Okay, so it only took me…er, forever…to get over the fact that OotP completely Jossed this story. If you're still reading it by this point, I'm gonna assume that you've accepted the fact that this thing is so AU it's not even funny. I feel kinda strange with so many pod characters running around, but there you have it.

Sorry it took so long in coming.

aaaaaa

"Lupin, you snot nosed brat, I told you to stay in the infirmary."

James rolled over groggily to see everyone's favorite Defense teacher coddling his favorite pet student. James was willing to just roll back over and pretend to go back to sleep, but since both Peter and Sirius woke up at the sound of Longbottom's annoyed growl, he didn't think it was going to be much of an option.

"Why was he supposed to stay in the infirmary? He got back, didn't he?" James could hear the innocence in Sirius's voice, but didn't buy it for a second. Actually, he was surprised that Sirius hadn't caught on just yet. What did the bloke need? A detailed explanation complete with footnotes?

Watching the proceedings, he could see that Lupin wasn't going to go easily. In fact, the crazy twat had just thrown the covers over his head and burrowed in further. "Remus, are you okay?" Peter's voice chipped in.

"Do you mind? Some of us are still trying to sleep."

"James," Sirius called out as Longbottom finally managed to pry some of the cover down, "that stick? Remove it from your ass."

Shit. See if he ever let the prick copy his Charms homework again. He flipped Sirius the bird as Longbottom's back turned.

"Dammit Remus," Longbottom, who James suspected had opted to just ignore their jabbering all together, muttered, "you're burning up." With that, Longbottom just scooped the boy up, blankets and all.

And James saw red. Okay, so maybe there was a hint of green to the red. But it didn't matter. They pacified him with trite words and pats on the head, before retreating and pretending that if they didn't get too involved, if they didn't get too close, then everything would just work itself out without their help. And that was when they weren't pretending that he was two and couldn't wipe his own bum. Well, fuck them. He didn't need them. He didn't want them.

And apparently the feeling was completely mutual.

"Wait, can we come?" Sirius piped in, just as James pulled back his duvet.

"Yeah, he's our friend." Peter added, and James wanted to laugh. Their friend? Lupin wasn't their friend. He was a scummy little two faced liar. Why was he the only one in the room who seemed to be able to see that? A bloke made friends with other blokes or, on the rare occasion when they weren't attempting to scratch one's eyes out, girls. A bloke did not make friends with something that could kill indiscriminately. A bloke didn't befriend something that could tear and chew and slash skin and flesh into unrecognizable ribbons.

It was the principle of the thing.

"Not this time, boys. Go to class," Longbottom threw out tersely. James scowled at his retreating back. Oh right, go to class. Had the idiot momentarily forgotten that his class was the first class that they had today? Crawling out of bed, he glared at both Sirius and Peter, both of whom ignored him completely, and made his way into the bathroom to get washed up.

He was so glad everyone was in a tizzy over Lupin and Lupin's lack of sanity and health. Wasn't that just a peach. As if, by keeping his dirty secrets a secret, Lupin was somehow more worthy of all the attention and sympathy. How many people knew what Lupin was? Did the kid just walk through the halls, amused as fuck by their complete obliviousness? Did he think it was fucking funny, playing the wolf in sheep's clothing?

Because James could assure him that the joke was over.

"Oi, James, you gorgeous yet?" Sirius hollered in, his tie hanging limping over his shoulders. "We were thinking, me and the yellow wonder," Sirius pulled a half dressed Peter into a headlock, "that we'd stop by the infirmary at lunch. I know you and Lupin are on bad terms, but so what? Think of this as a chance to poke at him while he's down." Sirius shot him a brilliant smile. James didn't return it.

"Do whatever you like," he mumbled, pushing roughly past them. They didn't understand, anyway. He made a detour, stopping by his trunk first, and then slipped out of the room and past the Fat Lady.

He had no intention of going to class like a good little boy.

In fact, he was a bit sick of being the good boy. And he was done trying to be anyone's golden child, because obviously the effort was all for nothing.

aaaaaa

When Potter announced that he'd come to visit Lupin in the infirmary in order to kill him, Remus laughed.

He figured it was quite understandable given the fact that James was wielding a silver candlestick like a sword and Remus was three shades of loony on the drugs that the Madam had given him about an hour ago. Not to mention, that if James would have asked nicely, Remus was pretty certain he would have saved the scared little boy the trouble. Potter looked like he was about to skewer something with his eyeballs, but Remus wasn't stupid, and he could smell the sweat—the fear—radiating off the kid's body.

"You think I'm surprised?" he rasped out, the voice he'd had the night before having somehow been swallowed by the fever Longbottom claimed he had. "You never would have know what I was if I didn't tell you," he needled.

There was a shiver of terror working its way up his spine, because he knew how much there was to lose. And while he was sure Potter considered himself the tragic and broken party, Remus could assure him he had a lot to learn about hitting the bottom. "Look, you filthy animal, I'm doing everyone a favor," James snarled poking Remus in the chest with the candlestick. It burned like fire, even through his pajama top.

"I could've told you that," he snorted instead of reacting to the pain. Filthy animal. Dirty beast. Inhuman scum. Did Potter honestly think that there was a name he could come up with that Remus hadn't already thought of first? The prick wasn't that imaginative. Then again, it was probably likely that just like all the people who had inspected him and tried to reacclimatize him and socialize him to his new life as a spurned and feared member of society, James didn't see him as a person, or even a person capable of coming up with ironic quips and nasty names.

