Interlune

When morning came, Moony was still there, paddling listlessly in the water, not even knowing why he was trying to stay afloat now. And when the sun showed its face on the eastern horizon, and sent bright tongues of flame across the waves towards him, he did not even feel the pain as his body began to change from its wolfish to its human state.

He did feel the weight of his robes as they began to drag him down, beneath the waves. He could feel his wand, tucked inside his robes, poking him in the ribs. He knew that if he pulled the wand out of his robes he could point it at his robes and charm them into being light, into not being saturated with water, into being sails, to carry him towards the shore.

But what was the point? What was waiting for him on shore?

Would Buckbeak be there? Would the hippogriff, free and untethered, allow him to approach without Sirius there?

And if he could not approach Buckbeak, or if the hippogriff was not there, where would Remus find another set of Muggle-made iron chains? There was still one night left of full-moonlight, tonight...and in three weeks' time there would be another full moon...and next month, another...

And he was so horribly thirsty. And all around him was water...cold water...and it was such a struggle to keep it out of his mouth...

He thought he was dreaming when the hands grabbed him, gripping him under his armpits and heaving him up, out of the waves...through the waves...knocking him against the rough side of a wooden boat...

Why are you knocking me about the boat? he tried to ask, but all that came out was a croak. I'll soon drown, if you'll just let me be...

He thought he was dying when the hands pulled him up out of the water. He wished he could die when the hands, working on his back, sent waves of water up out of him, out of his mouth and over the rough wooden side of the boat and back into the sea...

He wished the hands would let him alone, let him go...back into the sea...

And at last, it seemed, he was able to make himself understood, for the hands did let him go, and he sank back into the waves, soft and cool and smelling of salt...and then beneath them...and all was dark, and cool...and then warm...so nice and warm...and then cool again...

Why, being dead was like being ill with a fever...warm...then cold...and all his bones were aching...

It was the aching that finally brought him back to the surface. Back up out of the waves. The aching in all his bones...and a dream of finally finding the chamber chamber at Hogwarts...and then not being able to enter...

Remus opened his eyes. He could not see moonlight. He could not see sunlight. He could not...

Oh, dear God, he could not see Padfoot!

He had to find Padfoot...he struggled to turn...thrashing against the waves...but the waves were wizard's robes...and they were not dragging him down...

Remus sat up. And a pain pierced his head, splitting his skull and causing him to howl again. But not even a moan came out. His lips were so dry...so cracked...his entire mouth was so dry...

He was so terribly thirsty...

He had to get up. He had to go find something to drink. He had to find...if not the chamber chamber, then some place that would serve the same purpose...

He leaned forward, bracing his hands against the floor and resting his weight on his arms. Then he got to his knees. Then to his feet. And staggered. And put his hand out to the wall to keep from falling.

And he saw that there was a wall. There was a floor. This was a room of some sort. It was not a cave...it was more like a room in a house...the wall was wooden...and yet the wall was not straight, like the wall of a room in a house...it curved up, more like the wall of a cave...and yet not like a cave...and there was a window in the wall.

Steadying himself with one hand braced against the wall, Remus reached out with the other hand and drew back the curtain that hung at the window. He could not tell what time of day it was. He could tell it was daytime, because the sky was a pale grey in colour. But it was a uniform grey, and there were no shadows of trees or of anything else on the ground. There was only the grey sky...grey clouds, he corrected himself...sodden grey clouds...clouds full of rain.

And rain had already fallen, he realised, looking around at the dark trees and at the ground. The ground was grass and sand, and it looked as saturated as the clouds.

But no rain was falling now. And he must get out of this...whatever this place was.

Remus let the curtain fall, and as he turned from the window he realised what the room was.

It was not a cave. And nor was it a room in a house.

It was the interior of a caravan. It was not brightly painted--the walls and built-in cupboards and furniture were a uniform shade, paler than the grey of the clouds outside. And warmer looking, too, he thought. Warm. And cosy.

He wondered where the driver was. And if that woman--or one of the women--he and Sirius had met was the one who had brought him here.

And where was Sirius?

Remus tried to remember. They had been swimming...in a room that had been like a cave...that had been a cave...

And there had been the trail of the moon on the water...on the waves...

The effort of thinking brought on the pain again...a stab so sharp that it gouged a rift between present awareness and memory. Clasping his head in one hand, Remus pushed himself away from the wall with his other hand; and, reaching out now and again to steady himself by grasping the edge of a cupboard or touching a curve of the wall, he reached the door in one end of the caravan, and turned the latch.

The door swung open, outward, and there were some steps...three steep steps...and then a jump down to the ground.

The grass was soft, and sodden, and cold under his bare feet. He wondered where his shoes were. He drew the hem of his robes up about his ankles, to keep the robes out of the wet grass, and then he started towards a clump of trees a dozen or so yards away. First things first, and then he would be able to hunt for Sirius, and...

But as he was about to head out from among the trees again, and back to the caravan, a sort of chirruping snort caused him to stop just at the edge of the trees.

A worried sort of sound.

He stood still, listening, and after a moment it came again.

Not far away.

Behind him.

Remus turned, and tried to imitate the sound. To reassure whatever it might be...

He had an idea, but, just in case he was wrong, he drew his wand out of his robes...

There was the sound again. The worried-sounding, snorting sort of chirrup. And now, with it, a rustle of something moving among the trees...

And a grey head poked out of the branches. A grey, feathered head, with sharp orange eyes, and a fierce, curving beak.

