Remus sighed as if he was releasing his dying breath as he laid his head down. In the things tome for Ancient Runes, careful of the drying ink just bedside it. Not for the first time the Gryffindor found himself wishing that Pince would let them smoke in the library, because he would just about kill for one just about then.
The library was stock full with students due to just how close OWLs and NEWTs were, the numbers only increasing more so as the usual finals reared their ugly heads as well. So every table was full of quietly mummering students, and heavily bored ones weighed down by equally heavy books lining their arms. Normally this was something that Remus could find it in himself to tolerate, enjoy even as silence was something that typically set the boy's nerves on edge after never having it before, but so close to the moon sound was like some kind of personal offense to the lion. The other students seemed to realize it too as his was the only table that anyone in the entirety of the library had to themselves.
That was why it had come at so much of a surprise and yet none at all when Regulus Black of all people had stopped before him, books in hand with two familiar boys and one fair haired girl behind him.
"Mind if we sit, Lupin?" The younger black had asked in that posh accent of his that all of the purebloods seemed to hold. The one that always served to remind the Gryffindor of the Cockney accent that he had come to Hogwarts with first year, and had been systematically killing every year since. The only time that the teen used it was during the summer holidays, but it was always best not to think of those during the school year. "Everywhere else is full."
Remus eyed the four younger students carefully, wondering if this was some angle that the younger Black was playing. The war had been on everyone's minds this year, and it was no secret where all but one notable expectation of the Black family stood with it. But though the wood within him begged for a good fight, the part of him that had been trying so hard this year to be kinder thought better of it.
"You're taking Ancient Runes, right?" Remus asked instead of properly answering the question outright as he knew that he should.
The older boy watched with a twinge of satisfaction as confusion pooled on that of the Slytherin boy's face, the younger Black's face morphing into an expression so like his brother's that Remus almost had to remind himself that the boy before him was not. Eventually the other boy nodded primly and Remus did as well.
"You Slytherins like deals, right? Help me with this problem and you'll hear no complaints from me," the older boy said, pointing to the questions that they had been assigned easier in class that day.
"Why? The studious Gryffindor can't figure it out himself?" One of the other Slytherins, Barth Crouch Jr., had asked with more than a heavy level of annoyance and scorn, only to be hit on the shoulder by the last boy- Evan Rosier.
Remus glared up at the boy, more amused by the title that he had been given then offended by the rude accusation attached to it. It was always strange to hear how others thought of him outside of the Marauders who knew that Remus was the one that was the brains behind most of the group's bigger pranks throughout their years at Hogwarts. No one ever thought that it was him.
"Can't remember one of the theorems from last year," the older boy said, shrugging as he kept a cool head- something that he had become very good at during his time as prefect. "And I don't want to have to bloody well fight my way to the tower and back for the notes on one measly problem, now do I?" Remus remarked firmly.
He watched as the younger boy seemed to eye him consideringly- as if he was seeing something that he hadn't before- but shifted his gaze away when the younger Black brother moved to stand beside him at the table, looking down at the paper with that too familiar pinch in the younger boy's brows. Remus had seen it on Sirius more times than he could count when the four of them were drawing out the lines for the map. He'd always had to look away from the older Black when he did that and found himself instinctively doing the same with the younger.
"You're going to need to out the Algiz before the Dagaz rune," the younger boy decided after a moment, "simce with this Theron you can use literal translations."
"So it will be 'shielding from change', that way the painting will remain unabated by time" Remus remembered quickly before grabbing his quil to do just that, only stopping to gesture to the three Slytherin boys and the one Ravenclaw girl to take their seats as they had agreed to before.
For the next few hours the odd group sat at the table in a comfortable silence that was soon filled with the quiet complaints at the work and questions being exchanged with one another.
Remus found that the Ravenclaw girl was named Pandora Lestrange and was a particularly gifted witch in just about everything that she tried, and was often prone to experimenting with spells- even right before finals it seemed as none of her mountain of books were about anything that they were currently studying, but her current fascination instead.
Bart Crouch and Evan Rosier seemed to share one mind as the pair filled the table with scathing remarks that Remus somehow found himself adding to when familiar names came up. Somehow plans for an exorcism were brought up for Professor Binns, and Moaning Myrtle before long. The only problem that the group found was how to make sure that it was limited to just the two ghosts and cover their tracks enough that it would look like a natural passing.
