Moonlight

Chapter Five

Animagi


Ted continued reading his father's journals for the remainder of the Easter holidays. He was halfway through "1975" when he finally stopped to pack up his trunks to leave for his return to Hogwarts the following day. The last thing he packed was the ANSWERS box, which he transfigured into the gold Gobstone and stuck in a small pocket on his bag, along with his father's watch, and a map Harry had given him for his twelfth birthday--a map of Hogwarts called the Marauder's Map, which showed the entire school and grounds, and traced people's movements within the grounds' boundaries. Ted recalled asking Harry about the map's makers, Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs.

"I believe they were just a bunch of school troublemakers from years back," Harry had said. And then he'd added in an oddly hollow voice, "They're all dead now."

By now Ted, and his best mate, Rodger Adams--who had been his best mate since their first train ride to Hogwarts--knew Hogwarts and its grounds like the backs of their hands.

On the Hogwarts Express that Sunday, Ted met up with Rodger after the train started off. Alone together in a compartment, after they talked about Rodger's holiday, Ted told him all about his: about his birthday, about the letter from Victoire, about his father's box of stuff and what was in it--including what he'd learned so far from reading the letters and newspaper clippings and his father's journals--and that odd thing that had happened the other night, with the prickling sensation in his nose and the shadow he'd seen in the darkness outside his bedroom window. By the time he'd finished the snack trolley had arrived, and Ted and Rodger both supplied themselves with an excellent spread of excellent candies and sweets.

Rodger had a head of thick dirty blond hair that tapered down to the base of his neck in the back, and rather than being lanky, like Ted, he was willowy, gracefully tall, with piercing, smoky blue eyes that couldn't fail to charm the hearts of young witches. Ted didn't mind much though--he could change anything about his own appearance at will. Today, Ted had decided to turn his light brown hair to electric blue.

"Wow," said Rodger, tearing off a bite of his licorice wand, "so your dad was a werewolf? Your parents are so much more interesting than mine." Rodger's parents were Muggles, but that's not what Rodger found uninteresting. What he found uninteresting was their jobs: they were lawyers. Actually their personalities were lively and fun. But Rodger found the study of law--whether Muggle or wizarding--a very mundane practice, and it forced his fun-loving parents to act seriously when they were on the job. "But this nose prickling thing..." he went on, "that concerns me some."

"I'm sure it's nothing," said Ted. He couldn't help but feel concerned himself, however.

TAP-TAP-TAP!

Ted looked up and saw Victoire at their compartment door. His palms turned sweaty at once as his heart pounded faster in his chest. He sat up straighter from his lounging slouch on the seat.

Victoire slid the compartment door open and leaned back against the doorjamb with her arms folded beneath her breasts, her dark red hair silvery, fiery, and falling seductively about her gorgeous face and slender shoulders. "Nice hair," she said, smiling attractively at Ted. "Very vivid color, for you, isn't it?"

"Th-That's why I picked it, I s'pose," Ted stammered, his mouth going dry. "Did you get my letter?" He had finally gotten around to answering Victoire's letter only yesterday. There had been no time to talk to Harry about it first, because Ted had spent so much of the rest of his holiday cooped up in his room reading his father's journals.

"I did," said Victoire. "You took a rather long time for such a short message, though."

Ted massaged the back of his neck and did not meet her eye. Even now he was struggling with how he should tell her that he'd simply been struggling with what to say in his reply. The best he could come up with at present was, "Sorry."

He wondered if perhaps it was Victoire's father, Bill Weasley that he should talk to about this: how in the world did Bill manage to land a woman with veela blood? Obviously he'd been quite good-looking when they first met, and was probably no stranger to suavity. Not like Ted was, anyhow: Rodger had always been the charmer, not him.

He chanced a glance at Victoire, who was raising an eyebrow at him. "I really liked...er...hearing from you," he went on hastily. "Really, I did." He attempted a smile that he knew had to look awkward rather than appealing.

