Remus has learned to fear the moon.

He is familiar with the pain of the transformation now-it has sunk deep into his bones, ever present, even when the moon is waning. Joints click when he moves-his knees, in particular are sore. The family tries to joke about it-Father says that Remus has always seemed much older than his years. He laughs when he says it, but there is something false in that smile, and Remus doesn't find the joke funny at all.

He is eleven now, and small for his age. His skin is pale, almost translucent, he's scrawny and sometimes his hands shake when its dark and that silver light floods his bedroom. He hates the moon. He hates the change.

He's elven and two days old when Dumbledore arrives on his doorstep.

Remus pulls the door open at 9am. His parents are out at the market. They'd stopped taking him years ago-they didn't like the stares and the whispers. Remus has gotten used to them, but his mother still cries at the snickers, so Remus sleeps in on the mornings they travel to the market for food.

So he is alone when the older wizard's knocking wakes him. Dumbledore is polite, but when he looks at Remus with those eyes-so blue, so knowing, the boy's breath catches in his throat. His heart is suddenly roaring in his ears-the blood pulsing and racing almost like it does during the change. He's alive with energy and nervous apprehension.

'Remus Lupin," the wizard says, the words gentle, "May I come in? I have something I would like to speak to you about."

It all happens in a blur-the letter, the train, the robes that are a little too big and scratchy against the back of his neck. Remus feels like he simply blinks and suddenly he is sitting in a compartment on a train, rushing towards a place he never thought he would attend. He's excited, but he's not sure if the rapid pounding of his heart and the tightness in his chest is from terror or the thrill of a new adventure.

He's never really been on an adventure before, accept when reading.

The two boys in his compartment are chatting, aimlessly. One is obviously well cared for- his robes are pressed and neat and his skin holds a healthy, tanned glow. Curious, mischievous eyes glance at Remus from behind a round pair of glasses. Remus thinks he imagines the glance, but when the boy smiles with just the corner of his mouth and says, "Hi," Remus starts a little. He's not used to interacting with people, much.

"Hello," he says, the word getting caught in his tight throat. His voice sounds hesitant and hoarse. The boy's is lazily confidant, but also kind. "I'm James Potter." He holds out a tanned hand.

Remus takes it. James's grip is firm. Remus's father has always said that you could judge a man by the strength and confidence of his handshake.

The boy sitting next to James coughs something like a laugh, tossing his hair back-it's long, longer than Remus's, and looks like its meant to hide his face. Playfully shoving James to the side, he extends his hand. "Sirius Black," His voice is deep and rolling, almost arrogant, but there is a kind of weight behind that Remus thinks he recognizes. Sirius has old eyes-older than eleven, anyway.

"Remus Lupin," Remus says. There is a strange kind of weight to his words. Sirius's handshake is not quite as firm as James's, but its still strong.

Sirius tilts his head to the side, a slow smile spreading across his face. "We're going to learn magic, boys," he says, as if this isn't obvious.

James guffaws and claps Sirius on the shoulder. They already looks so comfortable with each other, even though they've only just met. Even more surprising, Remus is comfortable with them. They haven't given him any strange looks, they haven't turned to each other and whispered about the faint scars on his cheek. They don't know what he is, they aren't afraid of him. They are just like him. Eleven and scared and intoxicated by the fact they are on a train to a school to learn magic. Remus has grown up with wizards, but there is something so wonderfully thrilling about the fact that they'd seen magic all their lives, but now they were going to learn to use it. Remus Lupin-werewolf, outcast, disappointing child who forced his parents to run from towns because of his reputation. In front of him are two boys who shook his hand. They acknowledge him. Maybe then can be friends.

Remus finds himself smiling. It's a real smile-so full that it hurts.

The hat sorts him into Gryffindor.

His first night, James and Sirius attack him with pillows, laughing and whooping. He holds up his hands to defend himself, but he's laughing too-he's laughing and shouting protests as they fall on him, a tangle of long arms and wild hair and wilder eyes. Eventually one of the older students shouts at them to cut it out and James grabs Sirius by the back of his shirt and throws him off the bed. Remus aims a kick at James's back, pushing him off the edge. James lets out a strangled sound, as he falls onto the floor. Remus grins.

"You really shouldn't throw each other around so much" a soft voice says to Remus's left. He turns.

A boy even smaller than Remus is sitting on the opposite bed, knees tucked up to his chest.

"Why not?" James says, pushing himself up off the floor and giving Remus a playful shove. Remus yelps.

"You'll break the bed," the boy says. There is a slight stutter to his words. "They're not made for three people."

