The Outcast (2)

In the dim morning light, all of Hogwarts was still wrapped in silence. Remus pushed open the door to the Hospital Wing, his face pale. This time, the injuries weren't limited to his neck; two new scars marked his face as well.

"These medicines can only help the wounds heal a little faster." Madam Pomfrey looked at his face with concern. "Perhaps you need some hot chocolate."

"I'll be going to the Great Hall in a bit. I'll have some then." Remus smiled, pretending to be at ease, but the movement tugged at the wounds on his cheek. He instinctively raised a hand, not wanting Madam Pomfrey to see his smile quickly fade from the pain.

There was no way such a small gesture could escape Madam Pomfrey's notice. She sighed softly as Remus lowered his head, but in the end, she didn't expose him.

"Get plenty of rest. It's Friday today, and I remember you only have one class." After handing Remus all the medicine, Madam Pomfrey gave him a few more instructions before leaving.

Remus stood where he was, holding the potions.

Everything around him fell quiet. The sky was a deep blue as dawn broke, and its light filtered through the window, casting a dreamlike haze over the world.

"You look badly hurt. Did something happen?"

He had no idea how long he'd been standing there when he suddenly heard a voice. His wandering thoughts didn't catch up in time, and he answered instinctively.

"It's nothing. I just ran into a little..."

Wait.

Remus stopped mid-sentence and turned toward the voice. The curtain around the bed over there had been drawn back, and James was poking his head out.

"James?" His heart began to pound, and he was glad he hadn't said anything he shouldn't have. "What are you doing here?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing." James jumped out of bed. "Where did those injuries on your face come from?"

"I..." Remus faltered. After a long pause, he managed, "There are always some magical creatures at school that we don't know about." He tried to change the subject. "What about you?"

"What else could it be?" James said nonchalantly. "I got hurt by accident while I was out adventuring."

As expected. He already felt like sighing.

"What did you run into this time?" he asked.

"No idea." James shrugged. "After all, there are so many magical creatures at school."

Remus: "..."

"I thought you'd say the Whomping Willow threw you."

After Potions Class, Remus went back to the dormitory to catch up on sleep, while James told Sirius and me about what he'd seen in the Hospital Wing that morning in the common room.

"Why do I always get the feeling you think my brain hasn't developed yet?"

James had keenly picked up on what I meant, which surprised me. "I really didn't expect you to catch that."

"Sirius, listen to her!" James was indignant, but this time his good friend didn't side with him.

"Actually, I think so too."

Joking aside, it was hard not to worry about Remus disappearing every full moon and coming back covered in injuries. My research into potions was getting nowhere, and James and Sirius were more than ready to question Remus right now.

"Maybe we could try Felix Felicis," Sirius suggested, offering a very sound idea.

"That might actually work!" James perked up. "I heard drinking that potion makes you really lucky. Maybe we could drink it and then ask Remus questions, and he might answer!"

"Whether it works or not, it'll be hard for us to get Felix Felicis." I'd tried drinking Felix Felicis before to change the plot, but I'd quickly realized that it didn't actually change your luck. It merely put you in a perfect state where you wouldn't make a mistake in anything you did, which was why it made you feel "lucky." "As far as I know, Professor Slughorn seems to have some Felix Felicis, but..."

At the mention of that, James and Sirius both clutched their heads.

Since we had Potions Class with the Slytherins, the two of them caused chaos in nearly every lesson. I often felt that Professor Slughorn wanted to throw them out of class.

"Can't we make it ourselves?" James made a last-ditch attempt.

"Not very likely." Sirius shook his head mercilessly. "Felix Felicis is extremely difficult. Even if we could make it, the whole preparation process would take about six months."

"That's too long!" James began pulling at his hair. "There's no 'waiting' in my dictionary!"

"The day before yesterday, you said there was no 'backing down' in your dictionary," I said.

"Half a month ago, you said there was no 'impossible' in your dictionary," Sirius added.

