Padfoot and Moony

Yellow Canaries

Sirius Black sat with a pen clamped in between his teeth, leaning back lazily on a plush sofa. He wore his Hogwarts' uniform, dark curls brushing his shoulders as he stared into the distance as the afternoon sun played across his clothes.

The Gryffindor common room in which he was sitting was empty, and Sirius was for once very glad of the silence. He needed to think.

Outside the window, other sixth and seventh year students lay on the grass in the lazy summer sun during their free period, mostly studying, but all the same laughing and chatting happily. Sirius' friends were one of the many groups that scattered the lawns, three seventeen-year-old boys, sprawled across the grass under a particularly large tree. One of the three, a confident, dark haired boy, was standing up and bragging about how he was going to win over 'Evans' this year, for sure. The two other boys, one stout and plump, with a slight overbite, and the other gangly, with light brown hair and a long scar across his face, looked up at the dark haired boy in disbelief.

"When are you going to give up, Prongs?" The gangly boy said, exasperation clear in his usually soft voice.

The first boy, Prongs, huffed and slumped back down, muttering in a low voice, "she's actually starting to like me. Why don't you believe me, Moony?"

Moony chuckled and squinted up at the castle, wondering where Padfoot might be. Padfoot was Moony's closest friend, a seemingly confident boy who liked bossing people around, playing pranks and solving puzzles. He had, however, seemed a bit off recently, and Moony was becoming increasingly worried. Prongs and Wormtail didn't seem very bothered though, seeing as they joked about even as Moony fell silent and subdued.

"I'm going to go see where Padfoot is," Moony said suddenly, coming to a decision. Wormtail and Prongs nodded, letting Moony go without a second glance.

As soon as the taller boy had left, the squat boy turned to his friend and said, in a troubled voice, "they're both acting pretty weirdly, don't you think?" Prongs nodded, frowning, watching the back of Moony's head as he traipsed back up to the castle.

"I'm sure they'll sort themselves out," he confirmed, even though he didn't know what was up with them either. "That time of the month."

In any other conversation, this last comment would've been seen as a offhanded joke, however, there was a darker meaning to Prongs' words. He grimaced at the thought.

The thing was that Moony was a werewolf, and every month he would have his transformation, through which the other three would accompany him in animal forms to look after him. Each month Moony would fall into an awful sickness leading up to the full moon, and, along with the fear of having to go through the painful transformation, this caused the boy to behave in an extremely depressive way, locking himself away and sometimes not talking to anyone at all for days on end.

However, nothing more was said and the two boys ran down the lawn to the lake, which spread on for miles towards the mountains, to skip stones.

Meanwhile, Sirius still sat in the increasingly hot common room, eyes fixed on the spot above a hourglass that rested on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. Footsteps sounded outside the room and soon enough, a portrait swung back and a gangly boy by the name Remus - or Moony by his closest friends - stepped into the room. He was breathless from running up the stairs, since the common room was high up in a tower, and panted as he walked over to where Sirius was sitting. 

"Hey Padfoot," he said, slapping Sirius roughly on the back as he leaned back onto the sofa. "We missed you outside; what's up?"