Sirius, hair disheveled and falling in his eyes, stumbles to his feet and flashes them a grin, "I like this one. What's your name?"

"Peter."

"I'm Sirius," Sirius does not extend his hand for a formal handshake. Maybe he think they're all past that now that they all share a bedroom. Somehow, Remus finds this gesture more endearing and sincere than if Sirius had held out his hand. He doesn't know if Peter feels the same way. The other boy is looking at them with something like terrified awe.

"Well," James says extravagantly, throwing himself down on his own bed. "Welcome home, boys."

It is their home.

Remus had never been treated poorly by his parents, but he had never really had a place that felt like home. Hogwarts is home. Despite having to hide himself away in the shack every month, despite the pain that rips his body apart and the nightmare of the wolf that prowls his mind, he is happier here than he has ever been in his life. Sirius, James and Peter accept him, make him laugh. Impossibly, somehow he has found friends.

But if they find out...

The thought makes Remus's stomach churn. He doesn't want to lose this. He doesn't want to lose the feeling when James ruffles his hair, the sharp tug of Peter's anxious grip on his sleeve whenever James and Sirius are planning some elaborate prank that is bound to land them in detention for the fifth time in a month. He doesn't want to lose the feeling of Sirius's arm around his shoulders and the feeling of both of them shaking with laughter-trembling with the wild strength of it.

No, he can't lose that.

So every full moon, he comes up with another excuse. Despite his parent's numerous lectures and warnings, he has never been a good liar. James and Sirius-masters of pranks, tricks and deceptions, are not fooled. He sees it every time he is forced to tell them some hurried story about how his mother is ill and he has to rush home, how he just needs to be alone because he is stressed about classes, how his father has some important family business to tell him...

No, they are not fooled. They play along because they don't want to pry, because they are friends and they are still new, not quite sure how to act around each other when discussions turn down a more personal road.

So Remus runs from the castle, the moon rising, joints screaming, muscles tearing. A wild rush of exhilaration surges through his body as the night darkens. He reaches the shack and curls up on the ground, naked. In the quiet, he can only hear his own labored breathing. He focuses on it as his muscles begin to spasm, the pain, familiar, but never less agonizing.

Breathe.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Try not to think about it, don't think, just breathe, just-

The pain cracks through his whole body, spine shifting, elongating.

He screams and screams. In his home, his parents had worked with him to be quiet through the change. Out here, with the rumors Dumbledore had started, he is free to cry as loud as he wants.

Remus screams until the sound stretches into a howl, and he falls into blackness.

Their second year, when McGonagall is giving a lecture about the dangerous art of becoming an Animagus, Sirius slips Remus a note.

I have an idea!

James, sitting one seat behind Remus, leans forward in his chair, reading over his shoulder. He huffs something like a laugh.

"Mr. Potter," McGonagall's clear, crisp voice stops James's laughter in his throat. Remus hears his friend audibly swallow, but when he speaks his voice is calm, if slightly arrogant. "Is something wrong, Professor?"

She lowers her glasses, eyes beady and disapproving. "Do you find the Transfiguaration amusing, Mr. Potter?"

"No, Professor," if she had been another teacher, Remus can imagine what James would say next, I find it quite dull, actually. But McGonagall is the head of their House, and Remus knows that James actually thinks that the class is brilliant.

"Lupin," she says, turning her gaze to him, "Please refrain from passing notes in my class if you want Gryffindor to win the House Cup."

Blushing furiously, Remus tucks the note into his back pocket. Next to him, Sirius grins.

"We're going to become Animagus," James hisses.

"I'm sorry," Remus says, a little too loudly, though the hallway is crowded with the rush of students hurrying off to class, "what?"

"We're going to become Animagus," Sirius parrots. He is entirely too excited about this-a wild grin is lighting up his whole face, he's practically glowing.

"We've talked about it," Peter says, as if this makes the decision any less insane, "and we all agree. We're going to figure out a way to do it."

This is not making any sense.

"Did you not here that hour long lecture McGonagall gave us? It's dangerous-"

"We know-" James practically whines.

Sirius cuts him off. He's bouncing on the balls of his feet, his hand on Remus's shoulder, repeatedly smacking up and down with his excitement. "We know the risks, Remus, alright? We don't care."

"I wonder what kind of animal I'll be?" Peter muses, and its the way he says it, with such soft wonder and almost childlike innocence that makes Remus snap. He thinks of the agony of the change every month, his body ripping itself apart and reforming into something new and feral and dangerous, his human trapped in his wolf instincts...

