Remus handed his neatly folded clothes to Sirius without looking up from the floor. Sirius took them, gently setting them on a high, dusty shelf to keep them safe. Sirius wanted him to say something, but Remus was quiet, characteristically so, and Sirius knew he should be used to it. That never made it any easy; knowing you should be used to something. Knowing you should didn't mean you were.

He watched Remus carefully, watching for the signs he had picked up on after three years of doing this. He often tried to get Remus to explain to him the process, but he never would. Sometimes, if Sirius pushed enough, he'd get vague details. But mostly he knew from watching.

Remus closed his eyes, his hands on the footboard of the old bed.

"Doin' all right, Rem?" Sirius asked, careful not to use his friend's nickname; not tonight.

Remus nodded.

"Your vision going?"

The amber eyed teen nodded again. Sirius came up next to him, arms across his chest, and leaned against the footboard, facing the door. The first thing Remus went through during his transformation was a slow shift from seeing in color to black and white. After months of noticing that Remus blinked quite a bit in the first few minutes, Remus had finally given in and told him why. His eyesight got better, too, and Remus closed his eyes because he couldn't adjust to the change.

"You should lay down," Sirius suggested in a soft voice. After Remus' eyesight went, the rest of his senses heightened incredibly. Overwhelmingly, as Remus had put it once. A whisper to him was even loud, and Sirius always took great care to accommodate.

"Lie down," Remus corrected. "And not yet."

Sirius smiled inwardly at Remus' correction. It was a good sign, a sign that he hadn't lost Remus in the transformation yet. Then, the boy's body went rigid.

"Come on, let's lay down." He wrapped his arms around Remus' body, gently leading him to the bed as Remus' breath became labored and his pulse started to race. The adrenaline would be kicking in soon, just seconds before Sirius knew the pain would start. Already, he could see Remus' muscles tensing and shifting, ever so slightly, below his skin.

Once Sirius had laid him on the bed, Remus pulled his knees to his chest and subconsciously held his breath. Sirius couldn't take it. The pain was setting in, and Remus was trying so hard to fight it. Every full moon, he fought the wolf with as much energy as he could with the dim hope of keeping his human mind throughout the night. They had read somewhere that it was possible, but so far, it hadn't worked for Remus.

Sirius crawled onto the bed next to him, easing the boy's knees away from his body slightly as he wrapped his arms around Remus again, this time with both of them lying down.

"Have you ever thought about just giving into it?"

"What?" Remus asked through grit teeth, his hands clenched into fists around the thin pillow.

Sirius felt a shiver race up his spine. Remus was still a few minutes away from completely transforming, but his muscles and bones were beginning to shift with an eerie rhythm. "Don't fight it tonight, Rem. Just let it happen."

"You should change," was Remus' only answer, indicating that it was time for Padfoot.

"I will," he assured Remus. The hairs on his arms were stiffening, and Sirius kissed the back of Remus' neck. It all started so slowly, so delicately, before everything happened at once. "Relax, Remus. Relax your body, relax your mind. It might hurt less."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

Sirius gently pulled the pillow away from Remus' ever tightening grip. "You're going to change no matter what, Rem. Give into it." He felt Remus start to pull away from him slightly, and he held the boy that much closer. Tremors were running through Remus' body now, and he knew it was getting harder and harder for Remus to concentrate on him.

"Relax," he whispered in Remus' ear. "I'm right here." His fingers curled over Remus', taking the shape of his fists and gently prying the werewolf's fingers open.

"Sirius…"

"Lay still. Relax. Remus," he said sharply when he noticed the boy slipping further from him. "Relax. Look, lay with me." He draped his body against Remus' back. He could tell Remus still wanted to fight the beast within. "I promise you it will be better."

These seemed to be the magic words. For an instant, Sirius felt Remus' body press into his, and while the muscles were still shifting, they weren't as taut. "Good, Remus. Concentrate on staying like this."

That was much easier said than done when it all finally started. Remus was hyper aware of his body, and he could feel literally everything that was happening to it. He felt the hairs on his arms start to grow, felt them almost individually. He cried out when he felt the first bone break, nearly shredding the attached muscle, then reform and regrow.

"Shhh," Sirius breathed. "Relax. Ride it out."

"You need to change."

"I will," Sirius promised again. "Breathe, Rem."

The pain became overwhelming, and Remus' heightened senses made it all too much. Usually at this point, he was screaming because he couldn't do anything else, and nothing made the pain go away. Tonight, however, Sirius could only hear his quick, labored breathing, and the definite crack of bones as they broke and reformed. Remus wasn't screaming tonight. Instead, he was doing something Sirius had never seen him do during the transformations before; he was crying.

"Relax, I'm here," he whispered again to the half animal, half human body next to him. He knew what he was doing was dangerous, but Remus needed him. "You're doing great."

Remus body was completely covered in fur now, and the snaps of bone had stopped. Tremors took over as the muscles finished settling, and a majestic looking stag and a mouse entered the bedroom to find a wolf and a black dog side by side on the bed. Padfoot was licking Moony's snout until the wolf finally became aware of itself and snapped at the dog. Padfoot didn't mind.