A Matter of Time
The boys had come to a silent mutual understanding that what Remus and Peter heard that Friday night was not again to be discussed, unless it was brought up willingly by Remus. They doubted he would bring it up, but if he ever wanted to talk about it, they were there to hear him out. James, Sirius and Peter, though, somewhat hoped that he would want to talk about it. It was killing them that they had this information, but they couldn’t do anything about it. However, to their dismay, Remus was eager to keep all forms of conversation away from the topic. Instead, he threw himself into helping them with the potion for their Animagus training. He couldn’t help them concoct it, naturally, but he would retrieve whatever they needed and would read the instructions for them when they were ready to begin mixing. The first night he had Potions tutoring with Lily, he made it a point to go into the storage room and sneak away the items they needed.
Snape seemed to make himself a permanent fixture during the tutoring sessions, something that bothered Remus greatly. He did not loath Snape as much as James and Sirius, or even Peter, did, but he did not like the fact that Snape was making himself an unavoidable presence. Yes, he was best friends with Lily “ a fact that extremely puzzled many Gryffindors, including Lily’s best friend, Alice Gordon “ but did that mean he would never leave her sight? The tutoring sessions were between Lily and Remus; this was never supposed to include Snape. This fact almost ruined Remus’s chances of smuggling out the ingredients, as Snape was lurking right by the doorway, as if he was anticipating Remus’s every move. Luckily, Remus was quick and when Snape turned his back, he snatched them up.
The boys did not have as much time as they would have liked to spend in the Room of Requirement, as James was at Quidditch practise almost every night. The team was working terribly hard to build Robbie up to the standards of Cory Hamilton, and this meant that they would have to practise every night. Cory was a Seeking prodigy; therefore he was not easily replaced. But Robbie showed definite natural skills. They would do everything in their power to make him just as good. Whenever James returned from the Quidditch Pitch, Sirius would suggest going down to work on the potion, but James was always too exhausted. He only wanted to go upstairs and sleep. Their inability to work on the potion did nothing to raise their spirits, especially when the first full moon of the school year arrived.
The last time there had been two full moons in one month was in December of their first year. This had not fazed any of the boys, other than Remus, because they were not aware of his ailment. This time, however, they were fully aware of it. This year, there were two full moons in October “ on the first of the month and on Halloween. When Tuesday, October 1st, dawned, James, Sirius and Peter left Remus in the dormitory, knowing he would want to sleep, and headed on to their classes. When they were in Defence Against the Dark Arts they noticed something odd about Professor Twikom’s mannerisms. She was usually bright and bubbly, speaking spiritedly about her plans for the day and keeping that same spirit during the actual lesson. Today, however, she looked sullen and spoke with little, if any at all, enthusiasm.
They could only attribute this to the professor’s meeting with Fenrir Greyback, though they were uncertain as to why this would affect her in such a way. She was in no danger of being the product of one of Greyback’s revenge schemes. She was protected in the castle walls; at least that was what they thought initially. Greyback had gotten into the castle, undetected, before. Who was to say he couldn’t do it again? He could easily slip within the walls and unleash his fury on Twikom. Family didn’t matter to him, it wouldn’t mean anything to him if took a bite out of her and condemned her to a cursed life. When they brought this up with Remus during lunch that day, he reminded them that it would be far more difficult for Greyback to sneak into the castle when he was a werewolf. This was when the castle’s security was at its peak, and that was simply for Remus, who was miles away in Hogsmeade.
They could do nothing to assure themselves that Greyback wouldn’t be venturing inside the once sacred walls of the castle. Remus’s words did not relieve them of their concerns, so they spent a restless night in the dormitory, envying the slumbering Frank Longbottom. Frank had nothing particularly nasty on his mind, especially not a vicious werewolf who was out for blood, and slept peacefully. They had considered once or twice “ or a thousand times “ to do something to change this, but decided against it. Frank didn’t have to stay awake like they did, and he would be severely ungrateful if they woke him. They passed the hours playing relatively silent rounds of Wizards Chess and trading Chocolate Frog cards. It was only when the sun began to break through the clouds and illuminate the room that they fell asleep.
They all sorely regretted losing so much sleep that night; they were falling asleep in every class. Their professors were not pleased about this. Professor McGonagall threatened a round of detention for each of them. Professor Flitwick, who was always cheerful and easygoing, continuously warned them of nightly detention for the next few days if they didn’t wake up. For the first time in their lives, James and Sirius created a potion whose explosion rivaled any that Remus’s potions had ever done. The entire class could not escape and therefore had several burns plastering their bodies. Needless to say, James and Sirius were very unpopular that day.
