Interlune

Perhaps it was such thoughts that had distracted him, that he was upon the woman's campsite almost before he was aware of it.

The sudden neigh of a horse startled him, and rounding a bend in the road he saw, in the far corner of a small field, a shaggy black horse, standing watching him from between the shafts of a colourfully painted caravan.

The horse snorted, and suddenly a woman's face appeared, over the middle of the horse's broad and high back: a face that for a moment looked as disembodied as if it had appeared in the flames of the campfire now smouldering a few feet from the caravan.

'Buenos días!' Remus called out, because he had no idea what the Basque words for 'Good morning' might be. He smiled, and raised a hand in a sort of half wave, half salute, thinking he would have doffed his hat, or at any rate tipped it, had he been wearing it. But it was stowed away in his rucksack, with his wand and his robes.

He had meant to keep walking, but the moment the words were out of his mouth the horse reared in the shafts, neighing again, and then plunging.

The horse could not rear very high, for the caravan was much too heavy to tilt up with him; and the shafts were evidently too strong to bend or to break. And when the horse plunged, he could not bolt; because only a long, steady pull at that collar would get the caravan rolling, and the sudden darting movement that he made only brought him up short, against the double check of the caravan's weight and the woman's sudden tug on the reins.

Remus himself had started to run towards them, more from instinct than from any knowledge of how such an approach might cause a horse to react--but the woman threw up her free hand and shouted out something that did not sound at all like any sort of wish for a good morning. And then he saw her hand make the gesture that was plain in any language, the gesture against what some called the evil eye.

Feeling his face go hot, and then cold and tight, Remus looked away.

And then he turned away, and walked on, breathing harder from his reaction to the woman's gesture than from his moment of startlement or brief attempt at rescue.

She did not need his help with the horse. That was obvious. She could manage an ordinary, apparently nonmagical creature. She evidently thought she knew how to deal with a monstrous one.

He wondered what she would have done if he had pointed his wand at the frightened horse and charmed it into calmness.

He wondered if she had any food to spare in that great caravan of hers, and if he had only imagined the smell of bacon and coffee mingling with the smoke that had still spiraled thinly up from the doused fire.

He sighed as he continued on his way. He would find something to eat soon, surely. Perhaps not any bacon-bearing bushes, nor any streams flowing with hot coffee. But there would be something. Perhaps not mushrooms--it was too dry here for mushrooms--but surely fruit. And maybe some cheese and bread--or even soup--shared by some shepherd or hill farmer.

There might not be much conversation, but help with work was always appreciated, and Spanish sheep seemed to understand more English than did Spanish sheepdogs. And both understood whistles. And if a wand looked to a Spanish shepherd like a pitiful substitute for a sheep-hook, well, if that was how people herded sheep in England, well, the English did raise very fine sheep.

To say nothing of the Welsh and the Scots.

But one could not accept the offer of a bed for the night. Not even if the bed was a sheepskin rolled out on the ground underneath the shepherd's caravan. Not even if the supper was cooked over a fire of purple flames, in a pot that could switch itself on and off and ladle out its own contents without dribbling so much as a quarter teaspoonful.

If one liked to travel by night, when the mountain air was bracingly cold and the moon was full and bright, well, then, Vaya con Dios!

If only, Remus howled within himself--if only I could travel at night. If only I could turn myself into an owl, and fly...

Or even an ordinary, nonmonstrous, nonmagical, Muggle-ish wolf...

Meanwhile, there was always plenty of chocolate in the outside pockets of his rucksack. He broke off a large piece now, and ate it as he walked along through the clearing mist. When was he going to start seeing some of those Valencia or Seville oranges Mariposa had told him so much about? Chocolate did made one so very thirsty...

He swallowed, and reached over his shoulder for his plastic, Muggle-made, noninsulated bottle of water.

* * *

It was towards the end of yet another day of mist and heat and loneliness that Remus, scanning the slopes before him from the vantage point of an outcropping of rock, saw what looked like a very large bird riding the thermals in the sky above the plain that stretched shimmering below.

He had seen similar birds before--hawks or eagles, or perhaps the bone breakers he had read about somewhere; he seemed to recall that they were very large birds indeed.

But this creature looked as large as a flamingo, or a crane.

It looked larger... it was getting larger... it was coming nearer, and nearer...

It looked like a flying horse... it looked like... a hippogriff...

It was a hippogriff.

It was Buckbeak.

And Sirius was on his back.

They zoomed past, still high overhead, and turning Remus saw them circle, descending, and then vanish around the bend back up the road.

Remus leapt down off the rock, feeling more nimble than he had felt in weeks, and started back along the road in the direction from which he had come.

There were other outcroppings of rock here, and low clumps of trees, and fissures in the rock that were like false entrances to nonexistent caves.

'Long time no see.'

Remus jumped as Sirius's voice came suddenly out of the blackness that was one such crack in the rock. 'We'd better be off, the shepherds may be bringing the sheep down at any moment.'

The voice grew nearer, and there was Sirius, stepping out of the crack. Sirius, his shaggy hair blacker than the darkness behind him; thin as a shadow in his grey robes; his face gaunt, his eyes hollow, his chin and cheeks unshaven.

'You're certainly a sight for sore eyes,' Remus said, and suddenly a smile stretched the corners of Sirius's pale lips.

'So are you,' he said--and in two steps they had covered the distance between road and rocks and were hugging each other, pounding each other on the back and rubbing each other's shoulders with the roughness of two young goats butting each other in play.

Or two wolf cubs, Remus thought; and heaved a deep sigh.

'Come on, then,' Sirius said, releasing Remus and giving a tug at the rope he held in one hand. 'We ought to get a move on.

'Come on, Buckbeak,' he went on, turning back towards the crack in the rock; and out of the shadows stepped the hippogriff, as regally as a king appearing from the interior of his coach.

Buckbeak eyed Remus as imperiously as a king might look upon someone he knows to be a subject, perhaps a cabinet minister, but whose name he does not recall, or care much to know.

You, too? thought Remus, remembering the horse and the woman who had wanted to ward off the evil eye.

'Bow to him,' Sirius murmured, at Remus's elbow.

'What?'

'Bow to him. It's what one does with hippogriffs. Look him in the eye, and bow to him. If he bows back, you can get on.'

And if he doesn't? Remus started to ask. But he closed his mouth, and looked up into the hippogriff's eyes. They were fierce and proud as an eagle's or any other wild creature's, and suddenly Remus thought, Buckbeak knows what I am, too...he recognises me...and he doesn't mind.

And Remus bowed, not just because Sirius had said it was what one did with hippogriffs, but more as if he were trying to acknowledge this hippogriff's recognition of him. To accept it; that which he had accepted from so very few humans or animals before. That which he had been offered by so very few...among them, the man who now stood at his side.

