SURPRISE! Another chapter before I disappear for a little bit.

Leave comments, please, so I have something to do during tonight. I don't want to freak out and study again.

"Most people grow out of absence seizures in their teenage years and adulthood, Miss Lupin. It's nothing to worry about in your case," Madame Pomfrey said. "Your brain activity seems completely usual despite it, though it does accuse a small wave around the time you said it might have happened. You don't need to come to me for absence seizures, as you already know."

"Tell that to my brother, please," Luna said, bitterly glaring at the curtain around the bed, knowing that her brother was somewhere around there, listening to everything. "I was fine. Once I ate and rested, I was completely fine."

"However, the weakness and dizziness that you have reported does bring me concern," Madame Pomfrey added.

"Ha!" made Remus on the other side of the curtain.

"I've been diagnosed with anaemia, but I'm already treating it. I have been taking two iron pills per day, as prescribed," she said, ignoring her brother's victorious tone on the other side of the privacy curtain that she had requested to keep him out. "I'm taking the other pills, too," she added in a lower tone, feeling her cheeks heating up.

While she didn't mind commenting on it with Madame Pomfrey, the simple idea of talking about it where Remus could hear her was beyond embarrassing for some reason that she could not understand. It wasn't like he didn't know – he had seen her taking them before going to bed, he had certainly heard their mother talking about it to Luna; but the idea of talking about it herself was much more awkward.

"That will certainly help," Madame Pomfrey said. With all tests done, she reached for the curtain and opened it. Remus was sitting on an empty bed right on Luna's sight. "I believe you two can go to classes now and stop fighting with one another for no reason at all."

Remus glared at Luna before turning to Madame Pomfrey.

"If she took care of herself and didn't almost pass out on top of two flights of stairs, I wouldn't have to be here, missing classes," Remus said.

Luna scoffed.

"No, certainly would've been skipping classes with your friends," she accused.

Before he could answer, snapping at her for any reason, Madame Pomfrey sighed loudly, sounding almost disappointed as she went to her desk to sit at the chair, crossing her arms and watching the two siblings snap at each other.

"You two used to get along a lot better when you were younger," she mused.

Luna looked down at her feet as she climbed down from the bed that she had been sitting on, not daring to answer the nurse, but Remus was not as demure about his feelings and thoughts as she was.

"Well, when we were younger, she wasn't making eyes at my friends all the time and defending that bastard of a father we – unfortunately – have," he said.

That caused her to move her head so quick to stare at him that it caused her another wave of dizziness, but she didn't care for the whiplash, she just cared that Remus had the audacity of saying those words.

"How dare you! Daddy is not a bastard! What's wrong with you?" she asked, frowning, shaking her head side to side. She felt her stomach churning inside of her. "How can you say those things?"

"How can you say otherwise, Luna?" he asked, turning to her. "Don't you see everything that he has done to us? We're the shit because of him."

"It's not Daddy's fault!" she defended. "He's suffered, too, you know? He lost us for years, Remus. No one deserves that, no parent deserves to be separated from their children. Even now, he only sees us a few times per year."

Remus turned to her, looking deep into her eyes as he also climbed down from the bed that he had been sitting on a lot more gracefully than she had done. He leaned slightly down, almost as if to remind her that she was that much smaller than him – that much more insignificant when compared to him.

"He deserved that. And he deserves even worse," he hissed, eyes freezing cold and empty.

Without any other word or farewell, either to her or to Madame Pomfrey, Remus turned on his heels, grabbed his bag from the ground and walked out of the Hospital Wing without Madame Pomfrey's note to allow him to walk into his next class. It was no problem; after all, he turned to the right when his class was to the left of the castle, so he had no plans of going to Potions.

Luna stood there, completely taken aback by Remus's reaction.

Madame Pomfrey, too, seemed shocked by Remus' words and tone when he got up and walked to Luna again, clearly not wanting the girl to go after her brother just yet.