He was relieved to see her smile back at him. "There's one more Hogsmeade weekend before finals," she said.

When she did not say anything else, it took Ted a minute to figure out what she was on about. He looked over at Rodger, who had his face buried in a Quidditch magazine. Though Ted couldn't see it, he felt sure his best friend was trying to hide the fact that he was holding in a gale of laughter.

"Er...." He cleared his throat. "Erm, did you...want to...meet there...er...just the two of us?"

"I'd love to," said Victoire pleasantly. Her voice was so melodic it made Ted's heart glow just to hear it. "I'm signing out of the castle early, right in the middle of lunch hour, so...I'll meet you at the post office?"

Ted nodded, unable to form words anymore in her presence.

She smiled more broadly. "Until then, Ted, au revoir." She disappeared into the corridor, her long hair twirling about her shoulders as she turned before sliding the compartment door closed behind her.

Ted hoped she didn't know that whenever she spoke French he found it sexy.

Rodger released his laughter at last. "You lucky bloke, you! I dunno what she sees in you--!"

"I dunno what she sees in me either!" Ted exclaimed wildly. For some reason he felt slightly annoyed at Rodger. "Are you saying I'm not good enough for her, Mister Ladies Man?"

The amusement died from Rodger's face as he lowered his magazine. "Well, er...no, I wasn't, mate, but--"

"I know I'm not handsome like you," Ted went on. "And I'm a bit of a klutz. But still--"

"Well, you're not gorgeous enough to have girls sighing and staring at you every time you walk by," Rodger cut across quickly, "but you're not ugly as sin either."

Ted relaxed. "Sorry."

"No problem," said Rodger, tossing his magazine aside. "You know, I expect it's your eyes. They've got that sensitive touch to them. Not all birds can see that in a bloke. That Victoire Weasley's got a good eye for it though." He unwrapped a cauldron cake. "Now, about your nose prickling, I think I'm going to look up some stuff in the library when we get back...."

"Yeah, that sounds good," said Ted vaguely, turning to gaze out the window and daydream about Victoire. Life suddenly seemed a very beautiful thing indeed.

Shortly after Victoire had left, there was another tapping at the door to their compartment, and Ted and Rodger looked around to see a group of blonde and brunette girls peering through the glass, all craning their necks and waving hopefully at Rodger.

Rodger's striking visage lit up. He jumped to his feet and crossed to the door in two easy strides. "Ladies," he greeted in a debonair tone, beaming at all of them charmingly.

"Hello, Rodger," the five girls giggled sheepishly.

Rodger flashed them his pearly whites. "In trouble already?" he asked them. "We haven't even gotten back to school yet."

Ted smiled slightly as he took out his advanced astronomy book and began to read.

~

That night in the Gryffindor sixth year boys' dormitories found Ted the sole one awake, reading Remus' "1975" journal by wand light:

1 September

I'm glad that James, Sirius, and Peter weren't too hard on me about being made a prefect this year. I think Professor Dumbledore might have made me one in an attempt to exercise some control on them, James and Sirius more so, of course, than Peter. If that's the case, I can already see that I'm going to fail miserably....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Prefect?" said James, his eyes bugging out with incredulity. "Remus? A prefect?"

"What do you expect, James?" said Sirius, stretching his legs and tucking his hands behind his head as he stretched out on a seat in their compartment on the Hogwarts' Express. "You and I are in detention all the time."

"Well, what about Peter?" James asked, glancing over at Peter crouching by the window in his seat.

"Me? A prefect?" Peter laughed. "I couldn't order someone around if my life depended on it."

"He's right you know, James," said Sirius.

Remus glanced despondently at the shiny new prefect's badge gleaming on his chest. He sat at the window too, but directly across from Peter, on the opposite side of the compartment, where Sirius had stretched out beside him. Remus had his legs tucked underneath him--his legs that had grown much longer. He was very tall now, but not gracefully so--instead, he was gangling: his long fingers however were quite elegant, as they quietly held the intermediate transfiguration book he was reading.