McGonagall had not said that the transformation into an Animagus was particularly painful, but there are severe consequences if something goes wrong. Experienced wizards have difficulty getting it right, his friends are not even of age yet. He can't let them feel that kind of pain. He won't.

"This is insane," Remus snaps, shoving Sirius's hand off his shoulder and pushing his way down the crowded hallway.

"It's not," James says, keeping pace him. Sirius and Peter fall into place on his other side. "It's not insane, Remus. It makes sense. Come on, mate, we're trying to help you."

"Help me?" Remus almost laughs at that. He doesn't look at them. There is a strange hollowness clawing at his stomach. Bile burns in the back of his throat. "By turning yourselves into animals? This just sounds like another way for you to end up in Dumbledore's office and a way for you to get more Howlers from your parents."

Sirius flinches at that, and Remus feels the slightest twinge of guilt. That had been slightly to harsh.

"Of course it's about helping you, you git," James's is exasperated, but the insult is oddly gentle. He grabs Remus's arm and steers him down a side corridor where the crowed is thinner. "This is about you not being alone."

"Alone?" Remus spreads his arms, "you're here, aren't you?" his heart is hammering in his chest, frantic and hard. He can almost feel it through his skin. A suspicion is forming in his mind, too terrifying and sharp to fully consider. Remus shoves it away.

James rolls his eyes. "You're going to make me say it, aren't you?"

"Say what?"

"We know," the words seem to tumble out of Peter's mouth, tripping over each other, fast and frantic.

Remus swallows, hard. His eyes sting suddenly. His lips are dry and his throat closes. He can't speak. A part of him wants to run, throw his bag to the floor and run to his dormitory, the shrieking shack, anywhere, far away from their eyes and the truth and Sirius's suddenly somber expression.

They take his silence as a question. "We've known for awhile," James says, the words awkward. He's not looking at Remus, but down at his shoes. Is he ashamed? "You didn't think we'd believe that your mother gets sick every month?"

"During the full moon?" Sirius cuts in. He's shoved his hands deep into his pockets, the way he always does when he's nervous. He's not looking at Remus either. "We aren't idiots."

"We're geniuses, actually," James's words are clearly supposed to be a joke, but when no one laughs he awkwardly clears his throat. Peter doesn't say anything. He's shifting his weight from foot to foot, twisting his fingers along his shirt collar, tugging at his tie.

Around them, students talk and laugh and run on their way to classes. Remus's feels his blood roaring in his ears, his breath quickens and catches in his throat. Finally, finally he finds the words, forces them out, "do you hate me?"

James jerks back as if slapped. Sirius barks a laugh, and Peter looks up sharply. "Have you even been listening?" James snaps, "we want to help you."

"We want to transform with you," Sirius says, the words earnest. He takes a step forward. "You're only really dangerous to humans, right? We'll be animals. It will be fine."

"I-" Remus doesn't know what to say. His head is spinning. Everything is a blur and he is aware that he has tears in his eyes, but unable to really feel them.

"Christ, Remus," James grabs Remus's shoulders. "Breathe, alright? We're your friends, mate. That's never going to change."

Peter nods earnestly, and Sirius bounds forward and pulls Remus forward into an embrace. Remus falls against his friends shoulder, automatically wrapping his arms around Sirius as the other boy slaps him roughly, affectionately across the back. "It's going to be alright, Remus," He whispers, as if this is a secret between them. "We could never hate you, mate. Never."

To his complete embarresment, Remus finds himself crying.

"Oh God," James says, and suddenly his arms are envoloping them too, and then Peter is joining in, and they are all wrapped around each other and Remus is laughing and crying, and James complains that all of this emotion is ridiculous and come on, men we have transformation to plan.

Remus wipes his eyes with his sleeve. He looks at them, his friends, earnest and brilliant and smiling. "Thank-"

"Don't even say it, Remus Lupin," Sirius warns, slinging an arm around Remus's shoulders, he steers both of them back down to the crowd of milling students, "you'd do it for us." He grins. "Let's go be geniuses."

They are geniuses.

By their fifth year, they have successfully transformed. The whole experience is rather bizarre. Remus howls and tears at his skin until it breaks and tears and the wolf erupts. The dog-Sirius- crouches in the corner of the shack, growling quietly, but when the wolf meets his eyes and pins him into submission, the dog goes down without a fight, tail wagging.

They meet up with the stag and the rat outside the willow. The wolf grows and the stag lowers his head, shaking his horns in a playful greeting. At an impatient snarl from the dog they are off-running wild across the castle grounds.

