Is It Over Now?

Chapter Four

When Remus wakes the next morning, it's to the hushed whispers of boys that seemed to have forgotten just how well the supposedly still sleeping teen could hear.

" He's different now; cold ," came the low voice of Peter as the other three boys moved as quietly around the room as they seemed capable.

" Moony has always been a little distant," came James's Layla defense of the supposed to be slumbering teen - the sad thing was that Remus couldn't even deny it. James and Sirius always hung all over one another, wrestling when all four of the boys had been young, and Peter was always eager to be as close to the spotlight as he could be. Remus had always been the most reserved of the lot of them, a boy that hid behind more secrets then he would ever know how to count. This was just the first time that anyone had ever said so much out loud. " He's still our Moony though."

"It's my fault, isn't it?"

The voice was unsure and pained, almost unrecognizably so, but Remus still knew who had spoken even if he couldn't see them. The hidden teen waited for the inevitable way that James would jump to the other's defense - to protect his brother in everything but blood from the reality of it all as he had done when they were young.

It never came.

Silence hung in the air for a long moment, broken only by a muttered curse as Peter seemed to have dropped something - likely the boy's shoe - on himself.

Using the noise as a probable cover, the werewolf slipped out of bed, gripping the banner subtly as he stood, his bones protesting anything but a death - like sleep.

"Morning," the tallest of the four boys muttered, his voice thick with sleep as he ignored the so clearly guilty looks on the faces of his friends in favor of gathering his clothes to go and change in the bathroom.

When he came back out the other three were waiting patiently by the door for their fourth to grab his books and wand so that they could all walk down to breakfast. The rumbling in the wolf's stomach made the teen eager to comply, but stopped short at the peculiar looks from the other three Marauders.

" What ?" Remus asked, his voice a little more than twinged with annoyance.

"Is that a new wand, Moony?" James asked, an almost tangible confusion lacing the other teen's voice.

Remus looked down as the pale wood in his hands, his skin buzzing from the magic within it reaching out to his own in a way that the previous one never had. From how right it felt to hold it at last. A smile curved on the lips of the teen, sharp like a predator's teeth.

"Yeah," he answered simply, slipping it inside of his robes as the others watched, seemingly no less confused than before.

"Did your old one break?" Wormtail asked almost meekly, a shiver running down the rat's spine at the glint in the taller boy's eyes. If Peter wasn't already friends with the teen, he might had attempted to become so right then so that such a look would never seek to eat him whole.

"Nah, just wasn't mine now was it?" Remus answered, his words inspiring more confusion than clarity in them once more, but the tallest teen started for the door before the others could ask anything else.

—-

Classes passed slowly though the rest of the day as long speeches warning of the dangers of false sense of complacency went into one ear and out of the other with each subject as OWLs were behind them all, but NEWTs only a year ahead.

Remus would never deny though the small thrill that went through him each time that he used his wand, the way that the magic seemed to ebb and flow in a way that it never had before. A stark contrast from the way that the old wand had always taken time to warm up to him at the start of each new term, yearning for an owner that was long gone now. The boy couldn't help but wonder if this ease was how all of the others felt each time that magic poured from their skin - somehow he thought that it wasn't quite the same for him as it was for the others.