'Buckbeak.' Remus started towards the hippogriff--and then stopped short, remembering. And bowed.

And Buckbeak bent his knees and bowed, and then hurried towards Remus, clicking his beak, and came and stood as close to Remus as he could get, rubbing his feathered head against the front of Remus's robes and letting Remus lean against him.

Remus had no idea how to pet a hippogriff, but he stroked the grey feathers and then gently scratched the line on Buckbeak's neck where feathers became sleek silvery hair.

'Am I glad to see you!' Remus murmured. 'But where is Sirius? Do you know?'

As if you could tell me, he thought to himself.

And indeed Buckbeak acted as if he wanted to walk out of the trees and up to the caravan.

'Bad idea, boy,' Remus told him, continuing to stroke his feathers and scratch his neck. 'You stay here, and I'll go look for him.'

He picked up the rope attached to the rings on Buckbeak's collar, and drew it over the hippogriff's head, and looped it over a low branch, securing it with a touch of the tip of his wand.

The hippogriff still wore the harness Sirius had conjured, and the wooden box and Remus's rucksack were still secured to the hippogriff's back.

Remus thought about removing the burden, but it wasn't a heavy one; his rucksack was remarkably light even with the Muggle-made iron chains inside. And once he found Sirius--he would not think 'if' he found Sirius--they might want to leave very quietly. Daylight or not.

Remus patted Buckbeak, and turned to go.

And saw, through the trees, bounding toward him across the wet grass, a large black dog. On the end of a rope. And, clutching the other end of the rope and stumbling along in the dog's wake, a woman.

She was not the woman Remus had seen two days before. Her caravan looked very much like that one, but she did not look like that woman. That woman had been tall, and thin--almost as sleek and svelte as a veela, with none of a veela's charms. This woman was shorter, and stocky. She had wavy, dark rust-coloured hair, pulled back into a single long plait. She wore a long, dark green garment that was not like Muggle women's dresses, nor yet like wizard's robes...

The dog was coming straight at Remus. Remus stepped out from among the trees, away from Buckbeak, and Padfoot came bounding up to him and slid to a stop in the wet grass, and sat down right at Remus's feet.

'Well,' said the woman, panting and brushing loose strands of her hair out of her eyes, 'I daresay he is your dog, after all.'

She did not appear to be the least bit afraid of either of them. And her voice was as English as his or Sirius's.

She was down from Oxford, she said, as the three of them made their way back across the grass towards the caravan, Padfoot now free of the rope and keeping right at Remus's side.

She said she had tried English on Remus because his dog had seemed to understand her English commands as well as he did her Spanish ones--when he chose to understand any--and although she kept wanting to practice her Spanish on human beings, even when she thought she knew what she was saying to them she didn't always know what they were saying to her.

'I should've worked on it harder,' she said, as they arrived back at the caravan and she led the way up the three steps and into the little, arched room. 'But I only just started learning it last term, when I decided to come on this ancestor hunt.'

She was lifting a lid from one of the lower cupboards. It swung up like a tabletop, to reveal a shinier, metallic-looking surface with two shiny black grill sort-of-things over small discs of silver pierced with tiny holes.

She turned a knob in front of one of the grill-like things, and Remus and Padfoot both started when flames leapt up out of the silver disc to dance around the black thing that must, indeed, be a grill.

The woman seemed amused at their moment of amazement--from which they quickly recovered--but all she said was, 'I insisted the caravan should have all mod cons. Well. As many as practical. And it wouldn't be practical to have to go looking for a place to empty or refill storage tanks every other day or so. So there's no running water, and no loo. But though I prefer cooking over an open fire when I can, on days like this I'm not prepared to go without my tea.

'And you can't start a fire with a handful of wet sticks.'

So she must be a Muggle, Remus and Padfoot agreed, exchanging a look behind her back as she filled a kettle from a large water bottle and set the kettle to boil on the grill.

No wizarding folk worried about things like the intricacies of plumbing or how to start a fire with a handful of wet sticks. Remus wasn't sure exactly what 'mod cons' were, but he reckoned they must be some sort of Muggle equivalent of toilets and bathrooms, of kitchen sinks, and--judging by the knob and the silver disc that produced what were apparently very real flames--cookers.

The flames were real enough to boil water, at least. They were slow, but they were bright--orange and blue--and they did take the chill off the day while Remus and Padfoot and the woman waited for the kettle to boil.

She was taking down mugs and tins and jars from cupboards, and a loaf of bread, and some cheese; and from a drawer she produced four spoons and a fifth metal object, which she clamped onto one of the tins and proceeded to turn, rather as one would wind a clock with a key, but which opened two of the tins, one after the other.

What will these Muggles think of next! Remus marveled. He watched her scoop the contents of the opened tins into a saucepan, add one tinful of water, and set the saucepan on the second grill, which she then lighted as she had the first.

'I'm sorry I haven't any dog food,' she told Remus, stirring the contents of the saucepan. 'Although sometimes I think tinned soup tastes about the same as dog food, don't you?'

'Er...yes,' said Remus, thinking, she may be English, but Muggle-English must be a dialect unto itself. Rather like Muggle-French, he thought, as the woman said, turning to Padfoot, 'I hope you'll like it, old love.'

Old LOVE? Padfoot raised eloquent eyes to Remus's, but bore with equanimity the woman's one-handed caress, while Remus choked back laughter.

