- Text Size +
Protect Your Friend


Argus Filch sat behind his desk, grinning horribly with broken, yellowed teeth, and stroked Mrs. Norris, who purred and swished her tail. “I’ve got all night, boy,” he croaked, eyes glowering at Peter, who sat in the chair opposite. “Confess.”

“I - I didn’t mean to be out of bed,” Peter stammered. “I didn’t realize the time. I - I fell asleep.”

“Liar,” Filch sneered. “What were you doing out on the grounds?”

Peter shook his head, “I wasn’t on the grounds, I --” Peter had been about to tell Filch about the tunnel (it seemed the only way out of the trouble he was in), but Argus Filch cut him off.

“Liar again!” he snapped, “I’ve only just been cleanin’ up your footprints. Mud and water and nasty dirtiness, tracking filth all over this castle!”

Peter blinked in surprise, “But I didn’t - I swear. I didn’t make any messes!”

Filch’s fingers moved over Mrs. Norris’s fur, his clawlike fingernails scratching her skin so that her back arched and she kneaded his leg with her own claws. “You’re lucky Dumbledore’s stopped the practice of using the chains like I used to, boy,” Filch hissed. “I’d string you up from the ceiling by your toes and we’d see how quickly you’d confess then, with the blood rushing to that great round head you’ve got.”

Peter’s eyes flicked to the chains and manacles that Filch had hanging proudly on the walls and he swallowed back nerves, cowering a bit in the chair.

“Course, if Dumbledore never heard about it, I reckon there’s naught he can do to stop me…” Filch murmured, leaning threateningly toward Peter.

Peter broke. He began to sob. “No, no, don’t hang me by my toes, don’t hang me!” he wailed.

The grin on Filch’s face widened. “Are you going to confess then, boy?”

“Yes, yes, I’ll tell you anything you like,” Peter cried.

Suddenly Mrs. Norris leaped from Filch’s lap, her hairs on end, her golden eyes darting about the room suspiciously. Filch didn’t notice the state of his cat, though, he was too busy relishing the tears that fell from Peter’s eyes, wettening his face and making snot fall from his nose. “Tell me what you were doing on the grounds,” Filch demanded.

“It truly wasn’t me on the grounds, sir,” Peter sobbed. “It wasn’t me out on the grounds!”

“Then who?”

Peter said the first name that came to mind. “Remus Lupin.”

Suddenly there was a terrific crash as several of the chains that hung on the wall fell to the floor, their links clanking loudly against one another, the manacles thunking loudly on the wood. Peter let out a squealing shriek so loud that one might’ve thought he were being tortured, and Mrs. Norris hissed, her back arched, claws protruding from her paws, her teeth bared. Filch leaped to his feet, glowering at the wall. “Peeves! SHOW YOURSELF,” he yelled. “I’m in the middle of a confession, you nasty poltergeist!”

Peter shivered and cowered in the chair,

Mrs. Norris was upended, as though she had been picked up and tossed through the air. She let out a growling cry as she landed on her fours, right on top of Peter in the chair, her claws scratching at his skin. He shouted and flailed about, trying to escape her scratching and nipping. Filch’s eyes were round as orbs, “You dare throw my cat! I’ll have your head for this, Peeves!”

The door of the office swung open, seeming of its own accord, and Filch, boiling angry, seemed torn between finishing with Peter and going after the poltergeist. “Stay. Where. You. Are,” he hissed at Peter, “I mean it, you stay where you are, or I’ll have you expelled by dawn.” He turned and ran into the hallway, muttering, “I’ll get the Bloody Baron… Skulking ‘round Ravenclaw, I’m sure he is, he’ll take care of Peeves… show that poltergeist once and for all… touching my cat… out of the castle for sure…” Mrs. Norris ran after her master frantically.

Peter had buried his face into the corner of the chair and laid there, cowering before the empty desk. He had most definitely smashed the chocolate frogs now, probably melted a bunch of them, too, for having sat on his robe pockets so long, and he had great scratches over his forearms and one on his cheek that smarted brightly. This was the exact reason why he didn’t fancy taking adventures, he thought miserably.

“Get up, you dolt,” said a voice, “I didn’t risk my neck for nothing.”

Peter shivered and peeked up. Looming over him was James Potter, looking quite sour. “J- James,” stammered Peter in surprise. “You - you came to help me?”

“I should leave you here and let him string you up,” James said.

“But how did you know where I was?”

“When you didn’t come back to the dorms, Sirius and I came looking for you.”