James, Sirius, and even Peter had grown as well, though Peter was still noticeably the shortest. He barely came up to James' shoulder. But James and Sirius had grown about the same. Sirius had even grown tall gracefully--he was statuesque, and needless to say, he was sexy for a boy of fifteen. James was pretty good-looking, he was statuesque too--but unlike Sirius, he did not have the mysterious gray eyes or the long dark hair that made Sirius look so alluring. Instead he had the same untidy short black hair and dark round glasses over a pair of the same hazel eyes. The popularity he'd built up as the amazing Seeker of the Gryffindor Quidditch team (a title he'd held since second year) had certainly made up for that, however.

Remus turned a page in his book and said to James, "I suspect that Dumbledore made me a prefect in hopes of keeping an eye on you and Sirius."

James, who was slouching on the seat on the other side of the compartment with Peter, sat up straighter. "But...you wouldn't say...rat us out, or something, would you? I mean you've been sneaking around with us under my Invisibility Cloak since first year, and--"

"I won't," said Remus defensively. "I won't. I promise." Anything to keep them as my friends, he added to himself. Despite their demonstration of fierce loyalty when they had not abandoned him at finding out that he was a werewolf, Remus continued to fear that he would do something that would make them stop being his friends anymore.

"James, cut him some slack, will you?" said Sirius. "Remus is our friend. He wouldn't turn into a dirty snitch overnight just because he got a prefect's badge."

Remus felt grateful that at least Sirius was defending him, if not in quite the way he wanted to be. He'd rather Sirius said something that would make Remus feel better about his duties as a prefect.

"You're right," said James, getting to his feet and smiling fondly at Remus. "If we can love Remus with his furry little problem, we can love Remus with his prefect's badge, right?" He pointed his wand at the compartment door, uttering a special concealment charm that would give people outside of the compartment an illusion of what was actually going on within. He did the same to the window.

Remus forgot the sensation of his heart swelling with gratitude, and became wary of what James was doing. "James, why are you charming the door and the window so that people outside will see us doing something in here that we're not actually doing?"

"Sirius, Peter, and I have something to show you," said James, finishing with the window and beaming excitedly as he turned to face Remus. "Sirius? Peter?"

Peter moaned, and Sirius said, "Excellent," with a puckish gleam in his eye.

"What are you talking about?" Remus asked. But then it slowly dawned on him as James, Sirius, and Peter stood in a line before him.

"Peter?" James prompted.

"But James, what if I screw it up?" Peter whimpered. "Again?"

"You won't screw it up, Pete," said James bracingly. "You've got it now. Come on. Show Remus."

Peter sighed.

Remus felt a jolt as Peter's head shrank and lengthened, and his clothes seemed to melt into him and vanish and were instantaneously replaced by short brown fur that grew all over his shrinking body. A long tail, pink, naked, and segmented like a worm, sprouted from his backside, while his ears became tiny flaps, and faint whiskers poked out from his nose. His watery eyes became small, black and beady, and his hands and feet turned into pink paws with teeny tiny claws. The two pairs of incisors on his upper and lower jaws became one pair and grew longer. When he was done, he was sitting back on his haunches, standing up straight at no more than six or seven inches, and squeaking. Peter had transformed into a rat.

Remus gaped at the other two.

"Sirius?" James prompted, his smile disclosing his gratification.

Sirius shrank too, but not as much as Peter had. His clothes dissolved too, and were immediately replaced by a thick covering of long, shaggy black fur as his hands and feet became padded paws. His nose and mouth lengthened into a snout, his teeth became sharp, a long tail erupted from his backside, and his ears grew and flopped. He dropped to all fours, his grey eyes now simply huge and adorable, his long pink tongue lolling out as he panted and wagged his tail, his open mouth shaped in a way that made it look as though he were smiling. And to think that Remus had often secretly attributed Sirius' various mannerisms and such to those of a dog's: now Sirius had literally turned into a dog.