Remus wished he could stifle the rumbling of his stomach as well. The last meal he remembered was the fish he and Sirius had eaten...twenty-four hours ago?

He looked at his watch, but it had stopped. And he could not very well wind it with a Muggle standing right beside him.

He could leave the caravan again.

But he was so hungry, and so thirsty...and the soup smelled so wonderful...and the kettle was about to boil...

When it did, the woman lifted the lid and added three spoonfuls of tea from one tin and six spoonfuls of sugar from another, and then lowered the flames beneath the kettle by turning the knob.

She lowered the flames under the soup, too--until they disappeared altogether, and then she was spooning soup from the pan into three bowls, one of which she handed to Remus, with a spoon and a large hunk of bread.

'It's hot,' she cautioned, as he took the bowl from her hands.

It was, but not too hot to hold.

Frigefacto, Remus wanted to whisper to it; but he didn't dare, not with the woman here.

Padfoot was watching expectantly as the woman picked up the second bowl of soup; when she sat down with it, leaving the third bowl steaming on the counter, he looked so disappointed that she laughed and leaned forward to rub his head again.

'Poor love,' she said, smoothing the thick black fur around his ears. 'You don't want to burn your tongue, now, do you?'

Remus spluttered, trying not to laugh or to choke on his soup, and when he had stopped coughing he gave Padfoot a look which he meant to say, Don't worry. We'll soon be out of here--if not as soon as we've both eaten, then by sunset. I'll think of something.

I've already thought of something, Padfoot's expression seemed to say.

He looked very put out when the woman refused to give him any tea. 'It's not good for dogs,' she had said, as much to him as to Remus, when Remus had told her that Padfoot liked his tea with more milk than sugar.

'All that caffeine,' she went on, handing one mug to Remus and sitting down with the other. 'I daresay it isn't all that good for humans, either, but I can't do without my tea. Wine's all right with supper, but if I have it with lunch it makes me want to sleep all afternoon.'

Which was just what Sirius had felt like doing, Remus remembered, sipping the hot, sweet, very strong tea. He liked it best this way, the way she had made it, scooping tea leaves and sugar into a kettle full of boiling water and letting it all brew together on the fire for awhile, before pouring it out over milk in mugs.

In this case, 'milk' was actually a white powder, but it didn't seem to adversely affect the flavour of the tea.

Remus sat sipping his, thinking how easy it would be to relax, and even to fall asleep; if only Sirius were Sirius, and not Padfoot, and they were back at the cave.

Or back at Hogwarts. Sitting in the staff room. Sipping tea and eating hot buttered scones...

A low 'Woof !' brought him out of his reverie. The look on Padfoot's face would have roused a classful of bored students on a sunny day; would have made them sit up and pay attention, no matter how dull the lesson.

Here, only the sky was dull. That same sodden grey cloud cover, Remus saw, reaching out to draw the curtain back from the window. It could rain again at any moment, and the rain could last all afternoon and into the evening. If it did, there would be no moonlight.

If it did.

And it might not.

Remus gulped down the last of his tea, and stood up, setting his mug down on the counter.

'You must excuse me,' he told the woman. 'I must take my dog out for a run.'

Immediately Padfoot got up, too; went to the door; and began to bark and whine. Remus knew perfectly well he could have worked the latch with his paw, but could an ordinary dog do so?

Remus opened the door, and his heart sank as the woman rose from her seat.

'And I must go have a look at my horse,' she said, following Padfoot down the steps as Remus stood aside for her to pass in front of him. 'There's a farm just the other side of those trees,' she went on,' and when it started to rain earlier on I took the liberty of putting my horse in the shed in their field. I shouldn't think they'd mind, the shed doesn't look as though it's used much--but I want to go check he's all right and take him some water.'

Remus sighed. She was lifting two large water bottles from a box on the side of the caravan, and he could tell by the way she handled them that one was too heavy for her to carry far; let alone two.

He longed to take out his wand and charm the bottles to wherever the shed was where her horse was waiting, but all he could do, bending down to pick one of them up, was to touch his wand and murmur 'Allevo!' as he picked up the bottle she had set down on the ground.

'Here, you take this one, then,' he insisted, when she insisted on carrying one of the bottles. She carried it in her arms, like a baby; not by the handle that was molded out of the bottle itself; but she seemed pleasantly surprised by the lightness of it, and even checked it carefully to assure herself that it was full.

'Allevo!' he whispered to the second bottle as the three of them set off towards the trees. Padfoot's ears and tail were drooping, and the only positive thought that Remus had was that, when he took a route that would lead them away from where he had last seen Buckbeak, the woman did not insist on cutting directly across to the woods but went willingly enough with him.

He also liked, he thought as they walked, that the woman did not ask questions. No doubt she was as curious about her guests as they were about her--and she did not even know what their reasons were for being in Spain--or rather, just off the Spanish coast where she had found them. But she had not even asked them what their names were.

What my name is, Remus corrected himself. What I'm doing here. She thinks Padfoot is a dog.

He heaved another sigh, and she stopped walking and looked at him. 'Are you all right?' she asked. 'Are you sure you're up to walking? You were pretty rough this morning.'

Pretty rough. You don't know the half of it, Remus thought, biting his lip. And another night is coming, and I must get this water to your horse and then find some way to get off alone with Sirius and work out how we're gonna get out of this situation...

But apparently Sirius had decided to act upon whatever plan he had seemed to want to tell Remus about during lunch. He looked up at Remus now, gave one short, sharp back, and then galloped away into the trees.

