Chapter 7
*I jinxed it. I absolutely jinxed it.*
I lay fuming in silence, stretched out in the hospital wing alongside the rest of the Marauders under the watchful eye of Madam Pomfrey.
And all because of what? An unfortunate coincidence and Sirius Black's bottomless self-confidence. Thanks to those two factors, we hadn't just witnessed the entirely predictable clash between the upper years of Gryffindor and Slytherin — we'd actively taken part in it.
To be precise, James and I hadn't even tried to fight back at first. We'd recognized what was happening and immediately pressed ourselves against the wall in the trophy room. Peter had frozen completely solid in the opening seconds of the brawl and nearly caught a stray curse, which meant we'd had to save him.
The whole thing could have ended there. The shield charms held well enough against spells that weren't aimed specifically at us, and nobody was looking to go after third years in the middle of a larger fight. At least, not until Sirius registered what was happening and started hurling near-combat spells and some fairly serious curses at the Slytherin upperclassmen.
*Decided to show some house spirit,* I thought savagely, cursing my too-impulsive friend. That decision had led directly to our entire group getting thoroughly beaten — James and I caught the worst of the curses, and someone hit Sirius with an impact spell that broke both his arms. The Slytherins had paid for that immediately, deeply regretting the choice to divert attention from the sixth and seventh year Gryffindors pressing down on them from the other side — but that was cold comfort from a hospital bed.
The wing was genuinely overflowing. Madam Pomfrey and her assistants were frantically working through more than fifty students. Somewhere in the background Dumbledore was speaking, McGonagall was hissing like an enraged cat, and Slughorn appeared to be expressing his displeasure in an aggrieved mutter. The other heads of house and various professors were all circling somewhere nearby as well.
"At least Peter got away with just a good scare," Potter said, chewing without enthusiasm on a meat pasty that the sole uninjured Marauder had retrieved from the kitchens. "Was it worth it, Black?"
"Absolutely worth it. Did you see what our lot did to those snakes?!" Sirius replied, entirely unbowed, attempting to maneuver his own pasty toward his mouth with both arms in plaster casts. He wasn't having much success, but nobody was planning to help the primary author of their current situation. He'd earned this.
Bone-Mending Potion and a night in plaster was unpleasant, certainly. But James had caught some sort of parasitic curse, which Madam Pomfrey's assistants had removed fairly promptly — though even so, he was advised to avoid magic for three days and had been prescribed a course of potions lasting nearly a month. Something that brought James no joy whatsoever. Potions were almost never better than tolerable, and the majority sat somewhere on the spectrum between cold vomit and a rancid nettle brew.
I'd also received my fair share. Enough of it, in fact, that my chest currently resembled one large festering inflammation. It would be gone in a couple of days at best — and that rate of recovery was something I owed entirely to being a werewolf.
Without my elevated endurance and accelerated regeneration, I might have been looking at two weeks in this wing, even with the medical bandages doing solid work. The runes woven into them helped dispel foreign magic from the body and blocked most of the pain, which was why I could more or less ignore the wound in the meantime.
"Come on, Remus, back me up a little!" Sirius appealed to me, starting to lose his sparring match with Potter while I quietly worked through the stack of meat pasties. "You held out the longest. You must have seen every detail of how our side dismantled those snakes."
"Don't shout so loudly. Silencing charms aren't absolute," I said, wincing at him. "Though you're not entirely wrong. It was interesting to watch a battle of that scale at close range."
"There, you see, James? Moony's on my side." Sirius brightened considerably, which infuriated James to a corresponding degree.
"It would have been even more interesting to watch all the way to the end," I added, addressing no one in particular. "Without having to panic through the back half of it while dodging spells and transfigured debris flying in your direction."
That took some of the wind out of Sirius's sails.
"Fair enough. I didn't realize just how big the gap was between me and the upper years. Even the defensive artifacts barely helped," he admitted, managing at last to bite off a chunk of his pasty.
"It comes down to concentration and volume of magical force," I said, having read about this particular nuance more than a month ago in a book on advanced magical theory, and now having tested it personally. "Experienced wizards learn over time to control how much magic they put into a spell. And trust me, in the middle of that fight, the upper years were giving everything they had."
"No wonder my Protego and Impervius broke so easily," Sirius muttered, clearly not wanting to develop that line of thought any further.
I, on the other hand, couldn't stop thinking about the battle.
I had lasted longer than the others — figuring out early enough to layer my Shield Charm with a Transfiguration and a conjured cloud of magical smoke. The combination meant I could see my opponents clearly while the Slytherins were attacking largely blind, apparently not anticipating that anyone would cast charms like that in a relatively enclosed space.
