This is SLASH, people. If you don't like it, then there's always the handy "back" button waggling its eyebrows meaningfully at you.

A first attempt at Remus/Sirius in order to introduce more variety in my fics. Be nice. Dedicated to rhoddlet, who kicks my ass.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter, et al, are property of J.K. Rowling.

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Danger Lies

Being an Animagus isn't about half as fun as it sounds. As always, the base materials are the same-- flesh, hair, bone, blood-- but as you transform into your other self, all these shift and twist into another shape, quite different, quite terrifying.

Nobody can actually predict what form your Animagus will take. We all thought James would turn into something exotically brave -- eagle, lion -- but when he changed for the first time into a stag, we were all a bit staggered (a bit of a pun). Not staggered enough to stop making stag jokes, but still staggered.

What's so brave, so James about a stag?

(A stag will fight to death for its mate. Sirius only actually comprehended the entire thing after James died for his Lily and Harry.)

Peter's a rat; we teased poor, shy Peter about it loads. "Ooh, we've got a rat in our midst!" cried James jokingly, and punched Peter in the arm. Peter recoiled, then laughed shakily with us. Peter, he's one of those timid people you know you can trust because they're so simple and sensible they can't think of anything wrong to do. He takes a long time to get a joke, but when he does, he'll be laughing loudest. But you know the saying -- it's always the quiet ones. Sometimes I wonder about Peter.

I'm a large, black, shaggy dog with claws that went click-clack on the stone floor of Hogwarts. James said my Animagus goes quite well with my hair, which I never cut or comb; and my fingernails, which I never cut until I get warned by a prefect about the rule against hazardously sharp objects in Hogwarts.

Remus is a wolf, of course. We all like to call Remus our first Animagus, the one who could turn before all the rest of us. We're careful about the jokes, though. Remus isn't timid like Peter, he's sensitive.

His parents were dead protective of him, he told us. Ever since the werewolf thing cropped up and he became a bit more... wild. He laughed at that, but we all knew it wasn't a joke laugh, it was more of those laughs where you're laughing at the unfairness of everything. You can't do anything about it, so there's no other thing to do but laugh.

Remus understood that best. We got into trouble all the time, and we were always sent off to be punished by Filch. And Remus would always laugh softly while we were doing all the horrible things; zapping the foot-long slugs in the school garden, cleaning up the vomit after the final-year Potions students had done a particularly nauseating brew.

Remus hates being a werewolf, I know. He calls it his "taint" and laughs, but his eyes are so pained you have to look away. We call him "Moony" and try to make up for all the lost fun and games he hadn't had in his childhood, when he was too busy being locked up in the house by his parents for fear of people coming after him.

You learn a lot from people like Remus by the things they laugh at.

Once Remus said to me, "Every time it's the full moon, I start feeling horrible. I'll wake up at night, and I feel it creeping up me -- like cold, mucky slime, and when it's the night of the full moon it's like my head goes under this horrible ocean of muck and I can only see through this dark sea, where everything's muffled and I can't move. It's so dark, and I come up all dirty, Sirius, it makes me hate myself so much..."

I didn't know what to say. I joked about it, trivializing something I know I shouldn't, but I have to because I have to say something; "Well then, the Marauders'll be your life-float!"

Remus nodded slowly, but I could tell it didn't help. What helps? None of us knew, so we just accompanied Remus through his monthly sea visits to calm him down. We wandered, we played and grinned animal grins at each other. Animals know how to communicate through action.


People, on the other hand, need words. They need metaphors and similes, all just to convey something so base it can just be said through movement. Love. Care. I don't know what we wanted to say to him in the first place, but there was this huge rift between us and Remus we wanted so badly to bridge, to reach out to him. We had to offer him stupid comfort by giving him names, Moony, giving him jokes, giving him awkward hugs sometimes.

It was like Remus was up in a tower most of the time, and we were down there shouting to him. Remus, Remus, let down your hair. Remus' hair was his werewolf, and I know this sounds horrible, but every time he turned it felt like all of us could connect to him better, stronger; reach out to him the way stupid words couldn't. Especially me, because we were both of the same animal family -- wolves and dogs.

Before I change into my dog self, I think about the intelligence of wild things. How they know how to communicate without sounds or words. A dip of a canine head, a friendly lick of wolf-tongue. Love. Care. This way lies danger.

I wish I could touch my fingertips to Remus' and pulse into his body all the feelings that're crammed into mine. I know I can't, because Remus is always the sensitive one. I don't want to turn our friendship into something else, something unrecognizable. I'm always the spontaneous one, up for a challenge; but the last thing Remus needs is another unstable, uncontrollable aspect introduced into his life. I don't want to be that aspect. I want to be his friend, but I always want something more, maybe something that Remus can't give to me.

Remus needs someone to depend on, and I want that to be me. And -- that way lies danger. That much I know for sure.