“I don’t want to do homework,” Sirius whined, banging his forehead repeatedly on the tabletop in the common room that night.
“You think I do?” James snarled, his head resting on his folded arms.
“You might.”
“Shut up, I’m trying to sleep,” Peter moaned. He had procured a pillow off the couch and had placed it on the table where his notebooks should have been.
“Sorry, Pete,” James and Sirius said together. The boys were half asleep and did not register the fourth person who sat down with them. It was a few minutes before the person decided to make himself noticed.
“You guys aren’t supposed to be the tired ones.”
The three wearily looked up to see Remus observing them through darkly bruised eyes. Normally, they would have said something about this comment, but instead ignored him and went back to sleep. Remus propped his elbow on the table and leaned his head into his hand. “I should really use this chance to get revenge on you guys for something.”
“What have we done to you lately?” Sirius asked uncaringly, his voice muffled.
“Nothing yet, but you will.”
“Good point.”
Remus looked around and spotted Lily Evans sitting with Alice Gordon. He went over to them and whispered something to them so that his friends could not hear. When he returned to the table, he produced a number of hair ties and began doing up Peter’s hair in pigtails.
“What are you doing?” Peter whined, waving his hand in an attempt to swat Remus away from him. Unfortunately, he was swatting his hand in the wrong direction.
“You have a bug in your hair,” Remus explained calmly.
“Well get it out.”
“That’s what I’m doing.” Remus hummed a tune as he admired his handiwork and moved on to Sirius, who also had the same reaction. Remus simply explained that the bug had flown from Peter to Sirius (and would soon fly over to James). He was lucky that they were too tired to care. He stood up and looked at their newly acquired pigtails. Sirius’s hair was long enough to make a very believable girl hairstyle, while James and Peter merely looked strange with their pigtails. Shrugging it off, he yawned and retreated to the dormitory.
He entered the room to see Frank Longbottom lying on his bed, writing a letter. Frank nodded at his roommate and returned to his work. Remus sat down on his own bed and kicked his shoes off. It was only a matter of minutes before his roommates discovered what he’d done to them. He wondered what they’d do, and then decided that they probably wouldn’t do anything, as they were far too tired. He smiled to himself. It wasn’t as bad as dumping cold water on them, but making them look like girls was entertaining enough. He sat up when he heard footsteps, thinking it was his friends coming, then settled back down when he realised it was only Frank walking across the room.
“Do we have Charms homework?” Frank asked over his shoulder.
“Nope,” Remus replied. “Flitwick said next time he’s giving us an essay.”
“Brilliant. D’you know on what?”
“No, sorry.”
Frank folded his arms across his chest and bounced on the balls of his feet. “What do you think about Twikom?”
Remus picked at a loose thread in his bedspread, keeping his eyes down. “What about her?”
“Think she’ll be a good teacher?”
“What’s it matter? She’ll be gone by the end of the year anyway.”
“Good point.” Frank opened his mouth to say something else, but Remus never heard what it was. At that precise moment, three suddenly wide awake voices sounded from somewhere below. “REMUS LUPIN!” The dormitory door burst open and in ran James, Sirius and Peter who were clearly unhappy with their new hairstyles.
Remus’s eyes darted from them to Frank, who was staring at the spectacle with an open mouth. “See you later, Frank.” Remus jumped off his bed, all of his weariness from the full moon gone, and ducked past his friends.
James, Sirius, Remus and Peter sat out on the grounds under their favourite beech tree near the lake. James was playing with a Golden Snitch he had nicked out of Madam Spark’s office; Sirius was sitting with his arms behind his head, leaning against the tree trunk and staring across the lake. Remus was surrounded by a number of photographs and was organising them in a photo album, while Peter shifted between watching this and watching James catch the Snitch. It was a lazy Saturday afternoon that was just warm enough for the students to take advantage of.
Sirius yawned and sat up. He took in his surroundings and spotted something that made him grin mischievously.
James saw this look and knew it all too well. “What’s up, Sirius?”
“Do you think I could skip this stone so it hits Snivelly across the lake over there?”
James secured the Snitch in his pocket and bent forward so he could see where Sirius was pointing. Snape was sitting farther down the lake, skipping pebbles in the lake while he spoke with Lily Evans. A grin very similar to Sirius’s grew on James’s face. “Just make sure you don’t hit Evans.”
