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Bandages


James and Peter were up and dressed and out to the tunnel of the Whomping Willow first thing in the morning, long before most of the castle was up for breakfast, even. The ankles of their robes were soaked from the morning dew, carrying armfuls of bandages and pain relieving potions they’d knicked from Madam Pomfrey’s store in an empty pillowcase as they charged through the dark to the trap door in the floor of the Shrieking Shack. They pushed open the door, afraid of what they’d find - and rightfully so - for Sirius was on the floor, kneeling beside Remus, who lay on his back on the floor, still passed out from the transformation… He’d torn Remus’s slacks away to get to the injured area - his leg was a terrible mess of blood, rings of clear bite marks where his jaw had clamped down lined his skin. The sleeves of Sirius’s oxford were stained with blood already...

“Here, we’re here,” Peter breathed as he ran over and dumped the pillowcase he’d carried all the way from the castle to the Shack out beside Sirius. “What do we do?” Bobbins of gauze rolled about Sirius on the floor.

“Dunno,” Sirius said, shakily.

James sat at Remus’s head, pulling it onto his lap carefully as Sirius grabbed a roll of gauze and tried to bandage up the cuts but they were bleeding through. “Try a mending charm,” James suggested. “Muggles sew cuts together all the time. That’s what they did for me on the cut Snape gave me last Christmas,” he added. “It was suturo, I think… like suture.”

Sirius took his wand out of his pocket. “Suturo,” Sirius tried and he guided his wand along the cuts… watching as a silvery thread emitted from his wand tip, stitching along the separated bits of skin, pulling them together. “It’s working,” he said, and he hastened to sew the dozens of cuts all along Remus’s legs and arms, where the wolf had bitten and clawed the himself all through the night. Sirius stared down at him as he worked, Peter following up with the gauze as James held Remus’s head in his lap.

Together, the three boys repaired their mate.

It wasn’t until after Remus was mended that Sirius said, “I… I need one of you to… to help me with this.” He unbuttoned his Oxford slowly, his hands shaking with nervousness, and he shrugged the shirt off to reveal a mark on his arm, between his elbow and his bicep… a halfmoon shape like the ones on Remus’s thighs and calves. “I can’t mend it myself…”

“You’ve been bit?” breathed Peter, terrified.

Sirius’s throat ached. “Just… just sew it, please.”

James moved over and he drew out his wand, “Suturo,” he said, staring at the bite with wide, frightened eyes.

Peter’s voice shook, “But doesn’t that mean you’re - you’re a werewolf now, too?”

“Dunno,” Sirius’s voice shook, too. “I - I didn’t change when it happened. I was in dog form when it happened, though. I’d jumped at him to stop him biting himself and -- well, I don’t think he meant to bite me.. He was trying to bite himself again and I blocked it and… well, you see.”

James finished guiding his wand along it, and Peter leaned in with the gauze. “Do werewolf bites affect animals?” James asked.

“Dunno,” Sirius answered.

Peter shivered and looked down at Remus for a second before turning his eyes back to Sirius’s stitched up arm as he tied the gauze off, finishing the wrapping of the wound.

“Thanks guys,” Sirius murmured, shrugging his oxford back on over his shoulders, but leaving it unbuttoned. He looked about at them, “Please. Don’t tell Rey.”

“We won’t,” James promised for them both and Peter nodded.

“I’ll tell him when the time’s right to,” Sirius said.

When Remus woke up nearly an hour later, he was bandaged heavily - and probably a bit more sloppily than Madam Pomfrey might’ve done - but the knots in his back were gone. The knots had been so painful that in comparison to the residual aches of the bites and scratches that covered his body, it felt like a relief, and he was surprised when Sirius met him with a pain relieving potion the moment he was awake enough to swallow it down.

He was even more surprised to find James and Peter there, too.

They told him what had happened, leaving out the detail of Sirius’s injury, and they brought Rey upstairs to the bed so he could rest properly… Sirius turned the stereo on and they played a Beatles record so the room sounded cheerful and they played with the Marauder’s Map, making the ink fade and reappear and purposely just making it turn up insults over and over for the fun of laughing at the words it expressed.

Messer Moony should like Messer Prongs to know his ego is larger than his antlers.
Messer Wormtail wants to inform Messer Prongs that often farts in his sleep and ought to stop eating beans before he gasses us all!
Messer Padfoot believes Messer Prongs ought to run a comb through his mop of a head once in awhile.
Messer Prongs says to ignore all those gits as they’re just jealous they aren’t as fine as you, Messer Prongs.
Messer Moony would like to reiterate his point.