Acceptance of what he was. Of him, as he was.

Of him.

He straightened up from his bow, and Buckbeak bent his own scaly knees and inclined his sharp, feathered head.

'Hop on, then,' said Sirius. 'We've got to go. It's getting dark.'

'Dark?'

Remus turned from Buckbeak to stare at Sirius and then out across the plain. Already half of it lay in the shadow of the mountains on whose last low slopes the three of them now stood.

'Sunset,' said Sirius, his voice quiet and calm. 'Not moonrise. We're under the shadow of the mountains, just as the plain is. We've plenty of time for Buckbeak to fly us down and a fair way across. When it's time, he'll land, and you and I will continue on foot while he flies on ahead.

'On foot,' Remus echoed.

Once more he saw a smile flash, bright and white, across the dark stubble of Sirius's beard.

'On foot,' Sirius repeated. His eyes met Remus's with all the intensity of Buckbeak's; with much more in addition to acceptance.

'It's been years, Sirius,' Remus reminded him. 'We're not as young as we were--'

'No, we're not.' Sirius nodded. 'We're neither of us as young as we once were.

'It's years, as you say...and for a great many of them I thought we'd never have another chance to relive the old nights.'

Sirius stopped, and cleared his throat, and then went on, turning towards Buckbeak and bowing to the hippogriff. 'So come on. Climb on.

'Here. I'll give you a leg up.'

And before he could voice any more doubts about what Sirius evidently had in mind, or even decide if he ought to express them after what Sirius had said, Remus found himself sitting on Buckbeak's back, just behind the great wings, which unfolded now, much larger than the wings of any flamingo or crane. And Sirius, with a quick, quiet 'Ascendo!' and a flick of the wand he pulled from his belt, was astride Buckbeak's back, in front of the hippogriff's wings, and gathering up the rope that looped like reins from the sides of his collar.

'So where did you get the wand?' Remus asked as they soared in swift silence down the last slope of the mountain and out over the plain. He spoke as much to keep from panicking as from real curiosity. The last time he had seen Sirius, in the ruined room on the first floor of the Shrieking Shack, at Hogsmeade, Sirius had used wands he had charmed from Harry's friend Ron and from Severus Snape...without either wizard's permission.

That had been just a couple of hours before Sirius had been recaptured, and before he had escaped again, this time on Buckbeak, who had just been freed.

Prisoners in Azkaban were not allowed to keep their wands, and an escaped convict was not able to just walk into a shop and try out wands until one picked him.

So Remus was curious.

He was also anxious to take his mind off the speed and altitude of their flight, and the distance between them and the plain below.

He had never liked heights. It was bad enough standing up on a rocky outcrop looking down across the slopes below for a cave to hide in.

Flying lessons at Hogwarts had never been something he had looked forward to, and after his first ride on Sirius's flying motorcycle--a twenty-first birthday present Sirius had given himself--Remus had promised himself he would never take another. Students on broomsticks did not fly too high at Hogwarts--unless they were Quidditch stars showing off or just flying for the love of flying.

One reason Sirius had wanted the motorcycle was that it would go higher, and faster, than any broom then in production.

Hippogriffs, Remus had learnt this evening, flew even higher, and even faster.

So think about wands, Remus told himself, screwing his eyes tight shut and wishing he could bury his face in Buckbeak's feathered neck. Any wizard can handle a wand...and keep both feet firmly on the ground while he does it, if he wants to...

But Sirius did not seem to want to talk about how he had come by this present wand.

'An owl brought it,' he said. And while there was no emotion audible in these words such as had interrupted his talk of reliving 'the old nights,' there was a finality to his tone that stopped Remus asking any more questions.

Such as, who sent the owl? Will a wand pick a wizard if the wizard is an animagus and goes shopping in his animal form? What if a wizard drank Polyjuice Potion--just happening to have a stray hair or other bit from the body of another wizard--could that wizard (appearing to be the other) trick a wand into selecting him...or would the wand select the one he was appearing as...or both of them?

What do you want to do? Remus asked himself--try for a postgraduate degree? Write an article for the Journal of Transmogrification? Write a book?

No. Remus heaved a sigh. I just want to get off this bloody hippogriff.

But when they finally landed, in a great rustling of wings and swirl of dust, as Remus slid gratefully down from Buckbeak's back and felt solid ground once more beneath his feet, he was very glad for the solid bulk of the hippogriff. He leaned against Buckbeak, and drew in deep breaths of the cool dry air; felt the breeze on his sweating face as refreshing as a draught of mountain spring water. Even the chill of it in the small of his back and under his armpits was welcome, and the chill was tempered--or intensified--by Buckbeak's warmth.

Buckbeak's warmth. Living, flesh and blood warmth.

And the cool, the chill, of the air. The evening air.

The evening...

'I must go, Sirius.'

Remus straightened up, and stepping away from Buckbeak he begun to tug at the shoulder straps of his rucksack, trying to pull it off with one hand while with the other he fumbled at the buttons of his shirt. 'I've got to... Buckbeak's got to take off...Sirius...tell him to go--'

'It's all right, Remus.' Once again Sirius's voice was very quiet and calm. 'Give me your pack.'

He slipped it off Remus's shoulders and held it out the hippogriff, who lifted one foretalon and grasped the rucksack by the shoulder straps.

'Go,' Sirius told Buckbeak, and his voice was still quiet and calm; and commanding now as well. 'Go home, Buckbeak! Home.'

Buckbeak did not need to be told twice. Already he was rearing on his hind legs, not in panic as the black carthorse had done, but calmly, majestically--as if he were very sorry but he really must go now.

Remus glanced up into the hippogriff's eyes, not wanting to see there any fear, or, worse, rejection; he did not want to look, and yet he did.

And in the great orange orbs, which blazed with fierceness and a spark of savagery, he saw once again that recognition, that wild acknowledgement and acceptance.

And then the hippogriff was gone, in another rustle and swirl of wings and dust. He was climbing, circling; gaining altitude; soaring away across the plain...

Remus looked down, to get on with removing the nonmagical garments that would not transmogrify with him. And he saw that Sirius was gone, too.

And yet not gone. For were he had stood, tall and thin in his tattered grey robes, there now sat a black dog. An enormous and yet very gaunt and shaggy, jet-black dog.

'Hello, Padfoot,' said Remus, and the dog looked up at him with eyes the same colour as Sirius's eyes, and gave a wave of his plumed tail.

There was no moaning tonight; no whining or whimpering; no snarling or struggling as Remus's body changed from that of a man to that of a wolf.

The transformation was painful, yes--it was always painful when there was no Wolfsbane Potion to dull it, to ease the process. But one could not cry out, one must bare one's teeth and try not to pant too obviously, when one's friend was near--not watching, but standing guard a short distance away, sniffing the breeze, ears pricked, and hackles raised perhaps despite all efforts to appear as calm as if every wizard who took on animal shape was an animagus, and transformed himself, at will, instantaneously and easily, instead of writhing and crouching, rolling in agony, fighting against one's self--one's selves--every step of the way.