“Was it you who made the footprints Filch was talking about?” Peter gasped.

James’s eyes were dark, “No,” he replied, “And it wasn’t Remus, either.”

Peter’s cheeks pinkened. “I didn’t mean to --”

“To what? To throw your friend to the fire because it was too hot for you?” James snapped. He rolled his eyes, “You’re lucky, I don’t think Filch digested that bit, what with the chains I threw down.” He took a deep breath, “Betraying a friend. You’re lucky Sirius didn’t hear you.”

“If he didn’t hear me, then it doesn’t matter, does it?” Peter asked.

James shrugged, “You should protect your friend.” He held up the invisibility cloak. “C’mon.”

“Where is Sirius?” Peter asked, nervous, “You said he’d come looking as well.”

“He’s making his way back up to Gryffindor Tower. He was looking in the Trophy Room passage when I found you.” James held up the little bit of Voldemort’s mirror. “I told him to go back. Then Filch found you before I could get you and I followed you lot in here and now we need to go before he figures out he’s chasing nothing.”

Peter trembled, “But he said if I leave he’ll expel me.”

“He can’t expel you,” James replied, “He hasn’t got the power to do that and he can’t have you expelled because he’d need proof he’d caught you at all and he hasn’t got that. C’mon.”

Peter still looked unsure.

“Fine, stay then,” James said, “I’m going.” He tossed the cloak over his head.

“Wait! James!” Peter cried, jumping out of the chair, “Wait!” He ran smack into James’s invisible form, falling, sprawled upon the floor.

James lifted the edge of the cloak so that he stared down at Peter with a cool expression. Peter scrambled to his feet and hurried to join James beneath the invisibility cloak. Without a word, and quick, so that Peter had to scurry to keep up, James ducked out of Filch’s office and into the dark corridor beyond. He never slowed, no matter how close it came to Peter’s ankles showing beneath the cloak, all the way up to Gryffindor Tower. When they’d spilled through the portrait hole, James whipped the cloak off and Peter tumbled onto the carpet. Sirius was still downstairs, waiting.

“What took so long?” he asked, a nervous tone to his voice.

“Filch,” James answered, folding the cloak.

Sirius’s eyes widened, “Did you get caught?”

James nodded at Peter, “He did.”

“How’d you get out?”

“I knocked some things down and Filch thought it was Peeves and went after him, threatening to get the Bloody Baron,” James said with a shrug, “You know. The usual.”

Sirius led the way up to the dorms. “Remus is back, but he’s asleep,” he said quietly. “I haven’t talked to him yet…” Sirius’s voice carried a bit of an ominous tone to it.

James asked, “How’s he look?”

Sirius frowned as a response.

Peter went right to bed and pulled the covers up over his head. He was worried James would tell Sirius how he’d tried to shove off blame on Remus back in Filch’s office - too worried about that to pay attention to James and Sirius as James leaned around the end of Remus’s bed to get a look at their mate’s face.

“Oh bloody hell, what’s he done?” James sounded disturbed.

Peter peeked out from under the covers. “What’s happened?” he asked.

Sirius whispered, “He’s got a pretty good gash across his face. Looks like he might’ve scratched himself pretty badly.”

Peter sat up and looked and sure enough, there was a tear in the skin of Remus’s cheek that stretched from just under his right eye, across his nose, and onto the left side of his face. “Do you think it’ll be leaving a mark, then?” he asked.

“Probably,” whispered Sirius.

James had opened Remus’s nightstand and pulled out the little bottle of ointment that Dumbledore had given Remus for the times after the full moon. It didn’t look as though Remus had put any on the cut, so James unscrewed the cap and very gently dabbed some onto Remus’s face as he slept, smoothing it over the ripped skin. “Hopefully this will lighten it.”

“Should we bring him to Pomfrey?” Peter asked.

“She can’t heal magical wounds,” answered Sirius, “She couldn’t do anything about the cuts on my arm. She’d just want to know what’s done it and what do we tell her then?”

James finished dabbing on the ointment and the line on Remus’s face glistened. He screwed the cap back on the bottle and put it down on Remus’s nightstand. The three of them were still, staring at their mate in a long silence.

Finally, James looked up at Sirius. “We should give it a go.”

Sirius’s eyes met James. “Yeah?”

James nodded.

“Give what a go?” Peter asked, looking between the two of them.

Sirius motioned for the lot of them to get away from being gathered around Remus’s bed - he didn’t want their talking to rouse their resting friend - and they moved to all sit upon Sirius’s bed, facing one another, their legs tucked up under themselves. Sirius tugged the book they’d got out of the library earlier that day, under the guise of doing extra credit for Transfiguration.