Regulus Black had been the most surprising of the odd group, the quiet boy that seemed the best behaved if the lot holding more than his fair share of his brother's talent for trouble as Remus caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a modified duplication spell created just for alcohol so that it wouldn't modify the taste or strength of the original or the copy. The younger Black brother had only smiled when he saw what Remus was looking at and the pair had adjusted one or two things together, 'the exact opposite of what a prefect should be doing,' as the Slytherin boy had felt the need to point out.
Remus hadn't known it then, but that simple decision to allow the group close had changed everything.
—-
Pain was the first thing that Remus had known when he woke up the morning after the last full moon of fifth year. It was the mind recking sort of agony that the boy hadn't endured in so many months that the Gryffindor had almost forgotten just what it felt like. Confusion swept up on the boy quickly because he knew that this pain wasn't right, it wasn't supposed to be his just then.
And yet it was happening.
Blood spilled down Remus's chest as he pushed off of the dirty floor and to the equally appalling bed, alone in a room that should have held three others. The wolf's frustration curled in his chest as Remus pulled the blanket over himself and his mind ran away with him, filling itself with all of the things that could have led to him being without the other Marauders; terrible phantom images of the other three bloodied somewhere at his doing. Because nothing short of something absolutely horrible could have kept them apart on the night of their last hurrah.
A miserable feeling curled in the boy's stomach as he wished for Madam Pomfrey. It didn't die once the witch finally did come.
The poor school nurse had a nervous air about her when she walked into the room, one so strong that Remus could smell it from a good deal down the hall before he even saw the unusually pale looking witch. Saw the sad gaze that the older woman held so openly.
"Oh, you poor thing," Madam Pomfrey said with hints of pity that the werewolf would only ever accept from the older witch. She'd been caring for him since he was eleven, and she'd held him in her arms as he had asked her to let him die, and had kissed him on the forehead with the tenderness of a mother that the boy had never known before then. "It's been a bad night all around, hasn't it?"
"What do you mean 'all around'?" The boy asked, trying to sound more curious of the complications of spells gone wrong than anxious of the sort of damage that could never be undone.
But the medi witch only brushed Remus off and continued to heal the boy before taking him to the hospital wing. There, under the school nurse's watchful eyes, Remus drank down all of the sleeping draught that he had been given. He didn't fight her on it like he normally might have, the Gryffindor wasn't feeling as brave in that moment as the house might suggest.
When Remus woke again sometime later, he wasn't alone this time. Later he would find himself wishing that he was.
"Prongs?!" The boy croaked quietly at the disembodied head of his friend, only to be immediately shushed by the boy in question.
"Are you okay?" The other boy asked earnestly, but there was a look in James's eyes that the werewolf recognized too much from his own every time that he looked in the mirror. Everytime that he thought of Sirius in a certain way, or came back from a twig to the library with a certain group of fourth years that the other Marauders didn't know a thing about.
Shame.
Guilt.
"I'm really sorry, Moony," James said before Remus could even answer the boy's question or properly think of his own. He could hear the pain there in the other boy's voice and desperately wanted to know just what had placed it there.
"What happened?" Remus asked for the second time that day, his voice hardening from the softness that it had taken on that year.
"Look, don't be angry with him," James began to stammer hurriedly. "He's an idiot, but I don't think that he realized. I did. Think that he meant to…"
But Remus wasn't listening to the other boy's excuses, not when he knew that there was only one person that he would give them for with such desperation.
"What did Sirius do?" Thenboy asked, his voice growing harder still as the panic grew in James's.
Remus felt an all too famIliar anger rise up within him as the other boy spoke, as James dulled and bent the truth as much as he could so that it wouldn't just yet break. So that Suriusi came out looking less tarnished than he should have. Only it didn't work at all because unlike James two had grown up around unconditional love and truth, Rmeus had grown up around liars and could hear them as easily as breathing. Even white lies.
"He fucking told Snape," Remus summarized bluntly, his voice coming out in much more of a growl then either of the boys wanted to hear, but - for the first time - Remus didn't bite it back.