The great black dog met the wolf's eyes and then glanced away. Then back again, with a look that told the wolf the dog was not afraid. No--and that the wolf had nothing to fear from him, either. This was not a wolfhound. This was...this was Padfoot. A dog was not a wolf, no...but this dog was a friend.

This was not a dog bred to hunt wolves. This was a dog...this was a companion...with whom to hunt...

No...not to hunt...

Yes. To hunt the moon. To hunt the moon, to follow its trail, to howl at it...

This was...this was...Padfoot. This was a ...a friend.

Padfoot gave a wave of his plumed tail. Yes, it's me. And you are my friend, Moony. And I am very, very glad to be with you again. Here, tonight, in this place of cool breezes that ripple our fur...

Feel it! Feel the wind lift your fur? See the moon?

Smell that?

That was a hippogriff. It's gone now. That's the sea.

Come on, that's where we're going. Come on. Race you!

And Padfoot, who had stretched out his forelegs, bowing in greeting and invitation, hanging out his long pink tongue and wagging his plumed tail, now leapt into motion, whirling round, and bounding away across the plain.

Come on! Race you to the sea!

Moony took off after him. Running, not from chains or caves or trees that sent splinters into the tender flesh between one's toes when one tried to claw trees into nothingness, into nothing that could keep one bound...

He ran towards the sea, he ran into the night of moonlight and starlight and wind of a myriad scents. And Padfoot ran beside him, ran with him; occasionally turning his great shaggy head to butt against Moony's shoulder or flank. And when he did this, and threw Moony off stride, then Moony would charge back, barging into Padfoot, snapping at mouthfuls of thick fur but never at throat or flank or even ear. They were not hunting each other, they were hunting with each other. They were hunting the moon.

Its trail now lay over the sea.

Its trail rippled and shimmered on the water, which was as alive as quarry and redolent with the scents of countless prey creatures.

The water was cold, it felt good to one's pads and one's belly fur. But it was not good for drinking.

I know where there is water that is good to drink, Padfoot said, as they waded back up onto the sand.

They paused to shake the seawater out of their fur, and then trotted up from the beach, both of them panting now, after their long run and swim. Both of them limping a little as they jogged up the pebbly path.

Not a cave. Moony stopped short at the mouth of looming blackness.

Not a cave. He bowed his head, and drooped his tail, wagging it once in apology as he crouched low to the ground. Not a cave.

But the water is in the cave. Padfoot turned back, tongue lolling, at the entrance of the cave. It springs up out of the ground. It's cold, and it's good for drinking. And I'm very thirsty.

Come on, Moony. The cave is safe. Come and sniff it out.

But Moony could not. He remained where he was, crouching low, head and tail drooping. He did not like to have the moon at his back, at it was now; but nor did he want to creep into the cave to get away from it.

He wanted to turn away from the cave. He wanted to hunt the moon...he wanted to hunt it down, out of the sky...he wanted to bury it where its light could never strike him again...

Go and drink, he told Padfoot. I shall wait out here for you. I shall be all right.

But when he turned, and headed away from the cave entrance, Padfoot came with him.

And it was Padfoot who led him, not back into the sea, but up a narrow track that climbed, twisting among rocks and brush, past the entrance of the cave, and around to a point above the cave, a point from which the path of rippling moonlight seemed to run right to the end of the sea.

And it was Padfoot who began to howl first. He braced his forefeet against the ground, and lowered his tail, and pointed his muzzle towards the moon, and began to howl.

They kept it up, at intervals, through the rest of the night. Occasionally one of them would take a break, and go off sniffing the ground above the cave and back along the track. They sniffed out rabbits, and tortoises, and other creatures: some good to eat, and some not. Once Moony caught a whiff of hippogriff scent, but at the time he did so he was more sleepy than hungry, and did not even try to remember where he had come across the scent, for future investigation. Instead, he returned to the low headland above the cave, and lay down, curling up not far from where Padfoot lay curled up with his nose and paws tucked snugly into the curve of his tail.

That hippogriff, Moony thought drowsily. I have hunted that hippogriff before...have I hunted that hippogriff?

He looked around, yawning.

The moon...where is it?

The moon has got away...it has escaped...

That hippogriff...Buckbeak...I must go back... I must go and look for my clothes...

Perhaps Buckbeak can find them, before somebody else does...

I'm so thirsty... so sleepy...

He closed his eyes...and then opened them...

And the sun was up.

It was bright, and warm, and it was shining down on him.

It was hot.

He was hot.

He started to get up, and realised that he had been lying stretched out, in the open air, beneath a warm grey robe.

Wizard's robes.

New wizard's robes. Finely woven, soft, and grey, and very warm.

He sat up, and the robes fell away, off his shoulders, and he realised that he had been lying naked beneath them.

Naked. Not covered in fur.

Covered up...with new grey wizard's robes.

Sirius's new robes.

But where was Sirius?

Remus yawned, and stood up, wrapping the robes about him, careful not to let them drag in the dust of the hard ground on which he had been lying.

He must have been lying here for hours.

Sleeping out, in the open air, on the hard ground.

He must have been sleeping, for he felt rested. Relaxed. Not at all stiff, or sore.

And not bruised or bloody from iron bands and chains.

He was not in chains.

But he was very, very thirsty.

He looked around, and then, seeing no one in sight, anywhere, he unwrapped the robes from about his waist, sorted out bottom hem from neckline, and pulled the robes on over his head. They were hot, too heavy for this climate, and they were Sirius's. But he could not very well go walking about stark naked. This place might not be as deserted as it looked. And he could not remain any longer up on this bare headland. He couldn't see any people up here, and nor could he see any water. He must go look for some water. The sea was below...but one could not drink seawater.

But there was a spring...

There was a cave below this headland. And in the cave there was a spring...and this track led down to the cave...

He could not remember how he knew this. He did not try to remember. He was not sure he wanted to.

And it might come back to him, later on, during the day. The way dreams sometimes did. And if he wanted to, he could think about it when it did.

He knew that whatever he remembered was not a dream. It had been quite real. And he had not been sleeping all of last night. He had been awake some of the time.

He had been...

And Sirius had been with him...

Sirius had been with him. Sirius had found the new robes, and had unpacked them, and--not knowing they were meant for him--had covered Remus with them. To keep out the cold of the night air, yes...it had been cold last night, even when one had had fur...

But the fur had disappeared, as the moon had disappeared...

And Muggle-made garments did not disappear and reappear as one was transmogrified. They were not like wizard's robes.