"Miss Lupin, I'm sorry, I should not have involved myself in such personal business," the matron said. "Clearly, I overstepped by boundaries, which I had no right to do. Forgive me. I just remembered you in your first year visiting your brother every month and it... overshadowed your growth."

She shook her head, dismissing the matron's apology.

"That's alright. You didn't mean it," she said, automatically, still looking at the door. "And it's alright, really. Sometimes Remus speaks without thinking; he didn't mean it. He didn't think it through before saying it."

Luna, without saying anything else, bent down to get her bag from the ground and tried to breathe through the feeling of her tightness in her chest in silence. She turned to Madame Pomfrey waiting for her note.

The older woman seemed to understand that there was nothing that she could do or say at the moment, because she turned to the desk once more, wrote down a quick note to Luna's professor and gave it to the girl, who took it between two fingers, turning on her heel and walking out. Madame Pomfrey wondered if Luna realised that she sometimes walked the same way her brother did, especially when she was angry, even if she didn't realise that she felt such anger at all.

The way to Transfiguration was quiet while Luna walked alone, a small mercy. While she found some comfort in the loud talking and laughing of teenage groups amongst themselves for it helped her go anywhere that she wished without being noticed, sometimes silence did help more than she would care to admit. Silence and solitude were great companion for darker thoughts.

She couldn't understand why her brother hated her so much.

Luna loved her brother, really did. More than most sister likely loved their brothers. There was a time in her life where she saw Remus as some sort of ancient god – unable to make a mistake, and even if he did it was trying to do right to the world and therefore it wasn't supposed to be commented on; to her, he was a protector and a comprehensive ear when she was sad about anything at all. She wasn't sure when everything changed. She wasn't even sure she was there when things changed because she would stop and think sometimes, and she knew deep down that she would remember something going wrong between them.

And all she could find was her dad.

While the relationship between Remus and Lyall was not a dynamic that she really tried to understand when she was younger, something did go rotten during the divorce. Luna perfectly remembered the way all the warmth in Remus' eyes went dither before the complete the frigid reactions started. Nobody told her why the divorce was happening and why it was Daddy that was leaving, why she was staying with Mum. All that she knew with certainty was that something had wrong, and she was too young to understand it. It was comprehensible the hesitation everybody had to deal with the subject at hand with her, of course – she was five or six, closer to her father than to her mother and screaming her head off most of the day because nobody would explain to her.

Perhaps, sometimes she would think, it was when Remus started to hate her, too.

Shaking her head to keep the tears away from her eyes and to focus, she knocked to Professor McGonagall's classroom door with the knuckles of her hand, holding onto Madame Pomfrey's note carefully not to crumple it.

The door swung open; McGonagall stared at her.

"You are late, Miss Lupin," she said, an accusing tone in her voice.

Without answering, she just offered the note to McGonagall, hoping that the woman would just accept that she was sick and not ask her to speak, because Luna didn't trust her own voice at that moment.

The woman read the note before stepping away from the doorway, allowing her to walk into the classroom.

Luna quickly found Pandora sitting in the corner, eyes stuck on the goblet in front of her instead of her friend walking into the classroom tardy. Pandora was far too focused, thankfully. It was in moments like these that Luna adored the way that Pandora just had her own world to take care of – the girl looked at her as she sat beside her and smiled.

"You are back!" she said, quite happy at her friend's presence. "Are you feeling better? Your eyes are back to normal."

"I'm quite alright. I told you that I was," Luna dismissed.

"You said you were alright, but your symptoms said you were not," Pandora explained.

"I might have to listen to them sometimes, but today was not the day, thankfully," Luna answered. "What are we supposed to do?"

Pandora looked back at the goblet. She reached for her book under the desk, opening it on the correct page before sliding the thick book towards her friend where the spell to change the goblet into nail-sized box was explained in detail; it was a difficult one, indeed, after all the density of a goblet was very different from such a small box, even if both of them had the characteristic of having a hollow inside.

