Remus followed Madam Pomfrey across the snowy Hogwarts grounds to the Whomping Willow, as he had done once every month for the past five years. Ordinarily, he dreaded these nights; he stayed cooped up in the Shrieking Shack, howling and scratching himself and the furniture. Tonight, though, promised to be different. James, Sirius and Peter had hinted at a special surprise waiting for him in the shack.
After using a stick to push the knot at the tree trunk and stop its flailing branches, Remus crawled inside and continued up the dirt passage to the Shrieking Shack. Once inside, he stopped dead in his tracks. Three animals were laying in wait for him. A majestic stag stood formidably behind a ripped-up chair and a big black dog lolled happily on the weathered couch while a rat scampered across the back.
"Seriously," Remus said, despite no one being in the room to hear him, "they left me food? This isn't funny."
"We didn't think you'd eat us!" protested Peter, who had suddenly appeared sitting on the back of the couch the rat had been running around on. He stumbled off the precarious perch as the dog that had been sitting there leaped off, morphing into Sirius during the jump.
"Yeah, mate," Sirius added, "that's called cannibalism and it's frowned upon in most polite cultures."
Remus forced a laugh and then swiveled his head to the chair. If Sirius and Peter were here, then...yeah, there was James, standing nonchalantly behind his chair, playing with that annoying stolen Snitch.
"You lot shouldn't be here," Remus said, though he couldn't help but be secretly glad that his friends were present. "It's not safe."
"Ah," commented James, still tossing the Snitch back and forth, "but, you see, it is. That's why we became Animagi, so we could join you and we could have some fun."
"And you can't bite us this way," explained Sirius. "Well, I guess you could, but it wouldn't do anything."
Remus opened his mouth to protest again, but then felt the oh-so-familiar convulsions come over him. He began shaking as the painful transformation ripped through him. As if through a layer of heavy blankets, he heard James yell, "Quick! Change!" and then saw the figures of his friends disappear, replaced by their Animagi forms.
Remus expected the typical mindless torture that made up his lonely nights, when his usually rational mind was imprisoned by animal instincts and he watched as if from the sidelines as his changed body wreaked havoc on his prison's walls, carpet and furniture. But tonight was different in that way as well.
Somehow, the more rational human side of Remus, while not in full control, was present. He felt as though he could curb his behavior if needed, and then he felt something else. There were three other presences with him that night, though two were stronger than the third. Remus couldn't hear his friends, per se, but he could sense their thoughts in a way. It was a whole new level of communication, and he was sure it was helping him keep his grip on his sanity.
He saw how they had been planning this for years, only perfecting the transformations this month, and wondered that his friends managed to keep the secret, especially from him. Remus was everyone's confidant: he knew of James' ill-fated obsession with Lily Evans, every detail of Sirius' various hookups, and Peter's occasional freak outs about his low grades.
He also saw how they had entered the Shack. They'd followed him before, watching under the Invisibility Cloak to find how to stop the Whomping Willow's thrashing arms, and then today Peter, in his rat form, had pushed the knot on the trunk. They then proceeded to walk in here under the Cloak and transform, waiting to surprise him.
And it had worked! He felt a rush of happiness from Sirius, who was bounding in circles around the room. Then, with only the slightest hesitation, he responded to the nonverbal urging to go out and tramp about Hogsmeade.
The four Marauders cavorted around Hogsmeade after exiting the Shrieking Shack. Remus reveled in this new feeling-he was as powerful as a werewolf should be, but at the same time he was calm, more like a dog than a man- hungry monster, and...what was that feeling? He was happy, genuinely happy, indeed, the happiest he had been since James, Sirius and Peter had discovered his secret and stuck by him.
Sirius lunged for a frayed rope half-buried in the snow, and, holding one end in his slobbery mouth, extended the other to Remus, who snapped at it. While the two canines were engaged in a viciously friendly game of tug-of-war, James galloped around the empty street and Peter scampered about, searching near Honeydukes for dropped morsels of candy.
Remus was still deep into his seemingly never-ending battle for the rope when he smelled something delicious. Looking up, he saw that James had turned back into human form and was climbing the fire escape of the nearest house. Overcome by bloodlust, Remus dropped the rope and sprang at James, eager to bite, to taste the tangy human blood. Despite never tasting it before, centuries of instinctive werewolf knowledge had engrained an insatiable thirst for human blood in this side of Remus.
Before Remus could reach James, who was still nimbly climbing the building, oblivious to the werewolf heading towards him, a ball of snapping teeth and outstretched claws hurtled at Remus, knocking him over. Sirius and Remus wrestled on the ground like two over-grown puppies, but the stakes here were much higher.
Finally, pinned under the great black dog, Remus felt himself coming back to himself. As James, now on top of the roof, morphed back into the great stag, the last of his temporary insanity faded.
I'm sorry, Remus beamed to his friends. Let's just keep playing
Sirius rolled off of Remus, panting and wagging his tail. James leapt down from the rooftop and nuzzled his head against Remus's in a sign that all was forgiven, while Peter scampered happily near them, his belly engorged from all the discarded candy he had gobbled up.
The rest of the night passed without any further incidents. The three larger Marauders ran races down the empty main street, Peter ate all the scraps people had dropped, and Remus remained in control of his demonic other half.
All too soon, the first traces of sunlight began to appear in the sky to the east. Remus could feel his transformation coming back upon him, and he joined his friends in running towards the Shrieking Shack before they could be discovered as out-of-bounds Hogwarts students. Sirius scooped Peter up in his mouth and carried him like a cat with her baby kitty as they sprinted towards the Shack. They made it just in time, as Remus's transformation back to a human occurred right when they had entered the shack.
When the shaking that always followed his transformations had subsided, Remus grinned up at his friends, who were also back in their human forms. "Thanks for tonight," he said. "It was amazing."
"No problem, Moony," said James, grinning back.
"Really, thank you...Prongs," Remus repeated, this time adding a new nickname for James.
"I want a nickname!" squeaked Peter, and then he blushed as his still-growing voice failed him.
"Sure thing, Wormtail," responded Sirius.
Peter made a face, then said, "Fine. If I'm Wormtail, you get to be Padfoot."
Laughing, Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs gathered under James's Invisibilty Cloak and walked back to Hogwarts, already eagerly anticipating next month's full moon.