Yet they would look every bit as suspicious to anyone who happened upon them lying abandoned out in the middle of the open plain...

In the morning sunlight the cave looked like a refuge: a shelter from the heat and a retreat in the event other people should visit the beach.

Remus thought it very likely that no one but he and Sirius--and Buckbeak--could even see the cave. At any rate, there was no one about now to see it. There was only the hippogriff, tethered deep in the shadows. And Remus heard him before he saw him. He heard him pawing the ground, and then clicking his beak--and for a moment Remus froze, reaching for the wand that was not tucked into these robes...

And then he recognised the sounds as those made by a hippogriff that has been startled by the approach of another creature.

'Good morning, Buckbeak.'

Remus had no plans to ride the hippogriff this morning, but he thought it would be a good idea to bow again, as he spoke, anyway.

He did so, and Buckbeak bent his knees and lowered his head in acknowledgement and acceptance, his eyes bright and piercing even in the dim interior of the cave.

And Remus found himself murmuring 'Excuse me,' as he slipped past the hippogriff and headed on towards the back of the cave. He could hear the water, bubbling up from the spring. He could smell the cool dampness of it, about him, in the air of the cave.

And here was the spring itself, the water bubbling up from the hole in the floor of the cave and trickling across it, in a narrow channel. It flowed towards the back of the cave, and though the shadows there were much darker than here or nearer to the mouth of the cave, yet it was not as black as the depths of many of the caves in which Remus had hid on his way to this place. And although the spring water was as fresh and sweet as any water he had ever drunk anywhere, yet beyond it, in the darkness, he seemed to catch a whiff of the salt tang of the sea.

When he had swallowed enough handfuls of the clear cold water to quench his thirst, Remus straightened up from his half-kneeling position, and went back towards the front of the cave. He wanted to explore the course of the stream, but for that he wanted his wand, and upon entering the cave he had spotted his rucksack, stowed neatly away in a sort of cubbyhole in the wall of the cave: a small space that it shared with a wooden box that Remus hoped held food.

Faint flashes of memory told him something about rabbits...but he did not want to explore that line of thought just now.

He knelt down by his rucksack, and unbuckled the straps and lifted the flap. There was his change of Muggle-made clothes, there his wizard's robes . . . there his razor and toothbrush . . . there his wand.

He drew the wand out, and rebuckled the straps of the rucksack before turning to the wooden box and lifting up its lid. The box held half a loaf of bread, a small wedge of cheese, an even smaller lump of chocolate, and a scrap of parchment. Parchment that bore no visible writing but that was clearly marked, with the muddy paw print of a large dog and a rough sketch of a similar, but not identical, print.

Remus felt his lips tighten in a little smile, and he reached into the box and picked up the scrap of parchment. Sirius was no artist, but neither was the drawing a failed attempt to copy the dog's paw print. There was too much attention to details, like the subtle difference in the shape of the pads, in the size of the sketched print. This was never intended to represent a canine paw print.

Remus touched the tip of his wand to the parchment. 'Aperio!' he murmured.

And words, looking as though they had been hastily jotted down with a cross-nibbed quill before being charmed into invisibility, appeared on the parchment--

I have gone to get your clothes. Help yourself to

food; I will bring back more.

Follow the spring-stream back through the cave--

there is a pool for bathing, and like the interior

of the cave, it is hidden from most eyes.

'Deleo,' said Remus, touching the parchment with the tip of his wand, and not only the words, but the canine and lupine paw prints, vanished.

Remus laid the piece of parchment back in the box. He tore off the crusty end of the loaf, and picked up the cheese. It was hard, and creamy-yellow in colour, and smelled marvelous. He bit off a large mouthful as he stood up, and headed back towards the spring and the stream that flowed from it, munching alternate mouthfuls of bread and cheese as he went.

The stone floor of the cave was cold beneath his bare feet. Dry as dust near the entrance, and where Buckbeak was tethered, it became moist, and then damp, as he followed the course of the stream. But it was never actually wet, or slimy or slippery, as he had begun to expect it would become the farther he went, now walking down a slope, head bent beneath the ceiling that got lower as the cave became more of a tunnel.

The water, which had been little more than a trickle up by the spring, was now a proper stream, running down through its channel that seemed to go deeper and deeper into the stone as the floor continued to slope downwards.

How long did it go on? Remus wondered. He could still see a faint glow of light ahead, as he had back at the spring. It was bright enough that he did not need wandlight; it was dim enough that he could not see how far ahead the end of the tunnel lay. But he could still smell whiffs of sea-smell mingling now and then with the stone- and earth- and spring-smells, and when he thought about it he realised that he did not care when the tunnel came to end.

And then he smiled. Maybe it wouldn't end. Maybe Sirius had put a spell on this tunnel as well as on the bathing-pool and on the interior of the cave. Maybe one came to the end of the tunnel only when one came to some other realisation. Maybe as long as one did not care when the tunnel ended, the tunnel did not end. Or maybe if one felt very much in need of a bath, so filthy one could not bear the touch of one's own skin; maybe then one would reach the bathing-pool.

Remus grinned, remembering the chamber chamber at Hogwarts.

He would never forget the day he had found it. He had tried hard enough--but apparently had not tried long enough--for months before he had found it.

He was trying too hard, Sirius had told him.

'I've

never found it when I've gone looking for it,' Sirius had said; and James, laughing at Remus's skepticism, had nodded. 'No more have I,' he had said, looking so virtuous that Remus had laughed.

'That's it!' Sirius had exclaimed, nodding at Remus. 'That's the best way to find it. Start laughing, no--harder--really laughing . . . so hard you can hardly stand up--let alone walk--and then maybe you'll find it.'

'Helps if you've had a few too many glasses of pumpkin juice,' James had added.

'Or cups of tea,' Sirius had said.

'Or bottles of butterbeer.'

'Or if you're running late for class and you think you're nowhere near a loo.'

'That's when I found it,' James had said. 'Never been so glad to have taken a wrong turning in all my life.'

'Only problem is that you can't ever find it when you want an excuse for being late to class,' Sirius had grumbled.

Remus had looked from one of his friends to the other, and then gone off on his own to see if he could find this fabulous chamber. A room full of chamber pots. And not just ordinary chamber pots in ordinary settings. Fabulous chamber pots, of every description one could imagine in one's wildest dreams, and stowed away in every possible and probable and improbable nook, cranny, and cupboard.

Remus had not found the chamber chamber that day. Or in subsequent searches over the next several months.

But the next year, well into the second term, one dark-of-the-moon night when he was trying to find his way to the dungeon he was supposed to be cleaning as a detention...

When he had drunk nearly an entire pot of tea, trying to stay awake, to finish a Potions essay before rushing off to do his detention, Mariposa had come down the stairs from the girls' dormitory to tell him it was after ten o'clock and had he forgotten he was supposed to have met Professor --

He had not waited to hear more, but had leapt up from the table and gone charging out of the common room, and was halfway down the last staircase to the dungeons before he knew he absolutely had to find a toilet before he even started to look for the dungeon...

