The air on the platform was chilly and, despite weather claims to the contrary, the sky was already starting to cloud over, even though the news had reported an unusual bout of sun to welcome in the start of September and the official end of summer hols.
Remus didn’t mind much. He came prepared, dressed in his customary four layers even in what was still considered ‘summer’ by most. Smiling to himself for some unspoken contest won, he wrapped his arms around himself and rubbed briskly at his shoulders, getting ready to brave the traffic towards platforms 9 and 10.
Hope and Lyall had accompanied him to the station and left him reluctantly, half an hour to eleven, with an embarrassing amount of hugging and repeat reminders to write, and frequently. Remus, assuring them even more repeatedly that he would, gave in to their smothering just enough to be accommodating, before making a show of glancing at his watch and waving them off.
They meant well and a part of Remus that had not really survived past boyhood started guiltily whenever he acted in ways that, he imagined, let them down. But James and Sirius and Peter would be arriving soon, and he hoped to meet up with them before boarding the train. He’d have to attend to his prefect’s duties up front before taking a customary seat with them in their cabin, and he’d like to catch up on the much-missed summer gossip that fell between the cracks in their weekly owls over the summer.
His parents knew all about his friends, of course. And they were delighted beyond words that he had found a group to which he could belong. But after revealing their big secret to him only last year -- that they had studied to become illegal animagi to accompany him during his monthly transformations -- Remus had been keeping most of his exploits with his friends at school a secret. What the three of them had done for him touched him beyond words, but there was no escaping the criminal recrimination, should word get out that three underage wizards had become unregistered animagi on school grounds. The sentence for unregistered animagi, if caught, was a life sentence in Azkaban.
Besides, his parents had taken to, since second year, giving each other doe-eyed looks over his head when they thought he wasn’t looking, every time he brought up the fact that his friends had figured out his secret and accepted him in spite of it.
It was the one thing Hope and Lyall had feared above all, and the reason for most of his isolated and lonely childhood. But he trusted James and Sirius and Peter with his life, and implored his parents to do the same. They were grateful to the boys, but still Remus tried not to push the subject whenever he could avoid it.
So though he was guilty about shoving them off, he breathed a sigh of relief, leaning back for a breather up against the ticket booth, that his parents had gone before his friends had arrived.
Glancing at the clock by the terminal, Remus ducked his hands inside the pocket of his cardigan and took up the handle of his trolley, startling Nyctimene, his perpetually ruffled owl, from her daytime slumber. She gave a hoot of distaste and scowled at him with lidded eyes.
“Sorry,” he said, sheepish, and eased the cart along towards the platform, keeping an eye and ear out for his friends.
