Chapter 4: Rabbit Heart
Sixth year. This would be their greatest year yet. Remus had proven the previous term that even with a Prefect among them they could not be caught or stopped. They were the greatest pranksters that had ever stalked the halls of Hogwarts and would live in infamy, their names whispered down the ages until they became the stuff of legend. Future students would hear their names and shake with fear or laughter at the pranks they had pulled.
Nothing could stop them.
"Evans!"
Except perhaps a love-sick idiot.
"Oi! Evans!" James called again. The girl refused to turn around and continued to pretend she didn't hear him shouting her surname at the top of his sizable lungs. "Don't make me come down there!"
"Give it a rest, Prongs," Sirius grumbled and pulled his cloak around him like a blanket. James had kept him up all night with his poetic descriptions of Evans and her beauty and of his plans to win her this year. Those plans were not going well and the train had only been moving for an hour.
"She's a Prefect, James," Remus reminded him. "She has responsibilities and an image to maintain."
James snorted. "Like you ever managed to maintain an image, Moony."
"I have a very good air of authority with people who aren't in this compartment," Remus sniffed and crossed his arms. "You three just don't listen."
"Why ever would we need reprimanding from a Prefect?" James asked, his hazel eyes huge.
It was Remus's turn to snort. "That look only works on first years and anyone too stupid to realise what a devastatingly manipulative devil you really are."
"What a devastatingly handsome devil he is, you mean," Sirius corrected with a smirk and a wink at his friend. James bowed appreciatively and turned his attention back to the corridor where Lily Evans was moving steadily away from him.
"I could cause a commotion down this end for you," Peter offered. "That would bring her closer."
"Brilliant as ever, Wormtail," James grabbed the boy's chubby wrist and dragged him to the door. "Do your worst. By which I mean do your best." He grinned and shoved the boy out into the corridor.
Remus shook his head. "Are you really so desperate that you're willing to torture a compartment full of unsuspecting Hufflepuffs? You could try walking down there and talking to her as if she were something resembling human."
"What?" James gaped. "That's an insult! She is not something resembling human. She is a goddess!"
"And you greet all female deities by yelling their surnames at inappropriate, inconvenient and embarrassing times?" Remus questioned, his eyebrow rising with his words.
James blinked and fought the feeling of stupidity. "…Yes."
"Git."
They fell into silence as the train continued to speed north. Remus left for his rounds, purposely ignoring the worrying smells coming from the compartment beside theirs and heading toward the front of the train. Far be it for him to interfere with Peter's plans to bring Lily closer to James.
Normally at this point in the train ride they would have at least a full month of pranks planned, and a general outline of their goals for the coming term. But Sirius was snoring in the corner and James was sitting in worried contemplation. He liked Lily Evans, he really did, but everything he did to prove it just seemed to annoy her more. He had charmed a bouquet of flowers to read her love sonnets last Valentine's Day, which he thought was a damn romantic thing to do. She had sent them back to him, buds crammed into the vase and stems sticking in the air. He hexed anyone who insulted her, but she took that as a major defect of character. What was so wrong about protecting the honour of the girl he might possibly love?
"You worry too much," Sirius said sleepily. "Just relax and let it come."
"What if it doesn't just come?" he tore the glasses off his face and cleaned them on his robes. It was a nervous habit very few had ever witnessed. "What if she never realises that I'm not just being a prat?"
"Two more years to prove it to her," the other boy said casually and stretched his long limbs, scratched his side and sat up in his seat, fully awake and ready for some plotting. "Should that be our goal for the year?"
"I'd hate to horde the Marauders' valuable time…" James smirked.
"Please. You are the Marauders," Sirius pulled him into a one-armed hug. "So, end of term goal: Make Evans realise you aren't a prat. That might take some doing, I'm afraid." He grinned.
The door crashed open and Peter stumbled in, holding his nose and coughing. He turned his watery eyes up to James in apology. The bespectacled boy frowned his lack of understanding, but soon grasped Wormtail's desperate stares when Lily Evans filled the doorway.
"Of all the low-down, disgusting tricks you could have pulled…" She drew her wand and pointed it at him.
"I didn't do anything, I swear," James held his hands aloft, hazel eyes wide in honest innocence, but, as Remus had said, no one but an idiot or first year would believe James Potter was innocent.
"Up!" she said and he stood without question. "Out!" and he hurried into the corridor. She prodded him forward until he stood before the door of the next compartment. Noxious gas drifted out from below the closed door and he could hear the Hufflepuffs inside coughing and gaging on the air. She threw the door open and shoved him inside.
"Clean up your own bloody mess!" she ordered then walked away wiping her hands on her robes as if she had just touched something particularly nasty.
"It's going to take a lot of doing," Sirius muttered to himself and dropped back onto his seat.
The train ride could not end quickly enough after that. The stink from Peter's prank still hung around him and clung to James's robes, making their eyes water. Remus escaped to the Prefect compartment and stayed there for the rest of the trip. This was not shaping up to be their best year ever, despite earlier claims to the contrary.