Luna took a deep breath and started working, pushing the hollow of her brother's eyes as he hissed words in her face to the back of her mind, wanting nothing more than to forget it just like she had forgotten so much of her childhood.

She tried her best and did manage to get the nail-sized box on top of the table, but it took her twenty more minutes than usual. She knew she was not as discreet in her struggle, McGonagall watched her closely, not saying a single word and not offering any help, but clearly interested in whatever her mind had in a loop.

By the time the class ended, McGonagall was done with waiting.

"Miss Lupin, please, a word," she said.

Luna sighed but got up from her seat to let Pandora slide off the bench to go to Herbology. Pandora nodded at her.

"I'll tell Professor that you're with Professor McGonagall for now," Pandora whispered.

"Thank you," Luna whispered back as her friend already walked away.

The classroom emptied quickly, leaving McGonagall and Lupin alone together.

"Yes, Professor?" Luna asked, putting her bag over her shoulder and putting her hands behind her back. An odd stance: stiff and unnatural, but she did not move.

"What happened today, Miss Lupin? Are you still not feeling well?" McGonagall asked.

"I feel completely well," Luna answered.

"You took almost thirty minutes to understand and perform the newest spell I taught today, which isn't common for you even if you weren't here during the explanation," McGonagall said, not taking Luna's word for it. "I might not be your Head of House, but I'm your professor; that means that I'm still responsible for you, therefore you can come to me to talk."

"I don't need to talk. I had a seizure," Luna said.

Usually when her health was brought into question, she would throw too much information to make people uncomfortable. They would normally take a step back and ignore the conversation, pretending that it never happened as to forget that they knew privileged information of a student that they were only supposed to care for while in schoolyear.

However, Minerva McGonagall was a force to be wrecked with and she wouldn't let her off so easily. She barely blinked at the information that she would certainly confirm with the matron of the school later in the day. She didn't care if she appeared emotional or overly caring with students, especially the Lupins.

"While having a seizure is certainly worrisome, you are lost in thought and sad," McGonagall said.

"I'm feeling weak."

"If you were feeling weak, Madame Pomfrey wouldn't have allowed you to get out of the Hospital Wing," she answered at once. "I'm not saying that you're forced to open yourself to me when you clearly don't want to talk about whatever it happening to you. I'm saying that you can if you want to, someday, talk."

"Nothing happened," Luna said.

McGonagall watched her for a second, trying to decide if what she had just said was true. She clearly didn't believe her, but nodded.

"Alright. Run along, then. You're already late for Herbology," McGonagall said.

Luna moved away, crossing her arms, but was polite enough to whisper a farewell as she walked to the door. McGonagall said nothing back.

James Suraj Potter was good in noticing the smallest of things.

With a real posh Londoner as a father born from Indian parents and Rajasthani mother (and though his mother didn't talk much about her family back in India, he knew that she had been born Vaishya and he sometimes wondered if he was one too, but never dared ask), he knew where to look for facial expressions and social cues when most people seemed lost.

His father seemed to show his disapproval in a more verbal manner once they were alone, but when in public he showed his discontentment to whatever it was that James doing by pressing his lips together and glaring at the back of James' head until he could feel the bone hurting. The punishment came when they were alone – usually his books were taken away, and so would his broom, sometimes he wouldn't be allowed to write or see his friends. Since Sirius had come to live with them after Christmas of '74, however, they couldn't take Sirius away from him.