'Oh dear!' The woman stopped again, looking after him, her face and voice full of distress.

'He'll be all right,' Remus told her. 'He'll come back when he's ready.'

I hope he comes back before I'm ready, he thought, walking on. Before the sun sets, before the moon rises...

The chains are with Buckbeak...can I Summon Muggle-made iron with my wand?

The trees ended at a fence that enclosed a small field. There were no animals in the field, and no crops. There was only rough grass, and a small, almost tumbledown, shed.

Setting down her water bottle, the woman tucked up her long skirts and was through the fence, slipping between two rails of it, as easily as a cat. She picked up the bottle and set off again, towards the shed, and Remus followed her through the fence, hearing the horse neigh as they approached the shed.

He was a small horse, as shaggy as the black one Remus had seen two days before, but only this horse's legs, mane, and tail were black. The rest of him was bay--a deep red bay, almost the same colour as the woman's hair--except for a crooked white blaze that ran from between his eyes down his face to his nose.

He seemed very glad to see the woman, and only a little suspicious of Remus. When the two humans emptied their water bottles into the bucket hooked to the shed wall, the horse came nosing between them, pushing them out of the way, eager to drink.

'He isn't hot,' the woman said, stroking his neck and shoulder. 'I won't let you drink it all, though, all at once,' she went on, talking to the horse now, her mouth close to his ear.

She fit into the curve of the horse's neck, Remus noted; she stood between the horse's shoulder and head as if she had been made to go there, or perhaps as if the horse had been made to go with her. They were two of a kind, he thought--or at any rate human and equine counterparts: short, stocky; sturdy in body, and not easily upset by the presence of strangers.

And, too, they both suddenly reminded him of Sirius. They looked as if they could stay here all day, in this shed, the horse standing relaxed, his weight on three legs; his lips now just playing with the water in the bucket while the woman leaned into the curve of his neck and stroked his cheek and very gently scratched him under his mane.

Without saying 'Excuse me,' or anything else that would interrupt their silent communication, Remus turned and slipped past the horse, out of the shed, and headed across the field. He had no idea where Padfoot had gone, but he had galloped off in the general direction of the spot where Remus had seen Buckbeak not long ago.

He found them both, not where he had left Buckbeak, but in a far corner of the coppice, where the ground suddenly dropped off into a sort of ravine. Drawn there by the hippogriff's quiet chirrups, he found Buckbeak with Sirius--whom he almost did not recognise in his own Muggle-made clothes.

'It's the only thing I could think of,' Sirius said by way of greeting, his fingers fumbling with alien buttons. 'If we can travel with her for a few days, we can get fairly far away from that last lot of fisherwizards and Muggle fishermen.'

Sirius swore. 'How is one expected to move in these jeans, let alone walk in them?'

'How do you know she's traveling?' Remus asked, having no reply for Sirius's question other than, you get used to it. Which Sirius probably wouldn't appreciate just now.

'She talks to animals,' Sirius said. 'Haven't you noticed? She talked to me quite a bit this morning while you were sleeping.

'And she's got a map, with a route all marked out, following the coast.'

Do the animals understand her? Remus wondered. He had never heard of a Muggle being able to communicate with animals...

'You and she weren't communicating very well,' he commented, as Sirius started to put his shoes back on. There was no way he could have got the jeans on over shoes--well, being wizard's shoes they would have let the tight legs of the jeans slip over them--but maybe Sirius had not considered that. He seemed to be in a great hurry, and just about as stressed out as Remus knew he ought to feel.

'Animals can't talk to her,' Sirius said now, doing up his shoelaces. 'Or I couldn't, at any rate. And I don't really think she expects them to. I think she just does it for company. I think she's lonely.

'She said something about nobody else being fool enough to go hunting ancestors in a country that had thrown them out two hundred years ago.'

He swore again as he straightened up from tying his shoelaces, and Remus, to distract him, said, 'What kind of ancestors does she have?'

'Gypsies,' said Sirius.

'Ah.' Remus nodded. Two hundred years ago, Gypsies, wizards, werewolves, and a lot of other folk, had been unwelcome in a lot of places. And not just two hundred years ago...

'She doesn't think she's a fool to've come to Spain,' Sirius went on, folding his wizard's robes and stuffing them into Remus's rucksack. 'She loves being here. She just says it's a fool's errand looking for people who didn't leave a lot of written records easy to find.'

Remus nodded again. 'So I suppose I ought to change my clothes as well?'

'Up to you,' Sirius said. 'She thinks you're a pilgrim and that that's why you're dressed like that.'

'A pilgrim,' Remus echoed. 'Oh, terrific. A pilgrim of what faith?'

'Any. None.' Sirius shrugged.

'A pilgrim who's taken a vow not to talk about his pilgrimage,' Remus said, considering the part.

Sirius gave a little twisted smile. 'Why not? After all, isn't an ancestor-hunt a kind of pilgrimage? Get her talking about it, and she won't have time to think of questions to ask us.'

'So you will be there?'

'Absolutely.' Sirius's eyes, as profound as Padfoot's, said he remembered very well that if the moon came out from the behind the clouds tonight it would be a full moon.

'So...do we know each other, you and I? Or are you just another traveller, begging a lift?'

'We're friends,' Sirius said. 'Padfoot's my dog. Why do you think I didn't jump up into your arms when I saw you and lick your face?'

'Because if you had I'd still be chasing you, with the biggest stick between here and Gibraltar,' replied Remus, laughing suddenly.

