Interlune

A wolf can travel long distances by night, but a werewolf is a wolf at large only when there is a full moon.

That month there was a blue moon, which meant there were roughly two weeks in which to be at large in wolf-form; but the month was July, when the sun shone quite late into the night.

The moon was up, too, during those hours, but the greater light outshone the lesser one, washing the moon as the sea washes a river when the incoming tide brings its salty waves to meet and to turn the river's current. A werewolf who is also a wizard could Apparate, and be at his destination in an instant, but a stranger appearing suddenly in a foreign land risks drawing the attention not only of the local Muggle population but of the magic community in the area. And when one's destination is the hiding place of a fellow wizard who is an escaped convict, and one is not certain of his precise location, it may be best not to Apparate. Especially when one's former students--and former schoolmates--may well be on holiday, or have relatives and friends, in the locality of one's own friend's hiding place and know one to be a werewolf and so do not accept one as a member of the wizarding community.

'It's bad enough, having to dress like a Muggle in order to blend in with 'em,' one wizard might say. 'A werewolf can never blend in.'

A witch might nod in agreement. 'You can dress them up,' she might add, 'but underneath--inside, where it counts--they're all fur and fangs and paws. One can't always see the tail, but one must never forget that the blood flows through the heart and the brain as well.'

'Blood will out,' the speakers might concur, and go back to quietly sipping their tea, or brandy, or--on a warm late evening in July--iced pumpkin juice. In the coziness of their sitting room, or garden, safe within their walls, secure in the purity of their own blood, Muggle-mix or no. Wolfsbane is not grown in many cottage gardens, nor in many window boxes.

So Remus traveled by night during the two weeks of that July when the moon was as dark as the sky, or when it was a thin crescent with horns as sharp as the prongs on the antlers of a stag.

He saw a number of stags as he made his way south through the countryside of France, but he did not hunt them. They were far too much a reminder of one of his long-lost friends. And on these the darker nights of the month, between the two full moons, Remus traveled as a human and hunted only for plants to eat, and for firewood, and for shelter in which to sleep away the daylight hours, which grew hotter as he traveled farther and farther south.

The land yielded food free for the taking--wild raspberries, gooseberries, cherries, and plums, mushrooms, watercress, and dandelion greens. He fished occasionally, and occasionally caught something worth eating. Now and again he stopped at a farm to ask for drink of water, and was sometimes offered a mug of cold beer, or a cup of hot coffee or tea.

A few times, arriving at a farm just as the farmhands were coming in from barn and fields, he was invited to stay for a supper of homemade soup or stew, bread and cheese, and wine.

The hospitality of the people, and their companionship, did his heart and soul as much good as the food did his body, and the gossip that made up so much of the conversation sometimes contained news of his destination, but never of his friend who was in hiding there. But this lack of news was itself news, because it meant that Sirius might still be there, undetected and unsuspected. There had been no more letters from him, and Remus had not sent any because he did not want an owl or any other bird to try to deliver a reply to him on a night of full-moonlight.

Some nights, after a good, long, pleasant supper at a farm, Remus accepted the offer of a bed in the farmhouse or in the hayloft high in the barn. In the morning he would rise with the farmer and farmhands, wash and shave, and breakfast with them, and then put in a day's work in barn or field in return for the welcome they had given him and the food they had shared with him.

On those nights he would lie awake sometimes for hours, listening to creaking floorboards and ticking clocks in the houses, or to the movements and munchings of animals in the barns, and he would wonder what it would be like to have such a home; to have a family, a wife, and sons, and daughters, and animals who would depend upon him for safety and security, even as he would depend upon them.

And he would wish that he had drunk more wine or beer at supper--drunk so much that he would have fallen asleep as soon as he had lain down and closed his eyes, so that he would not be tormented by thoughts that were, in a way, more horrible than the tortures of the nights of full moonlight, when he crouched, wide awake, eyes glazed and fangs bared, chained in some cave or to some tree as far from normal humans as he could manage to get before the sun set.

The search for shelter on these days cut into his traveling time more than did the work he did with the farmers to pay them for their food.

The farm work was also payment, was thanks, for the trust these people, Muggle or magical, gave him. The work left him sweating and trembling with tiredness by nightfall, sore and stiff the next day, but as much as it took out of him, it gave him something as well--a feeling that he was, in a sense, a member of a community: a community of human beings who, Muggle and magical alike, knew how to work with the land, to put seeds into the earth and help them to sprout and to grow and to bear fruit; and to work with animals--not mysterious and fantastical creatures to be sought out, studied, fought against or fought for; but tame and trusting neighbor-animals, dependents and friends, to be fed as they in return fed, to be provided for as they in turn provided.

The Muggle families did not talk of wizardry or witchcraft; the magical families did not talk of Muggles.

Remus, dressed in traveling kit of blue jeans, old shirts, and sturdy shoes, his wand stowed away with a couple of robes and some other spare garments and gear in his rucksack, reckoned he could pass for a Muggle among Muggles and a wizard among wizards, and made no effort, aside from his clothes, to seem to be more the one than the other.