But it hadn't been enough to avoid the injuries. The upper years were simply stronger. They cast faster, knew spells I didn't recognize, and applied them in ways that showed genuine combat experience — combining ordinary charms with curses, Transfiguration, and what seemed, in a few cases, like actual Dark magic.
Whether what I'd seen actually qualified as Dark magic, I honestly didn't know. My predecessor hadn't known the first thing about it, and I hadn't given the subject much attention either, even though I was aware that some books on the topic were available in the open section of the school library.
*Something to look into. Because this won't be the last of it. I'd be surprised if our year didn't try to retaliate against Slytherin today for putting three-quarters of the Marauders in the hospital wing. And even if the other boys hold off, Sirius is going to start something the moment we're recovered.*
I kept turning over what I remembered about the factors that determined a spell's power, because I had not at all enjoyed feeling the weight behind the upper years' attacks.
*Even Depulso — one of my favorite spells — hit completely differently in the hands of that Slytherin seventh year, Sheldon or whatever his name was. The force was on a different level than even my best attempts. Is the age gap really responsible for that kind of difference?*
I'd heard plenty of offhand remarks about how wizards grew stronger with age and consistent practice, but no one had ever specified how or in what terms that strength was measured. Not even Lyall Lupin had elaborated on the subject. For the people who lived here, the fact that wizards became more powerful with time was simply obvious — and so, by extension, their spells grew stronger. A sufficiently powerful wizard could sustain magic longer, employ large-scale Transfiguration more freely, access what was apparently referred to as "higher magic," and even manage a spell or two without a wand.
Though wandless and higher magic were considered the exclusive territory of the genuinely gifted. Most witches and wizards, even in old age, lacked the raw capacity for truly powerful spellwork without a focus. Lumos on the tip of a finger — that was the practical ceiling for an ordinary wizard, or so I believed.
*How little I actually know about magic. And the people who live here seem to have never really thought through the specifics either. Magical strength appears to be a thoroughly abstract concept for most witches and wizards.* I turned the thought over with some frustration. *Maybe there's something more concrete in the advanced Charms books. Some mention of what actually governs a wizard's power.*
"There has to be something to it beyond just age," I whispered, almost soundlessly, wrestling with the dull ache from the wound on my chest and the rather sharper irritation burning in the same vicinity. "I refuse to believe that a simple age difference accounts for that kind of gap."
"What was that, Remus?" Sirius had caught the tail end anyway, making me swear under my breath. In the course of my thinking I'd somehow forgotten that he and James were still lying in the adjacent beds.
"Nothing specific. Just thinking about how to increase the strength of my own spells," I said, remembering halfway through that the assistance of my better-connected friends might be genuinely useful here.
"Hmm. My cousin Andromeda always said I cast fairly strong spells for my age." Sirius started out thoughtful, then warmed quickly into his more typical enthusiasm. "I'll write and ask her what that actually depends on and whether there's a way to improve it."
"Good. Write to her." I paused. "Something tells me today wasn't the last time we'll be taking hits from Slytherin. And I'd rather not catch another round of curses if I can help it." The request was casual, but the nudge was clear — I wanted him to share Andromeda's answer.
"That much is certain," James said with a short, humorless laugh, still wincing from the memory of having the parasitic curse removed. "Maybe I should write to my father too. He warned me about potential trouble — let him suggest how to deal with it now that it's arrived."
"Mm." I let a beat pass. "What if we arrange joint training sessions? Something like our own dueling club?"
I watched them hopefully.
"Not a bad idea. We'd just need somewhere to hold sessions," James said, perking up at the concept. Sirius, whose mouth was occupied with the last of his pasty, nodded vigorously in full agreement.
"Leave finding the room to me. I have an idea," I said, smiling — thinking of a remarkable room that was supposedly located on the eighth floor of one of Hogwarts's towers. I'd planned to search for it during the holidays, but McGonagall's detentions had taken care of that. No matter. There was urgent reason to find a private training space now, which meant the search could begin as soon as we were out of this wing.
I did have to talk the boys out of helping me look. I didn't want to explain how I knew about the room — partly because the information might turn out to be entirely wrong. The Room of Requirement was only ever a detail in a series of novels written by someone in my previous world. It might be pure fiction, or it might be something lost in translation or adaptation. I'd never actually finished the books.
"Focus on what you're going to write to your families," I told James and Sirius instead. "See if you can get your hands on actual instructional material on combat magic. I'm fairly sure something like that exists. I'll handle the rest myself."
Hogwarts had three towers that reached eight floors, which didn't narrow things down dramatically. But I'd watched the films with my parents nearly every New Year's without fail, so I had a reasonable memory of the conditions required to open the Room of Requirement.
All that remained was confirming that those conditions were fact rather than fiction — and that nothing crucial had been lost in translation or cinematic adaptation somewhere along the way.