Ink in Paper - Regulus Black

Chapter Seventeen

This one feels long for some reason, but I couldn't find anything to delete in it, everything seemed a little bit important at least, so everything's here. Anyways, this is (somewhat) a bit of closure and sibling angst. Have fun. Leave comments!

The 20th of October brought Luna to the Hospital Wing before the sun was up and Remus' met her there not more than two hours after breakfast.

Luna was lying in the hospital bed, waiting for the potion to take its effects as she shivered and trembled, teeth chattering against one another. The fever was so high that she had already been put in one of the metal tubs that Madame Pomfrey had for persistent patients in the back of the Hospital Wing; it had gone down some, but now she was right back where she started – sweating, shaking and begging for another blanket, which Madame Pomfrey refused to give her.

That was when Remus walked into the Hospital Wing. Well, perhaps 'walked' was far too strong of a word. He was dragged into the Hospital Wing by Sirius Black and James Potter, one arm over each of their shoulders, with Peter Pettigrew right behind them, twisting his hands nervously as he watched, closing the door once they were inside.

"Madame?" James called out.

Remus had his head down; pale and exhausted, but conscious. He looked up once they stopped walking, almost looking surprised that they had finally gotten to the Hospital Wing. He looked to the side and made a little noise.

"Ha!" he tried to do, breathlessly. "You're here, too?" Remus teased.

Luna forced herself to raise her head.

"Got here first," she tried to tease back. She shivered so strongly that she locked her jaw, but once she was done she took a deep breath. James, Sirius and Peter were already looking at her. "Flu," she lied.

James cringed. "Fever?" he guessed.

She nodded.

Peter made a noise for sympathy.

But Sirius knew the truth, so he looked away from her shivering form under the one blanket that Madame had given her.

Sirius' reaction to her scars once she had taken her clothes off for the first time had been devastating. He had seen it and tried to ignore it, but once they were done and she was happily cradled to his side, his hand travelling up and down her back, he had asked. Luna had frozen on the spot, he had insisted that she didn't need to fear to tell him anything, because he knew of Remus' condition – it would be alright if she, too, was a werewolf. It had taken a lot of her to explain to him that she wasn't. She was infected, yes, but she could not infect others. She was sick, but she couldn't make others sick. From them on, he mostly ignored the ugly scars on her chest, only giving them attention in peppering kisses every now and then. It didn't take long for him to put her several trips to the Hospital Wing in the account of her infection and, from that moment on, he too had kept an eye out near the full moon for her (not that she had noticed that last bit, of course).

Madame Pomfrey came through the back doors where she was writing down everything that she had given Luna already and putting it on her file.

"Oh, Mister Lupin, yes. I was expecting you at some point of today," the matron said, walking closer. "Help him to the bed beside Miss Lupin's. This way I can keep an eye on them at the same time."

Madame Pomfrey watched the boys put Remus on the bed as he walked closer and pulled back the curtain between the two beds, leaving the siblings together in their illness.