And he had found the chamber chamber instead. And knew what James had meant about never having been so glad to take the turning he had taken.

And like James, and Sirius, and no doubt countless other Hogwarts students and staff, he had not been able to find the chamber chamber again...

Not until, years later, he had been back at Hogwarts, teaching...

I wonder if we could teach a class in finding it, he thought now, walking on through the tunnel that was, in a way, so like the tunnels that led from Hogwarts to various places in and near Hogsmeade.

How would one teach such a class? Who would write the textbook? Would it be taught most effectively as theory? Or in practical lessons?

And what would the parents think if it were taught in mixed classes, to boys and girls together...?

Hmmm.

Remus smiled as he realised he'd been frowning, thinking seriously about a class in...what?

Need-Based Discoveries?

He chuckled, and then, as he rounded a bend in the tunnel, he saw the bathing-pool before him. And beyond it, through a curtain of vines over the open end of the tunnel, the sea.

And Sirius was swimming, slowly, lazily, across the pool.

It lay, a nearly perfectly round small body of water, where the tunnel ended and the stream, turning in its channel to run down over a sort of rocky spillway, cascaded into the pool.

At the top of the spillway a group of rocks that looked like a small-scale dolmen was serving as a clothes-horse. Sirius's tattered grey robes were spread out over it, and hanging from various corners, and anchored by much smaller stones, Remus's Muggle-made clothes were drying in the sea-scented, cool-warm air.

'You've been busy this morning,' Remus remarked, as he descended the last stretch of the slope and crossed the sand-dusty stones to the rim of the pool.

Sirius nodded, and rolled over onto his back, spouting water like a skinny white whale.

'That's soapwort--there--in that crevice,' he said as Remus, having pulled his robes off over his head, looked around for someplace to hang them or lay them down.

'Bouncing bet,' said Remus, crossing to where Sirius had pointed, and pinching off a handful of leaves from the plant.

'Bouncing who?' Sirius laughed, shaking his hair out of his eyes as he treaded water.

'Bet. Don't you remember Professor Sprout telling us about it in class?

'Is the water cold?' Remus added, putting out a toe to dip in it.

For answer, Sirius skipped his cupped hand across the surface, sending up a sparkling splash of what felt to Remus like liquid ice.

He swore, and leapt back from the edge of the pool.

'Oh, come on,' Sirius said, laughing again. 'Dive in. Only way to do it. You'll soon warm up.

'Come on. Race you to the other side.'

Sirius was right, of course. Once Remus had got over the first heart-stopping plunge and could feel his fingers and toes again enough to swim, the exercise made the water seem as warm as that in Phelan Randall's rooftop pool. And a good scrubbing with soapwort and a sponge seemed to remove even the emotional traces of the recent full-moon nights.

The sponge floated away on the soapy outflow, back to its home beneath the breakers just offshore, and Remus and Sirius climbed out of the pool to dry basking in the sunlight just outside the cave's sea door. A check on the clothes had revealed Remus's Muggle-made garments to be still nearly as wet as when they had been spread out to dry, but Sirius's robe was only slightly damp along the hem and the underarm seams.

'I'll leave it a bit longer,' Sirius had said, stretching out in the short grass that grew between the cave's entrance and the beach. 'It isn't as though either of us was expected anywhere. And I feel I could go on doing this for months. Just lying in the sun. I don't think I shall ever feel I've had too much sun again.'

'If only the days were twice as long,' Remus agreed, pillowing his head on his folded arms.

'Or the nights twice as--' Sirius broke off, and Remus opened his eyes to see what had caused the interruption.

There was nothing in sight that looked suspicious, and Sirius's eyes were closed; his cheeks a little flushed, perhaps.

'Twice as short?' Remus asked, closing his own eyes again.

'Twice as short,' Sirius muttered.

And twice as bright, Remus thought. Like a full-moon night. Such a night would no doubt be bearable to someone who had spent twelve years in the soul-darkness of Azkaban. Such a night ought to keep away nightmares.

'We shall have a very bright night tonight,' Remus said.

Sirius sighed, and then, after a moment, he said, 'D'you reckon my robe's dry by now?'

'Dunno.' Remus didn't care, either. He wanted to lie here for months. He wanted to sleep here for months. He wanted to sleep all day. And all night... 'They're both your robes, anyway.'

'What do you mean, they're both my robes? Just the one is.'

'They both are. That new one's yours as well. Or it's meant for you. Minerva sent it for you.'

'Minerva who?'

'Minerva McGonagall.' Remus swallowed a smile. 'Don't tell me you don't remember her.'

'Well, no...of course I won't. I mean, of course I do. I mean...where on earth did you run into her?'

'At Hogwarts. She's teaching there. As a matter of fact, she's deputy headmistress.'

'Minerva McGonagall is?' Suddenly Sirius sounded wide awake. He was silent for moment, and Remus turned his head and opened his eyes to see that Sirius's eyes were open too, now, and that they were focused rather intently on Remus's.

Then Sirius turned his face up to the sun again, and closed his eyes, while a small smile played about his lips. 'Well done, Minerva,' he murmured. 'Well done, indeed.'

He said no more, and Remus, rolling over onto his stomach and closing his eyes again, looked back across the years in his memory to the days when he and Sirius had both been at Hogwarts. With Minerva.

She had been a number of years ahead of Remus and Sirius and James...and Peter: an older girl; not, perhaps, classically pretty, but...cool, Remus thought now (as he had then). Vocabularies came and went, as did years, but there was still no better world for it.

Cool. Minerva. Tall, and as black-haired as Sirius, and with those square-rimmed glasses that only added to her attractiveness; rather like exotic earrings on another girl...or Mariposa's accent.

Cool. Remus grinned. Even when she had learnt to turn herself into a cat. A tabby cat, but not in the least like a cuddly-looking moggy...

Well...

Remus sighed. Perhaps this would be a good time for another icy plunge into the pool. He started to get up, his bones and muscles protesting that they were no longer fourteen years old, no matter how the rest of him might feel.

He stood, brushing and disentangling blades of grass and one minute insect from his chest and stomach, and started back into the cave.

'Hungry?' called Sirius's voice from behind him.

Oh, yes, thought Remus. He called back an affirmative without turning around.

'I'll get breakfast,' said Sirius; and Remus, dipping a toe into the pool, decided that he would forego the swim and just slip back into his Muggle-made shirt and pants, which now felt quite dry, and also still quite cool.

'I wish you'd put this on instead,' said Sirius. He had entered the cave just after Remus, and, after pulling his tattered old robes on over his head, had picked up the new robe and held it out to Remus. 'You make me a bit nervous in that get-up.'

