Hallucinations

The month after the Potters died, Remus Apparated to his mother's, and for the first time in many years, walked into her garden shed.

In absence of her son, it had been put to use for storing gardening tools. Remus threw them all out onto the lawn, put the pot-plants carefully into the greenhouse, and locked the door.

His mother, who being a Muggle had only the vaguest idea of what had happened, got herself a blanket and some hot tea and settled down outside to wait, because really, what else could a mother do?

She saw the movement in the grass, of course. But she was dozing off by then, and did not see what emerged from the ripple of leaves or where it went.

The wolf did, or at least it saw the rat enter. But it wasn't interested in rat, not when it could smell human sitting outside the shed. It nosed Wormtail out of the way and set about scuffing at the hole in the shed wall, which refused to break despite the wolf's best efforts.

Wormtail tugged at the wolf's tail and finally climbed up to sit on its head, which was the safest pace in the entire shed to be. He had to bounce up and down a bit and bite an ear to make the wolf notice him, but it happened eventually.

The wolf barely remembered Padfoot and Prongs. It remembered Padfoot more, and was starting in its animalistic way to miss him. That made it easier to connect, so Wormtail tackled that first.

Padfoot's gone away for a while. He might come back one day. Er, night.

The wolf shrugged and pawed at the hole again. If Padfoot wasn't here, he wasn't here.

And Prongs... well, the wolf understood prey and the hunt. That was easy, much easier than 'gone away'.

When sunrise came, both Remus and his mother were surprised to find that Remus had managed to transform back lying in the recovery position on the floor, and that apart from a few splinters around his nose there was barely a mark on him.

What surprised Remus most, however, was the small piece of parchment he found tucked into his hand. There were three simple words on it.

You were nice.

Remus decided that he had been hallucinating, and had ended up in the recovery position by pure lucky accident.

///

The month after Sirius died, Severus Snape came up with a goblet of potion and a nasty look. Afterwards, no matter how hard Remus tried, he would not be able to remember what was said, but it was insulting and had something to do with Sirius.

Remus threw the goblet at the door as it clicked shut.

There was no time to explain to anyone, least of all Mum, so he went to the Shrieking Shack and made himself reasonably comfortable.

When morning came, he had claw-marks and bruises everywhere and was being manhandled rather awkwardly onto the bed.

Of course, he thought as he looked dazedly upwards, Peter was shorter than him. Then something touched his side and he hissed in pain, closing his eyes for the briefest of moments. When he opened them again, Peter was gone.

Remus told himself that it was an hallucination, and he had somehow dragged himself onto the bed. But that could not explain away the hand-shaped burn mark on his side.