They all laughed.

“That’s so like you,” Sirius hooted as Remus’s magic got the last word on the insults to James.

Remus nodded, “It really is, though,” he said.

“This magic is absolute brilliance,” Peter commented. “Have you lot really thought about what kind of brilliant magic this map really is? All the layers of complexity we’ve added to it? It’s bloody perfect! I don’t reckon there’s a single thing we could do to make it better.”

Sirius nodded, “I don’t either. We’re all geniuses, but mostly my boyfriend because it’s him that’s done most of the work on it.” He grinned and hugged Remus carefully, wincing as he raised his arm up to go ‘round Remus’s shoulders (which Remus did not notice, luckily).

“I haven’t done most of it, we did it all together,” Remus argued.

“You’ve drawn it, found the spells to make it function with the trace and the spells to protect it, performed the password charms…” Sirius pointed out.

“Yeah, all we did was march around at night telling you what to write on it,” James laughed.

“You’re the brilliant one,” Peter agreed.

Remus flushed.




Later, when Remus had regained some of his strength and they were all too hungry to resist getting into the castle in time for lunch, they helped Remus along the passageway back to the Willow and across the grounds of the school to the entrance hall. They walked in and James instantly knew there was something wrong. There was a very heavy feeling in the air. He looked over at Sirius and he could see the concern on Sirius Black’s forehead, indicating that he felt it, too…

They walked into the Great Hall and the long Gryffindor table was full, the same as the Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin tables were and the Staff table was crammed, too, except for the notable absence of both of the Prewetts. Dumbledore was leaning over, talking to McGonagall.

“What’s going on?” Sirius asked Frank as he and James helped Remus onto the bench in their usual spot.

Frank looked nervously at Sirius, “How in blazing hell haven’t you heard?”

“Had a bit of a lie in,” Sirius said.

“Fenrir Greyback escaped, killed seven ministry officials and was aided by two of the Ministry’s aurors, not caught in the sweep last month. They’ve killed Minchum’s daughter and his grand daughter’s gone missing.”

James stared across the table at Frank, having just sat down - and thank goodness for it, for his knees felt like gelatin as he heard the words. “No way, Minchum would never let that happen.”

“Well, it’s happened,” Frank said. He was holding Ali, who was dabbing her eyes tearfully with Frank’s handkerchief. He looked over at Remus, “Bloody hell, man, what’s with all the bandages?” For there were bandages on Remus’s wrists and two of his fingers and one that wrapped around the side of his head.

Remus stammered, “I… I fell this morning. On the, er, the steps. Saw Pomfrey.”

Frank raised an eyebrow, “Pomfrey did that shoddy bandaging job?”

“It isn’t shoddy!” Peter said defensively.

James looked at him, “Oi, take it down a notch, Pete.”

“Yeah, Pete. You’d think it was you what’s done this horrible job at wrapping him,” Frank laughed.

Pomfrey did what she could alright, Longbottom?” James said, turning to Frank, “Can we drop it now?”

Frank looked surprised, “Blimey, no need to bite my face off for it, bloody hell…”

The Marauders ate quickly and gathered extra sandwiches and bottles of pumpkin juice before getting up from the table and escaping off into the corridors of the school, Sirius and James bracing Remus up the stairs. They were passing the third floor when they ran into Maryrose Jenkins coming down them. She paused on the steps ahead of them, staring at them in surprise.

“What’s happened?” she asked with concern. James couldn’t help but notice her hair was still that shade of dirty blonde, her eyes pale grey.

“Git’s been in a fight,” Sirius lied.

“A fight?” Maryrose sounded surprised, “With whom?”

“None of your business,” said Sirius, realizing he’d been backed into a corner he didn’t have an answer for.

They passed by her and James kept his eyes turned down, away, his stomach turning over several times and he tripped a few steps past her, his feet suddenly uncoordinated.

When they got to the dormitory, all four of them promptly fell asleep, though James only slept for a few minutes before he woke up and couldn’t get back to it, his dreams haunted by odd images of himself standing in the center of a city with buildings just crumbling around himself and no spells to make them stop from becoming nothing more than rubble. “Why is everything falling apart?” dream James had asked an old man walking by him… and when the old man had looked up, it had been Mopsus, and Mopsus said… “Because many things must break wholly in order to heal wholly -- Mopsus sees all.”

So James sat up reading his Transfiguration textbook and shivering with a cold far deeper than the crisp September air merited...