His mother, however, was much less discreet with her disapproval of James' actions and words. Sometimes she would show her feelings with a loud, suffering sigh, she would curse in several languages, being as theatrical as one could be she would – those were usually reserved for less serious offenses as a joke that she didn't like, when he danced badly on purpose (especially when she was teaching him something and he wasn't taking it seriously) or when she came to school to resolve another seven or so detentions that he had gotten. Sometimes, however, she would quietly sit in the corner of the room, watching him with such decisive eyes that he knew exactly what he had done wrong before he was done with the word or movement; her eyes covered in kajal, sharp and freezing cold would make him stop and sit down quietly until they were along. Her punishments were not as obvious as his father's – she wouldn't scream, she would quietly hiss that she had not raised him like that, and then walk away quietly until she had calmed down.

Remus, at that day, was so much like his mother that James had feared talking to him.

Sitting in the corner of the Common Room with his book, Remus had not changed the page for almost a whole hour, but neither had he looked away from the tiny words of the Potion's textbook. He was paler than usual, even so close to the full moon, so much that his scars looked almost blended in, his pupils had grown twice their normal size, and the muscle of his jaw feathered the side of his face several times.

It was past midnight when Sirius finally decided to poke James, insisting that he went and talked to the boy.

"Hey, Moony," James said from where he was sitting near the fireplace, on the other side of the empty Common Room. "Are you alright, mate?"

"Yes."

James exchanged a look with Sirius, clearly not believing the boy. Peter shifted in his seat uncomfortably, crossing his legs and looking to the side, watching the fire for a second before gathering his courage.

"How is Luna?" Peter asked.

James cringed. Sirius winced.

Remus stopped breathing.

"Well."

Peter pressed his lips together, regretting his words, but nodding in acknowledgment.

"That's good. She scared us," Peter continued speaking. Sirius shook his head at Peter, begging him silently to stop talking. "You know, I saw her again when I was coming back to the Tower. She didn't look all that well."

Remus looked up from his book.

"What?" he asked, frowning.

"Luna. She didn't look all that well, I mean," Peter explained.

James waited for Peter to look at him and send him his best look of 'why did you do that?', shaking his head side to side in clear disapproval. Peter was not as good as Sirius in reading facial expressions, so James was often very clear about his thoughts with his face and eyes when talking to the boy.

Peter looked down, suddenly uncomfortable.

"I mean, Wormtail isn't lying and he isn't wrong either," Sirius finally admitted. "I saw her as well when I was going to the kitchens. She was crying. Did something happen?"

James looked at Sirius in silence, trying his best to be discreet with his thoughts.

He knew. Well, he didn't know, but he suspected something was going on between Luna and Sirius, or at least it had been happening during the summer holidays. However, if there was a thing that he did know was that Sirius' feelings for Luna were not nearly as romantic as they should be, especially not when compared to what Sirius clearly felt for Remus. That was a mess that James didn't want to be involved in, but he knew he would be when push came to shove.

"It was past the curfew when you went to the kitchens, and you took a very long time," Remus mused.

Sirius' shoulders clearly tensed up.

"Well, yes. I stopped to talk to her. I couldn't leave her alone and upset," he said.

Remus narrowed his eyes.

"Of course, you cannot stop yourself from being the hero to all those girls, am I right?" Remus said, venom in his tongue.

Sirius raised his eyebrows in surprise before getting up from his seat and crossing his arms.

"What are you driving at?" he asked, lip curling in a bad impression of arrogance and self-righteousness. "I walked your weeping sister back to Tower, now you're angry at me about that?"

Peter took a shaky breath in.

Remus got up from his seat.

"I'm just trying to say that you did take a very long time walking her to the Ravenclaw Tower and walking back, because you came back from the kitchen without a single crumb of food!" Remus said.

"I ate on the way, you lunatic!" Sirius said, widening his eyes. "Do you think I go around finding emotionally vulnerably girls to shag in the middle of the night? I don't! Fucking hell, Moony. I'm trying to ask if something happened so we can help you because tomorrow is the full moon; when you're upset about anything during your transformation you hurt yourself horridly. I'm trying to help you!"

Remus threw the book to the ground near Sirius' feet, letting the loud thump echo.