Remus sighed, shaking his head. Then he looked up at James. "James?" he prompted, arching an eyebrow.

"Don't mind if I do," said James.

Instead of shrinking, as Sirius and Peter had done, Remus saw that James grew as he began his transformation. His clothes dissolved to be replaced at once by short, black hair. His glasses dissolved into faint white circles around his hazel eyes, which then moved to the side of his head (Remus found this a little weird). His face lengthened as well. His ears became long and leaf-shaped, a stub of a tail emerged from his backside, his hands and feet melded into cloven hooves, and his arms and legs became gracefully elongated. He dropped to all fours as well with a thud that made Remus afraid someone would burst in at any moment and see what was really going on inside their compartment. But he forgot this fear when he saw antlers sprout from behind James' ears, cracking as they branched out like super-fast-growing trees. He squeezed his eyes shut while this occurred as though this part of the process gave him a slight headache. But it was over quickly, and soon James stood before him in the form of a great black forest stag.

Remus buried his face in his hands. They had done it! They had really gone and done it! He didn't know whether to be excited or anxious, and then this indecision just made him furious.

"So...what do you think?" James' voice asked.

Remus looked up and saw that his friends had turned back into themselves. Sirius started immediately lifting the charms James had placed on the door and window.

"He hates it!" Peter cried, collapsing back into his seat.

"No, Peter, I don't hate it," said Remus truthfully. "I think it's brilliant that you guys could pull it off, considering the circumstances. Especially you, Peter. But...remind me again how this is supposed to be a way for you spend time with me during the full moon? I mean I know that as animals I won't be a threat to you, but...."

"At least say you'll give it a try with us?" James implored. "Please?"

"Yeah, c'mon, Remus," said Sirius bracingly. "We want to help you out some. Don't make us feel like we went to all of this trouble for nothing."

"Well...." Remus bit his lip. While one side of him was against it, there was another side of him that was all for it.

C'mon, what's a little risk when you can have the chance to be with your friends when you need them the most?
But you'll be breaking so many rules...not only regular school rules, but the special rules that Dumbledore laid down specifically for others' and your protection. How can you betray his trust like that?

Just then they heard a tapping at the door, and saw Lily, glaring, her toe tapping impatiently on the corridor carpet with her arms folded beneath her breasts--which Remus couldn't help but notice were perfect, attractively complementing the curves of the rest of her willowy, hourglass figure: she too had grown a lot in the past four years.

James seemed to have noticed the swan that had emerged from Lily as well. As she slid open the compartment door without invitation, Remus noticed that James was gawping at her with a dazed expression--the kind a guy gets when he sets eyes on a veela.

But Lily marched straight up to him without bothering to close the door behind her and slapped him hard across the face.

James clutched the cheek she had struck, his glasses knocked slightly askew. "What was that for?" he demanded in a whimper. She had to have hit him really hard to make him use a pathetic tone like that.

"You bloody well know what, Potter!" Lily snapped, placing her hands on her hips. Remus thought she looked gorgeous when she was in a rage: her dark red hair blazed fierily, and her green almond-shaped eyes flashed like emerald lightning. "I'm absolutely disgusted with you! Can't even wait until we get to school to start humiliating him, can you?"

"Oh, come on now, Evans, Snivellus was up to no good, and I was just--" James was pleading with Lily. He was pleading with her. He had never spoken to her like this before.

Remus, Sirius, and Peter all seemed to realize this, for they exchanged questioning glances with each other.

Lily had silenced James, however, by drawing her wand and pointing it between his eyes.

James looked cross-eyed as he peered down at her wand tip so close to the bridge of his nose.

"You'd better leave him alone, Potter," Lily warned through gritted teeth, "or I swear I'll hex you so bad you'll never play Quidditch again!"