The book was quite old, with gold leaf-edged pages. The cover had an embossed image of a wizard slowly transfiguring into a rabbit. In gold letters that scrolled about the image was the title - Becoming an Animagus.

Peter looked up from the book with wide eyes, “You don’t mean for us to --” Sirius was nodding already, though and Peter cut himself off, “But what good is that going to do Remus?” he squeaked.

“Perhaps if there was someone there when he changes - in a form that could communicate to him - in wolfish - then perhaps - perhaps he wouldn’t lose himself quite so much as he does. Perhaps he wouldn’t hurt himself.” Sirius sounded desperate. “We can’t go on letting him injure himself like this!” He waved his palm at Remus’s sleeping form. “We have to do something about it. If we all learn to turn into wolves, then we could be with Remus when he turns, we could talk him out of his wolfish fits, and maybe - maybe the change wouldn’t be so terrible for him, if he wasn’t alone and left to be wild with his instincts.”

Peter touched the book softly. “But -- aren’t we too young? McGonagall said it was very advanced magic.”

Sirius shrugged, “It doesn’t seem so hard…” he picked the book up and flipped through the pages.

Peter looked to James, but James didn’t look nervous about it at all. Peter turned back to Sirius. “But if we become animaguses --”

“Animagi,” corrected James.

“--animagi,” Peter repeated, “Then we’ll have to register. Don’t you reckon they’d want to know why we became animagi?”

“Register smedigister!” Sirius said, waving off the thought with a floppy wrist.

Peter’s eyes widened even further - if that were possible - “But McGonagall said that those who don’t register their animagus form go to Azkaban,” he sputtered, “I don’t want to go to Azkaban!”

“We’ll only go to Azkaban if we get caught at it,” James said flippantly. “And besides, that’s only for criminals that aren’t registered. We aren’t going to commit any crimes, are we, Peter?”

“Well, no, but --”

“Okay then, see? We’ll be fine,” James sounded so cool, so casual.

Peter felt dizzy. “This isn’t a good idea,” he said, shaking his head, “It’s a bad idea, it’s not safe. What if Remus eats one of us?”

Sirius replied, “He’s not going to eat one of us. That’s why we’ll become wolves, too, and --”

“You don’t get to pick what form of animagus you are!” Peter said excitedly, sure he’d found the loophole that would keep them from doing this crazy thing. “Remember? McGonagall said it’s like a patronus, you don’t get to decide, it’s like a spirit animal thing. You become what best fits your personality! You might not be a wolf, you might end up being something that would make a good crunchy snack for a wolf - like a mouse or a bird.”

Sirius hadn’t thought of that, he rubbed his chin and pursed his lips, thinking, chewing on the inside of his mouth. “Hmm.” He looked quite stumped. He looked at James.

“It doesn’t hurt to give it a go,” James said, shrugging. “At worst, we do really well at our Transfiguration exams.”

“Now that’s the spirit,” Sirius said, his mouth splitting into a grin.

“But it’s an awful lot of work,” Peter complained. “Haven’t we got enough work already?”

Sirius raised an eyebrow, “Well what’s more important? Getting an Exceeds Expectations in Potions or keeping Remus from maiming himself beyond repair? Don’t you want to protect your friend?”

James gave Peter a quite pointed look.

Peter swallowed, “Of course I want to protect him,” he squeaked.

“Well then!” Sirius said, “This is the best way we’ve thought of yet. We just need to get a little bit more information on how to become animagi… This book is rather rubbish at the how-to details.”

“Probably they don’t want lunatics like you two just taking a book out and trying to do it,” Peter mumbled.

“We could ask McGonagall,” James said, ignoring Peter’s comment, “Make it sound like we’re just interested in the topic. Theoretically.”

Sirius nodded, “I like it.” He rubbed his palms together. “Now, I do think that we need to keep this a secret from you-know-who,” he said.

“From Voldemort?” Peter asked, confused.

“No, dummy, from Remus,” Sirius said. “He needn’t know about it yet, just in case we can’t do it for some reason. We’ll tell him once we’ve got it all figured out, if we can, so that he doesn’t end up disappointed if we can’t. I don’t want to build his hopes up just to dash them. I imagine this will mean a great deal to him.”

James nodded, “I agree.”

“Okay, it’s settled then,” Sirius said. He glanced over at Remus. “I do hope this works,” he whispered as the ointment on Remus’s face glistened across his nose.