Summary: The Marauders return to Hogwarts, but is everything okay between them? James seems more and more focused on Remus, who seems more and more distant. Sirius is worried about is brother and Peter can't seem to keep them all together. Will their friendship survive?

The Messer Chronicles

This Most Guarded Secret

When a secret is revealed, it is the fault of the man who confided it

~French Proverb

Chapter One

Turn and Face the Strange

The key to change… is to let go of fear

~Rosanne Cash

The light sound of birds chirping ad the far off sound of joyful children playing filtered through the trees that surrounded the Lupin property. The trees created a barrier around the small home so Remus could lie out on the grass and hear the entire goings on of the neighbourhood. But not be seen by anyone. It was one of the sandy haired boy's favourite ways to spend an afternoon. Sometimes he'd bring out a book and read that on the soft blanket of grass, but other times he's just lay on the grass and listen, daydreaming.

He'd dream that he was part of the joyful shouts and giggles. That he was out front with the neighbourhood children, playing their schoolyard games right along with them. It was his own form of escape from his solitary life of lying on his back grass. Even after he'd made friends with some boys from school, Remus still enjoyed his daydreams. The only difference was that he replaced the faceless neighbourhood boys and girls with the voices and visages of his friends.

'I wonder what James, Sirius, and Peter are up to?' the young boy mused. It had been a couple of weeks since he'd written to his friends or they'd written to him. He was just about to get up and grab some parchment to write some letters when his mother's sweet, smiling face appeared at the back door.

"Remus, I was going to go down to the market. Would you like to come with? Get out of the house for a little bit?" her voice was soft and almost song-like. She smiled warmly at her only son as she spoke. Remus barely missed a beat before nodding his head.

Because of Remus' problem, and the number of times its revelation, or even the potential of its revelation, had caused the family to uproot their lives, Remus had, in recent years put himself on what essentially amounted to house arrest. The young boy rarely left the house or interacted with anyone outside his parents and the letters he sent to his friends and received from them. So, Remus readily took any opportunity to leave his house, even if was only for a few minutes.

"Excellent, well go wash up and we'll head on out as soon as you're ready," his mother spoke. Remus nodded, jumping up and running inside his small house. As he ran, the sounds of the neighbourhood children playing beyond the ring of trees filtered back to him. For the briefest of seconds, before he burst through his back door, he was running right alongside those neighbourhood kids.

"Slow down there, Remus. You might break an arm or something," Remus' father called jovially from the front room. The young, sandy haired boy paused and momentarily poked his head into the room. It was a small room, crammed full with furniture books, and his father's work papers and objects, but it was probably his favourite room in the house.

His father sat in his regular chair, tapping on the wireless with his wand. The wireless was rather old and not great at consistently holding a station; often it would play static in the middle of a program. This meant that Remus' father was perpetually working on the device in an attempt to repair it.

"How's it going?" Remus asked his father, slightly apprehensively. Lyall Lupin's favourite Quidditch team, the Caerphilly Catapults, was going to be playing that night and the Lupin males had plans to curl up in the front sitting room to listen to the match. That is, if Lyall could get the wireless to work and stop cutting out.

"I think I've almost got it. Should definitely be in tip-top shape for tonight's festivities! Are you off to the shops with your mum?" Lyall didn't look up once as he spoke to his son but Remus didn't mind. He'd much rather have the wireless fixed.

"Yeah, I'm supposed to be washing up right now," Remus spoke in way of a goodbye before dashing up the stairs to his room and the small bathroom that, as an only child, he got to call his own. He quickly cleaned his hands and face, checked his clothes in the mirror to make sure they weren't dirty or stained, and then headed back downstairs.

As Remus walked through the streets of his small village with his mum, he took a sort of inventory of his life. 'All things considered, I think I've got it pretty good. My parents are loving. We have a roof over our heads and food on the table. We can spend time listening to Quidditch on the wireless and enjoying each other's company. I have good friends and am learning lots of things at school. The only thing is, well, my monthly problem…'

That summer, before his third year, Remus faced his worst experience of his monthly problem he'd ever had. It started with the lead up. If Remus hadn't known the day of his changes, hadn't meticulously tracked and recorded the phases of the moon for at least the upcoming decade, he would know it was coming because of the way he started to feel. At least a week before W-Day, Remus started feeling achy. It was a deep pain, experienced almost everywhere on his body, done to the bone kind of pain. It made him feel wrong, like his body wasn't entirely his, and that it was in the wrong form. And this pain meant that he wasn't able to sleep for very long each night, resulting in an increasingly tired and sickly appearing boy.

His parents, after nearly a decade of dealing with his W-Day transformations and the consequences of the devastating changes on his small body, knew how to deal with him. It involved a lot of avoiding their son and walking around on eggshells. It made Remus feel endlessly guilty, that his parents acted like that around him, like they were absolutely terrified to say or do anything lest it upset him.

That August, Remus was more on edge than normal. The smallest thing, his tea being too hot or too cold, could set him off. Normally, he was clam, warm and friendly. However, leading up to W-Day he was angry, prone to yelling, and quite violent.

"It's too hot to drink! What am I supposed to do with this? I can't drink this!" Remus shouted, throwing the small, delicate cup across the room. It hit the wall and shattered. Almost instantly, Remus felt guilty and tried to pick up the small pieces. Lyall Lupin, who had given his son the offending tea, quietly whispered a 'repairo'. The cup, including the pieces that Remus had picked up, jumped up, mended themselves, and came to rest gently on the cluttered coffee table.

An evansco spell vanished the spilt tea and all evidence of his outburst. That just made Remus feel even worse about it all. Unable to bare it, he ran up the stairs, closed the door of his bedroom, making sure not to slam it, and threw himself down on the bed. He'd never lashed out like that, causing actual damage and breaking one of his mother's precious teacups. It was absolutely devastating.

His father came up to his room about ten minutes later. When Lyall entered his son's room, he didn't speak a single word. He just silently padded across the small carpeted room and sat down carefully on the edge of Remus' small bed. Still without a word, Lyall began to rub comforting circles on his back. The warmth and unconditional love of the gesture made Remus begin to sob. His small, thin body shook with the outpouring of emotion; Lyall continued his small, comforting gesture.

Finally, Remus cried himself out, feeling a little better, but not 100%. Slowly, he sat up and turned to look at his father. With unfallen tears still shimmering in his eyes, he hugged his father tight and whispered a small 'I'm sorry.'

"I know it wasn't really you, but the terrible thing inside of you. Now, try and get some sleep. I have a feeling tonight is going to be rough," Lyall spoke. He then squeezed his son, kissed him gently on the forehead, and quietly left Remus alone in his bedroom.

Remus' dad was correct. That evening's transformation was the worst yet. He often didn't remember much, a combination of the pain of his body rearranging itself and the beast taking over. What he could remember from the precious evening's transformation was pain the likes of which he'd never experienced before. He also felt a strange sensation of loneliness and fear, though he couldn't identify why he was feeling them.

When he woke up the next morning, his entire body ached, almost to the point where he couldn't even breathe without it hurting. He also felt absolutely exhausted. Deciding not to fight against his aching, weak body, Remus once again allowed the numbing effects of sleep to overcome him. Most of the rest of the day, August 15, Remus was asleep in his bed, not really eating anything. It was definitely the worst W-Day and post W-Day yet.

He really hoped it wasn't a sig for how the rest of his year would go…