'Do I look like a Muggle?' Remus asked, hopefully--or perhaps he didn't hope so, he told himself. Perhaps he didn't want to know.

And Sirius shook his head. 'But then I know you're not one. Here.' He tried to hand the robe to Remus.

But Remus shook his head. 'I've got one in my rucksack,' he said. 'I can put that one on. It's mine.

'But what about you?' he continued, as they started back up through the tunnel. 'What about when people come down to the beach? What would they think if they caught sight of you dressed like that?'

He glanced over Sirius's worn-out grey robes.

'They think I'm a hermit,' Sirius replied. 'That's what they call me. "El Ermitaño."

'They tried calling me "father," but I put a stop to that.

'They don't actually talk to me very much--they think I'm under something they call "a vow of silence." Better than them thinking I'm under some sort of spell.

'At first they thought my dog was.'

Remus chuckled. 'What did you tell them?'

'I told them he was one of those--what do you call 'em--those monks' dogs that take brandy to Muggles lost in the Alps?'

Remus shrugged, having no idea. Hermione would know, he thought. Child was like a walking encyclopædia. Like a walking library, he corrected himself. And had Muggle parents as well.

'A rescue dog,' Sirius was saying. 'But born the wrong side of the kennel blanket. Not the pup's fault, of course...

'And the dog never steals the fishermen's catch.'

Remus's stomach rumbled suddenly, as his mind's eye conjured up images of a freshly caught fish--a large, fat fish--sautéing in a frying pan, sizzling with lemon juice, or brushed with farm-fresh butter laced with herbs...or fried in batter, sprinkled with vinegar, and wrapped in a page from yesterday's Daily Prophet...

"And what about the hermit's hippogriff?' he asked, giving his head a hard shake. 'Or do they think Buckbeak's the hermit's...what? Donkey?'

Sirius guffawed. 'They might do if I could whip up a bucketful of Polyjuice Potion for Buckbeak to drink. But one doesn't find bits of boomslang skin lying about the Spanish countryside the way one does soapwort, or knotgrass. And anyway, I haven't got the recipe.

'And nor would I let Buckbeak drink the potion even if I had any.

'What I need,' Sirius went on, 'is an invisibility rug. Then I could hide Buckbeak under it and tether him outside the cave.

'Come on, Remus. How about some fish? I'm starving.'

The fish were very large indeed, and they were lying in the wooden box where earlier Remus had found the bread and cheese and chocolate and Sirius's note.

The note and the other food were gone now, and the interior of the box was as cold as that of an icebox. And next to the fish was a carboy of wine.

Remus's stomach growled again. He didn't care that the fish scales bore signs of teethmarks, as if they had been carried from the fishing boats to the cave in the mouth of a very large dog. When they had been deboned and gutted--'Save that lot for Buckbeak,' Sirius directed--and cooked, they would make a very welcome meal indeed. Even if skewered on an ordinary stick and roasted over a fire, without any herbs or other seasoning at all.

But 'Accio sartén!' said Sirius, lifting his wand--

And a very ordinary-looking frying pan appeared, to come to rest hovering just above the purple flames Sirius had conjured.

The fish fillets settled themselves side by side in the pan, and Sirius went round the inside of the cave, and the nooks and crannies along its outside walls, and brought back a pinch of this herb, a pinch of that, a sprinkle of sea salt, and a bit of some other powder which he dusted off the palm of his hand onto the fillets.

Remus took the entrails and heads of the fish in to Buckbeak, and then remembered that his Muggle-made clothes made Sirius ill at ease, so he unpacked his robes and changed into them before rejoining his friend at the fire.

'So the Muggle fishermen think you're a hermit,' he said, settling down on the ground and taking the wine bottle Sirius held out.

'So do the wizarding ones,' said Sirius. 'Oh, they know I'm no ordinary hermit, but they don't seem to suspect that I'm who I really am.

'But the Spanish Ministry of Magic no doubt will, once they get wind of a hermit and a large black dog living here. And they'll come snooping round. Or worse, they'll send--'

Sirius stopped talking and leaned forward to poke at the fish with the tip of his wand.

'Done,' he said, and charmed the frying pan down away from the fire, which immediately went out without a trace of smoke.

The frying pan came to rest on the ground between them, and Sirius waved his wand over it, then sat back and gestured at the pan. 'Dig in.'

Remus needed no second invitation. He reached into the pan, and as his fingertips touched the nearest fillet, which was just nicely hot but did not burn, a large bite-size piece flaked off and fell straight into his waiting hand. He brought it to his mouth, took an experimental bite, and then tried not to gobble the mouthful down.

'That's delicious,' he said, swallowing. 'What kind of fish is it?'

'I've no idea.' Sirius smiled with his lips closed, jaws chewing. 'The Muggles call it "merluza," but I've no idea what that translates into. I don't know what the fisherwizards call it. I rarely talk to their fishermen.'

But at least the fisherwizards did not seem suspicious of Sirius, Remus thought. Fisherwizards were almost a race apart. They had their own culture, their own magics. They did not regularly mix with those they called 'landwizards.' Theirs was rather a live-and-let-live attitude, but in his Muggle Studies class Remus had learnt that some fisherwizards got on better with Muggles than other wizardfolk did.

Perhaps that was because both cultures lived so close to an environment that was so alien to both. Wizards could no more live at sea then Muggles could, not permanently, and not even temporarily without having to make some major lifestyle changes.

The sea was a powerful--and could be a harmful--creation, as well as a bountiful one.

And evidently there were other effective ways of working with it, of relating to it, as well as magical ones, Remus thought now. And recalled the wizarding farmfolk who had dug in the earth, and let their animals fertilize it and help plough and cultivate and harvest, instead of simply waving a wand at a patch of weeds and saying 'Eruo!'--or whatever the command was.

Remus's mother had used it on the weeds in her garden--that time they had lived long enough in one place for her to have a garden. Remus could remember the garden, but not the word she had used.

But he reckoned that it was because the fisherwizards did get on so well with Muggle fishermen--or perhaps because they lived on the fringes of other wizarding society--that the Ministries of Magic--the Spanish as well as the British--might, as Sirius had put it, 'come snooping round' to check out rumours of a hermit who lived with a large black dog.

'Or worse, they'll send the Spanish Animagus Registrar,' Remus guessed.

Sirius nodded, the expression on his face very grim. He picked up the frying pan and held it out to Remus, indicating that he should take the last piece of fish. Then, picking up his wand, he moved it over the pan in a circular motion. 'Purgo,' he said, and before Remus's eyes the pan became not only clean, but shining. For a moment it hovered in the air, turning this way and that as if to check out its own appearance in the mirrors of the wizards' eyes; then it took off, back the way it had come.

'That's no Muggle-made pan,' Remus commented.

