September 22nd, 1972"Remus." Mia frowned down at her friend. "The full moon is tomorrow; you really
should be back in bed resting."
"Can't rest. Quidditch," Remus said half-heartedly, vaguely motioning his hand in
the direction of the Quidditch pitch.
Although they had been back in school for a few weeks, the summer had done a
number on Remus. Somehow, being separated from Mia and the rest of his friends,
coupled with needing to move and be around his nervous parents—mostly his father—
Remus had reverted a bit back to the nervous and stressed out boy that Mia had met the
year before. His face was once again pale, and he had lost the weight that Mia had taken
such effort the prior year to put on his skinny frame. The only difference was that he now
stood a good two inches taller than her.
"James and Sirius will understand," Mia argued.
Remus rolled his eyes as he rested his head against the cold bench in the Gryffindor
stands, letting the frosty metal cool the skin of his face. He said that the approaching moon
sometimes made his skin feel like it had the worst sunburn—hot and itchy.
"No, they won't. They'll say I'm a bad friend for not watching them try out. They've
already taken the mickey out of me for not trying out myself."
Mia felt a breath of protective anger fill her lungs. "They're being mean to you?"
She had spent the summer worried for all the boys. Remus was practically missing,
considering that he and his family were always on the move. He answered her letters when
he could, but between relocating and dealing with the summer moons, he was ill more
often than not.
James had crashed his broom during a particularly bad windstorm at the beginning
of summer, breaking his left leg and hitting his head. Unable to heal it at home due to the
specific way the bone broke, the Potters had to go to St Mungo's where James spent the
night, prematurely ageing his worried sister.
Sirius had been another issue. Though he spent the first two weeks with the Potters,
he had returned to Grimmauld Place and then remained there without a single owl sent to
his friends the rest of the summer. When Mia and James finally reconnected with him on