'Because you're not my human,' Sirius said. 'You're my human's friend.'

Remus chuckled. 'You were doing a lot of thinking this morning, for a dog.'

'You were doing a lot of sleeping this morning, for a wolf.

'Here.' Sirius conjured a comb and a pair of scissors, and waved them towards Remus. 'See if you can do something with my hair. Every time I try, I end up looking as if I've been attacked by a nesting pair of tooth-beaked chimney flits.'

But later on, after Sirius, sporting a set of whiskers that looked more like the beginnings of a beard than just unshaven stubble, and a haircut that, if it wouldn't have been claimed by any barber in Diagon Alley, at least did not look like a birds' nest--later on, after Sirius had been accepted as Remus's friend by the woman--who told them her name was Sienna; and when she was in the caravan writing letters while supper simmered on the back burner; Remus said, as he and Sirius went to give the horse some more water and some hay and oats--

'If I weren't a wolf, you wouldn't have to be doing all this thinking. You could be sleeping at night, getting some rest, instead of running flat out for miles and then nearly drowning.'

'I didn't nearly drown,' Sirius replied. 'I could've transformed at any time, and shucked my robes off if I couldn't lighten them. It wasn't the fur that nearly did me in. I swam as Padfoot all the way to the mainland from Azkaban last summer, after all.

'It was a grindylow that attacked me last night. It knew I was no dog, and it went for my wand.

'I've no idea how--the wand transforms when I do--'

'But it isn't your wand,' said Remus. 'Is it? I mean...how did you get it, Sirius?'

'I told you. An owl brought it.'

Sirius swore at the Muggle-made jeans again as he climbed over the fence. 'All right, I didn't go into Ollivander's and try out wands until one picked me.

'Crookshanks got it for me. In Hogsmeade. He scouted round until he found it--or it found him--and then he went back at night and stole it.'

'Crookshanks the cat,' said Remus, remembering.

'He did the best he could. And he did very well. I don't use the wand for a lot of things I'd use my own wand for...but heaven knows where that is, now.'

Sirius sighed, and stepped into the shed ahead of Remus.

'It's great for Summoning frying-pans and things,' Sirius said. 'But not much good against grindylows.'

'And I wasn't there to help,' said Remus, scowling.

'You were there. That's the whole point.'

Sirius reached out a hand to pat the bay horse. 'If you hadn't been there--if you hadn't come to be with me, here, in Spain--I'd be wasting away in that cave, just as I was wasting away in Azkaban. I wouldn't have had enough sense of purpose to make myself pack up and leave.

'I knew the Muggle fishermen and fisherwizards might be getting curious about me, or that the Spanish Minister of Magic might take it into her head to pay a visit to Esmeralda's community...and get suspicious about an unknown hermit living in a cave with a big black dog.

'But I wouldn't have had enough willpower to pack up and clear out.

'Isn't that why you came when you got my owl? Because you reckoned I was settling in and getting ready to plant a garden just outside my door?'

'I don't know,' Remus said, hoping he was answering truthfully. 'I do know I wanted to escape...from Hogwarts...from Britain...from the house my grandparents left me...

'That house is so empty,' he went on. 'And Hogwarts...Dumbledore said I could stay on there for the summer holidays, but talk about empty...

'Severus Snape, and the ghosts, and a handful of house-elves.' He grimaced.

'They can be good company. The house-elves can,' Sirius amended, interpreting Remus's look correctly.

'Yes, but not day in and day out for two months. And Severus haunts the place like a ghost, himself.' Or more like a spy, Remus thought.

'The only thing Hogwarts would be full of would be memories...like ghosts. You, and James, and Peter...you're there everywhere, Sirius. Not so much among the faces of the students when they're there--although Harry looks so much like James that if it weren't for those green eyes I--'

Remus broke off, and then tried again. 'And he was there all during the Christmas and Easter holidays, he and his two friends.

'But when they're all gone, the students and most of the staff...

'And even if they were there now, I couldn't be. They all know what I am.'

'How?' Sirius growled, looking and sounding as if he'd like to tear the throat out of whoever had told.

'Things like that get out,' Remus said, because he could see now in Sirius's face the considering and discarding of names going on behind his eyes. Not Harry. Not his friends. They wouldn't have told. Not Dumbledore. Not Madam Pomfrey...

'Severus.' The word was a snarl. Sirius drew his wand out of his shirt, and raised it, looking poised to Disapparate, there and then--

Remus reached out and grasped his wrist. 'You can't Apparate into Hogwarts,' he reminded his friend.

'Then I'll go to the Shrieking Shack. I'll go to Honeyduke's. If I can't Apparate inside the castle I'll get in as Padfoot. I'll--'

'Sirius,' said Remus, keeping his grip on Sirius's wand arm. 'If you go to Hogwarts, what will I do? What will Sienna do?'

'You can--' Sirius glowered at Remus...and then, at last, after a long moment, he lowered his wand.

Remus let go of his wrist, and Sirius shoved the wand back inside his shirt.

'Tell Sienna I'll sleep in the shed tonight,' he said. 'Tell her I want to keep an eye on the horse for her.

'Tell her...tell her the dog will guard the caravan and that if he senses anything suspicious he'll wake you and bring you to me, so she mustn't be frightened if she wakes in the night and looks for the two of you and you're not there.'

'I'll tell her not to look for us,' Remus replied. 'I'll tell her to stay inside the caravan, no matter what she hears outside...'