Sirius stood up and walked to the shore of the lake. He squinted his eyes and knelt down, trying to figure out the perfect angle to skip the stone. Slowly, he raised his arm back and, in a blur, brought it down, releasing the stone. He, James and Peter watched intently as it bounced across the surface of the water, making circles of ripples as went. To their misfortune, the stone sunk inches away from Snape. Sirius snapped his fingers in disappointment and sat down.
“You’re mean,” Remus commented quietly, forcing a picture into its frame.
“Says the guy who made us look like girls,” Sirius said sardonically.
“Just your hair.”
“It was bad enough, wasn’t it, James?”
James couldn’t help but agree. It wasn’t the most pleasant feeling in the world to wake up from an unintentional nap to discover that he had pigtails and the entire common room had seen it. At least Remus hadn’t thought to add makeup as Lily Evans had done. “Why’d you do that anyway?” he asked Remus.
Remus grinned sarcastically. “I was bored.”
Peter sighed exasperatedly. “Didn’t you get us back for that bucket of water?” He could distinctly remember Remus stepping sideways and, as a result, the three of them fell into the lake near his house.
“Not really, no.” He flattened out the plastic on one of the pages of his album and selected his next picture. “Besides, there are other things you’ve done to me that I haven’t gotten you back for yet.”
“You’re going to hold everything over our heads for the rest of our lives, aren’t you?” Sirius accused.
“Maybe.”
Sirius looked at James. “Do you reckon I could skip this stone so it hits Remus?”
James laughed lightly. “I don’t want a part of it; I’m not looking like a girl again.”
Sirius spun around. “What about you, Pete?”
“I’m with James on this one.”
Sirius huffed, and then grinned shiftily. “Hey, Remus, would you help me?”
“Sure… give me the rock and I’ll throw it at myself.” He snatched the rock from Sirius’s hand and threw it over his friend’s head and into the lake. “That’s settled.” He replaced the photos that he had not framed inside the front cover of his photo album and stood up.
“Where are you going?” James asked.
“I have tutoring with Lily later, so I figured I’d better do my Potions homework.” He tucked his album under his arm and headed up the grassy slope towards the castle.
“So,” Sirius began, searching through the blades of grass for another stone. “When’s the first Quidditch match?”
James thought for a moment. “Sometime next month.”
“You guys are ready?” Peter wondered, pulling his knees up to his chest.
“As ready as we can be. The rest of the team is fine; we’re working mostly on Robbie.”
Sirius picked up what he thought was a rock, but turned out to be a dirt clod. He crushed it between his fingers. “He’s good though, isn’t he? Otherwise he wouldn’t have made the team.”
James was quick to come to his teammate’s defence. “No, he’s a great Seeker; it’s just that he’s nowhere as good as Cory was.”
“You guys were too used to him,” Peter reminded James. “You have to get used to Robbie now.”
“Pete has a point; Robbie will be good when he’s comfortable.”
James agreed with this, though he said nothing. Quidditch was different this year. He liked Biggs, he was the best choice for captain, but there was something strange about not having Cory as the captain. It was probably because he was the only captain James had ever been under. Now Biggs was the captain. James wondered… he couldn’t have been jealous because he had been passed over as captain, could he? It only made sense that Biggs became the captain, he had been on the team longest and was easily the better player. Besides, James was second in command, this was enough. He shrugged it off. He wasn’t jealous.
“Anyway,” Sirius was saying. “I was figuring that we begin mixing the potion sometime next week. That good for you?”
“Fine with me,” Peter said, plucking up pieces of grass. “James?”
“Practise all week.”
Sirius sighed in disgust. “Merlin, when you become captain, James, don’t make practise every single night.”
“Why don’t we do it now?”
“It’s Saturday!”
“So?”
“Saturday isn’t a day for work.”
Peter groaned in annoyance. James wasn’t going to be able to do the work until Biggs lightened up on the practising sessions, yet Sirius would never work on a Saturday. They needed a little persuading. Defiantly, he stood up and glared down at the bickering pair. “I’m going to work on the potion.” He spun on his heels and began up the slope to the castle.
James and Sirius were startled, having momentarily forgotten that Peter was there. When they registered what he had said, horror grew into their expressions. The potion would be doomed if Peter got his hands on it. They jumped to their feet and sprinted after him. “No! Wait! We’ll do it!”
Remus sat in Professor Slughorn’s classroom, waiting impatiently for Lily and Snape to finish whatever conversation they were having. Snape seemed keen on not letting Lily into the room. They were standing out in the hallway, their voices muffled by the closed door. He wished they would hurry up; he had been sitting there for at least fifteen minutes. He could have taken his time getting there if he knew he would have to wait. Snape knew very well that these tutoring sessions with Lily were precious to Remus’s grade and that he would not pass without Lily’s help. Then again, this fact probably had no bearings on the Slytherin.