"That proves I always forge ahead in life. You should both learn from me." James stood up. "All right, if Felix Felicis won't work, then we'll follow him every full moon. This time we learned that Remus goes to the Whomping Willow, and it looks like he touched something that made it calm down. Next time, we can follow him inside!"

I had to admit, James really did have the makings of a leader. After that summary, I almost wanted to applaud and cheer.

"But I have a question." I raised my hand after James finished.

"If this student has a question, you may ask it directly. There's no need to raise your hand." James imitated Professor Slughorn's tone so perfectly that Sirius was already sprawled on the sofa laughing, while the people nearby shot us looks as though we were mad. Sometimes I really did feel embarrassed sitting with them.

"What if Remus gets angry?" I said. "He doesn't want to tell us, after all. Even if we find out what's happening to him by secretly following him, he might feel offended."

That was also why I'd confined myself to brewing potions all this time. I hadn't been in Gryffindor before, so I really didn't know how James and the others had talked things through with Remus after discovering he was a werewolf.

"Impossible." James waved a hand. "Nobody would turn me down!"

Me: "..."

As expected, I couldn't count on a first-year James.

After settling on a rough plan for the future, the two of them began writing their weekend homework at a furious pace. No matter how important anything else was, homework still had to be handed in on Monday.

Later on, Lily returned from the library. With finals approaching, she spent almost every day there.

"I think you're definitely going to come first in the year." Lily always finished all her homework on the first day of the holidays, something I could never hope to match. After writing the same assignments several times over, I'd grown to dislike doing them more and more. "Those Ravenclaw students have been under a lot of pressure lately."

"Actually, it's not just because of finals. Even normally, Ravenclaw students are almost always in the library," Lily said, still shaken. "I even saw some Ravenclaw students reading at the Quidditch pitch before."

I couldn't say anything about that, since I liked reading horror stories in noisy, crowded places too.

Not wanting to do homework and seeing that curfew was approaching, I went wandering at night again.

My potion research still wasn't making any progress, and I'd used up all the ingredients I'd brought at the start of term. If I'd known I'd go through them so quickly, I should have left school to replenish my supply over Easter... But there was only a little over a month until the end of term, so a few more days wouldn't make much difference.

Suddenly having nothing to do, I felt at a loose end. Although I'd wanted a relaxed school life this time, knowing how the story ended made it impossible to relax. As I walked along, wondering what else I could do, I suddenly heard a muffled sound ahead.

Bang!

The sound was all too much like a human body hitting a wall. I'd often heard it when interrogating people as a Death Eater.

Why would I hear that here?

Following the sound, I turned a corner and saw a door with a little light shining through. It wasn't fully closed, so I peered through the gap.

Ugh, why is it those Slytherins again? Do they get some kind of perfect attendance award for coming out every day or something? Can't they just sleep in their dormitory?

Though I didn't think I was qualified to say that.

There was a long table and an even longer bench in the room. Snape sat at the very end of the bench, looking down at the book in his hands and paying no attention to anything around him. A few steps away, Peter was huddled in a corner, trembling. His cloak lay on the floor, and there were bruises on his face.

"You insisted on coming along, and we were kind enough to bring you. But now you won't let us cast a spell on you?"

Avery's wand was almost poking Peter in the face. Peter shook his head repeatedly, his voice trembling terribly. "I, I didn't..."

"How did a useless thing like you get into Slytherin?" Peter's behavior made Avery even more disgusted, and he kicked Peter to the floor. I finally knew where the sound I'd heard earlier had come from.

"Those old things don't like Slytherin," Evan said sarcastically. "They probably want to dump all the rubbish on us."

Peter didn't dare speak again. He kept his mouth shut, tears rolling down his face and his body shaking nonstop. Yet the whole time, he never raised his hands to protect his head, instead rubbing something tightly between them.

