Causam Magicae

5: Friends

Hermione was used to waking every morning to her body aching and her joints creaking with every slow movement in her morning stretch. Only, today she had expected to be a stiff husk of a girl due to her poor decision of falling asleep in the straight backed chair at Remus' bedside. However, she awoke to the same aches as usual. Cracking open her sleep filled eyes, she let out a stifled groan and stretched the remainders of sleep out of her system. She was laid in her bed on top of her wrinkled, paper thin sheets. She figured that she must have moved at some point in the night to her own bed.

"Mornin' Jane." Remus mumbled, his voice gravely and deep.

"Morning Remus." Hermione responded pushing herself up to sit and look over at her roommates for the past week. Remus laid in his bed, arm slung lazily across his face as if by blocking out the muted sumlight of the morning, his body could slap back into sleep. Peter laid in the bed to Remus's left, still sound asleep his body comically scrunched up with his arse in the air and mouth open, a small puddle of drool forming beneath his rosy cheek. Sirius softly snored in the bed to the left of Peter's. James... Hermione looked at the bed to the right of Remus and found it empty. Then the chair she last saw him sleeping in, also empty. "Remus? Where is Potter?"

Remus grunted and threw himself up to lean against his elbows and looked around the room before nodding his head to the floor to his right.

Hermione sat up straighter and peered over the end of her bed to see where he gestured and laughed softly. There he was, spread eagle across the cold tile, still fast asleep. "Is that a normal occurrence for him to sleep on the floor?"

"Mm only on special occasions when he eats too much sugar. Don't bother trying to wake 'im. He could sleep through a Biblical flood and float kilometers out in the ocean without stirring." Remus supplied before flopping back to his previous position.

"Not all of us are blessed with Prongs' ability to do so though Moons." Sirius grumbled sitting up rubbing his face, hair a fluffy dark halo around his head.

"Black." Hermione nodded in greeting.

"What? I get surnamed but he's Remus? That's rude of you kitten. How many times do I have to tell you to call me Sirius?"

Hermione huffed and slipped her legs off the side of her bed. "I can't have you getting the wrong idea about where you stand. And I am not your Kitten." She miffed.

"That's where you're wrong Kitten." He drawled salaciously, "You're cute and think you're vicious, just like a kitten."

She stood up and turned on her heel to head to the great hall for her usual breakfast only to be stopped by the sound of Remus's voice.

"Wait, Jane. You headed to breakfast? Gimme a sec and I'll come with." He kicked his legs, shuffling out of the bed and began looking for his shoes under the bed. "Padfoot, you're on dead duty."

Ice cold panic shot down Hermione's spine and she whirled around and quickly surveyed the two unconscious marauders. Were they breathing? Did she actually see their chests rise and fall this morning?

Sirius let out a great groan, "Oh come on Moony! I always have to do it!"

The sounds of Sirius' whining and Remus's tired drawl faded into the background of her mind as she searched for signs of life. James' face was turned away from her his body splayed out at awkward angles. She held her own breath as she zeroed in on his chest. There, slowly she watched it rise and fall. Her eyes darted to Peter's scrunched up form just when Sirius gave his hip a hard shove.

"Up! Up! Up! Breakfast time!" Sirius yelled at the top of his lungs ignoring the now panicked small marauder falling off the bed. He calmly walked to James' prone body and roughly nudged his shoe clad toe in the bespeckled boy's ribs.