stomach just hurts."
He moved his gaze back from the window and looked just over James' shoulder to see Sirius and Peter coming up behind him before he looked directly at James and smiled weakly, "That's all, it’s just a stupid stomach ache. I'll go to the infirmary to get it checked out."
Remus turned away not even giving James the chance to take him to the infirmary, for the millionth time (or at least that was how it seemed) that year. He walked as fast as he could towards Madam Pomfrey's office. He entered the now familiar room, do to all of the times he'd have to been in there before with James and Sirius, not to mention his own illness.
He felt lost as he looked around the cold room and began to make his way into the back of the large room where Madam Pomfrey's office was located. He wiped a tear away from his grey eyes, as he entered her office, furious with himself for lying to his friends again, and afraid of what might actually happen to him if they did find out about his illness. He slid down the door, after he had shut it softly behind him, and sobbed heavily into his knees.
~*~*~*~
James sat staring out the window as he sat in one of the chairs set away from the fire in the mostly empty common room. The grounds were illuminated by the moon, which shone brightly over the snow-covered grounds. He sat there, heavy-hearted with an overdue library book on his lap, open to a page he'd been reading repeatedly every day for a month.
He sat in thought staring out the window, the moon stood menacingly in the sky mocking him with it's light. James shifted slightly in his seat and stared down at the picture in his book as the beast on the page showed off its sharp teeth. He frowned at the page and absent-mindedly ran his hand through his hair in aggravation making it even messier than it was to begin with.
"Werewolves?" James jumped at the sound of the voice and turned around in his seat to see Sirius hovering over his shoulder. "You thinking of sticking one on Snape or something?"
His face was contorted into a smirk that showed simply that he loved the idea. They still hadn't found anything clever to try and get the boy back for their last encounter, but it gave them enough satisfaction to see Snape squirm in what he thought was well-disguised fear, whenever they came within ten feet of him.
James said nothing, not knowing exactly what to say. He didn't feel like talking about Snape. Instead, he unconsciously turned his attention back towards the window and stared out at the moon once more. "I like it when it's full," Peter stated. James hadn't even realized he was there until just then when the boy had spoken.
James' brow furrowed in hurried thought as he looked without really seeing the moon, he began, "You guys, I have something to tell you."
Sirius's eyebrow cocked upward for a moment as his suspicions rose. Finally, after what seemed like forever to James, he took a seat across from him. Peter followed suit shortly afterwards.
"What is it, mate?"
"Remus."
Peter looked up. "He got sick again today," he said plainly as if he were commenting on nothing more than the weather.
"Yeah, so what's the problem?" Sirius asked simply with the same air only a little more concerned.
James stared at him in the face and then decided just to plunge into his suspicions that had been haunting him for what seemed like an eternity. "Sirius, I don't think he has the stomach flu like he said."
"What do you mean?" Sirius asked his voice going slightly on edge.
James sighed heavily and put the book he'd been reading on the table in front of them and pushed it towards Sirius. He stared at the book in wonder as the pieces, shown clearly by his face, started to fall into place and then his expression of comprehension was quickly replaced by a face that held no emotion at all, "What are you getting at?"
"You know what I'm getting at! Sirius, Remus is a werewolf!"
At those words Peter let out a whine as if he were an injured animal. The thought alone seemed to be enough to kill him. His fear was evident by the way the small boy had begun to shake slightly while James stared at Sirius waiting for a reply.
"You're mental. James you've finally lost it. He just gets sick som-"
"Every month Sirius!" Sirius let out a sound much like a grunt of disgust.
"He gets sick, so what."
James stared in disbelief. He knew Sirius could be pig-headed but this was too much.
"What's that?" James said finally, after holding Sirius' glare for far too long, he pointed out the window.
"A coincidence," Sirius retorted firmly through gritted teeth.
Peter sat looking from one of his friends to the other as if he were waiting for a nasty fight to break out in front of him. He was sitting in his seat in such a way that he was ready to go and hide under the table at any possible moment.
James couldn't believe either of them. Peter was afraid of every aspect of the situation and Sirius was denying any possibility of this being true when all of the signs were pointing directly to it. He then had an idea and turned away from Sirius, for only a second. He picked up his bag, pulled out a piece of parchment and wrote:
"January 27 -- Remus had stomach flu; full moon"
James looked up from his messy handwriting at both of the boys. "You don't believe me, fine, that's okay, but could you guys at least be open to the possibility that he could indeed," James leaned in closer to his friends and whispered, "be a werewolf."
Sirius looked away from James, as he said the last few words out loud, and looked out the window in the direction of the gleaming full moon outside. His eyes moved slowly towards the open book and he stared at the picture with utter disgust; a face James had only ever seen one person, Sirius' mother, make before. He would never dare tell Sirius that but his smug air at that particular moment was a very Black one.
Sirius finally looked up from the book and met James' eyes directly and sighed, obviously still thinking. "Then will you be open to the fact that you could be wrong?"
Sirius' face broke into a half-hearted smirk as he looked at his best friend. James only nodded at him hoping with all of his heart that he was indeed wrong but knowing and entirely hating the fact that he wasn't.