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Dragon Fighting


It was a week before Remus was transported from St. Mungo’s back to Hogwarts. In the time he was gone, it was hard not to notice that one fifth of the Gryffindor Third Years were missing and a great many questions were raised about where Remus had gone, just as Sirius had feared. Most of the students in Hogwarts were quite aware that Sirius, James, and Peter were the best source for answers to the questions they had and the boys found themselves bombarded.

Remus gave them a funny look from his side of the lunch table in the Great Hall, his leg propped up across two spaces at the bench, wrapped in a great white plaster cast. “Why are all the Ravenclaws looking over here at me?” Remus asked, glancing about the room. “And the Hufflepuffs, too, for that matter…?”

Sirius was inspecting the chicken drumstick he was about to bite into thoughtfully. “Well, I reckon it’s because they think you were injured battling a dragon in the Forbidden Forest.”

Remus looked at Sirius in surprise, “Come again?” he asked.

Sirius had taken a gigantic bite of the drumstick and was chewing loudly, so James supplied the explanation, “Yeah, seems it somehow got out that it was a dragon bite what’s got your leg a mess.” He winked.

Remus snorted, “A dragon? You told them I was fighting dragons?”

“We told them you won, too!” Peter squeaked.

“Actually, Sirius sang the news to them,” James said.

Sirius swallowed his chicken with a great big gulp, a grin spreading over his face, and he quickly broke into song, “Remus was draa-gon fiiigh-tiiiing… his kicks were fast as lightning… in fact, it was a little bit frightening! The dragon fought with expert timing!

Remus couldn’t help but laugh, grinning almost as widely as Sirius was. It felt good to laugh again, even if the effort of it did ache in his ribs. It had been a long week at St. Mungo’s Hospital, and he was very glad to finally be home at Hogwarts. He’d missed Sirius, James, and Peter something sore - life at St. Mungo’s had been terribly boring without his mates to keep him company. Tizzy was sweet, but the little house elf wasn’t the same as his friends, though she was really good at card games and wizarding chess. She had happily spent hours sitting on Remus’s bed and playing games while the healers did what they could to fix him. Listening to Sirius’s horrible singing was like a breath of fresh air.

He was chopping them up, he was chopping them down…” Sirius was still singing.

“Those nitwits believed all that?” Remus snorted.

James nodded, jumping up so he was kneeling on the bench. “We told’em you showed those dragons a thing or two -- a one-two...three-four…” he mimed a fist fight, and Remus laughed as he watched James whirl about on the bench playfully.

“I reckon they’re all staring in wonder at the legend,” Peter said.

“You three are positively insane,” Remus announced.

“Us three? It was Lily’s idea,” said Sirius. It was true. Sirius had pitched the fear he had about what they would all say when students besides Frank Longbottom asked what was going on with Remus. He’d pointed out that it would need to be a magical malady, otherwise Pomfrey would’ve been able to do something for it there at Hogwarts, so they’d brainstormed and Lily had gotten a book from the library on magical maladies and their healing processes and compared nonfatal werewolf bites to a load of other injuries. All together they’d all agreed upon spreading about a rumor thTRemus Lupin had been attacked by a baby dragon in the Forbidden Forest.

“My only question is where the dragon would have come from,” Lily had pointed out when she’d made the suggestion.

“Blimey that’s easy isn’t it?” James had exclaimed, “Kettleburn’s been alluding to owning dragons eggs in every Care for Magical Creatures class we’ve had so far!”

When they’d finished lunch, Remus smirking now when he noticed a student giving him the eye, the other three Gryffindor boys helped push Remus into the wheeled chair that St. Mungo’s had sent him back to Hogwarts with. The chair was a muggle contraption, meant to be pushed or wheeled about, but since McGonagall had told them Remus would have to use one for a time when he returned, James had spent a good deal of his free hours practicing the locomotor charm. With a flick of his wand, the chair was racing along beside them just as quick as if Remus was walking himself.

