Is It Over Now?

Chapter Thirteen

Dora shook her head as the three Marauders watched their fourth leave. If they had paid attention then, then they might have known just how much the wolf held the snakes - his snakes - dear. But they only watched in confusion as the pair left to join the mischief of the others for one of the last times in public, the promise of summer weighing down on each of them like a curse.

—-

Remus started listening to the lecture once more, brought out of his daydreams by the low laugh of the Slytherin next to him. Nothing that ever made the snakes in his year laugh was something that should be tolerated.

"Something funny?" McGonagall asked, as she looked at the Slytherin coldly, her voice stern in a manner that made first years tremble but had stopped working so resolutely on the wizards and witches within the classroom a while before. War had a funny way of making one fearless when they knew that they were about to step head first into it.

Mulciber laughed once more, and Remus already felt his finger balling into fist at what the marked Death Eater was bound to say, spurred on by his newfound courage. If the bastard didn't calm down soon then Remus would be tempted to call for a resort, the fact that school was almost over be damned.

"I've just always wondered how muggles could be so stupid is all," the snake said and Remus watched as McGonagall raised a brow, the warning clear.

The Slytherins didn't care to hear it as they all snickered.

"And how is that?" The Professor asked, her voice as warm as the arctic.

The snake shrugs. "All I mean Professor is that magic is all around them and they're all so stupid that they can't even tell. Leads me to wonder why we bother keeping them around at all."

McGonagall's anger had a sadness to it that Remus knew only came from watching a student that she had taught for seven years become a monster, but the Gryffindors' anger was something primal, all hard eyes and barely restrained fist from the other side of the room. It was an amount of self control that the lions hardly ever expressed.

Remus found that as someone that hardly was a lion anymore these days, the wolf didn't feel the need to abide by such rules.

Mulciber opened his mouth once more, but Remus didn't care to hear the rest of it.

James and Sirius watched as Remus sat next to the Slytheirn with a blank look on his face, as if he was unfazed by the words spilling from the other teen's mouth. Words that were directed at the half - blood too.

The fox moved quickly, a hand in the snake's hair with a bruising grip. The same hand bashing Mulciber's head against the table in one quick move, the sound of bones crunching and a muffled groan of pain as Remus pushed the bleed boy away, his face just as blank as it had been before.

Sirius didn't bother to sort through the emotions the rose up within him at the sight, only knowing that they were far from negative and that he should do something about them soon.

"Sorry, you were saying?"

"Mr. Lupin! Detention!" The Professor screamed, shock masking the anger that would normally be there.

Only the snakes and the present marauders knew of the violence that laid beneath the wizard's studious facade. One would think that one already privy to it would know better than to risk incurring it once more, but no one ever did accuse Mulciber of being intelligent.

Remus raised his hand slowly, a smirk on the teen's face that no one outside of the snake den had seen before.

"Yes, Mr. Lupin?"