“Will it hurt?” Remus asked Professor Dumbledore, trying to sound brave and casual, instead of what he was: timid, and shy.“Not at all,” Dumbledore said gravely. “I have been told the opposite. It makes the transformations more bearable. It helps keep your bones from snapping, and it keeps your mind human.”Remus swallowed dryly but tried not to let himself hope. “More human,” he corrected. “Tame.”“Tamer,” Dumbledore allowed. “More of a man.”“And less of a monster,” added Remus lightly.“You are not, and never have been, a monster,” said Dumbledore quietly, handing Remus the potion bottle to inspect. “And Mistress Pomfrey is on shift guard tonight. She’ll see that you get it.”Remus left the office politely, his head whirling, but he should have guessed his friends were waiting outside the stone griffins.“Did they get it?” James asked eagerly, his voice, as always too loud. Peter hushed him, which he ignored. He did, however, modulate his tone. “Did they get it?”“They have it,” Remus managed, staring at the ground, his heart hammering. His friends were going to do something reckless. Something stupid. “But you can’t come tonight,” he said, feeling the lump painful in his throat. Dismayed cries met his pronouncement.“It’s a new potion,” he hissed, whirling on a foot. “They aren’t just going to give it to me and leave the first night. They’ll be staying to observe the effects.”“Sleeping draft?” suggested Sirius cheekily, and Remus glanced down at Sirius’ hands, ink stained and with several silver rings in order to avoid flushing white at his eyes. “No,” he said severely, and he pointed a finger at James. “You’rehead boy,” he added severely. “You can’t be telling one of your prefects you’ll be running out after midnight just because they have a potion that might work.”“Might work?” asked James loudly, disbelieving. “Might? Mate, we’re past might. We’re on mass-producing. We’re on does work. People are writing about it in all the papers. They’re making sure everyone on the registry is getting a dose.”Remus felt his face shutter shut at the mention of the Registry. At seventeen, he had come of age the year previously. He hadn’t yet had to register his lycanthropy with the government on account of still being a student, but he knew the second he graduated he would. And his career would be over before it started. All his years of studying to be a healer; all his practice potions and extra time in the library - gone. He’d be lucky to find housing, much less a job as a caretaker. They wouldn’t want filth cleaning up filth. He felt the shuffling behind him, and knew Sirius was elbowing James hard, and Peter stepping on his feet as James yelped in protest, remembering too late Remus’ sensitivity on the subject.“We’ll come tomorrow,” said Sirius bracingly. “After you see how it goes.”Remus couldn’t look at him; Sirius knew too well the darkness, more than any of them. He could always sense it when Remus was spiraling. He just nodded, and faked a look at his coming of age watch. “I’ve got rounds,” he managed, and his throat closed again on the automatic sentence: with Lily. But he didn’t have rounds with Lily, not anymore. Not since she became Head Girl. He rounded alone, or with Caradoc from Ravenclaw. “See you later then?” asked Peter hopefully, and Remus remembered he had promised to help Peter on his Advanced Charms essay. “No, sorry,” he lied, embarrassed. “I’ve got to go straight there to…prepare and that. And it’s winter so the sun sets early.”“Right,” and Peter’s face fell in disappointment, immediately turning to James. “You done that essay for Flitwick yet?”“Yes,” said James, catching sight of Peeves coming up a hallway and hurriedly ducking them behind a tapestry to wait him out. “You can look at mine later.”“Thanks,” said Peter, beaming, and puffing out a huge breath of relief, causing the tapestry - already bulging - to flutter.“Just run, Remus!” shouted Sirius as Peeves began whacking the tapestry rug face with the arm off a suit of armor. “We’ll see you in the morning!”Remus ran for it, letting the bewildered enchanted suit wander into his path as it quested for its missing limb. * * *The dawn was pink and lovely, with birds clattering in their migratory v formations overhead as they ascended up from their night on the Black Lake. Remus breathed the harsh taste of frost on his tongue as he stood just outside the radius of the Whomping Willow. No one was up at this time, and he relished the solitude. Looking up at the castle, all seemed still and deserted, and he felt possessory of it like this: alone, when no one else could see it. When not even the Staff that apparated to the gates and walked in had yet appeared, or even awake at home with their families.To his utter astonishment, Sirius was waiting for him in the Commons, completely dressed. “Let’s go downstairs to breakfast,” he whispered. “I don’t want to wake James and Peter.”“Is everything okay?” Remus asked, uneasily. Sirius would happily sleep until 1 every day if he was allowed to. “I wanted to talk to you.” Sirius had to follow that completely heart-stopping statement with a maddeningly long silence as they climbed out the Portrait Hole, saw Peeves on the long stretch of blank wall on the Seventh Floor, and swung around on silent tiptoe to a back ladder-like staircase so narrow they had to descend to the sixth floor one at a time. “Wh-what,” panted Remus slightly as they jogged around the corner back to the main staircase to resume their early dawn trek towards breakfast, “did you want to talk about?”“Hold on,” Sirius muttered as they passed a few early risers, mostly girls with journals in hand, or in leg warmers and jogging shorts on their way back to their dormitories to change. They all gave polite, silent nods at one another, almost embarrassed to be caught in their private routines in a castle full of people.There was only one other person up so early at the Gryffindor breakfast table, and no staff yet at the gleaming already-laid staff table. The food was always steaming, but while Sirius eagerly piled his plate high with beans, toast, scrambled eggs, and roast potatoes, Remus could only pour himself some tea to calm his queasy stomach. It was the first time his queasiness the morning after a transformation was not from the venom or his rough night before. In fact, he had slept- slept! - most of the night, something he had not done during a full moon since he was five. “It went okay?” asked Sirius, glancing over at Remus, who suddenly realized how very warm Sirius was in a hall that was cold and drafty without a press of people. He wrapped his hands more firmly around his tea, and Sirius pressed buttered toast on his plate with a severe look.“It went…” and Remus’ throat wasn’t dry from toast crumbs. “It went better than…than even us, running out.”Sirius grinned broadly, hugely. “Really?”Remus couldn’t not respond to that smile, like the sun on a cloudy day. He grinned back. Something twinged in his heart that cast his eyes down towards his plate. He was dreaming. He was everything parents whispered to their children at night and more. He was a monster and a horrible accident of fate. Men couldn’t like men, especially not Sirius who could have any pick of the girls in the castle - and often did. “So we can come tonight?” Sirius interrupted his spiraling guilt, and Remus wrenched his gaze from his plate into sparkling brown eyes. Around the crinkles in the corners; the carefully gelled bangs falling out of place to frame his face. He felt his heart beat doubletime and was glad Sirius didn’t have his dog hearing. “Of course,” he managed. * * *The night was sharp, cold, wild. Remus could feel it in his blood even before his skin began to sear. James carefully walked down the halls, blatantly abusing his Head Boy privileges while pretending to abide them. He had left Lily managing the commons with a flickered glance up at the moon out the windows. Next to him, he could hear the heavy breathing Sirius shuffling under the invisibility cloak, which could not cover Sirius’ feet and head at the same time without crouching.