The fact that he had not thrown the book at Sirius' head was already a great accomplishment when comparting Remus' mood swings of a usual full moon, James thought, silently thanking any god he could think of.

"Right," James said, reaching for the book and getting it. "Come on, mate, go to bed," he said to Sirius. "Moony, enough of it, too. This is ridiculous. What happened between you and your sister?"

Sirius started gathering his belongings, not even looking at Remus anymore, but took longer than he usually would because he wanted to hear Remus' answer.

Remus took a shaky breath in, looking up at the ceiling to control his angry tears.

"I just realised that she doesn't remember anything," Remus said. "And I don't know if I feel angry or I feel pity."

James blinked, cocking his head to the side.

"What are you on about?" he asked. "What doesn't your sister remember?"

"The divorce. She doesn't remember how anything happened, she keeps on defending that bloody bastard as if he deserves anything from her," Remus explained. "I said some... disturbing things now that I know that she doesn't remember anything, but I didn't put the pieces together until I had already left her in the Hospital Wing. She doesn't understand that everything going wrong in our life is his fault."

"Do you mean the –?" Peter pointed Remus' neck.

Remus' neck had the biggest scar in his body and the one with the ugliest scar. After he finally started undressing in front of the boys, James took a few days to be able to look at it without looking away hurriedly. While most of Remus' body was a myriad of scars, they were mostly cuts and slashes in white colour and common texture, the scars on his neck were completely different, perhaps because it had done when he was still completely human – it was a mixture of raised hypertrophic scars and keloids in rounded shapes and sharp marks. It took him almost a week to realise that it was the bite mark. It was the reason why Remus was what he was.

Being bit on the neck... Remus was lucky to be alive at all.

Remus didn't answer.

"She doesn't know?" James asked.

Sirius shoved the last book he had into the bag and started walking to the stairs to the dormitory. Remus watched him for a second before turning to him.

"Sirius! I'm sorry!" he called out. Sirius hesitated, but just nodded before going up the stairs. "I shouldn't have accused him," he said, turning to Peter and James.

James looked at the stairs, seeing Sirius disappearing into the darkness.

He thought that, perhaps, Sirius had been that upset about the accusation because there was some truth to it. While he did believe him when he said that he had not taken a long time in kitchen adventure because he had taken Luna somewhere else for a shag, he knew that his friend was feeling guilty because he had lied to Remus again and again to slip into bed with his mate's sister.

"Give him some time. He has been stressed as well with everything. He was just trying to help," James said as diplomatic as he could. Remus nodded, looking down at his feet in shame. James stepped forward, contouring the sofa and stopping right in front of his friend, offering back his Potion's textbook with a small smile. "Everything will be fine. Finish your homework and then go to bed. You'll need your strength tomorrow, alright?"

Remus nodded.

"Alright," he said.

James clapped him in the arm before turning to Peter.

"Pete, why don't you help Remus with the homework? He wasn't in class and you're pretty good at it," James said.

"Sure thing!" Peter said, smiling at Remus and already making his way towards his friend. "Come on. It's not as difficult as it looks, I promise."

Using the moment of distraction of the two, James took his bag and made his way up to the dormitories as well, walking in there without knocking at the closed door only to find Sirius still completely dressed in uniform and lying on top of his covers, unmoving and staring at the ceiling.

James stopped at the doorway.

"You'll make it worse if this goes on," was all that James said, not warning of his appearance.

Sirius seemed to have known James was there because he had no reaction other than a blink. He gave a very loud sigh and kicked his shoes off, finally putting his feet on the bed as if he was already ready to sleep. He put his hands on his stomach, trying to control his breathing.

"I don't even know why I started it," Sirius admitted. "She's..." he trailed off, not finding the correct word. "There's nothing wrong with her, you know? She's beautiful, James. Beautiful, smart."

"I'd hope so, she's a Ravenclaw," he grumbled, walking further into the room and closing the door once he was inside. "But she's his sister. It won't end well for either of you three if this goes on any further."