"I'm doing this 'cause no one else will." James half heartedly hit him on the arm with the candlestick, but this time Remus couldn't quite suppress a wince of pain as the stick collided with skin. "Because no one ever steps up when they're supposed to." James pulled the candlestick back, wrapping both hands around it, and for a moment, Remus allowed himself to feel a small pang of jealousy that the bloke could just hold something like that without even thinking twice about it.

He'd be damned though, if he was going to let some little pissant who didn't even know how to get a haircut be the one to do him in. There were less painful ways to die, and he intended to take all the fun out of Potter's slaying. "Pretty!" he yelled at the top of his hoarse lungs, almost laughing as Potter looked about ready to wet his pants while Remus tackled him to the ground.

Predictably, Potter reacted as if he had the plague, and scrambled away from Remus's touch as fast as humanly possible, ignoring the fact that Remus had managed to gain possession of the silver candlestick. "Pretty," he gasped out, as the silver burned his palms as smoldering flesh tickled his nose. "Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty," he chanted, trying to take his mind off of how much it hurt. Or maybe it was just that in the fevered state of his drug induced thinking, he could trick himself into believing that by saying it was pretty he was conveying how much it burned, scouring his hands.

"I hate you!" James's scream broke through his mantra, and Remus howled in pain as James ripped the candle stick from his hands. "You're a fucking loony, you are." James threw the stick, making a dent in the wall. If Remus had been more coherent, he might have been impressed.

It didn't matter anyway, because Remus couldn't see it through his tears. It hurt. It hurt so much. The problem was he couldn't figure out what hurt the worst; his injuries from a nasty full moon that were completely self-inflicted, the bleeding and melted looking flesh of his hands that stank and had been entirely his own damn fault, or his imminent expulsion that he was wholly responsible for from a school he was beginning to see that he'd never wanted to leave in the first place.

Blinking hard, and trying to stifle the sobs that were pounding in his chest, he looked up to see his face mirrored on Potter's. And that hurt too.

Because, for whatever reason, it was easy to see that had Remus been someone else all together, they might have been good friends. What was worse, had he been anyone else, Remus would have wanted to be Potter's friend. Fucking stuck-up asshole that he was.

He tried to uncurl his fingers as Potter grabbed the candlestick and ran out of the room as if the beast of hell was after him. Who knew? Maybe it was.

aaaaaa

Apparently James had skipped out on the same basic lesson to manhood that Peter had missed, Sirius decided with a scowl as he collide with a sobbing James.

They were men. Men did not cry.

Sirius got this basic concept, why the fuck didn't they? "What the hell, James?" he shook the bloke's shoulder as James wiped the tears out his eyes hard enough to be taking skin off with his fists as far as Sirius could tell.

"You wouldn't fucking understand, prick."

Well, so much for being friendly. He rolled his eyes. "Oh get over yourself, mister high and mighty. I'm sure a mudblood peasant like me can figure it out if you use simple words," he tried humoring. James was having none of it, as the bloke fell limply back against the wall, a candlestick dangling rather strangely from his hand.

"Is that blood on that?"

Scrubbing his eyes one last time, James pulled the candlestick up to get a better look at it. He laughed then, but it wasn't a laugh that Sirius recognized. In fact, he almost refused to believe the hysterical noise was coming from his friend's mouth because it sounded so, well, crazy for lack of a better term. "I couldn't do it," James babbled. "I was so sure I could do it."

"Okay," Sirius patted him ineffectually on the back. Couldn't these prats find a pretty face with developing boobs to do this to? Why was it always him who had to calm the hysterics? He got enough of this shit at home. It just figured that someone was going to have a kitten. They'd all been getting along too well. "What couldn't you do? There was enough noise in there to level this floor. You're lucky Pomfrey's downstairs trying to sort through a joke gone wrong." He'd conveniently leave out whose joke it was and how in going wrong it had pretty much gone right until James was in a better state to appreciate Sirius' magical genius. "I know you're keen on ripping Remus' throat out, and I know that I told you it might be fun to poke at him while he was down, but isn't it bad sport to try and kill a bloke when he's already down?"

James laughed that same hysterically insane laugh again, and Sirius decided then and there that he liked sane James much more than he liked the loony version.

"You don't understand, ignoramus." James reached over and pulled Sirius's hand over, shoving the bloody stick into his hands. Grimacing, Sirius tried to resist the urge to drop it as it slid in his hands, getting them red. Maybe his Dad wasn't too far from the truth with all his Satan worshiping worries. Because as far as Sirius was concerned, this had all the ear markings of something Gross and Disturbing. And while he could and would quite happily handle the gross, disturbing was another matter all together.

"If we have to sacrifice a virgin on an alter, it's going to be Peter," he held the end of the stick, which seemed to be the only spot now that wasn't slick with drying blood.

"I thought you were smarter than this," James' red rimmed eyes bored into him, and Sirius felt his hackles rising.

"Maybe if I had a fucking clue as to what you're nattering on about and flipping out over it would be a different story," he snapped back angrily. "We can't all be magical prodigies like the wonderful James Potter."

"Fuck you," James muttered, but there was no heat to the words and it stole the bluster right out of Sirius. "Why don't you hand the candlestick to Lupin and then come back to me after you've figured it out."

And just like that, James up and decided to conversation was over, walking away from Sirius's perplexed expression.

Climbing off the floor, Sirius shrugged his shoulders. He wondered, as he pushed open the door to the infirmary, if maybe his mum hadn't gotten her owls messed up when he'd received his Hogwarts letter.

Because in all truth, it felt like he was living in a mental institution more than it felt like he was living in a boarding school.