Remus laid his head down on his hands as he let the sound of McGonagall's lecture roll over him, resolutely ignoring the boy that he was sitting next to - the Slytherin that he was paired up with because bloody Peter was in the hospital wing with a broken arm after falling while trying to escape Mrs. Norris mid transformation. It wasn't the other boy's finest of moments, but no one told him to try and shift into a rat to escape Filch only to attempt to shift back after hearing the tell - tell pitter patter if paws on the old stone floor.
Normally the o furnace would have been halirious, Peter'd had the blood map on his for fuck's sake, but it was the map that was the problem and had all three of the Marauders in a sour mood as all three did anything but listen to one of the last lectures by their favorite Professor. In Peter's haste and failure to get away unscathed, the rat had gotten the parchment confiscated by Filch of all people.
The wolf only stared out the window and thought of simpler times of a year previous when he didn't have to pretend to be anything other than himself. A time when stolen kisses were accompanied by a group of friends walking through the castle in public, now it was almost NEWTs and the only time he got to see any of the other four was when no one else was looking.
He missed this time last year.
—-
Remus was sitting at the Gryffindor table one breakfast on the last Hogsmead day of the year, eating with the other three Marauders before the trio went into the village. He was surprised when Sirius started to sneer all of the sudden. The conversation had been playful only a moment before, ideas for pranks spilling from lips as Remus talked through the mechanics behind each. But the wolf only turned and smiled at the cause of the shift.
"Morning, Dora."
The Ravenclaw smiled but it didn't reach her eyes, something that Remus noticed right away.
"What happened?" The fox asked, his brows drawn in concern. Pandora wasn't one to fake emotions.
"I have a date with Lovegood today in the village," the blond says softly, and Remus sees Sirius draw a brow, some of his previous good mood restored for whatever reason.
"Isn't that a good thing?" The dog asks and for the first time in a while the wolf finds himself agreeing with the other Marauder.
"Would be," Dora admits, but still doesnt look away from Remus, "but Reg found out."
And now Remus knew the problem.
Blood meant nothing to the members of their group, blood was the people that threw you away like trash to Boy's Homes and house elves to raise. The people that beat you for small mistakes and thought you strange and less than human for anything peculiar about you. When blood meant nothing to you, those that you chose as family meant more than another ever could. Dora was their sister and Regulus was a very protective older brother.
"Where is he?"
"He went after Xenophilius," the Ravenclaw admits, "but it gets worse."
" How ?" Remus asks, already planning lies in his head to cover should anyone hear the threats that the younger Black brother was bound to make.
"Barty went to stop him… and then Evan went to stop Barty."
Remus stood, already knowing what sight would greet him once he found the four and smiling all the same.
"Where are you going?" James had asked, confusion clear in his voice as the strange pair began to walk away from the lions.
"To go stop Reg from killing Lovegood," Remus said with a smile, as if it were obvious, "and maybe to kill Barty myself should it come down to that."
Dora shook her head as the three Marauders watched their fourth leave. If they had paid attention then, then they might have known just how much the wolf held the snakes - his snakes - dear. But they only watched in confusion as the pair left to join the mischief of the others for one of the last times in public, the promise of summer weighing down on each of them like a curse.
—-
Remus started listening to the lecture once more, brought out of his daydreams by the low laugh of the Slytherin next to him. Nothing that ever made the snakes in his year laugh was something that should be tolerated.
"Something funny?" McGonagall asked, as she looked at the Slytherin coldly, her voice stern in a manner that made first years tremble but had stopped working so resolutely on the wizards and witches within the classroom a while before. War had a funny way of making one fearless when they knew that they were about to step head first into it.
Mulciber laughed once more, and Remus already felt his finger balling into fist at what the marked Death Eater was bound to say, spurred on by his newfound courage. If the bastard didn't calm down soon then Remus would be tempted to call for a resort, the fact that school was almost over be damned.
"I've just always wondered how muggles could be so stupid is all," the snake said and Remus watched as McGonagall raised a brow, the warning clear.
The Slytherins didn't care to hear it as they all snickered.
"And how is that?" The Professor asked, her voice as warm as the arctic.
The snake shrugs. "All I mean Professor is that magic is all around them and they're all so stupid that they can't even tell. Leads me to wonder why we bother keeping them around at all."
McGonagall's anger had a sadness to it that Remus knew only came from watching a student that she had taught for seven years become a monster, but the Gryffindors' anger was something primal, all hard eyes and barely restrained fist from the other side of the room. It was an amount of self control that the lions hardly ever expressed.
