Chapter Text
The next day, an exhausted Remus Lupin headed for the Quidditch pitch. He had woken up still tired from the transformation a couple nights before—not to mention his strange dream last night, but when Pettigrew has asked if he would come to support the first game of the school year, Remus found it hard to say no to someone who had been checking up on him. Besides, the bit of cloud cover was relaxing to Remus. He wasn’t a big fan of really bright sunlight. It hurt his eyes and seemed to irritate the wolf inside of him to the point of internal pain as well.
Remus and Pettigrew entered the pitch together, and Remus’s breath caught. He woke up a bit more as he looked around. He knew immediately he would be attending more matches in the future. The pitch was saturated with the scent of freshly cut grass and the rainwater of the night before. Hundreds of students already milled around the seats, settling in for the game. They wore mostly yellow and green uniforms, but a few students from Ravenclaw and Gryffindor had shown up too.
‘Obviously,’ Remus thought sardonically.
“Dunno where James and Sirius are,” Pettigrew mused beside him. “I know they left the dorm before us. Maybe they’re already seated?”
Remus shrugged. He wasn’t really concerned with where they were. Honestly, he’d almost forgotten the two had made plans to be here, because they mentioned it so casually the day before. The werewolf knew they would definitely be there, though, because short of having received detention for some idiotic thing during the week, they were the two most excited for the first Hogwarts Qudditch match of the season. Looking around again, Remus couldn’t blame them for their excitement.
Pettigrew continued, “Well, regardless, let’s find some seats ourselves before they’re all gone.”
They pushed their way through the throngs of Hogwarts students and faculty. Miraculously, they found seats next to each other and close enough to the front rows and quickly claimed them. Remus promised himself that the next game he attended, he would arrive early. Pettigrew decided to pass the time by observing the other people surrounding the pair, quietly telling Remus fabricated and sordid stories about them.
The snogging couple sitting a few rows in front of them were both here on unfaithful dates. He was cheating on his real girlfriend (a Ravenclaw to his Slytherin), because he thought Slughorn was a handsome bugger; the girl he was with was cheating on her real boyfriend (Hufflepuff to her Hufflepuff), because he smelled of sweaty feet all the time.
Flitwick and Dumbledore, who sat next to each other, were dreadful sadists. They always attended each Quidditch match, making high bets of Sugar Mice and lemon candies of which students would get horribly injured, how it happened, and other such terrible things. Never fatally injured, but just enough that they would be crying as they left for Pomfrey.
The blonde Hufflepuff sitting on the other side of the pitch—no, not that one, the one sitting near the bottom of the pitch seats. And even though she was sitting in a cluster of Hufflepuffs, it was clear she was there alone. Did Remus see her yet? (It took Remus a few moments, but he finally spied a blonde in the second row across the pitch, fidgeting, eagerly watching the Slytherin players’ entrance.) Anyway, she was desperately in love with one of the players in the Slytherin team.
See, they were in the library together once, at two different tables. He was working on discovering a hex to use on people. She was working on one of the various Transfigurations essays McGonagall always hands out. She was talking to herself a bit too loudly as she wrote. He saved her from Pince’s wrath. Since, she’s been hoping for a glimpse of him, wondering if she needs to stage another “Pince Attack” to gain his attention.
Remus, wearing a small, amused smirk, asked, “Do you think she’ll succeed?”
Pettigrew shook his head with exaggerated sadness. “He’ll never take notice of her again. He’s since fallen for me, you see.”
The young werewolf raised a teasingly skeptical brow. “What for? You haven’t done anything particularly fantastic,” fell from his lips before he could stop it.
The smaller boy looked at Remus with mock hurt. “Remus! Such little faith you have in your Pettigrew. Of course I have. A group of Slytherins—of which this Hufflepuff’s desired paramour was a part,” Pettigrew took great care to spend a few seconds rolling each r in “paramour”, fluttering his eyelashes at Remus. “Were arguing if it were possible for one person to be at once talented, handsome, witty, sophisticated, and bewitching. This boy, this one right in front of you, single-handedly ended the bickering just by walking up to them and introducing myself. They all realized I was the flagship on which they based their arguments, and everything was fine. That was me, Remus. I did that. Just one of my many accomplishments here at Hogwarts.”
Remus hummed, “And what are the other accomplishments, exactly? You’re eleven, after all.”
“Hmm? Oh, I’ll tell you another time. I couldn’t possibly keep you distracted from the game.” He winked, causing Remus to smile. Pettigrew liked to make people think he was empty-headed, and to some degree people around him didn’t mind thinking he was, but Remus throughout the few days of knowing him had come to find it was just a mask.
