Three and a quarter weeks, fourteen hours, and twenty-six minutes. Really, there was no fathomable reason for him to be cataloging this as if it were an assignment. But he'd always been fond of lists, hadn't he? For the groceries just in case his mother had forgotten what they were in need of, how many lines of work that were due on which date, the number of socks each person in the dormitory occupied and what color. It was a compulsion. A desperate attempt to control something when everything else around him fell apart. Remus often felt like those lists that ran through his mind, page after page, endlessly unattended and unfinished.
In his silence, he bore witness to a great deal more than usual. Peter began to chew on the end of his quill, likely due to the fact that their fourth addition to the party wasn't telling him otherwise any longer. James sent him more furtive glances than he did Lily (in quite another fashion, thank you very much). Sirius –
Remus didn't care. The forced indifference was as palpable as the tension.
Lately, as the empty moments throughout the day grew longer and stretched at his resolve, Remus found himself skipping meals to eat at odd hours. Usually when the Tower was packed with the white noise he no longer felt a part of. He could do this, survive the remainder of the term just as he did at the beginning of his first.
A werewolf deserved to be alone.