The hair at the back of Hermione's neck bristled and stood on end as another long howl pierced the night. "Bad idea," she was whispering to herself, "Merlin this was a bad idea, I should have transformed before I left." Her fingers were trembling as she rushed to remove her clothes, and she shivered from the cold of the night air; when her wand was stowed safely she dropped her clothes into a pile, turning as the howling continued, drawing closer. Heartbeat pounding in her throat, she closed her eyes and focused, transforming fluidly into her animagus form.

Her transformation came none too soon as the werewolf crested the hill, letting out another long howl as it scented the air, searching for her. She had transformed into a lithe-bodied wolf, tawny brown in color, and as Moony entered the clearing she bound over to him, pressing her belly to the ground as she approached and crawling towards him; she stopped several feet before him as he growled, huffed and sniffed at her. The werewolf seemed agitated by its inability to find the human, and Hermione rolled onto her back, making a light, whining sound to regain his full attention. It worked, and Moony stood over her, looking at her and sniffing her; then the great beast lowered his head to her and nuzzled the fur at her neck, licking her. Hermione slowly rolled back over onto her stomach and lifted her head up to nuzzle Moony in return, licking his nose and muzzle. After a few minutes, the werewolf nudged her repeatedly to get up and then the two of them took off into the woods.

It had been like this for nearly two years now. With every full moon came another transformation, and for Hermione another opportunity to study a werewolf roaming uninhibited, in the form of Moony. The first time she had transformed to observe him, she had tried to follow and trail far behind him; she should have known better. Moony had identified her almost immediately, had rounded upon her, pinned her down, inspected her thoroughly for more than an hour, and then gradually let her up, let her follow him.

After that Moony had engaged her more with each occasion, until he greeted her with familiarity, affection even, when he found her after each transformation. They ran for miles through the night, hunting, howling to the moon and the stars, and as dawn approached they returned the way they'd come and Moony curled up to sleep as she sat nearby and watched him. Hermione was always gone before the change occurred and Remus awoke; she slipped away with the silence of a shadow and would return, immensely weary, to her room at Grimmauld Place.

She kept meticulous notes of her nights with Moony, intrigued by the behaviors he exhibited when let free to roam. As she had documented in her notes, Moony had not exhibited the same feral bestiality and mindlessness since the end of the war; Remus had finally come to terms with his inner wolf, and had chosen every month since then to go deep into the wilderness where he had constructed himself a small cottage. There, far enough away from any human being to feel secure, Remus gave himself over to his transformation each month freely.

It seemed that when Remus was not trying to subjugate and stifle his inner wolf, but rather let him loose to freely express himself, Moony was satisfied, somehow much calmer. As she had observed that night, though, Hermione realized that a large part of Moony's relative calm had probably to do with the great distance between him and any human being. It had been reckless to let Moony smell her in her human body; he had fixed upon the smell of her at once and it'd been a struggle to distract him from it. After putting down her notes, Hermione finally slept.

Within two hours there was a knocking on her door, but she was too deeply asleep to notice it. After a second round of knocking, Sirius Black opened her door and poked his head inside the room. "Hermione are you awake?" he asked from the doorway as he stepped into her room.

Startled awake by the sound of her name, she jolted upright, drawing her wand. "What?" she had lain eyes on Sirius and after a moment her brain registered who she was looking at and she dropped her wand hand. "Oh, Sirius. I'm sorry," she yawned, "you surprised me."

"Sorry about that," he shrugged, "Gin just wanted to know if you were coming down for breakfast. You look beat, were you up all night again?" He had looked around her room and saw that her desk was piled with open books and stacks of parchment.

Hermione sighed, lying down again and pulling her blanket back up to her chin, "yes, spent all night researching; tell Ginny I'll be down in a few more hours."

"Alright," Sirius laughed lightly and turned, leaving her room and closing the door. Left alone once again, Hermione quickly fell back into a deep, dreamless sleep.

