Is It Over Now?

Chapter twelve

Remus sighs as he walks through the Hogwarts Express, going to school for the last time. There were less people here than all of the years before, less first years and hardly any muggleborns at all. The Gryffindor wasn't surprised, not with the way that the war had been progressing, the danger that lurked just from existing. He wasn't surprised at all to see that all of the Gryffindor seventh years had returned, blood status be damned. They were lions after all, reckless and brave.

Sometimes Remus found himself wondering if he was still one of them at all.

Remus walked into the prefect's carriage and grinned at Dora as she smiled up at him, her eyes bright. Nodding at Regulus as he did so back, stretching like a cat.

The three didn't say anything to one another, only that small gesture as Remus sat down on Pandora's other side. They knew that this year was going to be different from the last, people were going to care now what the three did, what the son of two purebloods and the supposed puppet of Dumbledore were going to do. Their group's friendship always raised brows before, but now they couldn't afford for them to do so.

The trio watched as James and Lily walked into the carriage, the pair close in a way that made most of its occupants breath a sigh of relief that they had finally gotten together and would no longer have to watch the pair pine over one another from afar. Head Boy and Head Girl, together at last.

This fact didn't stop James from looking at Remus strangely every few minutes, as if expecting the wolf to suddenly move to another seat while he was not watching. Remus only rolled his eyes, running out the same speech that he had been listening to for years now as he thought of how to adjust the runes and enchantments that the trio had used last year with the shoes to give a muggle motorbike the same properties.

" Lupin ."

Remus looked up as his name was called and a hand roughly shook his shoulder, the voice using a harsher tone than it had in years. Using his last name as well.

"We're discussing schedules, dear," Dora said airily as she shifted to cover up Regulus's retreating arm, but the damage was already done.

Silence filled the room as everyone had seen the mark peeking out from beneath the youngest Black brother's school robes. Remus pretended to be just as surprised as the rest of them, not that James seemed to buy it much.

"Patrol schedules, right?" Remus asked after the silence had dragged on long enough, after the sight had been ingrained in the other's minds enough for the whole school to know by the end of the feast just how the youngest Black had spent his summer.

Remus and the rest of their group had engineered it this way, to see the school's reactions out and in the open, and for Regulus to know those most likely to join the other side as well.

It was a test, as plain and simple as they come.

"Patrol schedules," Lily agreed, but there was fear in the girl's voice. Fear that Remus had intentionally caused. He knew that he should feel bad about doing so, but he also knew that this was for the family that he had chosen, the one that didn't fear the darker parts of himself.

He could live with whatever the costs.

—-

The dorm was quiet when the four boys walked inside of it, Wirius the only outlier as he bounded around the room with a manic grin and grand ideas for pranks spilling from his lips. This was their last year of being children, their last year before joining Dumbledore and the war. He didn't want to waste it.

He couldn't understand why the other boys didn't seem to agree.

" Sirius ," James said softly, too softly for this to be a normal conversation and Sirius felt his heart stop because the other boy only ever used that voice where one group of people were concerned, each of them sharing the same last name. "Please sit down for a moment."