Remus thought once or twice about getting up and making it known that he was still there, but decided against it. Judging by the altering in the muffled voices, the conversation must have been concluding. He saw the doorknob turn ever so slightly, until the lower of the two voices “ Snape’s “ spoke up again and the golden doorknob was still once more. Remus gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. He wanted to get out of there and find his friends. Ten Galleons said they were doing something that involved their Animagus training and he wanted to be there.
Resting his head on his folded arms, he stared at the stone wall opposite him and let his mind wander. He couldn’t remember when he’d had a moment to just sit and think. His friends had always wanted to sneak down to the kitchens or go to the Room of Requirement or watch James’s Quidditch practises. They were constantly kept busy. Remus had had so much on his mind that he welcomed these activities with open arms, needing something to clear his head. He had been putting up a front that he wasn’t at all bothered with the confrontation he and Peter had witnessed the night they snuck to Slughorn’s storage room. The truth was that he was terrified. How long was it going to take before Greyback found a way to get the names of the students enrolled at Hogwarts? Greyback was cunning… he could get it easily, or at least talk to a few helpful candidates.
What Remus wanted to know was how did Twikom not know what a monster her relative was? He was not speaking of monster in the way of a werewolf, but a monster in his behaviours. Greyback purposely contaminated children without blinking an eye, without the slightest twinge in his conscience. She must have heard about some time when a child was bitten… Then again, Greyback probably knew how to cover his tracks so it couldn’t be pinned on him. But what about Dumbledore? If Twikom didn’t realise it, surely Dumbledore, the most intelligent wizard the world had ever seen, should have known it. How had Greyback gotten past Dumbledore’s watch that night? Dumbledore couldn’t be everywhere at once, Remus knew this, but he definitely knew everything. He must have known that the sacred walls of his castle had been infiltrated.
Remus had thought about sending a letter to his parents, informing them of this, but then chose not to. He didn’t want to worry them more about him than they already were. He was making his parents age faster than they had to. Every month he could tell lines were growing on their faces and their hair was greying as they wondered how badly their son was going to come off after the full moon. It wasn’t fair to them to have something else to add to their anxiety. He would just keep it to himself, the extent of his horror. He was the only werewolf to ever attend Hogwarts. It wouldn’t be difficult for Greyback to realise it was Remus he was after. He never forgot a name.
How long was it going to take? How long would it be before Greyback procured Remus’s name and figured out a way to break into the castle again? How would he do it? Would it be on a full moon, when Remus wasn’t even in the castle? If that was when, it would endanger the lives of all the other students. He couldn’t live with that. He couldn’t live with knowing that students had been injured, or even killed, because of him. He couldn’t ask his friends for help. They had given him far too much for a lifetime. They invested themselves in his problems more than they did their own. He often wondered how they were still his friends, he had too many troubles. Aside from Sirius, who had his own dysfunctional family to deal with, there was nothing that needed to worry them. Except for him.
He had to think of something on his own. Should he leave the school? He would possibly be saving the lives of his classmates. If he did leave, where would he go? He couldn’t go home, his parents would never be able to accept him if they knew he dropped out of school. He grinned bitterly at the thought. Most would assume his parents wouldn’t accept him because he was a werewolf, it would never cross their minds that his parents loved him despite of that. But they would never forgive him if he threw away his one chance at a normal life. But what was normal anyway? He had never been normal. Not since March of 1963, the month before he had been bitten. Never before had he hated Fenrir Greyback as much as he did right then.
Greyback had already destroyed Remus’s innocence; did he have to come back for seconds? Remus bit the inside of his mouth, his mind was on overdrive. If he left, when would he do it? If he stayed, what was he going to do when Greyback finally decided to execute whatever plan he had up his sleeve? He couldn’t continue acting as though nothing was weighing on his mind; his friends were able to see through the façade. They just knew enough not to say anything about it. It was only a matter of time before everything came crashing down. No watch could tell him how much time he had before it happened.
The door to the classroom opened and Lily strolled in. She smiled at Remus when she saw him and set her books down, flipping open to the chapter on poisons. As she opened her mouth to speak, Remus abruptly stood up.
“I have to go.”
Lily was perplexed. “Remus… we’re having a test on this next week, you have to work on it.”
“I know… I just… I have to go.” He frowned apologetically at her and collected his things. With one last apologetic look, he hurried out of the classroom. He didn’t feel like studying anymore.