But Muggle women, Remus learned, had minds of their own. At least, this one did. She was not afraid, she told Remus. If she'd been a coward, she wouldn't have come on this journey all on her own. She wouldn't have hired a boat, and gone out for a sail before breakfast. She wouldn't have brought a half-drowned man and dog back to her caravan, but would have left them on the beach and gone for help, for someone else to take them home or to hospital.

'And I'm not afraid of goblins and ghosties,' she said, smiling at him as she filled his bowl with the savoury homemade stew that had been simmering away on the cooker while he and Sirius talked and she wrote her letters and updated her journal entries.

'And it's not going to rain tonight, and I'm not going to stay indoors when there's a full moon.

'And don't you try to stop me, either,' she told Padfoot, who stood between her and the door, teeth bared, hackles raised. 'If you bite me, I'll bite you back.

'I bit my pony once,' she went on, turning to Remus and still smiling: a very determined-looking smile. 'He used to nip at me, and one day he bit me. And I grabbed his ear and pulled it down to my mouth and bit him as hard as I could. And I didn't let go straight away, either. I ground in my teeth a bit, getting a good grip, as if I were going to hang on, like a bulldog.

'And he never tried to bite me again. And when we sold him on, when I outgrew him, we heard he never tried to bite anyone else, either.'

'I don't wonder,' murmured Remus, as Sienna flounced past Padfoot and out the door and down the steps. He was shivering, but there was no pain with this sudden rush of feeling that was not a chill...

The moon was not out...not yet...

'Go with her, Padfoot,' he said. 'Stay with her...'

Padfoot spun around, and was out the door and down the steps in a single bound.

Remus turned back to the table, where the frying pan sat, cooling, still holding the remnants of the stew...

He began to spoon up great mouthfuls of stew. He did not want to be hungry tonight...he wanted to be full to bursting...

But not sick, either, he told himself, forcing himself to slow down, to chew, to not gulp down great mouthfuls...

And as he stood there, at the table, chewing, his eyes fell on the thing Sienna had called a 'laptop'--a thing that had a screen like a small Muggle-television screen, and a grid of buttons she called a 'keyboard'--

She kept her journal here, she had told him. No, it was not a secret journal. He was welcome to read it...

During supper he had read a few paragraphs, before the argument had begun about her not being afraid to go out into the full-moonlight...

I wonder (she had written) if all Mum's people really did not leave any written records because they travelled about so much, or because they wanted to keep the routes they travelled a secret from other travellers.

I can find no record at all of any names that look or sound anything like 'Obskara,' and all I can think of is that it looks maddeningly like 'obscure'--which it certainly seems to be!

Perhaps it is Basque, but I can get nowhere with that line of enquiry. I wonder if anyone at Oxford speaks Basque. If I could learn even a little, and then come back here next summer...

I hate to give up, but John and Morag are expecting to meet me in Granada...

That was as much as Remus had read; that was all that had appeared on the screen. But he noticed that what she had called the 'scrollbar' indicated there was more preceding these paragraphs; and now, chewing another mouthful, he tapped the up-arrow key. And read...

These full-moon nights are the only thing that can get my mind off this ancestor-hunt, that can ease my frustration. The moon is as lovely here as ever in Oxford, and out here in the countryside I can see so many more stars. And I can see my own shadow as clear as it is in broad daylight. And I remember how Dad told me that a full-moon night was the only night bearable to one who had spent so many years in prison. It was night, he said; it was dark, and yet one could see things round about one. One could see one's shadow, and know that one was not oneself only a shadow. One could see one's shape, and know that one was still human, and that no prison, no matter how horrible, could take away every trace of one's humanity.

Remus gave a low moan, that shivered upon the air in the moonlit caravan. His finger trembled on the key, and then both his hands began to shake uncontrollably. The spoon fell from his curling fingers, and landed with a clatter on the table beside the frying pan.

He was shaking all over now, shivering, as if with a sudden chill. His lips trembled, and he could feel a prickling at his nostrils, and along his scalp...

He turned away from the table, and turned towards the door, and towards the moon...which was now doubly his enemy, because it had become a friend to people who had befriended him and yet had never told him how they had been befriended by that which he hated and feared more than anything else...

With a howl of pain and rage and fear, Moony scrabbled on all fours across the floor of the moonlit room, and leapt through the doorway, clearing the steps and landing in the cold wet grass, and fleeing the bright caravan.

The woods were cold and wet too. The cold fought against the pain that continued to tear, like fanged fire, at Moony's muscles and veins.

Long ago, for a brief period of time, a few dozen months out of as many years, he had had friends: companions whose warmth and laughter had helped to drive away the pain. They would come to him, just as the pain was starting to attack, and they would stay with him, and the warmth of their fellowship, and their laughter--and their humanity--would chase the pain and the savagery away.

And last night...and the night before that...one of them had been there, with him, again. The other fanged one...the one who could fight him tooth and claw, if need be...the one who had raced with him, to hunt down the moon...Padfoot...

Padfoot had come back once before. Padfoot...and Wormtail...

And when Wormtail had fled, running for his life...Padfoot had not given chase but had leapt after Moony, bringing him down...fighting him with tooth and claw...chasing him away...trying to hunt him down, instead of the moon...

Because the moon had become Padfoot's friend. In those twelve long years of imprisonment in Azkaban, when the full moon had brought light to some of the long nights, that moon had become a friend to Sirius...Padfoot...

