Orphic » Sirius Black

Chapter 5 - Habitual Gestures

Their first full moon with Remus was a success. It was extremely scary at first, but they ended up managing it well. They had been playing and running up and down the house all night. The werewolf was greatly curious about them. They ended up taking down almost all the furniture inside the house, right before the werewolf fell asleep.

When dawn began, Remus was back to his human form again, and continued sleeping heavily on the floor beside the broken armchair.

James was the first to wake up. It was still early, and he was glad he did. They had to leave before Madame Pomfrey could get there to retrieve Remus.

He rapidly got up and started to examine the destroyed room. His heart skipped a beat when he turned to see Remus. He was naked on the floor, with some fresh scars scattered on his chest and legs, and the old ones all over his body completely on sight.

It was the first time James saw Remus' scars on his body. Of course, he had seen the ones visible on his face and arms, but never all of them at once. He flinched and looked away quickly. It hurt to see him like that, so vulnerable.

With trembling hands, he reached for his, Sirius and Peter's wands before waking them up. They transformed back to their human forms, and stood in silence as they looked at Remus.

Sirius didn't flinch like James, nor gasped and looked away like Peter. He had seen his scars before, maybe a bit more than James and Peter. He knew how they felt; he had a few himself. Maybe not because of the same reason, but they both shared and faced an external source of pain they could not control: Remus' being his lycanthropy, and Sirius' being his own family.

"Shouldn't we cover him, or something?" suggested Peter, as he rubbed his hands together. "It's sort of cold."

"Yeah, we do," said Sirius, and he quickly went to the bed and pulled the sheets from the mattress without hesitation.

"I say we shouldn't," said James, stopping Sirius on his tracks. "Wouldn't Madame Pomfrey notice that someone was here with him before her?"

"Oh," muttered Sirius, and glanced at Remus again. He couldn't believe he had been doing this all alone, every month since he was four. He could imagine, but never see himself suffering in silence for that long.

Sirius sighed and dropped his arms, gripping to the sheets. He threw them back to the bed and throbbed his face. It was too early.

James took out the invisibility cloak and hurled it above their heads once they were ready to leave. They walked cautiously through the tunnel, and came across Madam Pomfrey inside it. They had to stick to the wall as close as they could and hold their breath so that the witch didn't notice their presence, and then kept on walking all the way to and through the castle.

Just as they opened their dorm's door, Sirius dragged himself to his bed and plopped on it, falling asleep almost immediately. Peter laid on his bed awake, trying to sleep, but couldn't.  James didn't, either.

It was not news that James Potter was a morning person. Even though he had barely slept, he wasn't tired. Or at least, it hadn't hit him yet. He took the spare time to get ahead of their classes of the day, and browsed the book they found the other day at the library, looking for a spell that could help with their almost finished Hogwarts' map.

Half an hour later, he woke Sirius up and dragged him to the bathroom, just like every other morning. He stood by the sink and in front of the mirror with his eyes sealed for a long time. Even Peter had gotten out of the shower.

"C'mon, Sirius!" screamed James, peeping at the bathroom while tying his tie. The shout seemed to awaken Sirius, and got him to open the faucet sloppily.