There's a cold wind blowing outside, its harsh enough to make most people squirm. Colder still is the inside of Azkhaban walls. Sirius is untouched, the fire ignited by the pain of loss keeps him warm.
When the pain isn't so terrible, when the fire becomes a flame, he thinks about the old days. Flashes of happiness, before the Dementors suck them away. The common room? The map? The secret passages? The pranks? The plots? There are faces too. Marley? Frank? Alice? Remus? Harry? Dumbledore? Lily? James?
But they don't stay for long. Flashes. Moments. Memories. That is all he can experience.
There are better days, when the flame becomes a light, days with memories. The first Letter? The first encounters? The full moon nights? A wedding? A baby's birth?
And then on the terrible days, the days which follow the happy ones, when the fire returns, roaring. Memories of fights, battles, death. These memories are far more clear. The memory of the night they died. The memory of realizing his own mistake. The memory of confronting Peter.
And so when the cold winds hit against the prison walls, he doesn't flinch, because the fire inside him would just never die.
The sun sets, a few hours later the full moon will rise, just as it always has, but this night will be different, so much more different for Remus. This night will be like the ones he had before he knew of the blessings of friendship. For this full moon Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs would not ride together.
Remus waits for the moments before which the beast will rise from within him. There will be no friends to calm the beast, no one to quench the rage.
And on this night, he doesn't want to numb the rage either. The pain of betrayal. The loss of death. These are the harsh truths he must quell, but tonight he doesn't want to. Instead he summons them all. Every memory, every thought that crushed his soul. He yearns for the venom to kill all the memories. To take over his being so that he may wake up to never feel the pain again.
When the full moon rises, the transformation begins. Just as painful, just as torturous as before, but he doesn't feel the pain. For the first time, Remus is able to keep his mind in the body of the wolf. But he doesn't want to. He hoped that the transformation would take it all away.
But it won't. It never will. When moon wanes, and the sun rises, and he becomes human again, and for the first time, Remus wishes he was still the wolf.
He saw it all happening before his eyes. The blinding green light. The maniacal laugh. The faliing bodies. His fallen friends. The fallen Dark Lord.
Fear. That is all he could understand. He feared the Death Eaters who would hunt him. He feared being caught by Sirius and Remus. He feared the Dark Lord rising again. He feared being killed by them all, because he knew that then he would have to face his greatest fear.
He feared meeting James again. The friend who trusted him. The friend who sheltered him. The friend who protected him. But mostly he feared being forgiven by him.
It was fear that drove Peter into hiding. Fear that showed him that he was never the Gryffindor he claimed to be. Fear that compelled him to live as a rat.