Remus remembers the nights in odd flashes-a sharp scent there, the rush of the wind against fur, the feeling of the dog's jaws against the scruff of his neck, playfully biting, of the rat's indignant squeaks as the stag kicks him lightly into a run...

It's wonderful, and Remus revels in the fact that he no longer has to hide. That he isn't dangerous, that he's not hurting them. They love it. They run with him.

"We should have codenames," Sirius suggests one day. They're alone in the Common Room. James is stretched out on the rug in front of the fire, carefully drawing out their map. Peter, his head buried in a book, is curled up in one of the chairs. Sirius is perched on the arm of Remus's chair.

"What?" Remus says, looking up from his potions paper, "Code names?"

"Yeah," Sirius shrugs, "why not? You know, in case future generations find our map and have a best friend who's a werewolf."

James snorts softly. "Yeah, that's likely, still..."

"Come on," Sirius whines, nudging James with his foot, "humor me. All best friends have bizarre nicknames for each other. I feel like we've all reached that point in our friendship."

"Of course we have," Peter says from his chair. "I think it's a great idea."

"You just agree with whatever Sirius says," James rolls over onto his side, running a hand through his hair, tugging the strands through his fingers, forcing them to stick up more, "What do you think, Remus?"

Remus smiles, slightly. "What harm can it do?"

"You should be Moony," Sirius elbows him, "you know, because of the moon?"

James snorts. Remus smiles wider. "Very original."

Jumping off the side of the chair, Sirius strides to Peter and ruffles his hair. The other boy yelps indignantly. "You should be Scabbers because of your hair."

"That's stupid."

Remus stifles a soft laugh. "Who are you going to be, then?"

Sirius cocks his head. Since becoming an Animagus, Remus has noticed that his friends have started adapting some of the traits of their particular animal. According to McGonagall's earlier lesson that was perfectly normal. "Huh. Good question." He throws himself dramatically into a vacant armchair, stretching his feet out towards the fire. "Something dog-like."

They continue talking about it for awhile, and Remus leans his head back against the chair's cushion and smiles.

They settle on the names, eventually. After awhile it becomes so natural that Sirius rarely calls him Remus anymore. Their runs every month are slowly becoming less fun and more dangerous, as darkness and whispers of war sweep the Wizarding World. Increasingly, Remus feels himself finding it harder and harder to control the change-the animal in him sensing the shifts of power in the world and wanting to flee from it. The stag and the dog keep him in line-although Sirius admits to Remus later, when they are both human again and recovering from the nights events in the hospital wing, Remus feeling sick and aching, Sirius perched on the edge of his bed. Sirius admits that he is scared.

"Something's coming, Moony," he says. "Something dangerous."

Remus looks at his friend. They've all grown up. Sirius is no longer the gangly, long haired boy he'd met on the train. They are older, they've changed. "I know," he says.

After their seventh year, they join the Order of the Phoenix. For a few months, terrifying though the work is, Remus feels exhilarated. They are solving problems, fighting evil. His friends by his side, growing and falling in love, dodging hexes and curses and struggling to stay alive. Every full moon, Moony, Padfoot, Wormtail and Prongs escape into the darkness. Then, slowly but surely, one by one, tragedy after tragedy, they dwindle off. James is ripped from him first, and after that night, so is Sirius. Furious, Remus goes to Dumbledore and demands that they investigate further, that Sirius would never do this, he hadn't done it, he couldn't have, didn't Dumbledore understand-

"Peter is dead," Dumbledore says, cutting Remus off mid rant. Remus stumbles back into a chair, shaking.

He's losing everyone.

Years later, Remus rides the Hogwarts Express.

It's an odd feeling, stepping back onto that train. So much has changed, and yet some things are still the same. His joints still ache, more now than ever. He's thin and pale and slightly malnourished after years of seclusion and hiding.

Almost without thinking about it, he slips into the same compartment that they always used to ride in. The seats soft under his hands. He slides his fingers across them, remembering the boy with the teasing eyes and the round glasses, the boy with the long hair and the easy smile.

We're going to learn magic, boys.

Storing his trunk, Remus leans his head back against the cushion, closing his eyes. What is it going to be like, returning to these halls that he had once called home, where he'd met and lost the greatest friends he's ever known. Where he'd found acceptance. What is it going to be like, teaching Harry Potter?

Remus clenches his eyes shut. So much has changed, yet one thing has never changed, no matter how old he gets, or how many times the wolf rips from his skin.

He's still afraid of the moon.