Maybe it was how stressed he'd been over the past few days, maybe it was the new environment that Moony had never been in, but whatever the reason, when his transformation was complete he hardly seemed to recognize his companions like usual.

It started off like normal, and clearly as painful as ever. Dark gray fur began sprouting all over, as his normally dark green eyes took on an amber glow, all the life of Remus Lupin draining out to be replaced by a senseless animal. His arms elongated, his jaw began tearing out of his face and even before the fangs sprouted a ferocious howl began ripping out of his throat.

Prongs and Padfoot were long since waiting, but they weren't prepared for his roaming eyes to land on them and lung right for Prongs' throat. It was like their first meeting all over again, his desire to bite winning out and those long powerful arms tried their best to latch onto the larger body, hot breath snapping towards a jugular, but Prongs tossed his head back and managed to drag himself out of the way just fast enough he only received a few deep scratches into his ribs while Padfoot collided with Moony the rest of the way knocking him off course. The two canines tossed around for a bit, Moony winning out the fight but the scuffle enough to make him pause and reassess. He released another guttural howl, now eyeing the bed and instead lunging onto that, ripping off one leg with a flick of ease and snapping it in between his teeth like a carrot, his claws digging into the carpet below like he was trying to burrow himself right out of the room.

Padfoot let out a little whimper, edging closer and sniffing gently, and when Moony's nose twitched back in his direction, dropping the block of wood and a snarl already turning his lips back, Padfoot dropped onto his belly and wagged his tail in a friendly gesture, his back legs still prepared to pounce away at a moment's notice.

Moony's nose was still twitching furiously, his ears falling back as if asking 'where are we' but at least they'd moved away from his more violent question of 'who are you?'

Prongs came prodding back forward, letting an antler drop down and edging his side in a rebuff for attacking him, before giving him an even firmer buff and now asking as if to play. Moony was in no mood, using a back leg to kick him away and nearly taking the others snout clean off as he began pacing the length of the room, growling horribly at the door now, a clear question 'why can't I stretch?'

The two of them still tried to rope him in and keep his better attention, jumping forward and acting as if still looking for a game, but Moony was in no mood, swiping and biting at either of them if they got too close. When he didn't hit fur, he began turning on himself and letting his own claws scratch against his own hide in frustration, but neither of the others would let that last long before they came forward and began the game again. It was a small room, so they each received far more injury than they had since their first night they'd pulled this off, the one and only difference being there wasn't a rat scampering in between all of their feet as a further distraction to all.

So the pattern continued long into the night, until the waning began. By this time Moony had absolutely destroyed the room, deep claw marks leaving great chunks in the wall Prongs could have stuck his head through if not for the magic keeping everything pinned in this room, and the bed was no better. It was just a scrap of material, so Remus came back into himself and landed on a mangled frame. Sirius was at his side in an instant, pulling his wand out and muttering some spells on instinct, coupling in a few he only knew because he'd looked them up, Madam Pomfrey had stopped questioning long ago why Remus' injuries had subsided after his fifth year but his friends had learned them anyways.

James double checked both of his friends, recognizing how terrible they both looked with Sirius sporting his own amount of injuries and realizing he probably didn't look much better, but not willing to leave the others in suspense a moment longer then he had to. It took quite a few minutes to undo all the charms they'd barricaded themselves inside with, and then he had to repeat the process to get inside his infant's room, but when he did get the door open he feared he'd have to duck another amount of spells he startled the two so bad.

"Bloody hell James," Lily moaned, darting to his side in seconds, her hands ghosting over a particular spot on his face which he'd technically deserved letting his antlers get caught from a swinging claw while the other had gone for his eyes. It had only been a glancing blow at the time, clearly it had developed into more. "You've never come back looking this bad."

Harry was hovering behind his mother, looking pearly white as he gave his father several once overs and stuttering out, "are, are you bleeding?"

"I'm going to live, I promise," he got out, pushing Lily's hands away when they went to pull up his robes and look at the wound. "He had a bad night, he's used to getting out more, it's nothing we can't handle, or haven't before. We know plenty of spells to heal the worst of it, we'll sleep off the rest."

Neither of them looked pleased, but James pressed on loudly, "did you two get any sleep?"

"No, of course not," his wife scoffed like she thought he was going mad. "We might not have been able to hear anything but that doesn't mean we couldn't stop thinking about it." Lily really couldn't help it though, she may have known James went and did this once a month, but never before down the hall from her where she couldn't do anything to help. Even if she did trust James and Sirius to handle him as well, she never could take her eyes off her baby, just in case something had gone wrong, just in case she'd needed to defend him from jaws with no man's mind behind them.

James gave a deep sigh, pulling them both into a tight hug and ignoring how hard that pulled at his side as he promised, "we're all fine. We're going to get Remus fixed up and then we're all going to get some sleep."

Lily looked like that was the last thing on her mind as she got out of his grip, grabbing hold of his hand and pushing him into the chair in the corner, pulling out her wand and beginning to cast her own healing charms.

In retrospect this may not be as big a deal as I made it out to be, just couldn't resist writing this in. Hope it was worth it.