"Not… not exactly," James said carefully, still trying to play the peacemaker. "He told him how the willow worked, and Snape…" Remus almost found it amusing how difficult it was for the boy before him to say just what the other two boys had done. Almost. "No one was hurt," James hurriedly continued, "but Snape he…"
"He saw me," Remus said, not needing the other boy's confirmation to know that it was true. Not wanting it either. "James, please leave."
"Remus-"
But the scarred boy wasn't having it, not when he knew that once the shock and betrayal of all of this had properly worn off that James would be right back at Sirius's side as if none of it had happened at all.
If it even took that long, Remus thought darkly.
"James, get out," the boy said coldly, making the other boy look at him with a panicked expression.
"But Moony…"
"Please."
"Okay… okay, but I'll be back."
Remus didn't answer him, he only closed his eyes and waited for the other boy to leave. Eventually he fell back asleep once more.
—-
The next time that Remus Lupin opened his eyes he wasn't alone, nor did his visitors do much to make it seem as if he was.
Gathered around his bed were the figures of three Slytherin boys and one Ravenclaw girl, each in varying stages of consciousness as Pandora and Regulus quietly talked about the book between them, and Evan and Barry silently slept on theirs. Despite everything Remus found himself looking on fondly at the scene before him, or maybe it was because of everything.
"Anyone going to wake the dunderheads?" The Gryffindor asked as he pushed himself up on the bed.
Regulus looked mildly alarmed for a moment at the new voice, flinching from the suddenness in a way that caused Pandora and Remus pain to see, but quickly covered the reaction with a pleased nod that Remus easily returned.
The Lestrange girl was a different story, as he stood up from her chair - passing the book fully to Regikus in the process - and climbed up onto the cot next to Remus, laying herself fully at his side in a way that shook have made Remus blush had he been any other boy. But instead it was like resting with a little sister.
"Hello to you too, Dora," the Gryffindor said weakly, his voice much too raspy for his liking.
"Evening, Remus," the Ravenclaw girl whispered somewhat quietly as the younger Black brother leaned forward and grabbed the glass of water on the bedside table, handing it to Remus without having to be asked to do so.
The fifth gratefully accepted it and took a greedy sip of the liquid before deeming it enough and leaning forwards with a smirk playing across the boy's lips that he saw Regulus mirroring. With a quick move, the rest of the water found itself on the frames in the two sleeping boys.
"Fucking shit!"
"Bloody Hell!"
The other three snickered as the other two boys cursed, but the violence in their eyes was lost once the pair's eyes fell on the Gryffindor.
"Lupin," Evan said excitedly before his eyes fell on the now empty glass in the Gryffindor's hands. "Lupin," the Slytherin said in a much different tone than before.
But Remus only smiled. "Careful, Rosier," the boy taunted. "Pomfrey's a right terror if you get on her bad side, especially for attacking an injured student."
"Sometimes I wonder why you're not a Slytherin when you say things like that," Barth said before shaking the water out of his hair like a dog, moving to the displeasure of everyone else there that got hit by the water.
"So Remus darling," Pandora started once the boys had calmed down enough to listen, or at least to be still, "what landed you in here this time?"
No one missed the way that the boy's face shifted into something stony, or how the four could almost feel the older boy's anger as it rised, as if it was something tangible that they could physically hold if they wanted to. When Remus's gaze fell on Regulus, somehow they could all tell that the anger wasn't directed at the Slytherin boy, but rather someone that shared his resemblance.
"Your brother happened," the Gryffindor said bluntly, his voice gruff.
No one missed the way that the younger Black brother flicked back at the older boy's words, but Pandora was quick to grab onto the dark haired boy's hand and held it tight, just as she held Remus's as well.
"He did this to you?" Regulus rasped, his vice coming out strangely at the mention of the boy that had always stood in front of him during their mother's rage doing such a thing to another. But Regulus knew that cruelty ran in their family as thick as the blood in their veins.
"Not directly," the Gryffindor replied quickly upon seeing the other boy's pale skin and haunted eyes, "but it was his actions that caused it, his plan. This," Remus said bitterly, gesturing to himself laid out in the bed, to the bandages peeking out from beneath his clothes, "was the best outcome."