The scarred boy chuckled and shook his head, looking around at the masses himself. There had to be someone in the crowd Pettigrew couldn’t make up a story about. For a while, he didn’t see anyone that would potentially stump Pettigrew. But finally, his eyes landed on McGonagall. He turned back to Pettigrew with a triumphant smirk. “What about Professor McGonagall?”
Pettigrew’s eyes gleamed with excitement and Remus would’ve been more disappointed by his failure if he weren’t so happy that he was the one who’d put the light in Pettigrew’s eyes in the first place. “Oh, that’s easy. She’s on the run.”
Remus tilted his head, trying to suppress the mental image of a wolf doing so. He wasn’t expecting Pettigrew to say that. “The run? From what?”
“She’s not Scottish,” Pettigrew explained, speaking low and leaning in conspiratorially so Remus could still hear him above the other students. “Not really. She’s not even British. She’s an Armenian child soldier, moulded by an absent father, and the harsh training of her strict handlers. She had to cut out all emotion from herself early on in life. It was the only way to survive such a hard upbringing. But that’s also what made her such a great warrior.”
Remus couldn’t help leaning in as well, speaking more as a breath than an actual voice. “So, she’s running from her handlers and governmental conscription?”
Pettigrew winced in sympathy for a McGonagall he entirely fabricated. “If only it were that easy for her, Remus. Unfortunately for her, after many years of service, the same country she loved and called home framed her for high treason, for the murder of the wizarding minister of Armenia. They took her youth, her heart, and now they want to take her life. It’s why she’s so closed-off and wears a tight bun. She yearns for a home she can never return to.”
Remus laughed loudly enough to garner glares from some students surrounding them. He flushed sheepishly as continued quieter, “You’re too much, Pettigrew. How do you make up stories like that?”
Pettigrew grinned. “One day, you’ll realize I’ve been telling the truth about everyone this entire time, my naïve Lupin.”
They sat in a relaxing silence for a bit before Remus spoke again. “What would our dorm’s stories be?”
The blond boy nodded seriously, “Well, the first thing to understand is, Cokes is actually a—”
He was cut off by the arrival of Madame Hooch, the Quidditch coach and flying professor, and the Hufflepuff and Slytherin teams.
After Hooch released the snitch and the two Bludgers, she told the two teams to play a fair and clean game. Remus heard a student yell, “Slytherin won’t,” and the robes she wore may have looked like Ravenclaw to him, but he wasn’t sure.
His brows knit together. Slytherin didn’t seem so bad to him so far, just a bit arrogant. But arrogant people came from any House, didn’t they?
Hooch threw the quaffle into the air and the game began.
Slytherin got a hold of the quaffle first, but the Hufflepuff keeper—Remus was ashamed to admit he didn’t know any of the players’ names—managed to keep the other team from scoring their first shots.
Remus felt second-hand frustration for the Slytherin team. After all, he reasoned, thinking back to the other—Ravenclaw?—student’s apparent detestation for Slytherin house, he knew a Slytherin who didn’t seem to be that bad. The boy didn’t even seem as arrogant as Remus earlier thought him to be.
Remus wondered if Snape were feeling the same frustration he did, or if the other boy was even there. The werewolf thought he might be, since his house was playing today, but Snape also didn’t seem the type to follow sports much. Remus started to look around, to check for a head of shiny black hair or a nose with a slight hook. At least for Snape’s friend, Evans.
“Remus, are you watching?” Pettigrew nudged him.
Remus looked at him in surprise. He’d forgotten they weren’t exactly in a break in the match right now. “No, sorry. I was…looking for someone.”
“James and Sirius?” Pettigrew asked, frowning. He also looked around the stands a bit, but mostly he focused on Remus.
“No…I was…it’s not important.”
Pettigrew’s frown deepened, but he didn’t push it. “Well, you missed the first score.”
“What?” Remus craned his neck to look at the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins lining the pitch seats, then at the different goal posts, as if he could still tell the score that way. “Who was it?”
“Hufflepuff,” Pettigrew deadpanned. When Remus glanced at the shorter boy again, he was still frowning, staring at Remus. “Are you sure you’re well enough to stay for the game? We can head back to the dorm if you need. Get the details from Sirius and James later.” He shrugged as if he didn’t really care that this was the first game of the Quidditch season.
Remus shook his head, more to clear it than to answer the other boy. “No, I’m fine. I can stay.”
“You sure?” Pettigrew pressed.
“Shut up, the two a’ ya,” a Gryffindor groaned in front of them.
Pettigrew responded with a gesture Remus was sure would get their House docked points if a professor happened to see. He looked away to have deniability for Pettigrew’s sake.
“You sure?” Pettigrew asked again, careful to not at all change his volume in the slightest.