'Nope.' Sirius belched gently, and lay down on his back, and stretched.

'Fisherwizard's?'

'Mm.' Sirius nodded. 'She'll never have missed it,' he added, looking up at Remus's raised eyebrow. 'Or if she has, she'll have thought I Summoned it.'

Now Remus raised both eyebrows. 'She?' He grinned.

Sirius nodded again, and folded his hands beneath his head, linking his fingers.

'Is she pretty?'

Another nod. 'And she's eighty-one and she's got ten kids and forty-seven grandkids and great-grandkids,' Sirius said. 'She isn't sure whether I'm Muggle or magical, but since many of the Muggles think their hermits have uncommon powers, she doesn't care, so long as I send the frying pan back clean and polished, and don't let my dog carry it.

'And since she doesn't care, she won't allow any of her kids or grandkids or great-grandkids to care.

'But she can't stop them wondering.'

The half-smile that had been on Sirius's face while he related all this vanished, and he gazed intently up at Remus. 'Do you feel like having a siesta?' he asked.

Remus frowned. Whatever he had expected Sirius to say once the smile had gone, it hadn't been this. 'A nap?' he asked. And what afterwards? he wondered. 'In preparation for what?' he asked.

Sirius's expression grew more somber. 'Do you think you could travel tonight?'

Tonight, Remus thought. Another night of full-moonlight. A bright night, in which one could see one's way nearly as well as by day.

Could he travel? Remus wondered.

Once, long ago, he could have traveled by full-moonlight. With Padfoot and Prongs beside him, one on either side of him, keeping him between them, keeping him from straying. From running away...

'What do you think?' He turned the question back to Sirius. Because, after all, Padfoot was older now as well, and after twelve years in Azkaban and another year of being on the run and hiding out in the Forbidden Forest, what animagus could be at the height of his strength?

And without Prongs's added size and strength...

Last night Moony and Padfoot had raced across the plain. They had hunted. Then they had slept.

And Sirius today had said he felt he could lie in the sun for months. Resting. Napping. Conserving energy. Restoring strength.

And now he was waiting for Remus to answer the question. Remus, who could not control his transformations, or his behavior when he was a wolf.

I'm not an animagus, Remus told himself. Once, long ago, on the full-moon nights of his adolescence, with his three animagus friends by his side, he had been able to be more Remus than Moony while in wolf-form. Or, if more Moony than Remus, still he had been able to be more like his friends and less of a monster.

But that had been years and years ago. And even then, even as a teenager, he had when transformed been a full-grown wolf.

And now, even though by day, and during most nights he felt older than he was, on nights of the full moon his wolf-body seemed not to have aged at all.

'Why?' he asked Sirius.

Sirius heaved a sigh.

'Because I can't stay here any longer,' he said. 'Some of Esmeralda's family are growing suspicious. And just because fisherwizards have little to do with government ministers, that doesn't mean government ministers have little to do with fisherwizards. In fact it means they sometimes have more to do with them.'

Remus nodded.

'There's too much to lose, Remus. For both of us,' Sirius said.

Remus nodded again. 'Why can't we travel now? There must be...' he looked at his watch...'a good few hours of daylight left. If we could find a place to hide out before sunset...if we could go on Buckbeak...'

'On a hippogriff?' Sirius asked quietly. 'In broad daylight?'

'No. I know we can't.' Remus felt his cheeks redden as he shook his head miserably. But Sirius could go on Buckbeak, he thought. At night. He could be far away from here by morning.

Remus forced himself to meet Sirius's eyes, hoping he would find his own thoughts mirrored there. He did not want to say it. He could not bear to say it. Go on, Sirius. Take off. Fly away. Look out for yourself.

After all, he thought, being a werewolf was not a crime. Ministries of magic did not throw wizards into Azkaban just because they were werewolves.

No, but Muggles could kill a werewolf just as they could kill a fish. Not as easily, perhaps--but people who made their living from the sea were not limited to the accomplishment of only easy tasks...

When Remus finally looked at Sirius, Sirius's eyes were not on his. Instead he was watching a tiny spider, which, having dropped on a strand of silk from the roof of the cave, was now dangling about a foot above Sirius, turning gently on its invisible thread.

'When I went to get your clothes this morning,' Sirius said, quietly, as if he did not want to startle the spider, 'I found that a woman had come across them first.'

'A woman?'

'A woman driving a black horse to a caravan,' Sirius said. 'She asked me what right I had to the clothes. I transformed behind her caravan before she had seen Padfoot; her horse was upwind of me and couldn't see behind him because of his blinkers, and when I came round the front of the caravan and he saw me and announced my arrival, she was more angry than alarmed.'

Remus remembered the black horse that had neighed and plunged at his approach, and how that woman had made the sign against the evil eye and had shouted at him.

Could it be the same woman? he wondered, picturing the black horse 'announcing' the arrival of a gaunt, unshaven man in tattered robes.

...Had the woman thought Sirius was a monk?

'She was ready to fight me for them,' Sirius went on, as the spider climbed back up its thread and out of sight. 'Tooth and nail. I didn't want any of her relatives coming looking for me, so I let her have the shoes. They were what she wanted most, anyway.

'And I'd seen your spare pair in your rucksack,' he added, glancing at Remus to see his reaction.

'Good idea,' Remus said. His wizard's shoes were even more comfortable than the Muggle-made ones had been. Soft and sturdy as the latter were, they could not flex with one's feet to help one climb over rocks, nor could they stretch to avoid rubbing a blister, or massage the soles of one's feet when one sat down to rest.

'But she might start telling people how she came by the shoes,' Sirius was saying. 'And they might decide to look for the weird guy who left his clothes in the middle of nowhere and then came back to get them, wearing hermit's dress.

'And if they were to find this place, Padfoot could send them packing. And so could Moony. But...'

His voice trailed off.

But if they recognised Moony for what he was...

Remus didn't finish the thought, either.

'And we can't go now, because people mustn't see Buckbeak,' he said instead. 'So I'll go now.'

He stood up.

Sirius watched him, looking startled.

'I can travel now, as I am,' said Remus. 'I can put my Muggle clothes back on, and I'll just have to risk people noticing my shoes.

'I can find a place to hole up for the night, and then, when it's dark, you and Buckbeak can leave and get as far away from this place as you can.'

'But you won't know where we are.' Sirius looked as much distraught now as he did surprised. 'How will we find each other? I won't be able to send you an owl, the way I did when you were at home.'

It doesn't matter, Remus started to say. But that would have been a lie. Of course it mattered. Sirius was the only friend that he had left, now that James was dead and Peter was worse than dead.

Remus shook his head, and went into the cave to get his rucksack. Behind him he heard Sirius getting up and following him.

'I don't want you to go,' Sirius said, as Remus unbuckled the rucksack straps and took out his Muggle-made clothes.