He was seldom asked his name, and when asked gave only his first name, or an alias; none of his hosts asked for any sort of identification, or indeed for any credentials at all. They seemed satisfied--and more than gratified--when he demonstrated his willingness to do the most menial of tasks, from pulling up weeds in a vegetable garden to forking down hay for horses, to washing down the cowshed before and again after milking.

And if a Muggle-owned horse with a girth gall or a loose shoe was healed or re-shod overnight--or within the time it took the farmer to remove and hang up the harness--well, who was going to ask questions when it meant an animal did not have to suffer until the vet or farrier came, and when no bill had to be paid?

And if a bucket that came from the barn was brimming with chocolate milk that was ice cold even though it was fresh from the cow, the witch who carried it could hardly be anything but pleased with a guest whose only comment, between great gulps from the dipper, was that it was the most delicious milk he had ever drunk, and did she want him to go gather the eggs next? or carry on weeding?

No Muggle suspicions were aroused when Remus admitted to being ignorant about the operation of electric pumps, milking machines, and automatic waterers.

No magical brows were raised when a man who spoke a French as fluent as it was possible to speak with an English accent did not comment on France's win over Italy in the Alpine Quidditch Cup or show any more curiosity about his host's prize-winning seven-horned bull than to inquire politely if the heifers the bull got were good milkers.

If asked, Remus was prepared to say that he was a schoolteacher on a walking holiday. But only a few farmchildren asked, and they seemed so surprised that un professeur was willing to help them feed the chickens and peg out the washing (so that they could all have time for a swim), that none of them ever questioned him further except to ask him how his back had come to be so covered with scars.

Had he needed a reminder, such a child's curiosity, and the accompanying admiration in young eyes, would have been more effective than the grown men's friendly jokes about his uncallused hands or their teenaged daughters' teasing glances across a milkpail, to bring home to Remus the realization that he did not have a home among normal human beings--magical or Muggle--and that he never would have.

Perhaps, he told himself, lying awake one night long after his hosts had gone to sleep--perhaps if Severus Snape should ever marry and have children and perhaps a farm . . .

The smile on Remus's lips felt as bitter as the potion Severus had brewed for him had tasted. All this past year, at Hogwarts, Severus had brewed the potion that was the only cure for the monthly madness that was the curse of the victim of a werewolf's bite. Every month, for nine months, during the week preceding the full phase of the moon, Severus had faithfully brewed a cauldronful of the potion and brought a gobletful of it to Remus for him to drink.

The potion did not stop him turning into a wolf physically. It did, however, stop the mental changes--the lunacy--that had tormented Remus every month for all the years since he had been bitten as a small child.

Friends were supposed to be that faithful, Remus reminded himself.

But even if Severus became a farmer with a dozen children and as many prize-winning bulls--or potions--he would not consider Remus a friend, any more than he had this past school year or ever before.

And one friend had not been faithful . . . had betrayed them all, one by one--Remus, Sirius, Severus (indirectly but nonetheless despicably), and James.

And James's wife, and their son, and all the community of wizards and witches in the world . . .

Sometimes, in those long summer evenings when sun and full moon shared the sky, giving plenty of light for Remus to find food and shelter; plenty of time for him to secure his chains to a strong tree or to anchor them firmly in a cave wall; sometimes Remus almost believed that the coming night would be a respite from his ventures into the life of community.

As he fastened the iron bands round his neck and wrists, securing them with Muggle locks no paws or teeth could open and with spells that could not be broken 'til well after dawn, he almost thought that a night of howling and moaning and whimpering would bring relief from the misery of working side by side with normal human beings during the day; of trying to find rest in their homes at night; of walking alone on other nights through their woods and fields and cities, trying to pass through their countryside as quickly as possible and leave their communities in peace.

But when the sun had set, and the full moon shone more brightly than all the stars, then there was no respite. There was no relief. There was no thought. There was only the pain of transformation, the pain of trying to break loose from the chains; the pain of wanting to run wild, to ravage and to destroy some creature, human or animal, Muggle or magical; any creature, even himself.

Such nights seemed endless, the few hours of summertime darkness seeming to have been enchanted into a preview of some hideous eternity when one would writhe and weep in torment, powerless to escape the bonds with which one had shackled oneself.

Dawn followed darkness, but brought a sleep of exhaustion. A sleep of nightmares in which one walked up to a farmhouse to ask for a drink of water--and heard oneself asking for a gobletful of Wolfsbane Potion instead.

And the dreams continued with the hunting. The pursuit that did not end with the fall of night, nor with the coming of dawn. The hunt that went on and on . . . the fleeing, the panic that never stopped surging, until the hunters' arrows and bullets and spears came with a pain so unimaginable that one woke because one could not comprehend dying; woke sweating and feeling sick, and yet so savagely hungry . . . so desperate for food, for water; for company and for the comfort it could never bring . . .

There was never time for even weeping. One must break the spells, unlock the locks. Put away the chains, and wash, and be once again on one's way.

So Remus traveled south, through France, and on into Spain.