The hardest bit of the chair was getting it up the stairs. They’d experimented with levitating the chair with Remus in it, but it had proved too dangerous an endeavour when they managed to nearly dump him out of the unsteady chair. “I don’t fancy breaking my leg a second time,” Remus had said, refusing to let them try it again. They’d moved him out of it and Sirius had volunteered to ride in the seat while they gave it a few more gos, but even Sirius tired of hitting the carpet after a time. Next, they found a spare bit of rug in one of the cupboards on the ground floor, rolled up and covered in dust. James and Sirius worked together - Sirius levitating the rug while James used the locomotor to try and create a sort of fake version of a magic carpet. Amazingly, that hadn’t been half bad, and Remus had made it all the way through the castle once, laid out across it, but the problem came when they realized wherever they’d gone, they needed the chair upon arriving and they’d left the thing way back in Gryffindor tower. Peter had to scramble back and fight with dragging it down the stairs and nearly toppled down himself one of the time when it had gotten away from him, rolling and crashing into a suit of armor a ways down the corridor on the third floor.

After that, the magic carpet just became something they used in fun. They zipped Remus up and down the corridors, shouting and laughing so much that they rivaled even Peeves the poltergeist. “LOOK OUT! Coming up on your left!!” Remus shouted as the boys magicked him along through the halls, nearly bowling down a group of annoyed-looking Ravenclaws. Usually the rambunctious activity would have made Remus worry about their grades, but on the occasions that the Hogwarts faculty had happened upon the boys messing about, they hadn’t reprimanded them at all. On the contrary, Professor Flitwick had clapped merrily and complimented them on such an excellent locomotor charm. Even Professor McGonagall had smirked and looked the other way.

Of everyone in the school, the person who seemed the most put-off by the Gryffindors antics was Severus Snape. He sat, glowering from his spot beneath a tree on the grounds, side-by-side with Lily Evans, their copies of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them open on their laps as they did their revisions. Across the grounds, Sirius, James, and Peter were laughing and drawing with colorful inks on Remus’s cast, magicking their doodles to move about the plaster. Sirius had dragged his record player out onto the grass, too, no less, and put on a rock album that they danced about and sang with as they messed around. Lily’s foot wiggled to the beat, a detail that - however small - seemed to irritate Severus the most.

“They shouldn’t be allowed to do that,” he said finally.

“To do what?” Lily asked, following his gaze to where the boys were.

“To play that ruddy record,” Severus grouched, “Some people are trying to study around here.”

Lily shrugged, “They’re just having fun. Besides, the music sort of helps. I play records while I study all the time.”

Severus didn’t even own a record player. He didn’t care much for music. He turned his eyes crossly to Fantastic Beasts and tried to ignore the irritating music, and the even more irritating sound of James Potter’s laughter. That laugh made him grit his teeth - it was the worst part of having switched into the same classes as Lily. Especially the Divination class. He hated sitting at the little table with Remus Lupin and hearing James’s laughter across the room. It made him ache that stupid Professor Vablatsky had stuck the two of them together. What role could James Potter possibly play in his Lily’s future life?

Once Hogwarts was over, Severus had no intention of keeping Potter in his and Lily’s lives.

Instead, he pictured them living in a little cottage some place, maybe near the sea, and taking long walks. Severus pictured bringing her home flowers when he returned from his Important Job at the Ministry, surprising her and seeing those impossibly beautiful eyes shine with delight and joy that he had returned to her each night. That, Severus was sure, was everything he would ever need to be happy.

He was broken from this quick reverie into fantasy by the sound of Lily’s laughter. He shook himself out of it and followed her gaze to see that Sirius Black had knelt below the levitating carpet that held Remus Lupin aloft and was doing his best impression of the Atlas, pretending to carry the weight of the carpet about on his shoulders as James Potter flicked his wand about to move the carpet. Peter Pettigrew was laughing uproariously.

“I don’t know where they come up with this stuff,” Lily said, shaking her head as the procession of Gryffindors made their way off to their usual spot by the lake. “I swear if they channeled even half the energy they use in troublemaking for something worthwhile, they’d be ruddy brilliant, the lot of them.”

