Limitless

A Connection

The next morning at breakfast, Remus arrived for breakfast late, looking more tattered and worn than usual.

Sirius watched him the moment he walked through the door, his eyes tracing his movements, which to my eyes were as graceful as they ever were but I could see by Sirius's face that he knew better.

"Moony, are we going for a run tonight?" Sirius asked his voice light but his characteristic frown pressed into his forehead.

"I think," he said his voice a little hoarse, "it's a little more than a necessity at this point."

"Excellent." James said rubbing his hands together excitedly before exalting, "It's man time! You, you, you and I!" he said pointing to Remus, Peter, Sirius and himself in turn. His eyes sparkled brightly, his enthusiasm for his friends unmistakable. The corners of Remus's mouth twitched upwards.

"Lil's," James screamed, "it's a full moon tonight baby."

"Oh!" came Lily's voice from somewhere else in the house, "I've got some places lined up for you guys. I'll bring them down."

Lily arrived a few minutes later, her arms laden with parchment, muggle books and photographs. They discussed going where they would be going with ardor. When we left the table, it was decided that lessons for the day would be cancelled due to the 'lunacy', as they called it, of one of our members. It was just as well, Dumbledore would be at Headquarters this evening and I wanted to get my head straight so that we could discuss S, whoever it was.

I sat outside in the cool air by the stone bench going over my notes while everyone practiced dueling. At first it was pairs against pairs but that left Lily and James together, which meant that they annihilated everyone so instead they drew names randomly and did some one on one dueling. I watched them while I worked. They were all surprisingly good at it, quick on their feet and fleet minded.

"Come on Yves!" Yelled Alice after the third hour. Everyone had dueled everyone else and now they were doing a knock out challenge to see who was the best.

"Yeah! That can wait! Come have some fun." Lily yelled, her cheeks slightly pink in the cold air.

I packed my things away and went to join them. Because I was the newcomer I had the pick of he lot. I drew a name out of the hat and unfolded it.

"Peter?" I said looking to find him. He looked utterly terrified, even more pallid than usual.

We took our places, wands aloft, before James yelled, "Duel!" as our signal to start.

Before Peter could flick his wand, I tapped mine and his legs went out from under him. He came down hard on the ground but he clutched his wand resolutely.

He looked up at me, his face red from embarrassment. I hadn't meant to humiliate him. He heaved himself to his feet and pointed his wand again. This time he was quicker, but I deflected the red sparks that were issuing from his wand before disarming him. The entire episode took less than two minutes. He stalked away mumbling about being knocked out in the first round. I took a seat next to Lily to wait for my turn in the next round. Alice knocked out Frank in the next round, Lily took out Marlene, Emmeline was narrowly defeated by Remus but James and Sirius- well, they were something else. We were all thoroughly enrapt.