Running With Wolves

Chapter 4: Professor Lunly

Chapter 4: Professor Lunly

Sirius woke abruptly from the nightmare, sitting up with a start. Sunlight filtered through the crack in the curtains pulled lazily around his four-poster and it took him a minute to remember that he was at Hogwarts.

            "Are you alright, Sirius?" Remus asked softly from the bed beside his, already half-dressed in his school uniform.

            "Yeah," said Sirius, "Bad dream." He rubbed his eyes, running his fingers through his hair. It had grown back while he had been at James house. Shaking the memory from his head, Sirius swung his legs over the side of his bed, shoved aside the curtains and stretched, then bent down, rummaging through his trunk for his clothes. He felt a prickle on the back of his neck, and when he looked up, Remus was still looking at him. Remus quickly looked away and Sirius' heart twanged a bit. He didn't need Remus of all people feeling sorry for him.

            "I really am fine, Moony, I just had a weird nightmare is all."

            "What? Oh, yeah. Good."

            Sirius moved around his bed, picked up a pillow and chucked it into the bed on his other side. There was yelp and James emerged, hair mussed, looking rather alarmed.

            "Time to get up, Prongise!" said Sirius. Grumbling, James got out of bed. His pajamas were just as rumpled as his hair. His left pant leg had gotten stuck, bunched around his knee, and his shirt was buttoned up the wrong way. Sirius raised an eyebrow. James looked down and rolled his eye, then unbuttoned his shirt and began preparing for the day too.

            Peter, who had obviously been woken by James shout, poked his head out of his curtains, got tangle and tumbled off the bed onto the ground. Everyone laughed, though Peter looked slightly disgruntled.

            Breakfast was an oddly quiet affair. There was a strange tension in the air and Sirius didn't know how to break it. Not even James had stood up to declare his love for Lily Evans. McGonagall gave the four of them an odd look as she handed out their schedules, but she didn't say anything.

            "Transfiguration first," Remus commented at last, looking at his schedule.

            "Oooh, Minnie first period on a Monday," Sirius said, wincing. "Have you decided when quidditch tryouts with be, Prongs?"

            "Not yet, why? You're not trying out, are you?"

            "I don't know, I did a lot of practicing over the summer. I figured I might give it a shot." James looked incredulously at Sirius for a moment, then seemed to realize that he probably shouldn't express doubt in his friends. Sirius leaned back from the table, a hand on his breast. "I'm wounded, Prongs, wounded." And just like that the tension was gone. Had Sirius imagined it?

            Professor McGonogall's room was nearly empty when they got there.

            "Ah, there you boys are, take a seat." She said as she shuffled around the room, gathering papers and making her way back to her desk.

            The four of them took their seats at the front of the class all in a line. Sirius sat down between Remus and James and Peter sat on James' other side.

            "I'm impresses Mr. Pettigrew, I wasn't sure you would be able to score high enough on your Transfiguration OWL to move on to NEWT level in my class. I suppose the three of you had something to do with it?" she asked.

            "We all studied together," said Remus. Sirius smirked. Yeah, they studied together, they also managed to turn James, Peter and himself into animagi to accompany Remus on the full moon. There was no way any of them was going to fail that OWL. James especially had never failed a Transfiguration exam in his life.