A day later Remus returned, still tired from the full moon, but looking none the worse for wear. It was Saturday and he arrived back at Grimmauld Place just after breakfast when Ginny was still in the kitchen cleaning up. Sirius was lounging in the parlor and he flagged Remus down immediately when he entered the house.

Shortly after Voldemort had died, and Hermione killed Bellatrix, Sirius had appeared from nowhere in the kitchen of number 12 Grimmauld Place. He'd no recollection of falling through the veil in the Department of Mysteries, and utterly no clue as to how he had been returned, but after having tried every conceivable spell on him to prove his identity, the Order had been satisfied that it was actually Sirius Black, and he had taken up residence in the old Black residence with Harry, Ginny, Hermione, Ron and Remus.

Now, he greeted Remus with a broad smile and a friendly hug, urging his friend to sit and make himself comfortable by the fire. "Was it a rough time?" he asked, looking Remus over for any cuts or bruises. But Remus only shook his head, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes.

"The transformations aren't so bad anymore," he reminded Sirius. "Moony must be getting old," he laughed a little and sighed, "no, it's not near as bad as it used to be."

"That's good," Sirius nodded, considering Remus thoughtfully. "You hungry, mate? I'm sure Gin's got extra from breakfast, I'll get you a plate."

Remus shook his head tiredly. "No, I'd just like to sleep some more."

Grimmauld Place was an enormous house, such that even with six people living under one roof there was still plenty of room. Sirius had taken up residence on the fourth floor, in his old bedroom, though he had gutted it of its contents and remodeled it with more mature décor. Hermione had already taken Regulus' old room as her own before Sirius returned, preferring to be alone on the fourth floor, but she had chosen to stay even after he turned up to be her neighbor. Harry and Ginny had taken the master bedroom on the second floor, and Ron had also settled on the second floor of the house, being near to the stairs and so near to the kitchen.

On the third floor there was Remus' bedroom, as well as the Black family library and the room which Hermione had transformed into her own private lab. All in all, the house had comfortably accommodated all of them, and especially since they had finally removed old Mrs. Black's portrait from the entryway, it had transformed a great deal from its once decrepit state.

Now Sirius helped his friend up, assisting him up the stairs to the third floor. Hermione was working in her lab with the door open when she heard Sirius helping Remus up the stairs. Greeting them as they passed, she went back to her work almost immediately and Sirius left Remus to rest in his room. As he was returning to the stairs, Sirius paused at the door to Hermione's lab. "What're you working on?" he asked.

"Nothing right now, just storing some of the herbs and materials I've harvested recently." And indeed she had an array of jars sitting open before her as she was sorting several piles of dried plant material into them. At the end of her table were several jars with freshly pickled contents, Sirius recognized a jar of toad livers and another filled with frog eyes.

"Hermione, your lab is reminiscent of Snape's," he remarked, glancing around. He hadn't been in her lab often before, and didn't pay much attention to it when he had been there, but on that day he noticed that Hermione had a lunar calendar adorning the wall behind her workstation. "Hey," he asked, "what do use that for?"

"Hm?" Hermione glanced up from her sorting, then looked behind her to see what Sirius was referring to, "oh, it's very useful, necessary for harvesting herbs and such at the right time of the month. The timing of the harvesting, and the method of preserving and storing an ingredient is very important for more complex potions."

"What sort of potions are you working on?" Sirius was actually growing curious about it; he'd never particularly cared for the study of potion-making, finding it rather too time-consuming and tedious for his taste when he was a young man.

"I've been working on a potion to reverse the effects of long-term, repeated exposure to the cruciatus curse since the end of the war, as you know. Progress there is slow," a cross look passed over Hermione's face. She had asked the Ministry for a research grant, so that she could afford to fund her research and employ two or three other people to carry out tests and field work for her experiments, but the Ministry had only offered to fund her research if they had full oversight and all her work was carried out within the confines of the Ministry of Magic.