As the train whistled its approach to Hogsmeade Station, Remus returned to collect his trunk, and all four readied themselves for the crush that inevitably came when the train emptied. They fought to keep together as they exited their car and stepped onto the dark platform. Peter was lost in a rush of fourth years and they did not miss his smell. James somehow got swept away by a group of seventh years, but Moony and Padfoot pressed on. They climbed aboard the horseless carriages and laughed at the faces James had made when he gagged on his own stink near the end of the train ride. They both agreed that trying to prove him anything but a prat would be nearly impossible, but that wouldn't stop their attempting it.
The Marauders were masters of the impossible.
"Mr Black, Mr Lupin, come with me," the crisp voice of Professor McGonagall met them at the stairs to the castle. They looked between one another in momentary panic. Surely they hadn't gotten into trouble already; they hadn't even done anything yet. "Quickly, please," the woman insisted.
The witch walked at a surprisingly brisk pace through the castle toward a section that Remus knew well – the hospital wing. She pushed open the door and gestured for them to enter. "The Headmaster is waiting for you."
Remus shrugged and went in. He knew he had done nothing wrong. Sirius knew the same, but that didn't stop him worrying. He followed Moony in. "Professor?" he asked.
"Behind the curtain, Mr Black," Professor Dumbledore's quiet voice called to them. He sounded strange. Was he ill?
The privacy curtain was pulled aside and they saw the Headmaster standing tall and proud in his vibrant blue robes. He gestured to the bed where a boy with messy black hair lay, unconscious.
"James!" Sirius shouted and ran the short distance to his friend's side, grabbing his wrist and feeling for proof of life. He felt the heartbeat, rapid as a frightened rabbit's and probably just as quick as his own. His heart was hammering on his ribcage in panic. "What happened? He was just with us on the train!"
The Headmaster's gaze shot to Remus, demanding confirmation. The boy nodded and Dumbledore's brow knit together, "Curious."
"Professor Dumbledore?" a voice called from the door. "Professor McGonagall told me to come see you."
"James!" Sirius shouted again as he launched himself across the room, gripping the boy in a hug so tight it hurt.
"What the hell?" James wheezed.
"Gentlemen," Dumbledore said, his voice carrying a seriousness they rarely heard. "Would you be so kind as to tell me if you recognise this young woman?" He waved them forward to another privacy curtain, pulling it aside as they drew near enough to see the figure. A girl probably their age, hair a mess of light brown curls and wearing a creased brow even in unconsciousness, lay on the bed.
"I don't know her," Remus said, though something in his voice suggested that he would like to. Sirius fought the smirk. He had just thought his best friend and near-brother was dying, smirking would be inappropriate.
"Did she come with him?" Sirius asked and looked to the boy he was very glad wasn't James Potter, studying the boy. Like the girl, he wore an expression of deep worry even in unconsciousness. He wondered if they were in pain, or possibly suffering from nightmares.
"She did," Dumbledore said, but offered them no further explanation. "I apologise for frightening you, Mr Black, Mr Lupin. You may continue to the feast." He nodded them toward the door as he lingered by the bedside of the boy who wasn't James, frowning at him as if he were a particularly tricky puzzle in need of solving.
"That was weird," James whispered. "That kid looked just like me. Did you see?"
"Nose was different," Sirius shrugged and pretended that he had not just had a heart attack thinking the boy, whoever he was, was James. After the initial scare, he had looked a bit closer, and had seen the differences in the face. The boy on the bed looked skeletal compared to his friend but even then his face was rounder, nose slightly wider. They weren't identical but on first glance the similarity was uncanny.
James glanced at him. "You worry me sometimes."
"Behold the power of observation, Prongs," he said and walked a little quicker. Remus smiled knowingly and matched the boy's pace, eager for the feast and to hear what the Headmaster might tell them about the pair currently unconscious in the infirmary.
Dumbledore had summoned them assuming it was James in the bed, and questioned if they knew the girl. That told Remus that the pair had not been expected. He considered what that might mean, two school-aged teens on Hogwarts grounds. Was it a Death Eater trick? The Prophet had been filled with news of dark events all summer: Muggles tormented, Muggle-borns attacked, Dark Marks thrown high in the air over ransacked houses. Several articles had been published without names because the victim had been under-aged. Remus had spent the summer worrying that Tildy or Evans had been attacked.
As they rushed to join their table in the Great Hall, Remus's eyes travelled the length and he saw Tildy and AJ and Michael and all the other Muggle-borns and half-bloods he knew well. He relaxed onto the bench beside Peter and let out the breath he had been holding.
"Worried?" Sirius asked, eyebrow quirked up in question.
"Not anymore," he replied and smiled.
After a few words ('Ekki, ekki, ekki, pitang'), the Headmaster bid them eat, which they did. And then the speech came. Three of the four Marauders sat straighter up to watch the crafty old wizard's face as he spoke, gauging his level of honesty as best they could when his words finally brought up the two curious guests.
"Hogwarts shall be playing host to two transfer students this year. Unfortunately, their arrival was more traumatic than anticipated and they are currently recovering under Madam Pomfrey's expert care. When they have recuperated and join you in classes, I hope that you will show them what it means to be a Hogwarts student. Now…" He continued the speech, but they weren't listening anymore.
"'Anticipated' my muscular buttocks," Sirius said quietly. "Dumbles had no idea who those two were. He thought that bloke was you, Prongs."
James nodded his agreement. "There's something odd, and I'm thinking we ought to find out what."
"Second goal of term, then?" Sirius suggested, mischief glinting in his eyes.
"Absolutely."