Remus hummed his affirmation. He ignored the fact that Pettigrew’s lips were still pursed heavily, and kept his eyes glued to the match. He hoped Pettigrew would follow suit and the blond boy did, finally.
The scoring trend continued for several more turns, resulting in Hufflepuff having 30 points for their team. But Slytherin finally got the quaffle back and soon enough gained 70 points for their own house. Remus held his breath as one of the Hufflepuff Chasers narrowly missed the tip of his broom being smashed by a Bludger.
Players zipped back and forth across the pitch as Remus searched for the two seekers. Because of this, his eyes caught a movement in the grass outside the pitch, but when Remus strained to see what it was, whatever caused it was gone.
Or, you know, Remus was going mad. But he didn’t want that to be the case.
He went through the motions of watching the players trying to keep hold of the quaffle, but he was only paying the match half of any mind. His mind was preoccupied with superimposing images onto the players with what might’ve caught his eye.
Fairies, bugbears, imps, pixies. They all entered Remus’s head, to varying degrees of amusement.
Werewolf.
Remus cleared his throat softly and shifted in his seat. That was enough imagining for now. Besides, he doubted something incredibly dangerous would venture so close to the school without running into some type of warding spell. So it didn’t really matter what had Remus’s attention.
The wolf in him whimpered, wishing for more answers than that.
The game ended with Hufflepuff’s seeker eventually catching the snitch. Remus let out the breath he held while beside him, Pettigrew celebrated loudly. Slytherin house was clearly upset, but most of the students and team members congratulated Hufflepuff on their win.
As Remus and Pettigrew exited the Quidditch pitch together, Remus listened as Pettigrew excitedly predicted the rest of the season: Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff’s dramatic tie in points, Gryffindor’s victorious win, and Slytherin’s unfortunate, tragic defeat.
Remus gave Pettigrew a light-hearted look and the other boy laughed.
“What? I said it would be tragic, didn’t I?”
Remus shook his head good-naturedly and didn’t respond.
He met the eyes of Saith Dougal, one of the professors at Hogwarts. She was a tall woman, with more straight lines to her than she had curves. However, her high cheekbones, chuck hazel eyes, and olive tone assured her ethereal beauty. As Remus and Dougal’s gazes stayed glued to each other, she smiled in a way that met her eyes, but still seemed off somehow. As if she knew something Remus didn’t.
She approached the two schoolboys and tilted her head slightly in greeting. Remus twitched his lips awkwardly in response, but Pettigrew didn’t move at all.
“I look to seeing both of you in Defense Against the Dark Arts Monday afternoon, after your stint in the hospital wing, Lupin. I trust you both having been reading the book?”
Both boys nodded, Remus in a trance he still couldn’t break.
“Great,” and her smile showed all her teeth. “Enjoy the rest of your weekend, boys.” Dougal laughed from deep in her stomach and flipped her long, dark red hair. As she walked away, her movements seemed more like a fairy dance on the water than actual walking.
Pettigrew shivered beside Remus. “I don’t know what it is about her, but she’s the creepiest person I’ve ever met. And I know James and Sirius.” He laughed in a strange way, still affected by his thoughts of Dougal.
Remus nodded, even though he didn’t actually agree. Dougal was strange, yes, but something about her put Remus at ease as well. He couldn’t explain it. Like feeling your parents’ magic for the first time. Or someone you met once on the street, years beforehand. She seemed familiar to Remus somehow.
Pettigrew, oblivious to Remus’s pensiveness, took a hold of the taller boy’s wrist and quickly navigated himself and Remus through the crowds and toward their dorms. Once they were a decent distance from where they encountered Dougal, Pettigrew continued. “If I could drop a class, I would. It’s not worth it. She shouldn’t be teaching, Remus, guarantee it. She needs to be locked up. I can promise you that.”
Remus chuckled in a way he hoped was casual. “She isn’t that bad.”
Pettigrew shook his head adamantly. “You wait and see, Remus. Her true colors lie just under the surface, but I can see them. She just hasn’t shown them yet. She will.”
Remus frowned. It was hardly fair to make assumptions based on gut-feeling. Surely you should get to know a person before making such grand accusations. “You really shouldn’t talk about professors that way. It could get you into trouble. Besides, I’m sure she just has a hard time connecting to other people. Not everyone can be as debonair as you, Black, and Potter,” he teased.
Pettigrew shook his head again, getting a far-off look in his eyes. “Just you wait, Remus. Wait and see.”
Remus wasn’t sure he wanted to know exactly what the words promised. He carefully removed himself from Pettigrew’s grasp and muttered that he was heading to the boys’ lavatory, and that he would meet Pettigrew at the dorm a bit later.