"My other project has to do with crafting a counter-curse to the imperius. Again, very slow progress there," she sighed, and having finished filling her jars she turned away from Sirius to wash her hands thoroughly. Having dried them off, she picked up her wand and cast a spell to seal the lids onto all of the jars.

"You don't take small projects, do you?" Sirius shook his head, chuckling, cast back into distant memories. His time at Hogwarts had been the best years of his life, and he recalled one Remus Lupin who had similarly always been obsessed by books and theory.

"Not if I can help it," Hermione answered with some humor, but her tone turned serious, "I have a very limited amount of time on Earth, the human life span is terribly short, even with the capacity to live longer as a result of magic. I'd like to learn as much as I can, accomplish as much as I can, and alleviate as much of the unnecessary suffering of others as is possible."

"You'll make Gryffindor the proudest House in the history of Hogwarts," Sirius assured her, "truly the brightest witch of your age. It's good we got you instead of Ravenclaw."

Hermione nodded, smiling at the thought, as she began replacing her jars onto shelves in a cupboard behind her workstation. "Is Remus doing well?"

"Yeah, just tired s'all. Not as roughed up as usual."

"That's good." She had finished her task and looked at Sirius. "Did you need something?"

He shrugged. "Nah, have a book to read, actually."

"Oh really? The infamous ladies' man, Sirius Black, is also a literary man?" Hermione raised an eyebrow at him skeptically, and he laughed.

"Yes, but don't tell Moony eh? Don't want him to think his habits rubbed off on me over the years," Sirius winked, and with that dismissed himself from Hermione's lab, returning down the stairs to the parlor. Hermione finished tidying her lab and then exited, closing the door behind her and warding it against unwanted intrusion.

Checking her watch to verify the time, Hermione knew Harry and Ginny would be going on shortly. Ron had left as soon as he finished eating to attend Quidditch practice. Since joining the Chudley Cannons after the war, Ron had lived and breathed the game he so adored. Hermione, who had cautioned him against it to the last day, had reluctantly admitted that Ron had never been happier in his life. Despite the loss of his brother in the war, Ron had matured a bit and found incredible joy in playing for the team he had so long adored.

Ginny and Harry were due to visit the Weasleys as soon as Ginny finished with the kitchen, so Hermione headed up the stairs to her room and occupied herself with a book, leaving her door open to listen. She didn't wait long, since ten minutes later Ginny came quietly up the stairs to tell her goodbye. "Harry and I are going, we'll probably be gone all day. Are you sure you don't want to come with us?"

Hermione shook her head. "That's alright Ginny, thanks but I've got a lot of studying to do for the next step in my experiments. You and Harry have fun, say hello to your mum for me."

After she was certain that they were gone and that Sirius was occupied in the parlor, Hermione crept silently down the stairs to the third floor. Remus' room was just past her lab, and his door had been left unlocked. Having cast a disillusionment charm over herself, Hermione opened his door and slipped into his room, leaving the door open just a crack behind her. He was lying on his side, facing the wall with his back to the door when she entered, and Hermione stood still by the entrance to his room for several moments, breathing softly and looking at him from across the room. His breath was strong, steady and deep, he was truly asleep, and Hermione walked quietly to his bedside, looking over his shoulder to see his face.

There were dark circles under his eyes, but he was recovering well from the full moon. Remus wore many scars from his life, and from the final battles against Voldemort; one of the most recent stretched from his left ear to his collar bone. She watched as he slept, thinking how vulnerable he appeared; his hair had gone nearly half silver-gray due to the stress of the wars he'd lived through, but he the rest remained a sandy brown color. Casting off her disillusionment charm, Hermione withdrew several vials from her robes and restored them to their regular size with her wand.

"Remus," she said softly, and sat on the side of his bed, reaching out to gently touch his shoulder. "Wake up, Professor Lupin."

A faint smile curved his lips as he began to stir, and Remus grumbled sleepily, "I haven't been your professor for many years, Miss Granger." He opened his eyes blearily and stared at her.