I'd known Peter was being bullied back at Halloween, but I hadn't expected those people to want to experiment on him with Dark Magic! Given their current abilities, they probably wouldn't be able to master much even in a few more years, but this was really going too far. I pushed the door open, ready to teach them a lesson, but just then Evan suddenly rushed over to Peter and pulled his hands out.

"Let go of me!"

Peter, who had barely dared breathe until now, suddenly began struggling with all his might. He kept trying to hide his hands behind his back, but the others pulled them out anyway. Then he let out a scream, and I distinctly heard the sound of a bone breaking.

"Want it? Then go fetch it yourself like a dog!"

Bang!

The moment I kicked the door open, something happened to be thrown through the gap. In the light spilling out through the open door, I saw that it was a piece of candy that had been squeezed all wrinkled.

This is...

Peter looked up and saw me as he rushed out, but quickly lowered his head again. He picked up the candy and ran down the corridor, leaving only Evan's shriek behind in the room.

"Why is it you again?!"

"Well, aren't you impressive."

Peter had already left, and I had no time to worry about him. I immediately began loosening my wrists.

"Experimenting on a classmate? Then how about testing the power of my fists for me too?"

Amid the screams, I kicked the table over. Snape, sitting at the very end, was the first to be knocked to the floor. When he got up, he looked ten times angrier than usual.

[Snape's favorability -5]

"I didn't offend you this time, and I didn't lay a hand on Pettigrew either!"

As I held Avery by the collar and beat him, Snape furiously straightened his clothes. "Madwoman!"

"You just stood there and watched!"

Angry, I beat Avery even harder. He was almost in tears. "Severus, say a little less!"

"Last time James bullied you, when I went to help, you said I was with them."

I threw Avery aside and walked over to Snape.

"When you were lying on the ground tangled up in Mandrakes, what did you think of the students who just stood there watching?"

He froze for a moment, but soon his expression turned disgusted again.

"Pettigrew deserved it."

"Then you deserved it too."

Snape visibly grew more agitated. He looked like he wanted to hit me, but for some reason he didn't.

"What did Pettigrew do wrong? Was it because he's timid, bad at talking, and not very bright?" I asked him. "But you've never spoken nicely either, and you always call me a Mudblood."

He pressed his lips together, resistance showing on his face. It was several seconds before he spoke. "...I was just stating a fact."

"Really?" I crouched down until I was at eye level with him. "Then Snivellus is just stating a fact too. Why do you get angry?"

"If you think Pettigrew deserves to be bullied, then let me tell you, Snape: you deserve to be bullied too."

This time he was silent longer than he had ever been before. He didn't get up until I had dragged the three unconscious people together.

"Then why don't you say these things to Black and Potter?"

"Do you think I ended up in the hospital with them before because we were playing a friendly game?" I was very confused. "James and I have argued so many times because he's arrogant, looks down on everyone, and acts without thinking about the consequences. Didn't you tell me last time that 'Potter is beyond saving'?"

This time Snape ignored me. He deducted some favorability points from me, then strode out of the room without so much as looking at the three people lying on the floor.

Tsk, he really does treat everyone equally.

Just as I didn't expect James to change much in the first few years, I didn't think Snape would change either. After all, this had happened so many times already, and the points still had to be earned.

I clapped my hands and was about to leave too, but then I heard a very soft knock at the door. I looked up and met Peter's gaze.

He immediately lowered his head.

"...Thank you."

His voice was so quiet it sounded as though it would fade away at any moment. Before I could react, he quickly turned around and disappeared down the corridor.

─────

[Author's note]

★Hint★

Snape's route may be the hardest of all, especially when you're in Gryffindor. Many unpleasant things will happen in your interactions with Snape, and getting him to take a path he has never imagined will be a task even harder than defeating Voldemort;

Of course, you can also choose to stand firmly on his side. Being in the same camp will make progress smoother.

★Side quest reminder★

*Congratulations on unlocking Peter's main story-[The Outcast · 2]

*Congratulations on completing Snape's main story achievement-[Conflict]