Remus found that as someone that hardly was a lion anymore these days, the wolf didn't feel the need to abide by such rules.
Mulciber opened his mouth once more, but Remus didn't care to hear the rest of it.
James and Sirius watched as Remus sat next to the Slytheirn with a blank look on his face, as if he was unfazed by the words spilling from the other teen's mouth. Words that were directed at the half - blood too.
The fox moved quickly, a hand in the snake's hair with a bruising grip. The same hand bashing Mulciber's head against the table in one quick move, the sound of bones crunching and a muffled groan of pain as Remus pushed the bleed boy away, his face just as blank as it had been before.
Sirius didn't bother to sort through the emotions the rose up within him at the sight, only knowing that they were far from negative and that he should do something about them soon.
"Sorry, you were saying?"
"Mr. Lupin! Detention!" The Professor screamed, shock masking the anger that would normally be there.
Only the snakes and the present marauders knew of the violence that laid beneath the wizard's studious facade. One would think that one already privy to it would know better than to risk incurring it once more, but no one ever did accuse Mulciber of being intelligent.
Remus raised his hand slowly, a smirk on the teen's face that no one outside of the snake den had seen before.
"Yes, Mr. Lupin?"
"If I heal it can I have my detention time cut in half?" The lion asked, that smile still on his face as if all within the room were peering at a stranger instead of the boy that they had known for a few years shy of a decade.
"Why not," the professor said, her voice exhausted and questioning the Marauder's capacity of even doing so.
Remus gaze his wand a lazy flick to the angered and stunned snake, the damage completely reversing itself to the point that even the blood from the Spytheirn's broken nose had disappeared, before grabbing the other by the hair and whispering in the other's ear. His smile was as sharp as a wolf's, his voice as sly as a fox.
"We'll settle this in house, Friday," Remus whispered, leaving no room for question, not that Mulciber would have dared to, remembering the last time that the pair had dealt with an issue 'in house.'
The lions watched as Remus let the Slytherin go before stretching with his hands high above his head and then laying down against the desk like a cat. He wasn't exactly far from being one.
The display was violent in ways that they wouldn't have thought that their Moony could have been only two years before, but it settled the unease that has lingered inside of the other two boys since the day that they had found out about Remus's continued closeness with the younger Black brother the year before. It let them know that for all Remus had changed, he was still the same boy that designed pranks to make it to where the snakes couldn't say slurs.
Neither of the boys thought that the display had been engineered by a certain group of friends. They weren't cunning enough to think of such a thing. But neither were exactly surprised either when Remus disappeared Friday night and Mulciber came to breakfast Saturday morning looking as if he had lost a fight to a bludger or two.
—-
Remus watched from the carriage as Hogwarts became smaller and smaller in the background. He watched as the school faded for what should have been the last time, but somehow knew that he would be back one day, that he was bound to be. He wasn't sad to watch it disappear though, not when he knew that he had a home to return to.
—-
School hadn't even been out a week before Remus and the other Marauders were brought into their first Order meeting. Dumbledore had sent each of them a note by owl with the name of a secret location protected under the fidelius charm. Remus had smiled along with the other three as he held his, ignoring the guilt that coiled in his stomach at the lies that seemed to fall constantly from his lips. It didn't matter, he would do what it takes; everyone in their group would.
Remus stood quietly in the small room as he looked at all of the faces, familiar and not. Arthur Weasely was a kind man that the boys had met a time or two at the Potter's Christmas parties over the years, his wife Molly was much the same. Hagrid stood tall in the room, standing out among all of the others as a man that Remus could only assume was an auror - Moody , someone called him - stood beside the half giant. The Prewett twins smiled mischievously as they recognized the four Marauders moving about their ranks, though time had taken its toll on the pair as well. Remus smiled as he recognized three more faces.
Lily, Mary, and Marlene.
The girls smiled when the four joined them, but the mood was still solemn within the room, like a poison hidden beneath false cheer.
The meeting flew by quickly, Dumbledore handing out assignments and never giving any reason as to why. Remus didn't understand most of it, as if the adults were speaking in a language that he didn't yet know, but for the most part it seemed as if everyone was being sent off in desperate missions to try and help, ones that would do little even if they did.
This was a war that only ended once the leader had died and yet no one else seemed to be realizing that, or if they did then Dumbledore was holding his cards tight enough to his chest that no one else knew of an assassination plans if he had them.