The old James seemed to reappear as his eyes shifted from the wand tip to Lily's face with an expression of indignance. "Hey, that's going too far, Evans!" And then he went from indignant to affable, as his lips curved into a cocky smile. "You wouldn't really hex me that bad, now would you?"

"Just see if I don't, Potter!" Lily spat, and a few red sparks erupted from the end of her wand on the word "don't", during which James squeezed his eyes shut, the fear returned to his features.

Without breaking her glare with him, she stuffed her wand back into her robes, turned on her heel, and left the compartment, slamming the compartment door shut so hard that the glass within it shattered.

"Reparo," Sirius muttered, pointing his wand at the shards of glass, which all reassembled themselves instantly, good as new.

"You alright, mate?" Remus asked James, peering at him.

James had slumped back against the window, slightly breathless, as if he'd just caught the Snitch and won another Quidditch match. "Yeah...I...." He reached up and gently clutched again the cheek that Lily had slapped. He was staring off at some faraway place not meeting the other three's concerned gazes. "I...." Remus could see his face glow as a grin spread slowly across his face. "I think I'm in love."

Yet while Remus sniggered with Sirius and Peter, he could not help but feel a tiny needle of jealousy prick his heart.

~

Remus continued to worry.

Sirius and James continued to tell him not to worry.

"We've got it all planned out," James was telling him in the library. "We'll leave under the Invisibility Cloak once the dormitory's quiet. We'll go all the way out to the Whomping Willow, and then Peter'll transform. As a rat, he'll be small enough to safely reach the Whomping Willow's trunk and press that special knot you told us about."

"The one that freezes the tree?" said Remus.

"Yep," said Sirius. "Once that's done, James and I'll transform. Then I'll go down the tunnel--"

"By yourself? You must be joking!"

"Shhh!"

"Sorry. Go on."

"So, I'll transform and go down the tunnel and bring you out. Once you're out, Peter'll unfreeze the tree, and we'll be all set."

"All set? All set for what?"

Sirius shrugged. "I dunno. Knocking about with you on the Hogwarts grounds, I s'pose."

"And James' cloak?" Remus asked.

"While Sirius is down with you, I will be taking care of the cloak," said James. "Before I transform, I'll stick it securely in my bag, and then stick my bag in the roots of the tree."

"And just how are you going to leave me, after this night of fun?"

"We'll go back to the Whomping Willow about an hour before sunrise. After Peter presses the freezing knot, Sirius'll lead you back down the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack, and leave you there. He can open and close the trapdoor with his mouth, see. And then he'll head back up the tunnel, Peter'll unfreeze the tree, I'll get the cloak from my bag, and then we'll get back underneath it and sneak back upstairs to the dormitory before everyone else wakes up."

"Sneak back from where?" inquired a voice from the shadows in between the shelves.

Remus, James, Sirius, and Peter all whipped their heads around from their seats at the table at which they were sitting to see Severus step out from behind one of the shelves. He had a manic glee about his features as though he'd discovered a secret mountain made entirely of chocolate frogs. He had grown in the last four years too. He had grown, though not nearly as tall as James and Sirius had. His long black hair had grown as well, so greasy that it hung about his sallow face in long, dangling clumps.

"You!" James hissed.

James and Severus both whipped their wands out at the exact same time, James rising from his chair and shoving it aside as he did so.

"James, come on!" Remus implored in a strained whisper as James and Severus began circling each other. "Don't be stupid!" He noticed Sirius unsheathing his own wand as well. "Sirius!"

"Just in case he needs back-up," said Sirius.

Remus buried his face in his hands.

"Incarc--!"

"Impedimenta!"

CRASH!

Remus dared to look up from behind his hands to see what had happened. He caught a glimpse of Severus sprawled against a library wall, moaning, before Madam Pince was upon them. She shouted at them for having their wands out and using them to duel in the library. Severus crawled to his feet, not hesitating to point fingers at James and Sirius, who had both used the Impediment Jinx against him at the exact same time. James and Sirius did not hesitate in accusing Severus of his attempt to capture James in a net of ropes.

