/𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒\ [𝒔. 𝒃𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒌]

𝟏.𝟞.𝟢

"if we make if through december ... everything's gonna be alright, I know." ~ Phoebe Bridgers

~december 1971~ (christmas special part 1 of 5)

REMUS

For days after Remus got back to the school, he had to field questions from both the boys and the girls in his year about where he'd been, but he managed to get past them with a handful of carefully constructed excuses and a healthy amount of lies. He felt guilty leading his new friends on like this with the full knowledge that there was a good chance he wouldn't be able to complete his time at Hogwarts, but it was necessary. Not only this, but the thought of people seeing him as normal for once was just too tempting. He couldn't shove Sirius and James and Peter away. They were always nice to him. They didn't ask complicated questions and expect an answer. He'd even been surprised that when he got home from his latest transformation, both the boys and the girls had shown concern, but none of them tried to force any direct answer out of him. He knew it couldn't last, though. He could never tell them what was really wrong, and so someday they'd all leave him. It was only a matter of time.

The day before the start of the Christmas holiday, Remus awoke to an empty boys dormitory. He sat up on one elbow and looked around, taking in the disastrous mess around him. Every bed was unmade, even the ones that didn't actually belong to anyone, and the floor was so littered with clothes and books and parchment that you couldn't actually see the wood at all. His eyes flicked up to the window, through which bright, icy light was streaming, and he squinted to see if the snowstorm of that week had gotten any worse. To his delight, it had. Remus hated being cold more than anything, but he loved the way snow looked. He laid back on his pillows and pulled the mountain of blankets covering him up to his chin, just watching the white flakes float down to the windowsill and slowly build up over the pane.

At that moment, the door crashed open and Sirius and James bounded through, Peter close behind. "Aren't you up yet?" James said, leaping onto the end of Remus's bed. "Classes are all cancelled because of the snow. We've got the day off!"

"Come on, get up," said Sirius, stealing one of Remus's pillows and crashing onto the bed next to him. "You've been asleep so long, we thought you might've disappeared again."

Remus looked over at him in alarm, but Sirius only winked. The guilty feeling in his chest never went away, though. He pulled himself up and checked the clock. "Guys," he groaned, falling back onto the pillows. "It's seven in the morning."

"Exactly," said Sirius. "You got a whole eight hours of sleep, now come on."

Remus started to protest, but stopped as soon as he saw what little good it would do. He allowed James and Sirius to pull him out of bed, and grabbed the warmest sweater he could find in his trunk. When he looked up again, he saw that all three boys were waiting patiently for him by the door and felt a little pang in his gut. He didn't know why they always did that. They always acted as though they really wanted Remus to be with them, when he knew he couldn't be all that important. "Alright, I'm coming," he murmured, pulling on a pair of woolen socks before following the boys down to the common room.

The common room was mostly empty, as Remus would expect it to be on a snowy morning in which classes had been cancelled. He figured most people were probably taking it as an opportunity to sleep in; it was what he would've done, anyways. Peter was sitting on the floor in front of the fire place, an untouched game of chess in front of him. As Remus neared his usual armchair right next to the fire, Peter looked up at him in excitement. "Do you want to play chess with me?" he asked, his eyes lit up.