Remus sighed, he had known it wouldn't be so simple, so quick.
He was surprised though when Dumbledore had called him aside after the meeting and gave him his first task.
Parlay with the werewolves.
To meet with Greyback and his pack.
—-
Remus watched as the moon grew more and more full by the day and felt dread well up within himself as he knew what was coming. Dumbledore knew where the wolves were, all he had to do was go to them and run with them. It almost sounded simple but Remus knew that it would be anything but.
—-
Howls filled the night within the enchanted forest and Remus screamed in a way that was neither human nor animal as his own joined them, his body tearing itself apart and he joined the members of a pack who were all turned by the same man or by those that had been.
The wolves circled the newest of their number, teeth bared in a challenge that the beast knew that he couldn't fail. The other beast bit at his skin and the newest tore right back, blood thick on his snout that tasted of magic instead of iron alone.
When the sun rose and Remus was still holding onto life, the rest of the pack smiled, blood on their mouth and coloring their teeth. Remus smiled back just as sharp, as feral as the rest, ignoring the blood spilling from his bare body as the rest of the pack healed one another with a magic that he didn't yet know and wasn't yet welcome to participate in but knew he had to stay to witness.
His bones ached and yet it was less so than it had been in quite a long time.
—-
Dora scowled at the sight of her friend as Remus drug himself down to the lab that he had given her in the cottage, healing magic spilling from her wand as the wolf downed potion after potion.
"Is this really necessary?" The girl asked and Remus sighed, knowing that he would ask the same had she appeared before him just the same.
"It's the mission," Remus answers simply, hating the way that Dora's shoulders sag as she bandages his side, covering the teeth marks now permanently painting his skin.
It's the mission.
—-
Dumbledore wasn't pleased to hear that Greyback wasn't present, but Remus tells him that it was to be expected, not caring if he appeared imprudent before the man he had once called Headmaster.
"He's busy turning other children into monsters," Remus reminds the older wizard coldly.
And no one is doing a thing about it.
—-
The second moon Remus is there when they turn, he sees the tattered rags that the pack under Greyback calls clothes and hears the rattle in their lungs as each of them cough through the transformation. He knows that he will be just the same soon enough, should all things go to plan.
The wolves run through the night, the newest at their side as the pack hunted, though he didn't yet get to partake in the spoils.
When they are human once more, the sun low in the sky, the others crowd around Remus, healing his cuts and bruises with a magic that required no wand - a magic that the boy was starting to feel more distinctively in his bones, something that had been there since that night when he was young, but had been cloaked under the magic thought at the school. Something dark - before sending the teen back off where he had come from.
—-
Dora insists on looking Remus over in the lab once more and agrees that he is fine. She still brews potions for the wolf, ones for the former lion to take once she had gone back to school by the next moon.
They don't talk about Regulus on these stolen nights, knowing that he was probably having just as good of a time as Remus was. Knowing that they could do nothing to save the boy that they each loved more than anything else. Knowing that Barty and Evan had been drawn into it as well, brands on their skin like the scars on the wolf's.
—-
The moon was half full in the sky when Remus snuck out into the London night, the other Marauders asleep at Sirius's flat after James and the man himself had returned from their latest mission, Peter and Remus helping their few scrapes. Remus didn't think that Peter had even been so happy to be working at the Ministry.
Remus walked the city streets until he came across what he had been looking for.
The bike wasn't anything special to the wolf, but Remus knew that Evan would love it once he saw the thing. It was embarrassingly simple to copy the contraption with the modified Gemini spell that they had created in fifth year, the runes only giving the teen a day or two of trouble but he had it done in time for the younger boy to use before going back to school. They ignored the mark on his skin when he did just as Remus ignored the approaching moon.
He wasn't allowed to ignore it for long.
—-
The third moon with the pack came not long after the school term had started back. Remus said goodbye to the Marauders before setting off to the woods, the other three knowing of the assignment that he had been given.
"We'll meet up after, yeah?" James asked, concern lacing his voice as Sirius looked on worriedly, his hands moving at his side as if he wanted to do something but was resisting doing so.
"Sure," Remus lied.
He knew even then that he wouldn't be back for a good while.
He went anyways, the ring that he normally kept so close to his heart was left at the cottage.
With one last look at the Potter's home, Remus apparated to the woods and ran with the wolves through the night, only to be taken in the morning.