Madam Pince had all three of them thrown into detention.

~

It was time.

"See you later, Remus," said Sirius with a wink.

"Yeah...sure," said Remus, grinning nervously back over his shoulder at James, Sirius, and Peter all lounging by the merrily crackling fire in the Gryffindor common room. He sighed as he turned away from them and climbed through the portrait hole.

As usual, Madam Pomfrey escorted Remus down to the Whomping Willow and froze the tree for him so he could climb down into the tunnel. There was a churning in his stomach tonight that was different than the churning he got on any other evening approach of the full moon.

He climbed up through the trapdoor in the floor of the Shrieking Shack's first story. He went through the paces of stripping down and setting his clothes in the tunnel for Madam Pomfrey before closing the trapdoor. Half of him hoped that Sirius wouldn't be able to open it as a dog, and then he'd be kept safe for sure.

The compulsion to peer through the slats of wood boarding up the windows gripped him, and Remus had to bend to its will. He crossed to the window and watched, transfixed, as the full moon began to rise over the mountains. The light was so beautiful, as it reached his pupils....

He suffered the usual roaring in his ears, the excruciating pain that ripped through his violently changing body. When his spine cracked sickeningly to form the hunch in his back, the pain peaked right on time, as always, and the world began to dissolve. Just as he was losing the last shred of his mind to the darkness, he heard a scritch-scratching from beneath the floor, and the creak of the trapdoor swinging open and hitting the floor with a thud, as a large, black shape emerged from below....

And the darkness shifted.

A haze of gray emerged from it and expanded gradually into gloomy light. A dog barked faintly, but it echoed, even as it steadily grew louder. It was a friendly bark. No need to attack. No need to kill. Dogs were not prey.

A room came into focus. The dog's barks sharpened and stopped echoing. It stood there, wagging its tail, its tongue lolling out the side of its seemingly smiling mouth as it panted and looked up with huge, adorable gray eyes.

And the gray eyes seemed to speak. they said.

Remus? Who was Remus?

He was Remus...wasn't he...?

No.

The room started to go out of focus. He was not Remus. He was the wolf. Remus was in darkness.

Everything dissolved into swallowing shadows.

Barking. Friendly barking. The gray eyes were speaking again. Their voice was familiar....

Their voice was Sirius' voice....

Who was Sirius?

Sirius was one of Remus' best friends.

Who was Remus?

He was Remus....

The room came back into sharp focus.

The dog stood by the trapdoor, barking its friendly bark. That dog was Sirius!

This room was in the Shrieking Shack!

His name was Remus Lupin!

He could remember who he was!

With a thrill of joy, he threw back his head and howled his haunting werewolf howl.

Sirius the black dog urged him.

James and Peter...more of Remus' friends...more of his friends....

Remus bristled with delight and trotted on his four great paws to join Sirius at the trapdoor. He followed him down the tunnel all the way out into the cool night air. The grounds were bathed in moonlight....

Moonlight was the time to kill....

The world threatened to dissolve again as the sensation of gnashing dagger-sharp teeth dissipated in the jaws....

Barking. Friendly barking. Sirius, that was Sirius. Remus' friend. His friend.

There was a stag too. And on the stag there was a rat as well. Their eyes spoke too.

said the stag. That voice...that was James! Remus' other best friend! His other best friend!

whimpered the rat. The rat...the rat was Peter! Remus' best friend too! His best friend too!

He was surrounded by friends. Remus' friends. His friends.

Could he speak, like they spoke? Could he tell them now how glad he was they were there?

Sirius asked.

They were all peering at him. He was bigger than Sirius and Peter. But James was slightly larger than he.

James suggested to Sirius. Then he said to Remus,

Yes, he could hear them.

Yes...I can...hear you!

he managed.

James and Sirius exclaimed together. They sounded happy.