Pettigrew grinned, and the return to the Pettigrew that Remus knew relieved him.
“Sure. See you later, Remus.” He ran off as the taller boy watched.
Remus walked quickly to the lavatory but when he arrived, he stopped in the doorway. He wasn’t sure why he came here, to be perfectly honest. To have a reason to be there, Remus decided to wash his hands. As he approached, his steps faltered and his lips set into a thin line as he grew wary of the basin in front of him. He inwardly hoped history wouldn’t continue repeating itself in old habits.
The steam of the water comforted Remus from his intrusive thoughts, and soon enough his mind drifted to puzzles rather than painful memories.
The first puzzle was Saith Dougal’s mysterious personality. Yes, she was strange, and Remus couldn’t quite get a feel for her motives on anything yet. But he couldn’t deny how magnetized he felt to her. He couldn’t understand why. Or what Pettigrew meant by “just wait and see.”
Pettigrew.
His determination to be mates with Remus unnerved the werewolf. He couldn’t figure out what Pettigrew saw in Remus that made the other boy like spending so much time with him. Did he actually suspect Remus…?
But Remus had to throw away that question. If Pettigrew thought Remus was a werewolf, he’d have nothing to do with Remus. He wouldn’t be set on a false friendship to prove those suspicions true. Look at how he treated Dougal just ten minutes ago, and she’s nothing like a werewolf. Pettigrew’s treatment of Remus was much different. Nothing like—
Snape.
Snape always regarded Remus with suspicion. But he can’t know Remus was a werewolf. Surely Snape would’ve gone to the teachers by now, if that were the case. Not that the professors don’t know about Remus’s…condition, but Snape obviously wouldn’t know that. Remus was safe for now on that front.
And that thought was pleasant to Remus. He liked Snape alright, and hoped that, even if they didn’t become mates, they might at least get along.
His thoughts drifted to the movement he saw at the pitch. What could’ve caused it? A student or professor would be watching the game from the seats, right? So it couldn’t have been something like that. A “fantastic beast”, perhaps?
Lyall told Remus all about fantastic beasts and non-beings and other odds and ends he might cross paths with at Hogwarts. But most of Hogwarts’s creatures stayed in the lake or in the Forbidden Forest. Students were more likely to encounter them while walking through the forest, rather than at the Quidditch pitch. Unless it followed Remus out of the forest, after Remus’s transformations.
Maybe Remus imagined it.
Maybe…maybe it had something to do with what the almost-Pettigrew-voice (Remus refused to say while awake who the voice actually belonged to) wanted to show Remus at the end of that tunnel.
And what was that dream about anyway? There was no way the…entity the voice belonged to could end up on Hogwarts’ ground without Dumbledore knowing about it. So why the strong connection between him and Remus? And what was waiting at the end of the tunnel? Was the tunnel even a real place Remus could find in the corridors of the school?
It was a mystery that urged Remus’s inner wolf to investigate.
Lost in thought, it was a couple of minutes before Remus realized he had just finished the washing cycle for the fifth time. He brought his hands up to his face to look at them. They were pruned after the oils had been lathered out of them, and raw and bleeding around the cuticles and webbing from Remus’s hard scrubbing. Remus’s chest tightened, and he stumbled backward.
So much for watching himself for old habits.
He grabbed a towel and carefully dried off his hands, softly wiping the blood from them, before he made his way toward the door. Halfway through, he nearly collided with Snape.
Fuck it all, fuck it all, fuck it all, fuck it all, Remus thought. He must have been out of it more than he realized. He hoped the harsh mental mantra was at least kept off his face.
“Oh. Hey,” Remus said. He knew the greeting was lame, but he needed Snape to forgive it and let it go.
For a disappointing moment, Snape looked at Remus skeptically. Miraculously, though, after a few more seconds, he nodded in return. He glanced down at Remus’s hands at his sides and the raven’s eyebrows rose. “What happened to you?”
The scarred werewolf flushed and cleared his throat. The noise sounded too loud in his ears. “Don’t worry about that. Bad habit, really. On the… On the mend. I’ll get over it. Eventually. See you around! Maybe tell me how you felt about the game today!”
He managed to sidle around Snape without being too rude about it. He could’ve kicked himself hard for asking about a game Snape might not have gone to. And how he stumbled so terribly over his words. He was ashamed to admit he sprinted then, and didn’t look back, and didn’t stop until he was well away from Snape’s keen gaze.
Slowing, Remus started making his way back to the dorm. He ran a hand through his hair, more exhausted than he had been an hour and a half beforehand.
Whatever Monday brought with Pettigrew and Dougal, or anything else, Remus just wanted it to not be too much trouble. That wasn’t asking too much.
Right?