Sirius paused, lifting his head to sniff the air. There was the faintest trace of the scent he was seeking, but it seemed to be an old track. He growled softly in frustration.

This was the fourth Full Moon that he'd attempted to keep watch on Remus after he transformed into a werewolf, but this time the beast had been agitated about something, and had set off at a gallop. With his greater size and stronger build, he had easily outdistanced Sirius's dog form, and now Sirius was reduced to wandering the tracks that led into the Forbidden Forest, trying to pick up his scent.

He wished James and Peter would hurry up and learn to transform too, so that he wouldn't have to track Remus alone. Part of the problem was that the werewolf never seemed to tire, and spent all night hunting, and roaming the forest and surrounding countryside, with Sirius panting in his wake.

It had proved quite entertaining, however, to recount to Remus everything he'd eaten as a werewolf – mostly rabbits, though he apparently wasn't fussy, and after learning that during one night he'd made a meal off a long-dead crow, Remus had turned an interesting shade of green, and had spent the rest of the day in the hospital wing throwing up into a bucket. There hadn't been any trace of evidence to back up Sirius's claim, but the mere idea was enough to make Remus sick.

A faint noise reached him. Sirius pricked up his ears, listening intently, then began to move in the direction it was coming from. He went slowly at first, but he broke into a trot as he finally picked up the scent he had been searching for. Ten minutes later, he arrived at the edge of a little clearing in the trees. Remus was lying down, his muzzle resting on his paws, watching something. Slowly, Sirius crept forward, curious to see what it was.

On the other side of the clearing was a shaggy she-wolf, keeping guard as three youngsters played and tumbled around in the drifts of dead leaves.

Startled, Sirius looked from the cubs to Remus, then back again. Was this what it appeared to be? Could Remus have….? Sirius was pretty sure that werewolves couldn't reproduce that way while in their wolf form. But that didn't mean he wasn't going to tease him unmercifully about the possibility that he was the proud father of a litter of pups!

He pictured the probable look on Remus's face, and snorted with laughter. In his dog form, the laugh came out as a sneeze, and in an instant the werewolf was on his feet, turning towards Sirius with a snarl. There was no way Sirius could outrun him, and fighting would have been madness. Instinctively, he crouched down, adopting a placating, submissive posture. The werewolf walked towards him, sniffing cautiously, his hackles raised, while Sirius remained frozen.

After a minute, Remus seemed to decide that the dog posed no threat to him. His hackles settled, and he turned and dropped to a crouch, then relaxed, sprawling sideways, and lowering his head to rest on his paws again.

Cautiously, Sirius got up and went closer. When Remus raised his head to look at him, Sirius dropped into a crouch of his own, wagging his tail ingratiatingly. After a moment, the werewolf thumped his tail a couple of times in the dead leaves, before he turned back to watch the cubs in the clearing. Sirius sighed, resigning himself to a long, boring wait, but he soon found that it was rather pleasant to just lie there, watching the cubs as they jumped at fallen leaves, and wrestled good-naturedly together.

Maybe Remus had nothing to do with the litter of cubs, maybe he just liked watching them. Maybe Sirius wouldn't tease him about it later… but that was too much to ask! Even if he didn't believe it himself, Sirius was going to tease Remus about his 'family' anyway, just to see his reaction.

Sirius wagged his tail and sneezed again. Without looking up, Remus also wagged. Whatever else they might – or might not – be able to do, it appeared that a werewolf was, at least, capable of making friends with what it thought of as its own kind

The four Marauders waited outside the main door of the school. It was almost the Christmas holidays, and the weather had turned bitterly cold. Sleety rain had been falling all day, and James had been inspired to repeat Sirius's animagus transformation for the benefit of Lily and her friends. They knew she'd be coming this way, on her way to the Herbology Greenhouse.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Remus murmured. He was getting tired of James' increasingly harebrained schemes to get Lily's attention.

Beside him, James grinned. "Don't tell me you've suddenly remembered that prefects aren't supposed to approve of unregistered animagus transformations?" he asked.

Remus shrugged. "I just think doing it with so many people around is asking for trouble."

On James' other side, Sirius smirked. "Sounds like he's turning responsible on us, now he's got a wife and kids to support!"

Remus flushed darkly. Sirius had wasted no time in telling the other Marauders how he'd found Remus, in werewolf form, taking a lot of interest in a she-wolf and her cubs. Despite finding a book in the library that stated categorically that a werewolf was incapable of reproducing while in its wolf state, the other boys had teased him unmercifully.

However, this time the sound of voices approaching distracted their attention, and James said, "Remember, I have to look like a stray – so as soon as I transform, you have to dunk me in a puddle, so it looks like I've been out in the rain all day."

"With pleasure!" Remus muttered, but as soon as James had changed into his kitten form, Sirius picked him up and splashed him with water from the nearest puddle. He caught Remus's annoyed glance.

"We just need him wet, not drowned!" he said with a grin. He, Remus and Peter ducked back behind the stone pillars, leaving the kitten sitting at the foot of the stone steps, shivering. When Lily and Solstice reached the steps, James stood up, and meowed as pathetically as he could.

"Look – it's a kitten. A tiny one!" Solstice exclaimed. She ran down the steps. "Poor little thing must be half frozen." She scooped it up, then her face changed. "It feels – weird…" she said, her voice perplexed. Behind the pillars, the boys exchanged glances; they should have remembered the younger girl's odd senses when it came to animals.

"Weird? Oh, you mean like that dog we saw at the start of term?" Lily asked, remembering how Solstice had reacted to the big black dog they'd encountered. Solstice nodded, and held out the kitten.

