The Marauders: Year Three | #Wattys2016

A Good Deal of Studying

A Good Deal of Studying

Sirius's new obsession, having conquered the animagus puzzle, was in learning everything he possibly could about werewolves. He went to the library and carried out a stack of books on werewolves, Madam Pince watching suspiciously from behind her desk as he went by, unused to seeing Sirius Black in the library.

"The old bat glared at me like I was committing a crime," Sirius complained, stacking his books back in Gryffindor Tower.

"Perhaps she just hadn't realized you could read," James replied with a grin.

"You're a real tosser, Potter, you know that?" Sirius answered with a laugh, beating James with a pillow in revenge.

Also unused to seeing him with a book was Lily Evans, who watched in disbelief as all four boys crammed onto one of the couches in the common room together, squashed tightly side-by-side, each with a different book in their hands and reading quietly. It was the most peaceful she'd ever seen them and it made her suspicious what they were up to that James Potter had refused to tell her about. Obviously there was some sort of questionable activity to have distracted Sirius and James from their usual loud-mouthed antics. But when the boys fell asleep on the couch all together one night, she was the one who laid a blanket across them and picked up Remus's copy of Unfogging the Future from the carpet, flattening the dogear hitting the floor had made in the page.

"Thanks Evans," James murmured sleepily, his glasses only just hanging onto his nose.

Lily took the spectacles off and folded the ear pieces, putting them on the table at his elbow. "Don't mention it," she answered. She was rather thankful he'd been so tired; he never did mention it. Clearly, she thought, he'd never remembered it at all or else he certainly would've brought it up the next chance he got.

During this time of intense Marauder study sessions, James and Peter were working hard to discover how to control the change into their animagus forms. Of course, James had a bit of an edge over Peter, seeing as he knew at least what his form would be. Peter had no idea, which made it quite a lot harder to discover that part of himself. They were taking it in turns to read the theory half of Releasing the Animagus Within, James would muddle through a chapter, then hand it off to Peter, and lay there, staring up at the ceiling, considering how it was that he might resemble the stag he knew he could become. Lily's words about what a stag was like echoed about in his head - along with something else, something lingering about the way it had made him feel to hear that she held a stag in such high regard. Meanwhile, Peter just wished there was a way to simplify the whole process, or else that he wouldn't be ostracized if he chose not to follow through. He was falling behind in their classes with all the work he was putting into the study of being an animagus. It was hard going enough for him and he was terrified that he was so awful that he could very well end up repeating his third year if he didn't find a way to catch up somehow.

For Remus, the study time was about catching up on notes for the classes that he'd missed in the Shrieking Shack, and preparing for the viewing of the Orionid meteors the following week for Astronomy. He'd been given notes from the classes by Peter and Lily (whose was much more helpful than Peter's), but it was still quite a lot of information, even if it was from only two days. He wanted his reports on the Orionids to be quite good, since his grade in Astronomy was easily his lowest each year thus far.

Meanwhile, Sirius was discovering very quickly that the behaviors of werewolves was largely unstudied, or else written about in a highly biased tone.

They were studying in the dormitory one night, a record spinning on Sirius's player, when he suddenly let out a loud groan and, with a scowl, chucked the fifth book he'd looked at in a single hour to the floor. At the outburst, James looked up from Releasing the Animagus Within, his long horns sprouting out of his head (he claimed that they helped him study the theory of animagi). "They don't even give werewolves a chance!" Sirius complained, throwing himself backward into his pillow.