And wasn't that shocking for the other four to hear? None of them wanted to know what the other outcomes could have been that a boy getting married and hospitalized was the good end of the deal. But nothing was more surprising than what the angered Gryffindor said next:
"Your mother would be so proud."
Pandora held fast to both boys' hands as both were in varying states of falling apart. This wasn't how she had wanted to spend today, not when the sun was shining as it was and until a few hours ago she'd had three participants to try a new spell on and had thought that she would have had a Gryffindor boy to help as well.
"So how are we getting the bastard back?" Barry was thrumming his fingers across the book like a beating heart, like running feet. There was a cold look on the boy's face, but Remus thought that he quite liked it right then. "We are getting back at him, aren't we?"
"Of course we are," Evan said surely, his knee knocking the other boy's as he leaned forward and ideas started to spill from his lips.
That was the moon that everything changed.
—-
Madam Pomfrey let Remus go a little ways into dinner, which was given by the Gryffindor boy who had long grown restless once more, shifting in the bed as if his skin didn't fit right over his bones. Remus supposed that it truly didn't.
Eyes were on the Gryffindor boy from the moment that he walked into the Great Hall. Mary, Lily, and Marlene all had small smiles on their faces at seeing the boy back from his latest stint in the hospital wing, as concerned glances were exchanged between two of the remaining Marauders, and apologies sprung to the lips of the last one. But none of them got to speak to the boy at all because he never walked over to the Gryffindor table.
More and more eyes drew to the scene as Remus, the supposed tamest of the Marauders, walked in the opposite direction of his house table, not slowing down in his stride as Pandora Lestrange left her own table and walked at his side. It was a pairing that no one had ever seen before, raising more than one mummer from the lions watching the seven unfold with rapt attention, watching as they walked together straight to the Slytherin table as if they were meant to be there.
Barry Crouch and Evan Rosier could be seen smiling like madmen as they saw that the older boy was truly doing it. Regulus was almost inclined to agree but he'd known that the other boy would do it the entire time, he was too hurt not to. They both were.
Whispers broke out across the hall as the Gryffindor boy sat down at the Slytherin table and was welcomed with an arm slung across his shoulder by Rosier and a raised glass from Crouch. Sirius made a move to go after the other Marauder, but was stopped by a hand on his wrist pulling him back down.
"But James," the boy protested, watching as the last of their little group sat surrounded by snakes. As Remus sat in front of his little brother saying something that made the dark haired boy smirk.
"No," the boy snapped back with enough force to draw a few eyes to the pair as well. "You've already done enough," James said with a voice that was much colder than Sirius had ever heard it directed at him, remembering the look in their friend's when Remus had learned of what Sirius had done. It was the first time that he had ever been afraid of the other Gryffindor boy.
Too busy watching the scene unfold, no one saw the hard look in Dumbledore's normally kind eyes.
—-
The group at the Slytherin table rose as one when they were done, heading straight for the door with satisfied smirks on their faces. This time James wasn't fast enough to stop Sirius from going after the other boy, but was quick to follow the other boy, Peter right behind him as well. The strange group was barely down the hall when Sirius caught up to them.
"Moony!" The boy called desperately, causing the group to still as James and Peter caught up. "Moony, I'm sorry! Whatever this is please-"
But Sirius never got to finish his sentence because the next thing that anyone knew the boy was sprawled out on the ground, blood flowing freely from what looked to be a broken nose, as Remus looked down at him as if he was nothing more than another boy from the care home, and Sirius hazard up at the boy that he had known for years as if he was seeing a stranger.
"Don't call me that," the taller boy growled before spinning on his heel and walking away with the others closing ranks around their friend. "You lost that right last night," was the last that the Marauders heard from the lion among snakes and eagles.
Only Regulus stayed behind as James and Peter pulled the fallen boy to his feet, a bored look in the Slytherin's face, but Sirius could see the anger in his eyes.
"Regulus, I don't know what game you all are playing with Remus, but this needs to stop."
But Regulus Black was paying no mind to the demands of the boy that had stolen his brother from him all those years ago. He only had eyes for the ones that mirrored his own.
"Remus won't tell us what happened," the Slytherin said, feeling sick at the relief that shone so bright in the older boy's eyes at his words, "but he did tell us that our mother would be proud. Guess it only took sixteen years."
As Regulus walked away, his brother fell apart.
Good .