The Marauders Year Five Part 2 #Wattys2017

What Fell Apart

What Fell Apart

"That's when everything started falling apart."

"What fell apart, exactly?" James asked as he inched closer and put an arm about Remus as he looked so sad that it just shattered James's heart to see him look like he did. The wind was getting cooler that later it was getting and Remus was starting to shiver so James shrugged off his Gryffindor sweater and hung it over Remus's shoulders. He sat in with just his oxford and feeling quite cold himself, but Remus was telling him this story and it was worth being cold for - he just didn't want Rey to suffer at all for it.

"I wasn't feeling well after the full moon - worse than usual... I didn't know what was going on. I mean, Professor Veigler said once that it gets harder and harder for werewolves as we age and I thought I was maybe experiencing a new effect, like maybe even after the moon I would get sick for awhile now or something? And I had a fever and my stomach hurt so much, like this constant ache in my belly and I couldn't eat or relax and Sirius kept trying to force me to eat and I felt like he was disappointed in me when I didn't want to do things with you lot - but I just felt awful. Like he'd throw a party and I'd go down for a few minutes, but - oh James, you know I hate parties. I never know what to do with myself at them after the first maybe thirty minutes or so. I don't dance very well and I don't like drinking too much, and Sirius always is up on that table, center of attention, and he's multiple times hauled me up there and I hate that, I hate people looking at me and all that..." Remus flushed.

"I know, Rey."

"So I go sit on the stairs or I go to the dorm or something.... And I was particularly inclined to stay out of sight at this point, too, because there were rumors going about the castle because of Sirius's patronus, that Sirius was a werewolf, or else a Death Eater, or a follower of Fenrir Greyback. They were saying that Sirius probably had the Dark Mark on his arm. And people were talking about my scars, James. You'd overheard McKenna telling Carly she shouldn't be hitting on Sirius because look what he did to Remus Lupin's face and Carly arguing that she was fairly certain I'd always had those marks and that the rumor about Sirius was tosh."

James's eyes widened, "Bloody hell. You must've been terrified, Rey."

"So terrified, James," Remus said thickly.

"I'm sorry."

Remus looked down, his lower lip trembled just a bit, "So that's why I didn't want to be the center of attention then. And this one night, not long after Valentine's Day, I left a party Sirius was throwing and he'd had loads to drink and he came upstairs and I guess Carly Shaw had offered to snog him and there'd been insinuation that she wanted... maybe a bit more than that... and Sirius came up to brag about it. She'd told him that she didn't care if he was a werewolf like the rumors said, that danger was fun and she told him he could play at biting her and she made fun of the whole rumor thing, calling the Dark Mark a tattoo, as though it were something someone elects to have for the fun of it. Sirius was telling me about it, and he was being so... so horribly casual about it, as though it were funny that the castle was whispering about us, as though it wouldn't matter if they found out, and he was drunk, James, it scares me when he's drunk because you never know what he's going to say, what he's going to shout, and it's like a ticking time bomb with him sometimes... What if he decided it wasn't a big deal if people knew and he decided to shout out something about his gay werewolf boyfriend or something?"

As much as James hated to - he could actually imagine it happening. He could almost see it in his mind, Sirius so drunk he was nearly falling off the table, tripping over his own two feet, sloshing about the common room and going on and on about how grand his werewolf boyfriend was... "He didn't, did he?" James asked, terrified for Remus.