Painted Scars // WOLFSTAR

Year Three: Boggarts

For James, Lily saying no to Hogsmeade with him was devastating. For all of James' friends, it was an expectation.

James did this thing around Lily where he'd get phenomenally – and frankly embarrassingly – overconfident to shield the fact that she made him somewhat dumb. He'd prance around with this lazy smirk on his face that would make her roll her eyes. She saw through this act of course, and all he managed to do was make her think he was a douchebag. If he were Lily, he'd likely think the same, as frankly, he did act like a bit of a douchebag.

So for the entire day following, he'd groveled; and since Remus was in the Hospital Wing and Peter was serving detention, Sirius was the one who had to listen to it. It wasn't until Peter came back from detention and Sirius felt a trickle of blood leave his ear that he put his hands on James' shoulders to interrupt him.

"James, buddy," he said, looking into the eyes of the boy whose throat must've been beginning to hurt from all the complaining. "I think it'd do you some good to take your mind off of it. Why don't we go do something?"

"Like what?" he asked, head already perking up. Sirius thought momentarily.

"Remus is still recovering. Why don't we go research that thing we were talking about?" That thing. It's hard to explain where exactly the idea came from, as it was sort of a collective mix of the three of them. It'd sparked after a particularly bad moon, and Sirius told Peter and James that they needed to do something to help with Remus' transformations. They'd all said similar things leading up to the statement, but this was the first time that they solidly acknowledged that they needed to help. Ever since then, the three of them had begun to research werewolves in search of a way to make his transformations less painful.

So far, their research had been... inconclusive.

Research done about werewolves was surprisingly limited, considering how much people seemed to fear them. Even the books that they could find on werewolves weren't helpful, as most of them were either bigoted or just fear-mongering, so their investigation had been taking quite some time.

"Yeah, alright," James agreed, lifting himself out of his own self-pity. Sirius helped him off the couch with a grab of his hand, pulling him towards the Common Room exit. "Do you think Lily will be in the library?"

"I'll come, too!" Peter agreed as well, choosing to ignore the comment.

When they'd brought the idea to Peter a couple of weeks before, he'd immediately jumped on the idea with shocking enthusiasm. He almost seemed more excited than James and Sirius, which led him to believe that he was just attempting to make up for the uncomfortable conversation they'd had last year. Sirius' reaction to Peter's claims that Remus could be dangerous seemed to shake the frail boy to his core, but he discovered that he didn't feel very bad about that.

It almost felt like Sirius was back in his first year when they entered the library together. It was like when he'd spent hours down there searching for an explanation of why Remus went missing once a month, only now he was there to help it stop. The thought momentarily halted him.

He was doing the right thing... right?

When he came up with the idea to help stop the transformations, it was only so that he wouldn't have to get hurt anymore. But the more he thought about it, the more it felt like he was saying he wanted Remus to change.

Which he didn't. At all.

So why did it sort of feel like he was betraying Remus' trust again?

"Sirius, why don't you start with the books on Wolfsbane, Peter, you can read up more on werewolves and their weaknesses like last time. I'll look at how the moon affects them. Write down anything that looks even remotely useful, anything could help."