All the young dudes

Chapter 15: station to station

***

"It's not right."

Peter's suddenly able to breathe again when James leaves squeezing the air out of him. Now James whirls round to Remus, beaming and distracted, raking a hand through his hair. Sirius continues shouting and jumping up and down on the Shack's already ravaged sofa, Peter catches his breath, and James says, "What?"

"It's not right," Remus repeats, peering into the cauldron. "'Deep blue'. That's not deep blue, it's still quite green."

Frowning, James joins him at the hearth and looks in. He snorts. "Get your eyes checked, mate. It's blue."

"Yes," Remus explains, his voice gone tight, "but it's not the right shade, it's too green."

"You have seen the colour green before, right?"

"I'm not saying it's green green, I'm—"

"It's sort of..." Peter gets to his feet, looks in. "...Turquoise."

"Jesus, Wormtail." Sirius rolls his eyes. "'Turquoise'. It's bloody blue."

Remus turns around from the hearth and— pleasantly, politely— says, "But it's not the right blue, and it behooves us to pay attention to detail when risking your gruesome deaths."

Sirius stomps down from the couch, landing his feet so hard the rotted carpet exhales a puff of dust. "Fuck your behooves! I know what you're doing!"

James doesn't seem to hear him. "What's it matter if it's blue or turquoise or sunshine yellow— we've done it! Merlin, this is better than winning the Cup! This is better than winning a thousand Cups! I could slay a dragon right now! Somebody fetch me a dragon to slay!"

"I'm afraid there's only one option." Remus brushes ash from his knees. "We'll have to start over from scratch."

James freezes. "What?"

"Of course he was gonna do this, it's obvious!" Sirius shouts. "Of course he was going to find something wrong now that we're finished, now that we're ready to actually transform! It's been his plan this whole time!"

For just a moment Remus' face goes flinty. "I haven't been planning anything. And I realise it's a setback, but we haven't got—"

"HAVE YOU LOST YOUR BLOODY MIND?" James screams. "We are not starting over, you FUCKING LUNATIC! That's five months of work! Three years of work! You can't just declare that it's down the tubes just because it's the wrong fucking shade of blue!"

But Remus doesn't raise his voice. "The colour of the potion's indicative of the progress of the spellwork, it's the only gauge we've got. The research says that if all the spellwork's been done correctly then at this point the catalyst potion will be deep blue, meaning it's safe to drink and transform. But it's not, so clearly—"

"Who died and made you the expert?" James cuts in. "Don't the three of us get a say in this?" James waves around at him and Sirius, and Peter really wishes he'd leave him out of it. "We're the ones who've been doing the work! It's been months of these stupid rituals and none of us are dead, are we?"

Peter feels the air in the room shudder, like right before a crash of lightning, and Remus cracks.

"Don't you get it?" he cries. "When they say this spell is deadly, this is the part they mean! You do know what that potion's for, right? Or have I been the only one reading thoroughly?"

"It— it's just for, for showing the progress—"

"It's to keep you from ripping yourselves to shreds when you first transform!" A broken edge Peter's never heard before shakes Remus' voice and it makes Peter want to look away and plug his ears and shout nonsense words until it stops. It's indecent, Remus like this. It's like seeing an adult cry. "That's what this spell does left to its own devices— it tears you apart piece by piece at the molecular level and I realise that you're prepared to take it on faith that it'll put you back together in some solid form, Prongs, but you'll have to forgive me if I'm not!"