Sirius slowly pushed himself to his elbows.

"It was supposed to be a fling, you know? I knew that she looked at me and I was so... messed up at the time. You know that, you were there," Sirius admitted. "But then she those eyes when I first kissed her – I got scared. I pulled back. So, I went out with that girl, Diana, remember her? – anyways, I went out with her, snogged her senseless and I realised; I wasn't the problem. I could still snog girls senseless without freaking myself out for nothing."

"Pads?" James said, confused.

"I mean, neither was she, the problem, I mean. I freaked out because she... did you never notice, James? They have the same eyes," Sirius said.

That made a pit start in James' stomach.

"Oh, Pads, please tell me that you didn't," James said, almost begging his friend to prove him wrong.

Sirius blushed.

"I didn't notice until I went back to her, but by the time I noticed why the hell I was so focused on her, it was already too late. I was already in bed with her, and she was so happy, so sweet," Sirius said. "James –"

"Please, don't tell me more," James said, throwing himself on his own bed to sit down.

"She was a virgin, mate. I made a huge mistake," Sirius continued, having to unburden his chest, not realising what James had said. "I couldn't go back, and I couldn't just... not speak to her again. She's Moony's sister!"

"That's the very reason you should've stayed away, Padfoot!" James scolded. He sighed, putting is head in his hands. "You knew the girl was in love with you."

"I knew the fancied me, yes, but I didn't know it was this serious until you it was brought up in the station," he admitted, sitting up in bed. "Then she was so uncomfortable and awkward, I realised that perhaps Moony wasn't completely wrong about it. I didn't know what to do! I didn't know what to say to her! – and then we had an argument –"

"Argument? What did you do?"

Sirius glared at his friend, frowning.

"Why do you assume that I did something?" he asked.

"Because the girl wouldn't have an argument with you for nothing, Sirius. She lets a lot go over her head if you're anything like this when you're with her, especially if you had not realised that she was in love with you," James said. He turned completely in bed to face his friend. "Go on. What did you do?"

Sirius looked away.

"You know when you saw her letter arrive and confronted me about it? I scolded her for writing to me. We had agreed that she wouldn't," Sirius explained.

"What was it, anyway? You didn't let me read it," James said.

Sirius sucked his lips in and James held his breath in fear.

"A girl was pregnant, one of the girls that I'd meet in the summer holidays. She found out and wrote to me to warn me," Sirius said. "She was right to do it, too, because the girl wrote to me telling me that I was the father, but I was prepared. I insisted that I wasn't. I'm the one that takes the potions, I don't trust the girls to do it every time. She later admitted that it wasn't mine and that she had already gotten engaged to the actual father of the child."

"So, the girl did you a favour and you scolded her for it?" James asked.

Sirius crossed his arms.

"You stared at me as if I was thief, that suspicion made me uncomfortable the whole summer. I couldn't stop myself from getting annoyed," Sirius said.

James raised his eyebrows.

"Well, I was right to do it, wasn't I?" James asked, also annoyed.

Sirius got up from the bed and walked to James', sitting beside his friend with begging eyes.

"Prongs, I really don't know what to," Sirius said. "I don't even need to say it – you already know."

"That you fancy Remus? Yes, I do," James said, pushing Sirius to sit further away from him. "And that you're shagging his sister, yes, I do know it as well, and in far too much detail for my taste."

Sirius ignored his friend's complaint once more.

"What do I do?" Sirius asked.

James looked at Sirius with attention, reading him as well as he could (his mother was always better than him at that). He looked so vulnerable and young, finally looking his age naturally without having to force some cool, loud laughing that sounded nothing like the real barking sound that would come out of his mouth when he was happy.

"Do you want my honest opinion?" James asked.

Sirius nodded.

"I don't know who else to go to," Sirius said.

"Break whatever arrangement you have with her," James said. "Luna Lupin has to move on."