These were the Pyrenees, and while in France he had managed to understand and be understood in the various regional French dialects, in Spain he knew only a few words of Spanish and none at all of Basque. Once, years and years ago, he had known a Spanish exchange student, who had begun to teach him Spanish--but once her parents had learnt that he was a werewolf, she had broken off all contact with him. She had said she could not, and would not, dishonour her family by going against their wishes, but even her owl had seemed suspicious of him when it brought her last letter. And it was not even a family owl. Remus had bought it in London and had presented it to her as a gift on the last day of her last term at Hogwarts.

He had written a reply to her letter, asking her . . . no, begging her, he admitted to himself again now . . . to reconsider. To--if she would not defy her parents--at least not deny him her friendship, or at least her acquaintance. But she had never written back. And he had often wondered if the owl had even delivered his letter to her.

He had no idea where she might be now, or what she might be doing. His initial efforts to find out had come to nothing, and he had let himself be discouraged fairly early on. And then for so many years it was so difficult for any wizard to learn anything about anyone, and sometimes when one did discover something about someone, one wished one had not...

He wondered now what she would have thought of the people he was meeting as he made his way through this mountainous countryside. The hill farmers, the shepherds, the travellers, some of whom walked, as he did, alone, others in groups; still others who drove horses hitched to brightly painted wagons, or cars that pulled more Muggle-ish types of caravans.

They camped, these people, as he did--and although the Pyrenees were almost as thickly dotted with caves as with sheep, during the week of the blue moon he was hard put to find shelter remote enough from the well-traveled ways to protect himself from these other travellers--and to protect them from him.

During these desperate searches, scrambling over rocks and through brush, past sheep whose locations he tried very hard not to remember, he wished for some way to muzzle himself so that his howls and moans would be muffled in the dark hours of the nights. But when he had two hands he had no snout to bind, and when he had a snout he had neither the means or the inclination to bind it. Then he wanted only to free himself from the chains, from the cold iron that was as impervious to fangs and claws as it was painful--icy-burning--to his wizard's human hands.

He had seen dogs chew blades of grass in order to rid their upset stomachs of something even more foreign to their systems than grass, and once, in desperation, he had attempted to swallow enough stalks of wolfsbane to poison himself. But he had not been able to keep the plant down long enough to die.

The sickness had lasted long after his body had been transformed into wolfshape, and the thirst that had followed had been so savage that he remembered it far more clearly than he ever remembered any other details of the long hours of his monthly misery.

He hoped he would never try that 'cure' again. But now, in this country more alien even than the one he had called home even after the werewolf had bitten him, the temptation to do anything was so great that only one thought kept him going by daylight. Only one thought made him keep looking for caves. Only one thought made him eat as much as he could for supper and then creep into the cave, or up to the tree he had chosen when he found no cave, and secure the chain, anchoring one end of it and locking the bands around his neck and wrists with keys and with charms.

Then he would lie down, and wait, and try not to weep with exhaustion and dread. And he would try to think about Sirius, who was waiting for him on the other side of these mountains. Sirius, who had never feared to be his friend and who was the only friend he had left in the world. Sirius, who as a boy had been one of three who had become animagi in order to keep Remus company during full-moon nights. Sirius, who was now one of the surviving two of the three and who, during the thirteen years in which Remus had doubted him, had never stopped thinking of Remus as a friend. Sirius, who could still transform himself, at will, into a dog large enough, and strong and brave enough, to keep a werewolf company and under control.

And calm, Remus would think, as he lay down and closed his eyes against the bright light of the moon just rounding the edge of the cave.

And comforted . . .

* * *

He was not sure if it was the woman who recognised him for what he was, or if it was her horse that knew.

He knew he had startled them both, coming so suddenly upon the campsite as he had done, walking sleepy and hungry through the mist of the early morning--a mist that he knew by this his third day in this southern country would burn off within an hour and that the subsequent hours of the morning would grow increasingly hot.

He had wanted--oh, how he had wanted!--to stay on in the cave today, to sleep in the cool darkness, to rest, to forget the things he dreamed about on dark-of-the-moon nights.

But what was he to do? Capture some bird and charm it into carrying a letter to Sirius?

Sorry, can't travel today, I'd rather sleep--

Not work for his keep. Not gather news about events in the Muggle and wizarding worlds. Just--

Sorry--I want to sleep.

Sirius would let him sleep twenty-four hours a day if he wanted to, once he got there. Sirius would feed him . . . whatever food Sirius could find, he would share.

But Sirius needed him as much as he needed Sirius. Sirius had been a prisoner for only thirteen years. Imprisoned in Azkaban for twelve years, and in hiding for another. And Sirius had a number of friends who wanted to be with him--who wanted him to be with them. More friends than Remus had--more people to miss him. Sirius even had a family, of a sort--he had a godson. James's son, Harry, who was not only Sirius's godson, but his friend.

As were two of Harry's friends. Ron. And Hermione.

Which meant that Sirius had at least three friends, in addition to Remus. Who had just one.

But that one was Sirius.

And Remus was the only one of Sirius's friends who could be with him now. The only one who was free, because of having no family of any sort at all, to travel through this summer holiday to be with him.

The only one who had nothing to lose, Remus thought.