Happy.

Remus was happy. He was very happy. He felt so happy that he raised his wolf's tail into the air as high as it would go.

They were all here with him. He wasn't alone tonight.

His happiness swelled so much he couldn't stand still any longer. He loped round and round in circles, letting his tongue loll out like Sirius. he cried gleefully. He stopped loping, reared his head back, and howled at the moon. It was so beautiful...and it had been years since he'd seen a full one in his own mind....

Sirius barked.

Peter squeaked from his perch atop James' cervine shoulder.

said James.

Remus challenged, turning his back on the moon. His speech seemed to be improving.

said Sirius, lowering his body to the ground as if preparing to spring.

said James, preparing to spring as well.

Remus bounded past them all, and loped across the open stretch of grass that lay before them and ran between the forest and the castle. he called over his shoulder.

laughed Sirius behind him.

Remus heard him and James whooping as the three of them ran free across the vast stretch of grass, with Peter clinging onto James' back for dear life. Remus whooped too, and howled with delight.

They ran until they grew tired. And then they searched the forest for a stream where they drank water and rested before running some more. They kept this up until the moon had made its nightly journey across the sky. They were having such wonderful fun that they nearly lost track of the time.

James cried anxiously.

said Sirius. He bounded off across the grounds with James still carrying Peter on his back.

Remus called as he chased after them. He followed Sirius' tail all the way down into the dark tunnel that lead to the Shrieking Shack.

said Sirius once he'd opened up the trapdoor for him.

Remus climbed up through the trapdoor. The moment he emerged into the room on the first floor of the Shrieking Shack, he bounded about ecstatically.

Sirius barked.

said Remus, ceasing to romp about the room and looking at Sirius standing by the trapdoor.

said Sirius, diving below through the trap door and closing it with his mouth. It shut with a loud slam of wood on wood.

Remus called after him.

His happiness increased even more. He'd managed not to slur even once, that time!

But what was slurring, anyhow?

Who cared about slurring...?

It was time...to kill....

But there was nothing here...to be killed....

The sensation of jaws clamping down on a paw that shared the same body trembling with a low growl was lost, as the world dissolved into the darkness, which remained for only a moment before Remus fluttered his eyes open to find himself lying in a bed in the sunlit ward of the hospital wing with his fist jammed in his mouth. He took it out and dried off his saliva on his blanket.

"He's been having...er..." said Madam Pomfrey's voice from outside the ward.

"You don't have to lie, Ma-a-a-adam Pomfrey," said James' voice, which was stifling a yawn. "We know his condition."

"Well...er...in that case, he's been experiencing somnus lupus." Madam Pomfrey appeared in the ward with James, Sirius, and Peter in tow. They looked none the worse for wear after their nighttime escapade. They did, however, have huge bags under their bleary eyes from lack of sleep.

Nevertheless, they all beamed at Remus when they reached his bed.

"How are you?" Sirius asked when Madam Pomfrey had gone.

"Not bad for someone who's apparently been experiencing somnus lupus and then woke up with his fist in his mouth," said Remus, shrugging. "You?"

"Bit tired," yawned Sirius.

"Ditto," said James. "But it was worth it."

"I'm going to fall asleep in my potions exam today," Peter moaned. "I just know it...."

"Guys?" said Remus.

"Yeah?" said the other three together.

"Did it...did it all really happen?"

Sirius laughed and ruffled Remus' hair. "Yeah, it did!"

"Really?"

"Really," said Peter, grinning despite his troubles.

"And you didn't get caught?"

They shook their heads.

"And I didn't attack any of you?"

There was a slight hesitation at this query, but then Remus was relieved to see them shake their heads again.

"Now you get some rest, Moony," said James, ruffling Remus' hair just as Sirius had done a moment before.

Remus tilted his head and furrowed his brow. "What did you just call me?"

"Moony," said James, grinning still more broadly. "Fits, dunnit?"