Severus murmured, “It’s too bad really,” his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“It is,” Lily said, “They could really do something that might change all of the wizarding world, but they’re all too busy goofing off…”

“There’s something shifty about the lot of them,” Severus said. “Especially Lupin. He wasn’t fighting dragons, you know that’s a load of tosh they’ve started to cover up whatever stupid things they were really doing when he was hurt. Probably running amok about the castle as usual and didn’t want to get into trouble so they say the first rubbish story they could conjure up. There’s no dragons in the forest, that’s ridiculous.”

Lily shrugged. She’d been afraid this might eventually come up with Severus. So had the boys. Sirius had made her solemnly swear not to say anything at all to Severus about it, and so she stared down at Fantastic Beasts with a renewed vigor.

“They’d burn the forest up with a single hiccup if there were dragons in there,” Severus continued on.

“Maybe Kettleburn…” Lily shrugged.

“Kettleburn’s stupid but he isn’t that stupid,” Severus answered.

Lily turned the page on her book. Irony had it that the next page was on dragons and across the page crawled a lovely illustration of a Welsh dragon, his scales shimmering up at her. Lily ran a finger over the page and the picture dragon followed it playfully.

“I’d like to know what it is they were really up to, I’m sure it was no good, whatever it was…” Severus rubbed his chin. “You know, I’m still certain it was them who broke into Slughorn’s store last year that night… I know I saw Sirius Black with that missing bicorn horn.”

“What the bloody hell would Sirius Black ever do with a bicorn horn? They’re nearly as tall as he is!” Lily said, rolling her eyes.

“Someone broke into Slughorn’s storeroom and it wasn’t me. And I told Slughorn himself that and he believed me, so there’s that.”

“Slughorn’s a strange old man, isn’t he?” Lily murmured.

Severus thought of the sessions he’d been engaged in with Slughorn all the previous term and how Slughorn had continued to include him on Slug Club parties, even this year, even despite his lack of connections. It was nice to feel included. “I like him,” Severus answered. “He’s not brilliant, but he’s alright.”

Lily said, “Yeah, he’s alright. I think he might be lonely and perhaps that’s why he collects students in his little club, so he feels important.”

Severus’s mind wandered to the witch Slughorn had told him about - Lucinda Winefelder - and how he’d never told her how he felt. Slughorn’s eyes had seemed distant and tinged with regret. Severus looked over at Lily, “Yeah…”

Lily felt his eyes on her and looked over, a smile spreading over her face, amusement at the intensity he wore. “What?” she asked.

“It’s just that you’re very pretty,” Severus said.

Lily flushed, “Stop it,” she said, turning back away.

“It’s true,” he persisted, and he inched closer, the palms of his hands beginning to sweat. In all of the films they had seen at the cinema over the summer, this was exactly the sort of scene in which the male lead would get a kiss from the female he was after. His heart could barely stand the thought of it. “I think you’re positively radishing.”

Lily’s face broke into a grin, “It’s ravishing.”

“What?” Severus blinked at her as she giggled.

“The word you’re trying to use,” Lily said, “It’s ravishing. With a V. Not radishing. Unless you think I look like a root vegetable?”

Severus felt his face go hot. “No, I meant ravishing. It just came out wrong.”

Lily’s laugh tingled and she shook her head, “I’m far closer to a radish than I am to ravishing.” She looked away, her eyes drawn by the sight of Sirius Black hanging upside down from the tree by the lake, his legs wrapped around the branch above him as both his arms hung below, reaching for Peter’s outstretched hands.

“Well you ravish me,” Severus replied quickly, not wanting the moment to pass.

“What are they doing down there?” Lily exclaimed suddenly, having not heard Severus at all, “Do they fancy another of them being toted about on a bloody carpet? Look at that! The imbecile!”

Severus frowned.

“Sorry,” Lily said, shaking her head as she saw Sirius had successfully pulled Peter up into the tree without falling from the branch he’d been monkeying about on. She turned back to Severus, “What did you say?”

Severus shook his head. “Nevermind,” he replied. “It didn’t matter.” He closed his textbook, utterly disappointed and feeling a twinge of foolishness. He stood up, “I need to go anyway.”

Lily looked up, “Are you cross with me? I wasn’t making fun of you. It’s an easy mistake to make, radishing.”

Severus shook his head, “I just gotta go. See you.” He hurried toward the school.

Lily watched him go.