Sign of the Times

five

Sirius figured there would be teeth marks permanently imbedded into the Gryffindor table. Remus clearly hadn't learned his lesson the night before.

Sirius had removed Remus's teeth from the table no less than three times in the past ten minutes. Finally, Sirius dug his handkerchief out of his pocket and James handed him his own handkerchief that he'd balled up and James wrapped that one in his own and handed it to Remus to chew on instead of the table.

Remus held it in his fist as he gnawed on it and crawled up into Sirius's lap, resting his head on Sirius's chest.

Sirius brought his arm up to run his hand soothingly up and down Remus's side. He'd already tried to get Remus to eat something. The best he could do was get Remus to nibble on some toast. But even that went mostly uneaten.

That morning had been the first that Sirius had to wake Remus up. Sirius was concerned, to say the least. He immediately assumed it was because of how he was up in the middle of the night from nightmares, but he was sure it had more to it than that. He chalked it up to the moon that would be full that very evening.

It hadn't occurred to him to be worried when he immediately woke up that morning, but as he lay there staring at the ceiling, he realized that Remus hadn't woken him up and that Remus was, in fact, still sleeping beside him.

Sirius figured he'd let him sleep a few minutes and assumed that Remus would wake up on his own in a little while. That proved not to be the case. Sirius was forced to wake Remus up so they could make it in time to breakfast.

And that's where they were now.

When Sirius had decided that he had enough to eat, he pulled Remus closer to him and wrapped his arms around him. Sirius rested his cheek on the top of Remus's head and listened indifferently to the early morning chatter of the Great Hall.

After awhile, Sirius reached up and brushed some of his curls away and rested his hand on Remus's forehead. He frowned.

"You've got a fever, love," he said quietly. Remus didn't answer. Sirius craned his neck to peek at Remus's face and his eyes were closed, his breathing slow and steady. He'd fallen asleep again.

With it being a Sunday, Sirius wasn't sure what to do. There were no classes to go to and there were no pranks to pull. Not with the full moon only hours away. He sort of wished that the sun would set sooner so they could get the moon behind them and Remus could go back to being the energetic five year old he had been for the past week.

Ideally, Sirius thought, maybe he'd be back to being a seventeen year old. If Dumbledore and Slughorn would hurry up with that antidote!

It was right after lunch, on the way up to Gryffindor tower, that Remus woke up in Sirius's arms. He shifted and whimpered in pain, his muscles and bones were tightening up painfully in preparation for the transformation.

Sirius stopped and sat down on a bench outside of McGonagall's office and motioned for the others to keep going. He carefully shifted Remus around to a more comfortable position.

He hated that Remus had to go through all of this every month. He absolutely loathed it. It wasn't fair! What had Remus ever done to deserve this? It had always been hard to see Remus in pain, but somehow it was so much worse seeing how little he was. Older Remus had developed such a high pain tolerance. He was used to pain, so it didn't show as much.

But little Remus didn't have that. And Sirius was secretly terrified for the moon that evening. The thought of this baby Remus in his arms in that much pain made him sick. But he set his own feelings aside and worried about comforting Remus.