"You take it," she said. James tried to look appealing, but Lily took a step backwards.

"I'm allergic to cats."

"Oh – yes, I'd forgotten," Solstice said. "Well, what are we going to do with it, then? We can't just leave it here – it'll probably freeze." A large, familiar figure appeared in the doorway, and Solstice looked up. "Hagrid! I bet he'd look after it," she said to Lily. She started back up the steps. "Hagrid, look - we found a kitten. It's soaked through. I bet it's a stray. Can you take care of it? We can't because Lily's allergic to cats." She gave the scrap of black fur to Hagrid. James looked even smaller and more pathetic than ever, crouched in the groundskeeper's huge hands.

"A' course I can look after it. A kitten'll be no trouble – not after that chimera!"

Solstice returned the grin he gave her, remembering her encounter a couple of years ago with a baby chimera that Hagrid had been keeping in his hut.

"What are you going to call it?" she asked, still grinning, knowing Hagrid's penchant for giving entirely inappropriate names to his pets.

"Well, is it a boy or a girl?" Hagrid asked. "Can't name it properly if yeh don't know that!"

Solstice shrugged. "I don't know – we only just found it."

Hagrid gently seized the kitten by the scruff of the neck, and flipped it onto its back. It promptly struggled and hissed, but Hagrid just smiled at its futile antics, and and held it still while he inspected its rear end.

"It's a little boy," he announced. He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Well, seein' as it's sorta snowin', I think I'll call him Snowy."

Lily and Solstice looked at each other and giggled. "Hagrid! You can't call a black kitten 'Snowy'," Lily protested.

"Don' see why not! I can call him what I like," Hagrid told her firmly.

Grinning, Solstice said, "When I touched him, I got a weird feeling from him. As if – as if he's too smart to be an ordinary cat."

Hagrid nodded. "In that case, he's probably part-kneazle. Smart animals, kneazles. Yeh, that'll be it." He tucked the kitten into one of his huge pockets. "You girls better be getting' along teh class now," he said. "I'll let yeh know how the little felleh gets on."

"It's Herbology next," Solstice told him, "so we can walk part of the way with you." A plaintive meow came from Hagrid's pocket. "Poor little thing! He probably misses his Mum," Solstice commented, as they headed down the pathway towards the greenhouses, and Hagrid's hut beyond.

The three remaining Marauders looked at each other, speechlessly. They hadn't known that Lily was allergic to cats, and certainly hadn't anticipated that the girls would put James into Hagrid's care. Remus grinned.

"Well, Hagrid will take good care of little Snowy," he said. Now at least he had a comeback, next time James teased him about being the father of a pack of wolf pups!

James paused at the bottom of the steps and glanced back at the three boys following close behind, before leading the way along the path towards the woods. Not the forbidden forest; although the temptation was great, their goal tonight was the quiet grove where they had previously practiced their animagus magic. They had to go quietly; it was after eleven, and the lower floors of the school were mostly in darkness. Hopefully, no-one would discover the unlocked door while they were gone.

When they finally reached it, James wasted no time in pulling out his wand. After the abortive attempt to impress Lily by turning in to a kitten, he had decided it was time to discover which animal he was really supposed to change into. He refused to believe that his true animagus form was a kitten! So he was determined to work on producing a corporeal patronus, convinced that this was they key to understanding what he should be aiming for.

He focused for a minute, then said loudly, "Expecto Patronum!"

Silver light began to pour from his wand, solidifying. Definitely an animal of some kind, though indistinct. But a large animal. The light faded, and James took a deep breath before trying again. "Expecto Patronum!"

The light welled up again, condensing into a large animal form. This time it continued to swirl around the animal, and James could make out the sturdy legs, strong back and head held proudly, topped by a towering rack of antlers. Suddenly it leapt across the clearing, jumped a fallen log, and raced off into the forest, its light fading as it went.

James lowered his wand, and looked at the other boys. "A stag! Did you see that, it was..." His voice trailed off. He couldn't find the words to adequately describe his patronus, and how it had made him feel to produce such a magnificent aparition.

After a moment more, he grinned at his friends. "Well, now for stage two..." He walked a little further into the clearing, and took a breath, just as he had before his successful patronus spell. He closed his eyes, remembering the stag, then felt the now-familiar sensation of his body flowing into a different form. But this time, it seemed to happen without effort, and seconds later, he found himself standing on four legs. He turned his head, and felt a strange heaviness above his head. He jerked his head up and down a few times. Yes, it felt as he would imagine it would, to have antlers. He walked across the clearing towards the other boys.

He'd become used to having four legs while in kitten form, but this was different, his legs were much longer, requiring a different movement. Then he stopped, and after just a moment's concentration, was back in his human form. He stared at his friends for a moment, then suddenly let out a wild whoop of joy.

"I did it! That's what I'm supposed to be, a stag. It was so easy that time, once I knew the sort of animal I was supposed to be."

Sirius and Remus slapped him on the back, congratulating him, but Peter hung back, looking downcast. He'd been afraid of this, now the others would be off exploring the grounds at full moon, while he was stuck in the dormitory alone, because he couldn't transform.

James glanced up, and saw the look on his face. Sometimes Peter's diffidence irritated him, but today, elated by his success, he felt a sudden sympathy for him. He walked across the clearing and patted the other boy on the shoulder.

"Don't worry - we won't leave you behind," he assured him. He glanced back at Remus and Sirius, then continued, "We'll help you learn to transform. But not tonight," he added, as a biting wind shrieked through the treetops. He turned and began to lead the way back to school, while he and Sirius began to bombard Peter with advice on the best way to achieve an animagus transformation.