Moony shook his head. Confused, tormented less now by bodily pain than by images he could not see with his eyes or hear with his ears, he came to a slithering stop beneath the dripping trees. He sat down and rubbed his muzzle with a forepaw, trying to rub away the scents he could not even smell with his nostrils...

He shook his head again, and looked up at the moon, trying to catch its scent...and he howled, Why? Padfoot...Prongs...Wormtail...why?

High overhead, the moon hung, still, silent, remote. Around it, the stars glittered, sharp, like pinpricks of ice; cold-burning, like Muggle-made iron.

And across the light of the stars and moon, a great winged creature was soaring. A prey creature, and another creature on its back...a creature that was not prey, but that was nonetheless quarry...

Moony stood up, leaping, straining to reach the flying creatures; straining as against invisible bonds. He spun around, snarling and snapping at chains that were not there...

And let out another howl...

And something was there. Someone was there. Another living creature, a creature of fur, and fang, and claw.

Padfoot was here, a shadow in the moon-dappled darkness, but more solid than a shadow...Padfoot, who was not a shadow at all, but who was as real as Moony...

I came as soon as I could, said Padfoot. I put the woman on Buckbeak, and I set Buckbeak free.

Come on, let's hunt the moon.

Woman...Buckbeak...moon...

Images shifted and circled, blending and transforming...images Moony could see, but not with his eyes...

Come on. Padfoot nudged Moony, hard, with his great shaggy head. He slid out his forelegs, bracing his paws against the ground and waving his plumed tail. Last one out of the woods is a hinkypunk!

A hinkypunk. A one-footed creature that smelled of mothballs.

Moony shook his head, and dug his muzzle into the wet ground, trying to rub out the scent his nostrils could almost smell.

If I'm a hinkypunk, you're a flobberworm, he snorted at Padfoot.

Well at least flobberworms smell good. Come on. Race you to the moon.

They didn't catch the moon. Padfoot kept allowing himself to be distracted by rabbits. But as neither he nor Moony was hungry he never caught one but merely chased them from burrow to burrow.

Once Moony caught scent of a very large prey animal, and took off towards it, but he had taken no more than two strides before Padfoot charged into him, ramming him in the ribs and bowling him over, then turning it into a game by seizing only a mouthful of fur, and not Moony's throat, in his teeth.

Panting, You great clump of dog's breath!, Moony kicked at Padfoot's belly, but the fur there was too thick. Padfoot barked with laughter, not feeling a thing.

Twisting between Padfoot's forefeet, snarling half-genuine threats, Moony tried to get his fangs within reach of the broad black muzzle--

When something stopped him.

Something nearly as cold as iron clamped down...not around his throat, nor yet either of his forelegs; not over his own muzzle...he could not feel it, not with his body...yet it was very unmistakably there--

He could see it. He could see the memory: himself, and Padfoot...and others...other...humans...and blood welling up through the thinner fur on Padfoot's muzzle--

And then Moony began to twist and turn harder than ever, struggling in earnest now; and not to attack, but to get away. To flee...

He kicked again, hard, with his hind feet, and Padfoot let out a yelp of very real pain, and the instant his jaws loosed their grip on Moony's throat-fur, Moony was out from between the huge forepaws, and scrambling up, and running away.

* * *

He crouched in the darkest corner of the shed. There had been a large prey creature here, whose scent he had followed, but before he had got within anything like attacking range, the animal had fled, galloping across the grass away from where Moony was just slipping beneath the bottom rail of the fence. The prey creature had jumped the fence, awkwardly; nearly pulling the top rail down with its hooves; and had galloped away into the night.

Moony would have given chase. But just then another prey creature, the great winged one, had alighted on top of the shed, and on its back, hidden by its wings, had been that other creature...that...woman.

That human being, that creature that was not prey but was quarry. That creature one hunted, not because one was hungry; not because one longed to destroy it as one longed to destroy the moon; not because one feared it, or hated it; but because one...because one had to hunt it. To attack it...to...

The images that Moony could see, but not with his eyes, shifted and blurred, confusing him...he shook his head, snapping and snarling to chase them away; and ran towards the shed, bounding, preparing to leap high, to leap up onto the roof...

And the confusion of images and real flesh-and-blood creatures collapsed, crashing, all around him, and the winged creature sprang into the air, and a great black dog came running out of the woods, and the blackness expanded and fell all around Moony, as the corner of the shed collapsed and crashed to the ground where he crouched, trembling.

...There was a human being walking in the grass. There was a prey creature walking beside her. There was a great black dog walking at her other side.

There was Padfoot...

And there was Prongs...

No.

Moony shook his head.

Prongs was not there. Prongs was dead.

Moony shook his head, and heard with his ears a low whine, as he felt a dark, dizzying pain lunge towards his eyes...

'What was that?'

The woman's voice came as cool as the moonlit breeze. As cool as the damp blades of grass Moony could just reach with the tip of his tongue.

He was so very thirsty...

The larger of the two four-legged creatures...the prey animal, the hoofed one he had mistaken for Prongs, stopped stock still, and tossed its head, and snorted.

The other four-legged creature...the black dog...

Padfoot...

Padfoot was looking at Moony. Padfoot's eyes, light in the midst of the surrounding black fur, met Moony's.

Moony heard another whine, with his ears this time; and then another, like an echo but with a slightly different pitch...

'What is it?' The woman laid her hand on Padfoot's head. 'You heard it, too, didn't you?'