'I want us to travel by night, together,' Sirius went on, as Remus pulled his robes off over his head and started to put the Muggle clothes back on. 'The way we used to roam the Hogwarts grounds and the village.'

'We don't know if we can.' Remus was digging past his spare robe and change of Muggle to get at his shoes.

As he tugged at a shoelace--the shoe resisting, blocked by something--his razor flew out of the rucksack, and with it a ring of black metal on the end of a length of chain.

'What the--?' Sirius bent down to pick up the manacle--and dropped it quickly. He looked up at Remus, and his eyes were dark.

'That's iron,' he said. 'Remus--that's Muggle-made iron.'

Remus nodded, and bent down to pick up his razor and to stow the ring and chain back in the rucksack. But Sirius had picked up the manacle again, and although he handled it as if it burned his flesh, he turned it this way and that, seeing--unable to help seeing--the locks, the tufts of fur caught in them and in the links, the brownish stains that were not rust...

'Dear God.' Sirius swallowed, and then after a moment he swallowed again, and cleared his throat, and said, 'I didn't know...I'd no idea it had to be Muggle-made iron.'

His voice sounded as hoarse as it had on that last night Remus had seen him, nearly two months ago, when they had met again after thirteen years in which the old friendship had all but been destroyed.

'It has to be.' Remus took the chain and the manacle from Sirius's hands, which looked as numb and stiff as if the cold metal had frozen them. 'Impervious to any spell I can fight in wolf-form,' Remus explained. He stowed the fetters away back in the bottom of his rucksack and folded the Muggle-made clothes on top of them.

'Dear God,' Sirius breathed again. 'How long...?'

'Thirteen years, 'til last year,' Remus told him, folding up his wizard's robes and stuffing them into the rucksack on top of the Muggle clothes. 'But only two weeks this year,' he went on. 'Severus gave me enough of the Wolfsbane Potion to last me through the June full moon. But it doesn't keep. It loses its potency after ten days.'

Remus tucked his razor and toothbrush in among the folds of his robes, and then buckled the straps of the rucksack before sitting down on the ground to put on his shoes.

Sirius sat down beside him, his eyes going past Remus to the door of the cave.

'Buckbeak can carry your pack,' he said. 'I can rig up a harness that won't interfere with his wingstrokes. He likes to fly by night, and with the full moon he'll easily be able to keep us in sight.'

Remus started to speak, but Sirius waved him to silence before he had found words in which to voice his protest.

'You obviously haven't forgotten how to swim,' Sirius went on, and suddenly Remus remembered a night he had forgotten. A warm June night when he and Padfoot and Prongs--yes, and Wormtail, too--had plunged into the black waters of the Hogwarts lake, and had swum for hours...

'Madam Pomfrey was sure we'd all go down with pneumonia,' Remus said now. 'She never did work out why the rest of the school didn't catch our colds.'

'Or how you happened to go down with one the same time Peter and James and I did.' Sirius was smiling. 'What those merpeople could've told Dumbledore!'

'He'd've been cool,' Remus said.

Sirius nodded. 'He always has been.'

After that, there was no discussion as to whether or not Moony and Padfoot--and Buckbeak--would travel by night.

Sirius conjured up a light harness that would let Buckbeak carry the wooden food box in front of his wings and Remus's rucksack behind them. Sirius shrank the box down to a size just slightly smaller than the rucksack; the rucksack could not be shrunk with the iron fetters in it, and Remus would not leave them behind.

And Sirius did not argue with him.

So, with the box to balance the rucksack, and with Remus having exchanged his Muggle-made clothes again for his wizard's robes that would transmogrify with him, the three of them--Remus, Sirius, and Buckbeak--stepped out of the cave and went down to the beach to wait for the sun to set and the moon to rise.

When the long shadow of the headland came creeping over the beach, a shiver, that was not of the sunset chill, swept over Remus.

He saw Sirius glance at him; saw the apprehensiveness in Sirius's eyes.

All went OK last night, Remus reminded himself. There were no humans around...there are none around now...

And if we swim, even a werewolf has all he can do to keep his head above the waves...he won't have energy for anything else...

What about the fishing boats? he started to ask Sirius suddenly. But only a howl came out of his mouth. And beside him, the enormous black dog was barking, and snapping at Buckbeak's heels...

Buckbeak needed no encouragement. He was already taking off, great wings spreading out and beating, carrying him up into the air.

Padfoot barked again, and then gave a sort of growling, sneezing snort, and a shake of his shaggy head, and bounded away towards the sea, barking at Moony to follow.

And they ran together. Across the beach, and bounded into the surf. And they began to swim, heads held high above the waves, legs pumping.

The tide, which was still going out, helped them, carrying them not only away from the shore but along it, as if it wanted them far away from the fishing communities before it turned to go back, to bring the fishermen home.

They swam down the coastline, sometimes able to rest and keep their legs moving just enough to keep their bodies afloat.

The moon's long glittering trail seemed to lead back to land, but Moony was too tired to hunt the moon. Nearer than the moon, and showing up clear and black in its light, was a great flying creature. Moony wanted to hunt the moon only to destroy it, to keep it from shining full on him ever again. But this other, winged, creature...this was warm-blooded prey.

No, said the big black dog that swam beside him. Padfoot, Moony remembered. Padfoot.

Padfoot said the flying creature was not prey.

Remember Prongs? Padfoot asked.

Moony remembered. Hooves instead of paws...and antlers.

I could never get past those antlers, Moony told Padfoot.

That was because Prongs was not prey, Padfoot said.

But this creature hasn't got antlers, Moony gasped, trying to catch his breath.

No, Padfoot agreed. No. Wings. Talons. Hooves. And a beak.

Padfoot was panting. Breath rasping, like a steam engine straining to climb a hill...

Like a steam engine...

What was a steam engine? Moony tried to remember...

And suddenly he realised that Padfoot was no longer swimming beside him.

He could no longer see Padfoot's shaggy head.

Moony stopped swimming, and treaded water, turning frantically, trying to stay in one place while he searched the sparkling surface of the sea for his friend.

Padfoot!

All that came out was a howl.

Moony looked up into the sky. He could just barely see the flying creature. It was ahead of him now, and over nearer to the shore.

Help! he cried out. Come and help me find Padfoot!

Only howls came out of his mouth.

PADFOOT!

Moony dived. Saltwater stung his eyes, shot up his nostrils, choked him. He surfaced, coughing and spluttering. Then he dived again, baring his teeth at the enemy-element, snorting out through his nostrils, refusing to breathe...

But he had to breathe. And again the water shot up his nostrils, and he had to scramble for the surface once more, coughing and gagging.

Exhausted, out of breath, he floated for a moment, turning again in the water, searching the waves for Padfoot's head...