Padfoot seemed to literally tear his eyes away from Moony's. He looked up at the woman, and barked. Then he clamped his great jaws around her forearm, and began to tug her, gently but persistently, towards the fence, away from the shed and away from Moony.

'Stop it,' the woman said, putting out her free hand and trying to pry Padfoot's jaws apart. 'Let go of me. I haven't found nearly all the herbs I want. And even if dogs don't care if food tastes like it came out of a tin, I do. Although I don't expect you to understand that fluxweed and monkshood have to be picked by full-moonlight--'

Padfoot stopped tugging so suddenly that the woman, still resisting him, nearly fell. As if to counterbalance her, Padfoot sat down quickly, and she fell to her knees almost on top of him.

'You lunatic dog!' But she seemed almost as amused as exasperated. She made no effort to get up, but only sat back on her heels so that she was not leaning on Padfoot, and--after wiping her now-freed arm on her skirts with a look of only mild distaste, she reached out with both hands and began to caress Padfoot's head, ruffling the fur at his neck and scratching him around the ears.

The horse, still snorting, had trotted away from them; but it had stopped after only a few strides, and now dropped its head to graze. A circle of white rimmed its dark eye, however; and it kept one ear cocked towards Moony.

Padfoot, too, kept his ears pricked; and the woman seemed to be listening as attentively as she was now combing her fingers through Padfoot's thick neck-fur. As attentively as Padfoot was gazing into her eyes...

But he didn't sit gazing into her eyes for very long. Perhaps, Moony thought later on, it had only seemed to him like a long time. When he was so very thirsty, and the moon was slipping down the sky to hang so low above the trees; while the shadows of the three in the field--the horse, the woman, and Padfoot--grew, stretching out black across the grass...towards the shed where Moony lay waiting...hoping, for the first time since his student days at Hogwarts, that the moon would not go down...

He heard another whine. Heard it with his ears...and he shook his head, and saw that Padfoot was standing up again. He had the woman's arm again, in his jaws, and he was tugging at her, pulling her to her feet. He began to back away from her, his eyes still on hers, but trying to pull her towards, and not away from, the shed where Moony lay.

And their shadows lay on the ground, like one shadow; like the shadow of the moon's trail. It reached out across the grass, towards the shed, and towards Moony...

And Padfoot, turning his head, met Moony's eyes again. Held them. And as he continued to tug at the woman's arm, he also stepped slightly to one side of her, so that he was still backing towards the shed, but now at an angle that separated their one shadow into two. And the woman, noticing this, also noticed Moony. And she stopped again. But this time, instead of leaning back she stood poised, her head thrust forward, her eyes gazing straight at Moony's.

'What on earth--?'

And then Moony could not tell who was tugging whom; whether Padfoot was still pulling at the woman, or whether the woman was pulling Padfoot. The horse kept his distance, watching now, and snorting; and high above, the winged creature...the hippogriff...was circling...

But Padfoot and the woman were here. And Padfoot was lying down, right in front of Moony and almost on top of him. And the woman was kneeling down, in front of Padfoot and Moony, and her body was blocking the moon from Moony's view...

She was trying, gently, to push Padfoot's head aside, and was saying, just as gently, 'OK...it's OK. Good dogs...

'Come on, now...steady, now...I won't hurt you....

'Oh dear.'

She sat back on her heels, looking down at Moony. 'Oh my goodness. You're a wolf.'

She blew a gusty sigh, that wafted loose tendrils of hair away from her eyes.

'Great. Here I am, in the middle of nowhere...no mobile...and a wolf. Why couldn't I have just stayed in Oxford? I could have been halfway through my revision by now...

'Yeah, right. Stuck in the Bodleian.' She sighed again. 'OK. Well. Let's just hope Spain's free of rabies, shall we?'

She looked at Padfoot. 'You've got to get off of him if I'm to get him out of there. I know he can't bite with your paws all over his nose like that, but I don't imagine he can breathe very well, either.

'And anyway,' she went on, looking at Moony again, 'if you do bite me, I'll bite you back. And I bite hard, and I don't let go straight away...'

She was still speaking in that gentle voice, but as she spoke she was pushing Padfoot, trying to move him away from Moony.

Padfoot resisted her, growling softly. She leaned towards him, perhaps intending to put her arms around him and pull him out of the way...

Moony's nostrils, full of the smell of Padfoot's fur, and of the moonlit night, suddenly caught the scent of the woman as well. The scent of a human.

She leaned closer to Padfoot...

Padfoot growled again, and pulled against her, resisting her...

Her body moved with his...

And the moon shone full and clear in on Moony...

He snarled.

Padfoot snapped.

Moony lunged.

Jaws opened...

Closed...

The dark, dizzying pain lunged back again, all around Moony's ears.

Snarls and growls overwhelmed his ears, echoed inside them.

He was being tugged at, pulled at. He was being dragged out of the shed. He was being forced to run, stumbling, slipping, falling on the wet grass...

He tried to lurch to his feet, but there was a great weight on the back of his neck and sharp teeth pressing against his jawbones. He struggled, snarling, clawing the grass...biting back shrieks of pain...

Tearing with his fingers at the thick black fur of the dog that sprawled in the grass beside him...

Remus clutched at the fur...then as his fingers slowly began to relax he became aware of the coolness of the grass against his skin...

He buried his face among the thick, sweet-smelling blades...

'This,' muttered Sirius's voice beside him, 'is going to take rather a lot of memory modification in quite a short time.'